The tool searches the images for indicators of development, such as roads, agriculture, housing, and lights turned on at night. Deep learning algorithms find patterns in this data to measure the villages’ wealth. Researchers from Stanford University tested the tool on about 20,000 villages across 23 countries in Africa that had existing wealth data. They say that it successfully estimated the poverty levels of the villages over time. [Read: AI detects plastics in the oceans by analyzing satellite images] Identifying these patterns of growth can show why some places are doing better than others....

If you’re in a hurry, here’s a helpful infographic that sums things up: That might seem a bit hyperbolic, but the good news is that it actually shows a little progress. The flames were a tiny bit higher last year. But we’ve got more to back up claim that tech is a dumpster fire for queer people than just images and anecdotes. Despite the fact that more people in the US identify as LGBT than ever before, we’re not seeing much progress in the tech sector....

The website has taken a total of 10 factors into account: Torrents restricted Torrents banned Pornography restricted Pornography banned Political media restricted Political media heavily censored Social Media restricted Social Media banned VPNs restricted VPNs banned [Read: Internet partially restored in Kashmir after 165 days — social media still blocked ] North Korea scores a whopping 10 out of 10 on this scored card with China scoring 9. Russia, Turkmenistan, and Iran scored 7 in this survey....

The asteroid was equally devastating at a microscopic level, driving ocean plankton to near-extinction. This crippled the base of the marine food chain and shut down important ocean functions, such as the absorption and delivery of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean floor. Given the real threat of a sixth mass extinction event brought about by human-caused climate breakdown and habitat disruption, we wanted to find out how long the ocean ecosystem took to reboot after the last one....

The twin developments come as supply chain attacks — compromising a third-party vendor with a connection to the true target — targeting security-related apps are becoming a common vector to install malware. A cyber-espionage attempt Czech Republic-based cybersecurity firm Avast said it encountered an “cyber-espionage attempt” on September 23 to insert malware into its popular CCleaner cleanup utility — similar to the supply chain attack of 2017 where the software was infected with Floxif malware....

Next year, the city will get 49 high-capacity electric busses, and yes, they’re made by Volvo. Electric Cars Report says the vehicles will be delivered next summer. [Read: These 29 EVs all exceeded their advertised ranges — which is pretty awesome] The city will be getting 49 of Volvo’s 7900 Electric Articulated models, which can each carry up to 120 passengers. While this might sound noteworthy, this is just the latest in a string of other Swedish cities that are in the process of converting their transport fleets to electric vehicles....

This news has caused Bitcoin’s value to rise over 10%. At the time of writing, bitcoin’s price was over $42,000. In the filing, the company said that it may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term: The electric carmaker also added that it may accept Bitcoin as a form of payment in the future. Elon Musk has been a well-known backer of digital currency, and last year he asked about converting Tesla’s balance sheet to Bitcoins....

On Tuesday, GM unveiled the production version of the Cadillac Lyriq SUV, its first all-electric vehicle, and the first GM vehicle featuring its Ultium battery technology. The 2023 Cadillac Lyriq runs on a 100kWh lithium-ion battery pack, with capacity of over 300 miles range on a full charge. The dashboard is graced by a 33-inch-diagonal advanced LED display. There’s also Super Cruise, which Cadillac claims is “the first true hands-free driver assistance technology for compatible roads....

But there are certainly challenges. It would be nice to think that we live in a utopian world, wherein all users of tech are doing so for the benefit of the greater good. That’s simply not the case. Every day we see examples of how unscrupulous actors take advantage of our digital reliance for personal or political gain. From identity theft to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, cybercrime is no longer a word with sci-fi connotations—it is an ever-present threat in our contemporary world....

Autonomous driving isn’t quite as clear cut as it sounds. Despite many vehicles claiming to have self-driving capabilities, they aren’t all the same. As it happens, the industry (Society of Automotive Engineers, SAE) has settled on separating self-driving cars into five classes or levels — six if you include cars that have no automation at all. [Read: These idiots shot a porno in an Autopilot-enabled Tesla and Elon Musk deserves some blame] It’s important to know these levels in order to correctly distinguish one supposedly autonomous vehicle from the next....

