Posts

Halley’s comet, for example, takes about 75 years to return to the same position near Earth, meaning everybody has the opportunity to see it potentially twice during their lifetime. Neowise has an orbit of almost 6,800 years, meaning that the last generation of people to see it would have lived during the fifth millennium BC. This was a time well before the written word, when the global human population was about 40 million people....

I recently met with Rohan Puri, CEO and co-founder of Stable Auto, a company that uses data science and location intelligence to determine the best site for EV chargers. Based on data from thousands of points, the reality is most chargers are used less than 10% of the time, and very few over 20%. Particularly problematic are fast chargers. Puri explained: But an EV charging company needs at least 15% usage to break even....

But while progress has been great, not all of your internet traffic is encrypted. The domain name system (DNS), the protocol used to convert domain names (e.g., google.com) to IP addresses (e.g., 74.125.157.99), still remains in plain text, which can reveal much about your browsing habits. The DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) protocol, introduced in recent years, improves the privacy of your browsing experience by adding a layer of encryption to your DNS packets....

Occasionally, a particularly well-conceived article or review will get right to the beating heart of a topic with just a single line of text. Such was the case with the RokBlok and this succinct one-line encapsulation from TechCrunch: “It’s cute as a button, clever as hell and utterly absurd.” Yes, yes and yes. And due to all three, you probably need to have the RokBlok, dubbed the world’s smallest wireless record player, in your life....

According to various reports and an investor presentation filed with the SEC, Fisker wants Volkswagen to supply it with its “modular electric toolkit” (MEB). This is the same platform that VW’s ID.3 will be built on. It’s designed for high-volume affordable electric vehicle manufacture. The investor presentation says that Fisker and VW are currently in negotiations. If they are able to successfully barter a deal, using the MEB platform would help Fisker bring its first vehicle to market in half the time with substantially reduced costs, too....

The executive orders are based on national security grounds, though the threats cited are to citizens rather than the government. Foreign policy analysts see the move as part of the administration’s ongoing wrestling match with the Chinese government for leverage in the global economy. Whatever the motivation, as someone who researches both cybersecurity and technology policy, I am not convinced that the benefits outweigh the costs. The bans threaten Americans’ freedom of speech, and may harm foreign investment in the U....

Now the international Artemis program, lead by NASA, is aiming to put humans back on the Moon by 2024. But it is looking increasingly likely that this goal could be missed. History shows just how vulnerable space programs, which require years of planning and development spanning several administrations, are. After Apollo 17, NASA had plans for several further lunar Apollo missions, even including a possible flyby of Venus. But budget cuts in the early 1970s and a reprioritizing of human spaceflight to focus on the Skylab project precluded any further lunar missions at that time....

1. What’s happened since the telescope launched? After the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope on Dec. 25, 2021, the team began the long process of moving the telescope into its final orbital position, unfolding the telescope and – as everything cooled – calibrating the cameras and sensors onboard. The launch went as smoothly as a rocket launch can go. One of the first things my colleagues at NASA noticed was that the telescope had more remaining fuel onboard than predicted to make future adjustments to its orbit....

It’s true. Across the world, tech giants are filling voids. In China, Alibaba’s Jack Ma shared purported snaps of one million face masks and 500,000 coronavirus testing kits bound for America, where shortages threaten lives. — Jack Ma (@JackMa) March 16, 2020 Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also lending a hand. He just organised the delivery of 1,200 ventilators to Californian hospitals, as well as other medical supplies, albeit after awkwardly implying that US states weren’t running low on supplies....

You won’t be the only one if you instantly recall Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot when you see a picture of the Xiaomi CyberDog. You can catch a glimpse of it in the video below. As compared to Spot, the CyberDog is lighter (5.2kg v 32.7kg) and faster (1.6 meter/second v 3 meter/second). However, we don’t know what it can do for us, apart from performing tricks like backflips. The CyberDog has three USB-C and one HDMI port to attach lidar sensors, panoramic cameras, and search lights....

