We’ve known this for awhile, but a team of researchers recently took a deep-dive into data from the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey – yes, there’s such a thing as a “galactic archaeologist” and it’s what I want to be when I grow up. These scientists – whom I can’t stop picturing as Indiana Jones-types wearing bubble helmets now – traced the leftover remains of at least two galaxies that had been consumed by Andromeda in the past to determine what went down....

It might be the big names that hit the headlines, but the growth illusion is as much of an issue among startups just setting up shop. A culture has developed over the last few years which values rapid expansion above all else, including many of the fundamental building blocks of a scalable business, such as product-market fit, and a business model that actually brings profitability, at least at the underlying customer level....

Valve revealed the feature, called Remote Play Together on the Steamworks website, which is only accessible to developers. PC Gamer later revealed its existence to the rest of us. Valve’s Alden Kroll described it as such on Twitter: “This will allow friends to play local co-op games together over the internet as though they were in the same room together.” Steam Remote Play is its streaming software, which allows you to play games running on your PC on other devices....

If you ask buyers to explain why they invest in cloud storage, most will say it’s so all their digital content can be available to anyone, anywhere. However, sadly, it’s not always that simple. Giant name brands like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive can be either expensive, limiting or both. Meanwhile, there are always security concerns about the safety of any documents or media files pushed to a cloud-based server....

The US government had argued the law makes violating a website’s terms and conditions a criminal offense, which severely restricted investigations into discriminatory algorithms. Advertisers have used these algorithms to stop people from seeing job, housing, or credit ads based on their race, gender, and age. Researchers can investigate the companies behind them by creating fake user accounts, and then recording the adverts they receive. But if this violates the website’s terms-of-service, they could face federal prosecution....

That’s a trite summation for what’s happening, but according to Gary Marcus, the CEO and co-founder of Robust.AI, AI developers and researchers will need to augment their approach before any real progress towards “robust” artificial intelligence can be made. Read: UK plan to replace migrant carers with automation branded ‘ridiculous’ Marcus published a new paper on arXiv earlier this week titled “The Next Decade in AI: Four Steps Towards Robust Artificial Intelligence....

The study, published in the Geriatrics journal, used driving data, demographic information, and machine learning to predict — with 88% accuracy — whether an individual has MCI or dementia. Now, driving data on its own is not the most accurate measure of whether someone is experiencing these kinds of cognitive impairments. Driving data alone can only predict this with 66% accuracy. However, when it’s coupled with demographic data — such as age, race, gender, and education level — the accuracy rises to 88%....

Could plants grow in such an environment – and, if so, which ones? This is the question that colonists on the Moon (and Mars) would have to tackle if (or when) human exploration of our planetary neighbors goes ahead. Now a new study, published in Communications Biology, has started to provide answers. The researchers behind the study cultivated the fast-growing plant Arabidopsis thaliana in samples of lunar regolith (soil) brought back from three different places on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts....

Campaign group Transport and Environment (T&E) is calling on the UK government to put an end to subsidies and tax breaks for plug-in hybrid models, Reuters reports. The demands come in response to recent emissions studies that plug-in hybrid produces far more emissions than carmakers advertise. [Read: Why this security engineer loves working in infosec] Emissions Analytics tested the BMW X5, Volvo XC60, and Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrids and found even in ideal conditions they still emit more CO2 than their brands say they should....

Yeah, about that… One of the biggest questions people had about the Notch™️ was how macOS would actually handle the odd screen cutout. Would the macOS simply ignore the notch, and have the cursor slide behind it, or would you be forced to move the cursor around it? Would long lists of menu items ‘jump’ over the notch, or would they be obscured by it? As it turns out, the answer is “all of the above....

​In partnership with electric road systems company ElectReon and Dan Bus Company, the trial will run on 600 metres of electrified road along a two-kilometre route between Tel Aviv University Railway Station and Klatzkin Terminal in Ramat Aviv. The technology uses copper coils embedded under roads and connected to the electricity grid, along with receivers installed under vehicles. Following the completion of tests and integration of the technology – expected to take around two months – a Dan Bus Company electric bus will commence regular journeys on the route, serving passengers travelling to Tel Aviv University....

The truth of the matter is that facial recognition technology serves only two legitimate purposes: access control and surveillance. And, far too often, the people developing the technology aren’t the ones who ultimately determine how it’s used. Most decent, law-abiding citizens don’t mind being filmed in public and, to a certain degree, would tend to take no exception to the use of facial recognition technology in places where it makes sense....

And that’s a long time to keep the beast at bay for those of us who were excitedly expecting it last year. However, as we’ve recently seen what can happen when a much-anticipated game is released a little too early, we here at TNW commend Paradox and developer Hardsuit Labs for making the decision to keep BL2 in the oven for as long as it needs. Because, and I cannot stress this enough, there simply aren’t enough good vampire games out there....

I’m sorry… what? It’s simply titled The Club. If you’d told me this time yesterday that I’d be checking out a game like this, I’d have told you to lay off the MDMA and let me get back to guzzling my coffee. The game is developed by Crows Crows Crows, the studio founded by William Pugh, one of the designers behind popular ennui simulator The Stanley Parable. The studio described it in the announcement newsletter as “a mission-less, non-competitive, online music listening game (it’s an MMO)....

One of the most common jokes at the expense of the Cybertruck was that it looked like a polygonal model from a 64-bit console of choice. It was compared to everything from Pokémon to Lara Croft’s bust line — but my favorites were probably the Photoshop jobs that put the car into old-school racing games like Cruisin’ World. Twitter is a riot when it’s got something this cool to make fun of....

If you own any cryptocurrency, the chances are you’ve had to use an address, or a wallet, or both. It’s confusing, right? Well, it doesn’t have to be. The fact of the matter is that a wallet and an address are not the same thing, but the differences are relatively easy to understand. With this in mind, we’ll define what they each are and explain the differences without the unnecessary technical detail....

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced all kinds of financial winners and losers. Unfortunately, the tally does find mostly losers. Case in point, advertising dollars. A look at U.S. advertising dollars spent in 2020 is expected to end the year down about 30 percent from 2019’s figures. Yet one industry’s loss is another one’s gain as the surge in online traffic from our new stay-at-home/work-from-home world caused digital ad purchases to rise by 6 percent year over year....

The M 87 black hole, the first body of its type ever photographed by astronomers at the Earth Horizon Telescope, shows an unusual glitter… The first image of a black hole released in 2019 showed the body at the center of the galaxy M87 to look almost exactly as Albert Einstein predicted a century before. A new analysis of data from that study sheds additional light on the lightless object — The ring is glittering....

Without getting too alarmist, it’s hard not to be a budding germaphobe these days. Between countertops, elevator buttons, credit card readers and just the friendly neighborhood building door handle, it’s tough not to instinctively recoil from touching just about anything right now. With all those concerns floating around, adding an instrument to your EDC stash to handle those various world interacting functions is becoming a smarter and smarter alternative. Since you really don’t want to be poking, pushing or pulling anything right now, the Hygiene Hand Antimicrobial Brass Door Opener and Stylus can serve as a brilliant stand-in for your fingers....

But there’s one element of this scrap we rarely talk about: video cameras. Of course these features are mentioned in phone releases and highlighted as part of a raft of upgrades, but it’s uncommon they take center stage in discussions like still images do. Which, in my mind, is an odd move by phone makers. I assume it was this mentality that, to some degree, led Google to make a bizarre choice with the Pixel 4: no support for 4k 60fps video recording....