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The Pisces-Eridanus stream of stars was only recently discovered — at the end of 2018 — despite stretching across one-third of the sky. Stars within this stream average only around 3% of the age of our own solar system. “This system checks a lot of boxes for astronomers. It’s only 120 million years old and just 400 light-years away, allowing detailed observations of this young planetary system. And because there are three planets between two and four times Earth’s size, they make especially promising targets for testing theories about how planetary atmospheres evolve,” explains Dr....

Specifically, the company is testing two games for members with Android devices in Poland: Stranger Things 1984 and Stranger Things 3 — so I hope you’re a fan of that series. Contrary to popular expectation, Netflix isn’t streaming the games live, a la xCloud. Instead, it’s simply functioning as a hub to let you download the games onto your own device, kind of like Steam on PC. Today members in Poland can try Netflix mobile gaming on Android with two games, Stranger Things: 1984 and Stranger Things 3....

Hastings said that the mobile-only will be effective to increase the consumer base as people pay below $5 per month for content consumption: India’s internet market is dominated by mobile-first consumers and it’ll reach a mark of 800 million smartphone owners by 2022, according to a Cisco report. The country also has the cheapest data plans in the world, so mobile video consumption is as high as 190 minutes per day....

These atomic clocks can measure time accurately to within one second in billions of years. But there could be a price to pay for this accuracy, in the form of energy. Our new experiment found clocks that measure time more accurately consume more energy than their less accurate counterparts. This suggests nature imposes a fundamental energy cost for keeping time, and it may mean there’s a limit to how accurate we can make clocks....

They believe the polymer could overcome a fundamental challenge around connecting electronics to humans. Traditional microelectronic materials, such as gold, silicon, and steel, cause scarring when implanted that disrupts the flow of electrical signals transmitted between computers and the body. But the new polymer could solve this problem, by providing a coating for components that connect to human tissue. “We started looking at organic electronic materials like conjugated polymers that were being used in non-biological devices,” said study leader David Martin, a professor of materials science at the University of Delaware....

Our understanding of the deaths of both low and high mass stars are fairly sound, but the team’s findings could change how we think about the fate of stars that lie in between. They suggest that such stars may not collapse, as previously believed, but instead end their lives in a spectacular explosion. How a star evolves is very much dictated by its mass, with lower mass stars such as our own sun leaving behind a white dwarf — a stellar-core remnant composed of degenerate electron matter — and the remains of high mass stars marked by a neutron star, or if they are massive enough, a black hole....

Destined for the Japanese market, where Kei city-driving cars are popular, the Sakura comes with some pretty top-notch features for its category. Powered by a 20kW lithium-ion battery, the EV has a top speed of 130km/h and enough juice for 180km of range — just 60km less than the Nissan Leaf. On the inside, you’ll find that the car has enough space for four people, with a luggage capacity of 107 liters....

Because of this, it’s impossible to directly imageblack holes, making them mysterious and quite perplexing. But our new research has road-tested a way to spot some of the most voracious black holes of all, making it easier to find them buried deep in the hearts of distant galaxies. Despite the name, not all black holes are black. While black holes come in many different sizes, the biggest ones are at the centers of galaxies and are still growing in size....

Nvidia has now updated the blog post to clarify that the CGI Huang spoke for only 14 seconds of the 108-minute keynote. The difference between the fake and real parts is pretty clear to my eyes. You can judge it for yourself by watching the video below. The CG footage starts at 1:02:41. The keynote provided a showcase for Omniverse, a platform used to create and simulate virtual 3D worlds....

Unfortunately, there’s no correct amount of contemplation a person should give to the concept of dying. Some people live the majority of their lives without a care in the world while others suffer from crippling thanatophobia (death anxiety). By and large, however, people seem far more consumed with death thoughts now than ever. The question is, why? Maybe we’ve painted ourselves into a corner with technology. Numerous studies have shown that social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram can make us feel both less lonely and more isolated....

However, a recent study suggests that this isn’t entirely the case and ride hailing apps actually increase car ownership, especially in cities that are already dependent on cars. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, concluded that services like Uber and Lyft increase private car ownership by an average of 0.7% in urban US areas. According to Streets Blog USA, that equates to around 100,000 extra vehicles on US roads....

Hola totally-not-having-a-pandemic pals, I woke up early on Saturday and went outside. Dogs were barking, children were playing. People were gathered in groups. It was as if the pandemic had never happened in my cozy little beach barrio. Nobody was wearing a mask. Social distancing? People were hugging and leaning on each other. Days later and everywhere I go people are suddenly eager to shake hands, high-five, and fist-bump. I hear it’s the same all over....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. It’s always good to see more consumer tech companies stepping up to protect our privacy and security. Previously, it was Apple, now it’s Mozilla’s turn. The company behind the Firefox browser has begun rolling out encrypted DNS over HTTPS (DoH) for US users by default. If you’re outside the US, you can manually turn it on in the settings....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you are going to secure your accounts using two-factor authentication (2FA), then using SMS is a bad idea. Not only has it been proven insecure, it’s also susceptible to SIM-swapping attacks. But relying on SMS can also have other unintended consequences....

According to a company announcement, Polestar has partnered with Plugsurfing, a Europe-wide electric car charging network, which brings more than 195,000 charging points to customers. [Read: Report: Polestar to build more Chinese showrooms to compete with Tesla] Plugsurfing’s continental chargers can all be accessed with a simple RFID key card, which is pretty standard stuff. What makes Plugsurfing unique, though, is that it bills users’ domestic bank account once a month for the electricity they’ve used....

Nearly four years after my collaborators and I revealed how automated Twitter accounts were distorting online election discussions in 2016, the situation appears to be no better. That’s despite the efforts of policymakers, technology companies, and even the public to root out disinformation campaigns on social media. In our latest study, we collected 240 million election-related tweets mentioning presidential candidates and election-related keywords, posted between June 20 and Sept. 9, 2020....

Rail Baltica aims to integrate the Baltic States within the European rail network. It’s one of Europe’s most substantial investments to improve mobility and travel options, and it’s the largest Baltic-region infrastructure project in the last 100 years. The project includes five European Union countries — Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and, indirectly, Finland. It will connect Helsinki, Tallinn, Pärnu, Riga, Panevežys, Kaunas, Vilnius, and Warsaw. But it’s more than the construction of a railway — it’s a platform for connectivity that offers vast economic growth, cross-border innovation, digitalisation, and community development possibilities....

“Our CDN was unable to reach our servers,” an error reads. The company has confirmed the outage on its official status page too. It remains unclear what the cause is, but over 10,000 people have filed reports on downtime monitor DownDetector. So far, the issue seems to mostly affect users in Europe and US East coast. [Read: Kashmiri cops filed a case against people using VPN and social media] “We’re experiencing a high volume of errors when accessing reddit....

The report estimates that AI has the potential to deliver “additional global economic activity; of nearly $13 trillion by 2030 and add 16 percent to the higher cumulative GDP compared with [September 2018].” In geographical terms, Asia occupies 29.4 percent of the Earth’s land surface, but it also has a population of nearly 4.5 billion as of 2015 – 60 percent of the world’s total. Young Asians have an optimistic view of AI as a whole....

The game is being put out to pasture (lol) because Facebook is ending its support of Flash-based games at the end of the year. According to creator Zynga, in-game purchases will be available until November 17, and it’s planning some in-game events “designed to make your remaining time with FarmVille even more enjoyable” which… wow, that sounds unexpectedly melancholic. There was a time FarmVille was a staple of life on Facebook....