This is a question that human beings have wondered about for thousands of years. Here’s how the ancient Greek mathematician Metrodorus (400-350 B.C.) put it: A universe where Earth is “the only world,” he said, is about as believable as a “large field containing a single stalk.” About 2,000 years later, in the 16th century, the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno suggested something similar. “Countless suns and countless earths” existed elsewhere, he said, all rotating “round their suns in exactly the same way as the planets of our system....

The Facebook-owned app appears to be working on a new feature that will make it possible to send messages with expiring media, serial WhatsApp leaker WABetaInfo has noticed. [Read more: Are EVs too expensive? Here are 5 common myths, debunked] While users won’t be able to set an expiration timer for media, photos and videos will automatically disappear from the recipient’s logs once they’ve opened the file and left the chat....

The times are uncertain, and having to make customer experiences more and more seamless and immersive isn’t taking off any of the pressure on companies. In that light, it’s understandable that they’re pouring billions of dollars into the development of machine learning models to improve their products. But there’s a problem. Companies can’t just throw money at data scientists and machine learning engineers, and hope that magic happens. The data speaks for itself....

Let’s talk about one of the most popular terms in entrepreneurship: persistence. It has an excellent reputation and is often spoken about with reverence and respect. But I don’t care for it too much. I think persistence is overrated. A lack of persistence is a problem, but too much of it might be worse. See, I’ve seen my fair share of entrepreneurs who kept barking up the same tree and kept pushing the same shit....

Furthermore, new technologies and digitization swept the world off its feet. This liberated the data which hitherto had no records or wasn’t being captured. Today, we live in the abundance of data that companies are utilizing for a plethora of purposes such as designing applications, bringing new services and ultimately understanding the customer in a better manner. On account of these new jobs are emerging that require programming language to accomplish the goals....

— Aaron Aberasturi C. (@AberasturiAaron) May 12, 2019 — Michael Quander WUSA (@MikeQReports) May 14, 2019 After a series of poor choices and public mishaps over the past couple of years, Snapchat has been hemorrhaging users by the millions. But their newest filter has users running back to redownload it. — Mark Valdez (@mark_a_valdez) May 11, 2019 The filter has people experimenting with their identities beyond goofy pictures and videos — some are using it to create alternative personalities on dating apps to gauge the difference in experience....

The consent model on which privacy laws are based doesn’t work. App users remain concerned about privacy, as a recent survey shows, but they still aren’t very good at protecting it. They may lack the technical know-how or the time to review privacy terms, or they may lack the willpower to resist the lure of trending apps and personalized in-app offers. As a result, privacy laws have become more detailed, imposing additional requirements about notice, data minimization, and user rights....

Artificial intelligence is a backbone technology that’s as important as the internet or electricity. But it’s also a field so rife with scams that even institutions of higher learning are getting duped by smooth-talking marketing teams and BS AI. The long and short of it is that colleges and universities are implementing AI systems to process admissions videos. Here’s a quote from an executive at one of these companies taken from an article in The Hill today: The company claims it’s trying to put the “humanity” back into applications....

When you’re working with other people, there’s always going to be some moments of friction. Somebody’s tone or off-hand comment might sound like an attack to you, whether they meant to or not. Those moments make work frustrating, so it’s best to find a way to clear the air and move on. In my experience, the fastest way to resolve these things is to discuss them while they’re happening. Simply saying, “That sounds kinda harsh,” right after someone makes an unnecessarily mean comment might be more efficient and lead to less drama than waiting for a couple of weeks to plan a meeting to discuss ‘your language....

On the one hand, Musk has a brilliant once-in-a-generation intellect. He’s the architect and driving force behind several incredibly successful tech companies ranging from PayPal to SpaceX. Musk is the epitome of a big-picture person with the vision and gumption to take far-fetched, pie-in-the-sky ideas and ground them in reality. Open AI, a company he helped found, is responsible for GPT-3, the world’s most advanced text generator. Neuralink, another science-based business of his, is attempting to make brain-computer interfaces....

