The lunar synodic cycle – the moon’s regular journey from full moon to full moon again over 28 nights – causes changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, the moon’s gravitational pull on Earth, and light levels at night. Many species can detect this and use it to synchronize their breeding. Mass spawning in corals sees tens of millions of eggs released at once on reefs to coincide with full or new moons....
Emotion recognition technology (ERT) is in fact a burgeoning multi-billion-dollar industry that aims to use AI to detect emotions from facial expressions. Yet the science behind emotion recognition systems is controversial: there are biases built into the systems. [Read: Can AI read your emotions? Try it for yourself] Many companies use ERT to test customer reactions to their products, from cereal to video games. But it can also be used in situations with much higher stakes, such as in hiring, by airport security to flag faces as revealing deception or fear, in border control, in policing to identify “dangerous people” or in education to monitor students’ engagement with their homework....
Football season is back! And admit it — watching brightly-colored uniforms clash at high speeds on brilliant green fields are probably amplifying every deficiency of your current television, right? We’ve got the answer…because we want to get you in front of top-of-the-line TV technology — for FREE. We’ve got a ginormous 4K Ultra HD Smart TV just sitting here waiting for a new home. All you’ve gotta do is win the Samsung 65-inch QLED TV Giveaway from TNW Deals....
There we go. We can all breathe a sigh of relief. I mean, that’s kinda the main thrust of this piece, but we may as well flesh it out a bit, right? First, history. Just over a year ago, Apple added support for the PS4‘s Dualshock and the Xbox One S gamepads on some of its operating systems (you know, like tvOS, iOS, and iPadOS). What this meant is you could play games on Apple devices using a proper, dedicated controller....
In Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, food insecurity is on the rise; almost 8 percent of the population was found to be undernourished in 2015, compared with 6 percent in 2007, according to the World Bank’s development indicators. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for smallholder farmers, and those seeking to invest in them, with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicting that the agricultural market in Sub-Saharan Africa will grow from $200 billion in 2015 to $1 trillion by 2030....
Our current AI methods either require a huge amount of data, or a very large number of hand-coded rules, and they’re only suitable for very narrow domains. AGI, on the other hand, should be able to perform multiple tasks with little data and specific instructions. While approaches to creating AGI have shifted and evolved over the decades, one thing has remained constant: The human brain is proof that general intelligence does exist....
An exciting component of the rover will be a specialized drill that will collect rock and soil samples to be cached on the surface of Mars. If all goes according to plan, the cache will be retrieved by a future mission in 2031 and, for the first time, material from Mars will be brought back to Earth for analysis. As someone who studies Martian geology, I’m definitely looking forward to 2031 but am grateful I don’t have to wait 11 years to study rocks from Mars....
SPACs are shell companies that are floated on the stock market with one purpose: to buy another company. This aims to achieve the same as a stock-market listing or initial public offering (IPO) but in reverse. Instead of a traditional company seeking to raise capital from investors through an IPO, with SPACs the empty listed company is set up first. For this reason, they are sometimes known as blank-cheque companies....
It was a week of good news for EVs and climate action, as General Motors and the new U.S. president announced ambitious plans to tackle global warming. Both set a goal fourteen years out, which, although it’s later than the often-cited 2030 target from the Paris Agreement, is a profound move forward. General Motors makes a commitment Years ago, Charles Wilson, President of General Motors, and Eisenhower’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, famously said, “What is good for the country is good for General Motors and vice versa....
Similarly, the historically unprecedented scale of the George Floyd protests can be attributed in part to social media. By some estimates, 25 million Americans participated at protests. Social media has proven itself as a tool for political activism, from online boycotts to offline gatherings. It also has implications for how political campaigns operate. Social media can aid campaigns with voter targeting efforts, but it can also make the electoral process vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation, including from foreign actors....
We’re all used to typing emoji on our smartphones and tablets, but not so much on our PCs. I certainly don’t know of any desktop or laptop keyboards with an emoji button. But shouldn’t we be able to be as expressive on our primary computers? It used to be that you had to access emoji via a virtual keyboard, download a third party app, or copy and paste them from the web....
In this post, I’ll explain the qualities that can make a cold email successful — at least for me — so let’s dive in. Target your email appropriately If you’re thinking about blasting out a mass email to every investor you can find an address for, you’re wasting your own time, not to mention that of any potential investors. If I see a message that I can tell has been sent or Bcc’d to 3000 other investors, I’ll probably delete it without reading, as I imagine you would too....
An opinion piece in The Washington Post brought up valid concerns about how EVbatteries might be affected in a similar condition. It also mentioned an EV driver who expressed worries about his battery running out in the snow. He eventually got through the night with enough range left to make it out of the interstate. So, what’s the truth? Are EV batteries built for more than just a summertime cruise?...
Smell loss has traditionally received little attention in the field of medicine and so there has been a lack of clinical trials for treatments. A project is underway to address this matter, but it will be a while before the first research findings are published. However, an international group of experts, including myself, recently reviewed the existing evidence and discussed our recommendations for treating smell disturbances caused by viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2....
Instagram this week released Threads, a messaging app strictly for communicating with those on your Close Friends list. It’s a boon for those who use Instagram as their primary social media platform. So how do you get started on Threads? Here’s a quick guide. Opening the app When you first download and open the app, the first thing you’re gonna be asked is which account you which to use. Since it’s not uncommon for users to have more than one account, take this opportunity to pick which one you want to use to communicate....
Sharing music is one of the greatest ways to get to know someone, and there’s nothing like having a shared playlist to bring people together. Luckily, music apps recognize how important sharing music is, and have implemented collaborative playlists, which allow users to share music in a single playlist. So, to that end, here’s how to make a collaborative playlist with two of the most popular music service. Note that we’re leaving out Apple Music not out of lack of interest, but because the service doesn’t, at the time of writing, support collaborative playlists....
Popular voice chat program Discord has a “Go Live” feature that allows people to stream their gameplay and other things to their fellow users. It’s simple to use, and quite useful for sharing other, non-gaming things like movies or shows. Discord today announced that the limit for Go Live viewers has gone from the relatively modest 10 viewers up to 50. This is a temporary change, says CEO Jason Citron, to help those working from home or who’re otherwise housebound by the coronavirus outbreak....
The messaging service is pretty late to the party, as other apps like Telegram, Signal, and Slack have had this feature for a while. Before using this feature, make sure you update your app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Once you’re done, here’s how you can use it: Open WhatsApp on your phone. Go to any conversation, and find the message you want to react to....
This article was originally published by Sarah Wray on Cities Today, the leading news platform on urban mobility and innovation, reaching an international audience of city leaders. For the latest updates follow Cities Today on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, or sign up for Cities Today News. Linz in Austria will become an urban air mobility (UAM) pilot city, while Dubai is turning its attention to the finer details of making flying taxis a reality....
That’s right, it’s the twelfth edition of Plugged In — which is sort of relevant, because this week we’re getting festive. Nah, fuck all that Father Christmas noise, this is about the iPhone 12 event. That’s right, we’re going to spend all these words talking about a dumb phone launch. Grab yourself a cuppa and get strapped in. I always thought some of my opinions were set in stone, that there were unwavering pillars of my personality....
