I’ve noticed a few reoccurring misconceptions crop up in chats I’ve had with entrepreneurs across a range of industries. Since these beliefs can be huge roadblocks to a company’s business success, I thought I’d try my hand at setting the record straight. I’ll shed light on four particular ones in this article and discuss opportunities to maximize value from the ground up. 1. “Our company doesn’t need marketing because our product is good enough to sell itself” These words are common to hear from founders, especially those with a technical background, in the very early days of a startup....

Rather than scaling back the progress we’ve made, many are seeing this moment as an opportunity to create a new normal in which sustainability and circularity are integrated into our businesses and daily lives. With this in mind, Techleap.nl recruited some of the brightest minds in Dutch sustainability tech to join the Rise Programme for up and coming scaleups. The theme for batch two this year was: flattening the climate curve....

I was thinking of making a series of posts about my journey into all these technologies, and I wanted to start with my journey and experience working with React. Why React? No particular reason, but it’s the technology I’m working with the most lately, and I think I have a good message to pass along. This post will not focus on coding but rather on the lessons I learned after working with React on many projects, from small personal applications, to some big enterprise and other customer-facing applications....

Advances in AI have allowed us to make progress in all kinds of disciplines – and these are not limited to applications on this planet. From designing missions to clearing Earth’s orbit of junk, here are a few ways artificial intelligence can help us venture further into space. Astronaut assistants Do you remember Tars and Case, the assistant robots from the film Interstellar? While these robots don’t exist yet for real space missions, researchers are working towards something similar, creating intelligent assistants to help astronauts....

What is this Oversight Board that made one of the most politically perilous decisions Facebook has ever faced? Why did the company create it, and is it a good idea? We asked Siri Terjesen, an expert on corporate governance, to answer these and several other questions. 1. What is the Facebook Oversight Board? The Oversight Board was set up to give users an independent third party to whom they can appeal Facebook moderation decisions, as well as to help set the policies that govern these decisions....

There are a number of apps, dashboards, and maps out there. We’ve tried to make sure the ones on this list are created from reputably-sourced data. We don’t need more misinformation about the coronavirus spreading across the internet. We’ve also only included maps that cover the whole world, as this is swiftly becoming everyone’s problem. To that end, here are the ones that’ll help you track the virus based on the most up-to-date information....

Keep in mind that everything on this list is a product I’ve actually tested and genuinely enjoy using. So while there may be comparable or cheaper options in each idea category — do your own research — each product on this list is something I’m willing to put my stamp of approval on after real-world use. Also keep in mind that while all of these products work with regular bikes too, I’m coming from the perspective of someone who owns an ebike, so I’m not as concerned about weight or aerodynamics....

The Australian ratings board last week inadvertently teased a potential new release for RDR2. The board rated it again, something it’d only do if there were another version of the game incoming. And since there’s no DLC to repackage with the game as a “Game of the Year Edition,” the balance of probability swings in the direction of a new port. We’ve contacted Rockstar to see if it’ll offer any comment on that one way or another....

Up front: There’s little evidence to believe that so-called ’emotion recognition’ systems actually work. In the sense that humans and other creatures can often accurately recognize (as in: guess) other people’s emotions, an AI can be trained on a human-labeled data set to recognize emotion with similar accuracy to humans. However, there’s no ground-truth when it comes to human emotion. Everyone experiences and interprets emotions differently and how we express emotion on our faces can vary wildly based on cultural and unique biological features....

Now, what if you don’t want to wait till December to get a new, up-to-date, summary of your listening behavior? Well, look not further… we’ve got you covered! With Spotify’s option to export your personal data, and Google’s free, easy-to-use tool to visualize data called Google Data Studio, we’re going to show you just how to do that. That might still sound a bit overwhelming, but rest assured, no technical understanding is required — we even have a ready-to-use template for you to make it look badass....

Welcome to Middle Pleistocene Park! Okay, that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as Jurassic Park, but Hollywood’s a bit looser when it comes to era accuracy than we are. A serial entrepreneur and a Harvard geneticist today announced plans to resurrect the extinct woolly mammoth. If that’s not exciting enough, the when, how, and why of it all are mind-blowingly ambitious. Perhaps a little too ambitious to be believed....

Before we dive into that conversation, let’s get one thing straight, the most advanced systems we have at the moment are classed as Level 2 (of five) on the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) scale of automation. Level 2 automation is also known as an ADAS (advanced driver assistance system). These systems include the likes of Tesla’s Autopilot, Polestar’s Pilot Assist, and Nissan’s Pro Pilot. [Read: Nearly 70% of light-duty EVs on US roads were also made there] Self-driving cars, despite their technological complexity, sound simple enough in principle....

Research shared just before the pandemic’s onset uncovered that millennials are reluctant to trust government, business leaders, corporations, social and mass media or even traditional social institutions. Meanwhile, a recent Canadian survey found that half of respondents believe business leaders are purposely trying to mislead them, and just under half believe the same about government. The decline in trust is understandable, a predictable consequence of very real failures in leadership....

The sale of MGM on May 26 followed more than six months of negotiations. The American studio known for its roaring lion had been weakened by major financial difficulties before the pandemic. The prolonged closure of movie theatres was the final nail in its coffin. As part of my research on discoverability and access to diversity in online content, I regularly monitor the transformations and imbalances that are being brought on by the digital distribution platforms that control the global market for cultural goods and services....

It also lays the foundation for taking the building blocks of an FBA business and growing them, applying advanced techniques for product optimization that can dramatically increase sales, spark stellar customer reviews, and employ strategies that can help you dominate in your chosen market. Prices are subject to change.

Tropical forest ecosystems tend to have very high biodiversity, but often in the places you’d least expect. Research has found that there is often more wildlife in areas where there is an ancient history of human activity. So how have indigenous people in tropical forests nurtured biodiversity in tropical forests while still domesticating tree species, building cities, and growing crops? New research published in Trends in Plant Science suggests that the answer may be written in the trees themselves....

There’s even a course in how to manage social media and customer reviews, maximizing good ones while reversing bad ones on sites like Yelp, Google My Business, and more. Prices are subject to change

In what might be the most “year 2020” thing that could possibly happen, Global Pride is hosting a virtual Pride festival inside of Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons starting on Thursday, 18 June. Pride 2020 will forever be remembered as the year the festivities went virtual. Instead of marching in the streets together, many of us will be attending from the safety of our own homes. Luckily for us, there’s a veritable cornucopia of queer content scheduled for streaming throughout the month on just about every platform imaginable....

The app, called HKmap.live, is a Waze-like live map of the anti-extradition law amendment bill (ELAB) demonstrations that have gripped the autonomous region since June, keeping people abreast of road closures, tear gas firings, known safe places, and police presence. According to the app makers, Apple said it refused to approve the app because “Your app contains content – or facilitates, enables, and encourages an activity – that is not legal … Specifically, the app allowed users to evade law enforcement....

The butterfly keyboard lawsuit isn’t new (it was filed back in 2018), but this latest news means the case gets closer to actually making a difference. Unfortunately, the certification of this as a class action lawsuit won’t impact everyone. According to The Verge (and the case documents) the butterfly keyboard lawsuit will only cover those who purchased one in seven states (California, New York, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, and Michigan, if you’re interested)....