But actually, buying a new electric car? That’s another matter entirely. Volkswagen, the largest car manufacturer in the world, recently announced it had sold out of electric vehicles in the US and Europe for the rest of 2022. Ford’s E-Transit sold out before it had even started making them. Even the most basic (lower specification) version of Tesla’s Model 3 vehicle will now not be delivered for over a year, despite the company being capable of the largest production volumes in the world – a recent halt in production in China notwithstanding....

If anxiety feels like it’s been a constant companion this year, you’re certainly not alone. Yet while the existential dread of pandemics, economic uncertainty and political strife have taken their toll on millions, there are viable methods for keeping those demons at bay. Unfortunately, yoga and meditation just aren’t the right speed for many of those sufferers. Both bring a lot of preconceived baggage that some novice practitioners can find it tough to get past....

EA Play will join the Game Pass lineup “this holiday,” according to a Microsoft blog post – we assume that means sometime around the 10 November launch of the new Xbox Series S. The move adds more than 60 EA games to Microsoft’s 100+ existing Game Pass titles, including popular franchises such as Madden, The Sims, Battlefield, and Need For Speed. The extended catalog will be available on Xbox consoles and Windows 10 PCs and, according to Microsoft “some of the best EA Play games will also be available for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members to play on Android devices via the cloud at no additional charge....

According to security researcher Troy Hunt, the breach occurred two months ago (on July 1 2019). The compromised data has been added to breach alerting site Have I Been Pwned (HIBP). “We’ve been alerted that portions of the PHPBB user table from our forums showed up in a leaked data collection,” XKCD said in a notice. “It is likely that it was gathered up in some automated scan taking advantage of a vulnerability in the forum software....

The newly launched website’s tiny selection consists of just eight movies, some of which are Aakrosh, Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji, Rock On!!, Rann, and Lamhaa. The company says it is working with Indian movie studios to expand that selection to include thousands of movies and will continue offering them for free. Although the movie pages are studded with banner ads, the movies themselves do not feature any commercials in between, but that may soon change....

If you want to be the person your company turns to to lead major initiatives, you can start with the training found in The Complete Become A Product Manager Certification Bundle. This massive collection valued at over $2,000 is available now at over 90 percent off, just $39 from TNW Deals. Even if you’ve never taken a project management course before, this 13-course collection covers all the basics. The courses featured are:...

Most of us don’t have trouble deciding the type of person we each want to be. But as Marshall Goldsmith explains, identifying the person you want to be isn’t the problem. No, the problem comes in taking the correct steps to actually make yourself into that person you want to be. The path to improvement and self-realization is the centerpiece of the Methods of Leadership Online Learning platform. Right now, a lifetime of access to this practical personal and professional guidance is available at more than 90 percent off its regular price, now just $147....

You might have read Corin Faife at the Verge claiming it should be said as “neft” — but they’re wrong. It’s nay-fey-tay. Forever and ever, nay-fey-tay. I can see where Faife is coming from, I really can. “Neft” is an elegant solution to saying those three letters. As it doesn’t appear NFTs are going anywhere, this pronunciation approach would save us all a lot of time. But here’s my issue: why should we have an elegant solution for something that’s inherently serpentine and torturous?...

Years ago I worked on a small, distributed team that was split between two locations. The designers and frontend developers were based out of Austin, Texas, and our engineering team, along with the project stakeholders, were located in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was a smaller group of about 10 members, but we were collectively inspired to make a positive impact on our company. At the time, our mission was to enable product teams worldwide as they looked to adopt modern toolchains and best practices for their day to day work....

It’s a clever spin on the Vegas slogan, and a not-so-subtle dig at its data-hungry competitors. But it is also quite misleading. As the Washington Post recently discovered, a lot of third-party iOS apps are abusing Background App Refresh to regularly send sensitive personal information to tracking companies. The feature allows apps to refresh their content by running periodically in the background. What are the app trackers for? It’s no surprise that third-party apps use trackers to gather all sorts of analytics....