The idea of a natural world that dwarfed humanity and its creations long persisted, even into modern times – only to run, lately, into concerns that climate was changing, and species were dying through our actions. How could that be, with us so small, and nature so large? Now a new study in Nature by a team of scientists from the Weizmann Institute in Israel upends that perspective. Our constructions have now – indeed, spookily, just this year – attained the same mass as that of all living organisms on Earth....

I’m a 42-year-old queer technology journalist and the editor of Neural. This is my first job working in the tech industry. Just a few years back I was an almost 40-year-old intern. Before that, I worked in several different fields including a decade in the US military. Despite the diversity of my background I’ve never seen a more heteronormative workforce culture than the collective fields of science, technology, engineering, and math known as STEM....

In a White House briefing, Mnuchin mirrored president Trump’s recently-found tough stance on digital assets by claiming that its potential to facilitate crime is high. “Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have been exploited to support billions of dollars of illicit activity like cybercrime, tax evasion, extortion, ransomware, illicit drugs, human trafficking,” Mnuchin told reporters. “Many players have attempted to use cryptocurrencies to fund their maligned behavior. This is indeed a national security issue,” he added....

Why did Yahoo sell one of its prized possessions for a mere 0.27 percent of its original purchase price? It’s a question that’ll puzzle many, as unlike other faded social platforms, Tumblr still has a die-hard userbase, and continues to pull in a respectable amount of traffic. I’d postulate that Tumblr was simply too troublesome to monetize and moderate, and that’s why Yahoo pulled the plug. That leaves the question of what Automattic will do with the site....

There are only so many episodes of The Office and Housewives you can watch. Only so many hours of web surfing you can do. Only so many times you can check your email. It’s gonna be a rough handful of weeks, folks. We better start deciding now on how all the inside time is going to be spent. For many, there’s no better use of all the free hours than to develop a long-considered — and hopefully, bankable — new skill....

To address that, the firm is rolling out a feature called Communities — think of it as a subreddit for Twitter. You can join a community of dog lovers, Indian food enthusiasts, or plants to talk about that specific topic. It’s important not to confuse this with Twitter Topics, which are are automatically tagged tweets under interest labels such as crypto, funny tweets, football, cricket, and startups. Once you join a community, you can tweet to that specific group instead of all of your followers....

The social networking company said that there are plenty of useful bots and services on the platform. But it wants to make it clear that these profiles are not human-operated with a new “automated account” label. In addition to that, Twitter will introduce a “memorialized” label that will be put on the profiles of those who have passed away. It’ll also build a separate process to apply for memorialization. In 2017, after a controversy involving a supremacist account, Twitter paused its account verification program....

In its latest step, the company wants to promote third-party apps on its platform. The firm’s using Twitter Toolbox, a web page it launched in February, to highlight apps to a select number of users. As reported by TechCrunch, the experiment is starting off by suggesting safety-related apps to users, such as tools to filter out vile comments. Amir Shevat, Twitter’s head of Product for its developer platform, told the publication that the company wants to contextualize app suggestions for users based on their actions: As you can see in the picture below, when a user blocks someone, Twitter might suggest apps such as Block Party, Bodyguard, and Moderate that help you tune your bird site experience by filtering out unwanted content — going beyond what the platform can do on its own....

The screenshots come from Jane Wong — seriously, Jane Wong is the best — and appear to show various emoji in the Twitter app interface as reactions to a tweet. Twitter’s Director of Product Management, Suzanne Xie, confirmed in the replies that it’s something Twitter has tested as recently as last year. — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 10, 2020 Naturally, there’s no confirmation that this is something Twitter will add any time soon....

Just a few days ago, the state ruled that the companies must recognize its drivers as employees and pay them benefits. But Uber and Lyft will do anything to avoid that, including shutting down business in the Golden State altogether. Following Monday’s ruling, Uber and Lyft showed no signs of yielding and vowed to fight the order that was put on hold for 10 days. Due to go into effect on August 20, TechCrunch reports the companies’ attempt to delay it further were denied yesterday leaving them in a tight spot....