The agency had planned to use third-party facial recognition tech (FRT) to verify millions of people who use the IRS website. Last year, a vendor called ID.me was awarded an $86 million contract to deploy and maintain the system. The decision sparked a furious backlash from advocacy groups. They warned that the IRS system is intrusive, disrupts the lives of users, could expose people to hackers, and uses tech that’s notorious for biases....

Over 31 percent of all internet users worldwide use a VPN for either professional or personal reasons. But how many of those millions of users actually know and trust their VPN provider? Do you know your VPN’s country of origin? Do you know how and where their servers are maintained? Do you know their logging policies? And most importantly, do you know that they won’t sell your information to the highest bidder?...

But sections were left unsequenced, and some sequence information was incorrect. Now, two decades later, we have a much more complete version, published as a preprint (which is yet to undergo peer review) by an international consortium of researchers. Technological limitations meant the original draft human genome sequence covered just the “euchromatic” portion of the genome — the 92% of our genome where most genes are found, and which is most active in making gene products such as RNA and proteins....

Why? Because they can. And adding an extra bit of intrigue to this story is the fact Project Sandcastle is being developed by team members of cybersecurity startup Corellium, which is currently being sued by Apple. You can watch the port in action in this Forbes video: To be fair, this isn’t the first time someone has ported Android to the iPhone – Project Sancastle’s co-founders actually managed to get it working way back with the original iPhone roughly 10 years ago....

In fact, the Leaf is now the cheapest EV in the US market, as Endgadget pointed out. And from our research that does seem to be the case, with the next car on the budget list being the 2022 Mini Cooper SE at $29,900. Specifically, the Leaf S, the most basic model, now costs $27,400 or $28,375 including the destination charge. Considering its pretty decent 40kWh battery, which gives it approximately 238km of range, I’d say that’s not a bad bargain at all....

The patent was revealed by a Twitter user called @renka_schedule. If you translate from Japanese, it says a number of PS1, PS2, and PS3 games can be stored in the cloud, and can be played via a virtual machine that emulates the original consoles’ operating systems. ・PS1/PS2/PS3、様々な世代のゲーム機にわたる大量のゲームタイトルが、クラウドゲーミングライブラリを介して蓄積され利用可能。 ・これらのゲームは、それぞれのゲーム機に関連したオペレーティングシステムを模倣した仮想マシンの上で実行可能。 pic.twitter.com/TsWV859OLd — れんか (@Renka_schedule) July 4, 2020 They also followed it up with more patent documents, one of which suggests these games may come with short demos you can play before buying them....

According to a tweet thread from the analysis firm NPD Group, the PS5 became the fastest selling console in US history by both dollar value and units sold. This is tracked over the five months since the console’s release. It’s also important to note that the PS5 achieved this on both the dollar value and units sold metrics — the latter being particularly important. Due to inflation and the high cost of the newest PlayStation in general, the console racking up the fastest sales via value alone wouldn’t be particularly impressive....

At $199, It’s somewhat of a midrange recorder – not as expensive as the flagship Zooms and Tascams of the word, but able to provide a more-than-obvious improvement over what you can capture on your smartphone. First, some key specs and features: 2 track recording and 2 track playback 24bit/96KHz recording 16-hour battery life on AAs, but can maintain power via MicroUSB Auto record start, auto song split, 4 reverb effects Built-in editing features Pre-record: Can record two seconds of audio before pressing the record button Bluetooth remote control and streaming (AptX Low-latency compatible) Dual-recording hybrid limiter simultaneously records two tracks at separate volumes to prevent clipping Headphone jack and line-in Comes in white black or red....

The company says it envisions the vehicle being used to let people navigate places like theme parks, airports, campuses, and maybe even some cities. In other words, it’s not really meant as the type of vehicle you’d cruise down a bike lane with – it’s obnoxiously large for that. Then again, I’m not sure a large, presumably heavy vehicle capable of traveling 24 miles per hour should be zipping through airports either....

The pace at which various high -tech products have proliferated in consumer markets during the past few decades has been furious. Think for instance the emergence of mobile phones in the 1980s in comparison to today’s nearly 5 billion mobile phone users. Yet the future forecast is even more inconceivable: the Internet of Things (IoT) is envisioned to have over 20 billion connected objects by 2020 (!). That means there will be over double as many internet-connected devices than there are people in the whole wide world....