I see two reasons for why the challenges of machine learning are misunderstood. First, as the name suggests, machine learning is software that learns by itself as opposed to being instructed on every single rule by a developer. This is an oversimplification that many media outlets with little or no knowledge of the actual challenges of writing machine learning algorithms often use when speaking of the ML trade. [Read: How the Dutch government uses data to predict the weather and prepare for natural disasters] The second reason, in my opinion, are the many books and courses that promise to teach you the ins and outs of machine learning in a few hundred pages (and the ads on YouTube that promise to net you a machine learning job if you pass an online course)....

Access to cheap and ubiquitous solar power and storage will transform the way we produce and use power, allowing electrification of the transport sector. There is potential for new chemical-based economies in which we store renewable energy as fuels, and support new devices making up an “internet of things.” But our current energy technologies won’t lead us to this future: we will soon hit efficiency and cost limits. The potential for future reductions in the cost of electricity from silicon solar, for example, is limited....

That could change, thanks to a new discovery by Pennsylvania State University researchers. They have come up with a technique to charge lithium battery in just 10 minutes for 200 to 300 miles of driving. An electric car that can be charged in the time it takes to fill a gas tank could jumpstart the EV market. “The 10-minute trend is for the future and is essential for adoption of electric vehicles because it solves the range anxiety problem,” said Chao-Yang Wang, a professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State....

We could say the holidays are right around the corner and help you justify it that way. But seriously…do you really need justification to buy a drone? Whether you’re looking for a craft to capture incredible video footage, one to ramp up your flying skills, or just one to fill out somebody else’s wishlist, drones are so capable and inexpensive now that you really don’t have to talk yourself into much before buying one....

Sometimes, you want a drone that cuts through the air like a fighter jet, bobbing and weaving and zinging along like an aerobatic daredevil. Other times, you just want a drone that snaps a cool selfie from an angle you’d never get otherwise. While aerodynamics and flight plan routing and headless, multi-axis navigation is awesome, a solid camera that locks itself in the air and turns the best chance of scoring you a brilliant shot can definitely be just as awesome....

I’ve written before about how useful having a laptop stand is, especially if you’re working from home or somewhere else not really set-up like an office. Which, I’m pretty sure, is what most of the world is going through right now. But if you’re out and about, do you want to carry around a laptop case AND stand? Possibly: I have no idea about your personal habits. Yet it’d be easier if they were both one thing, right?...

The middle of a worldwide pandemic is a tough time to start a business. But no matter when you start, the basic opening moves for getting a new endeavor off the ground really haven’t changed over the decades. You need to be seen. You need to have a persuasive message. And you need to have multiple approaches to reaching and growing your target audience. While there are a lot of ways that can happen in our modern world, the training in The 2021 Complete Side Hustle Bundle ($30, over 90 percent off from TNW Deals) can focus your efforts on best practices for getting a startup business going and engaging potential customers on their terms....

There’s no clearer declaration that an emerging IT professional is ready for bigger tasks than when they start amassing major certifications. That’s especially true for those passing exams from the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA). For almost 30 years, their seal of approval has helped IT pros land the jobs they really want. With ace IT experts always in high demand, the motivated few can join those ranks and vault themselves to the top of most exclusive resume piles with the training from The 2021 Complete CompTIA Certification Prep Super Bundle....

In a letter to its users, the company said it’s shutting down operations in India by October 31, and offering a period of transition to let people export their content to TikTok. Vigo has already stopped operating in Brazil and the Middle East. Now, it’s wrapping up operations in India and other remaining markets. In January, a report from the Print noted that Vigo had more than 120 million active users worldwide....

Tracy Benson, former professional athlete and the CEO and co-founder of sports technology startup Obsesh, did just that when she took to the Growth Quarters stage at TNW Conference 2022 this Friday. Her talk, entitled “How to navigate Silicon Valley as a queer person,” was a frank and spirited jaunt through the founder experience from a severely underrepresented point of view. Benson essentially broke the challenge down to two simple concepts, “VCs want to make money,” and “less than one percent … have outwardly identified as queer....