As the BBC reports, Uber has said that it will pay its 70,000 UK-based drivers the nation’s national minimum living wage of £8.72 ($12.14) an hour to over-25s — but with a big juicy caveat. Uber said that it did not expect the change to result in higher fares. This is surprising for a company still struggling to turn a consistent profit, it’s not exactly clear where or how it’ll absorb the costs — but it probably has to do with their interpretation of the courts ruling....

According to a job listing posted earlier today, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the independent agency that oversees and regulates financial product offerings in the country, wants to hire a cryptocurrency expert. [Read: UK regulator wants crypto-derivatives ban to protect ‘ill-suited’ investors] The candidate More specifically, the FCA is looking for someone who’s experienced in working with “crypto-assets,” distributed ledgers, blockchains, and emerging fintech products. Throughout the listing, there is a particular emphasis on compliance, crime, and 5MLD (EU’s 5th Money Laundering Directive)....

Data science fields, including the ultra-hot machine learning and artificial intelligence areas — all link back to one primary source: Python. And the numbers don’t lie. About 63 percent of respondents in the State of Data Science 2021 survey said they used Python regularly. Meanwhile, 71 percent of educators said they were teaching machine learning and data science courses using Python, while 88 percent of students said they were learning Python specifically to break into those two hot fields....

“We subject all advertising to review, including political advertising,” Spiegel told CNBC on Monday. “And I think what we try to do is create a place for political ads on our platform, especially because we reach so many young people and first-time voters we want them to be able to engage with the political conversation, but we don’t allow things like misinformation to appear in that advertising.” It seems Snapchat is positioning itself neutrally between Facebook and Twitter who are at the extreme ends of the political ad debate, while Google has remained largely silent on the issue....

The 30-second video did what Halsey’s label wanted – though probably not how they wanted. It gained over 8 million views in 24 hours and sparked massive interest among fans, TikTok users and industry observers. Comments on the video were divided between those expressing support for Halsey’s predicament and indignation at the record label, and those who saw the post as the actual marketing scheme the label wanted all along....

Luckily for me, I happened across this video featuring a group of talented jazz musicians interpreting a Deepfake AI-generated version of Jay-Z rapping the infamous Navy SEAL copypasta meme. Natch. Adam Neely, a popular music YouTuber with over a million subscribers, released the video as part of a CuriosityStream documentary. It features a very human quest to interpret a computer-generated rap acapella. Jay-Z is a fantastic target for a Deepfakes AI because, unlike most rappers, he’s released a lot of official, studio quality acapella tracks....

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) April 29, 2021 If you can’t piece together why Bezos is blasting through the desert in a pre-production Rivian R1T all-electric truck, I can explain. Blue Origin is a private space tourism business that’s privately owned by, you guessed it, a Stetson-ed Jeff Bezos. In essence, Bezos’ is playing big boy billionaires club and calling his friends at Rivian to provide vehicles, so he can rescue passengers of the Blue Origin capsule like the self-made superhero that he is....

Situations like this do happen in pharmacies and other shops. And they tend to make people squirm. But, what if they could interact with a robot instead of a human employee? In our recent research, my colleagues and I found the use of robots, rather than people, as assistants, may reduce people’s feelings of embarrassment. In one experiment, we asked 170 participants to imagine they were in a medical clinic to book a visit for a hemorrhoid problem....

We’re not sure exactly what that means. It was likely intended to be an inspirational quip indicating that the employees of NASA have the President’s full support. But it feels a bit ominous coming from the administration that had to be convinced that we should figure out how to safely get humans back to the Moon before we shoot them off towards Mars. The Vice President’s quote continues: That’s some damn fine space-race-rhetoric there, but to what end?...

Bitcoin’s rally over the past month is largely attributed to speculation the US Securities and Exchange Commission is poised to approve an exchange-traded fund, or ETF, based on Bitcoin futures. So what is an ETF, and why does this matter to the value of Bitcoin? How does an ETF work? An exchange-traded fund is an investment fund, comprising a pool of assets, traded on a stock exchange. The general attraction is that an ETF offers individual investors the benefits of diversification, protection, and liquidity....