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In an interview with CoinDesk, the twins said they were considering joining the Libra Association, the governing body set up by Facebook to oversee its soon to be launched ‘cryptocurrency.’ “We’re definitely looking at it in earnest and we’re excited about the project,” Cameron said. The brothers’ relationship with Mark Zuckerberg has been strained ever since they accused the Facebook CEO of swindling their idea for a social network However, rumours about a possible collaboration have been swirling for months....

From climate-conscious food delivery to accessible, hi-tech transport to a smart e-bike, here’s what you should know about these three promising tech companies that are helping to transform our lives — and fighting for the health of our planet. Wolt: Climate-conscious food delivery Wolt helps customers fulfill their hunger cravings anytime, anywhere with an easy-to-use app for convenient food delivery to homes or offices. Currently, the company’s platform consists of over 15,000 restaurants that span 90 cities in 23 countries....

At Chengdu Motor Show the company showcased its innovative battery pack inside an Ora Cherry Cat from Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors. And that’s definitely good news. Why we need cobalt alternatives As the world moves towards reducing carbon emissions, demand for electrified transport has been rising. Most of today’s electric vehicles use lithium-ion batteries, which require cobalt during their production and operation. That’s because cobalt is crucial for boosting energy density and battery life, as it keeps the structure of lithium ions stable....

Even the most fantastical creatures have some basis in scientific reality, so the natural world is a good place to look to better understand movie monsters. I study functional morphology – how skeletal and tissue traits allow animals to move – and evolution in extinct animals. I am also a huge fan of monster movies. Ultimately, this is a fight between a giant reptile and a giant primate, and there are relative biological advantages and disadvantages that each would have....

That’s the premise laid out by proponents of nanobot medical technology. In science fiction, the big idea usually involves creating tiny metal robots via some sort of magic-adjacent miniaturization technology. Luckily for us, the reality of nanobot tech is infinitely cooler. A team of researchers from Australia have developed a mind-blowing prototype that could work as a proof-of-concept for the future of medicine. Called “autonomous molecular machines,” the new nanotechnology eschews the traditional visage of microscopic metal automatons in favor of a more natural approach....

One study found smartphone use increased by 70 percent during the first few months of the pandemic. And a recent Canadian survey found more than 40 percent of respondents are spending even more time on their phones this year. The reliance on digital technologies, including smartphones, has increased tremendously because of the need to do everything from home — working, studying, staying connected, reading the news and interacting with services, like food and grocery delivery....

The Google subsidiary revealed it’ll temporarily throttle streaming quality in Europe to reduce stress on the continent’s internet networks, Reuters reports. The reason, as you probably guessed, is the coronavirus pandemic. [Read: Pornhub is handing out free premium subscriptions to help Italy fight coronavirus] While YouTube said it hasn’t noticed any major upticks in traffic, it’s taking measures to make sure people watching videos from home won’t fold Europe’s network infrastructure....

Zoom is aware of this reality, so the company announced it will remove its 40-minute time limit, just for Thanksgiving day. Like many other professional videoconferencing apps, Zoom imposes a time limit for free users (because it has to get people to pay for more expensive tiers somehow). Google Meet has a 60-minute limit of its own, for instance. Specifically, Zoom will lift the restriction from 12AM ET on November 26 to 6AM ET on November 27, which one hopes would cover any length of Thanksgivingvideo call....

The adoption of technology is an excellent example. Since the industrial revolution, technology has been enthusiastically invented, produced, embraced, and widely adopted… while the societal impact was considered only ex post facto, if at all. Is the age of autonomous last mile everything a repeat performance? What’s the autonomous last mile? In connected societies, how these billions of items get from point A to point B is the subject of a massive investment in autonomization....

The dominance and influence of the current crop of social media platforms also tends to distort our memory. It’s hard to remember a time when Facebook wasn’t a behemoth – but it did exist and wasn’t all that long ago. With this in mind, we wanted to bring some balance back into the world of social media the only way we know how: by producing a kick-ass graph that shows the number of monthly active users on each platform over the past 16 years....

Several weeks later, we had figured out we were seeing two radio galaxies, about a billion light years away. In the center of each one is a supermassive black hole, squirting out jets of electrons that are bent into grotesque shapes by an intergalactic wind. But where does the intergalactic wind come from? Why is it so tangled? And what is causing the streams of radio emission? We still don’t understand the details of what is going on here, and it will probably take many more observations and modeling before we do....

To solve the charging time conundrum, a team of scientists from the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems at IBS has turned to the realm of quantum physics. The team drew inspiration from a 2012 study, which proposed a “quantum battery concept,” meaning a quantum mechanical system that acts as an energy storage device. According to the 2021 study and numerous others that followed (for instance, here, here, and here), thanks to quantum resources, quantum batteries could offer multiple advantages over their conventional counterparts....

I’ve handpicked ten gift ideas with the right items to put a smile on your developer friend. Since their prices range from relatively expensive to cheap, you can choose any of the following products according to your budget and preference. And you can start shopping for gifts right after reading this post. A mechanical keyboard A developer with the perfect keyboard is a happy developer. And you can’t do better than with a mechanical keyboard, especially if the person you are gifting the keyboard is also a gamer....

Last year, it seemed that people were appending the hallowed initials A.I. to every conceivable offering, much like they did with IoT and cloud in past years. The good news is that people are starting to think much more critically about AI and, as a result, are starting to recognize and talk about these challenges. So, if 2019 was the year that artificial intelligence (AI) started living up to its hype, 2020 will be about discussing and, of course, solving the key challenges that increasingly widespread AI adoption has revealed....

Ideally, a one-off bonus payment is most impactful for employers and most cost efficient for employees, which is probably why 15% of UK companies are planning, or have already paid, such a bonus. But how can smaller companies and those facing cash flow issues support workers? Thinking outside the box and tailoring a non-financial package to each staff member is one approach. Here are a few ideas: Paid time off When more money isn’t an option, increasing paid time off can help....

No matter how good your marketing is or how much money you spend on pay-per-click strategy, you’re dealing with a fickle audience. In fact, one fifth of all of your users will leave after using your app once. I know; I’ve seen it myself. But there’s good news. If you’re willing to put in some effort for retargeting, you can pick up some of those people you’re losing. You’ll touch hot leads more frequently, converting them into paying customers....

The new year is here, while we might only just be done with saying goodbye to 2019 and the last decade, there’s an exciting year ahead. Join Riding Nerdy this week, where we look forward with our top 5 predictions for bike tech in the coming year. 1. Ebikes…. ebikes everywhere! The past year has been great in terms of uptake, but ebikes are still yet to take over the European market....

On Oct. 29, 1969, Leonard Kleinrock and Charley Kline sent Stanford University researcher Bill Duval a two-letter message: “lo.” The intended message, the full word “login,” was truncated by a computer crash. Much more traffic than that travels through the internet these days, with billions of emails sent and searches conducted daily. As a scholar of how the internet is governed, I know that today’s vast communications web is a result of governments and regulators making choices that collectively built the internet as it is today....

A 5G network supports ultra-high-speed data rates of up to 10 Gbps, low latency or delay and can cope with up to a million devices per square kilometer. With 5G, you can download a typical high-definition movie in under 40 seconds, as opposed to more than seven minutes with 4G. In fact, 5G can let you smoothly play multiple HD videos, make 3D hologram phone calls, access virtual reality apps, and enable driverless cars to communicate with each other and traffic infrastructure....

You might be thinking: why do I need special headphones for work? Doesn’t any pair work, as long as it plays music decently? Being an audiophile who’s traditionally opted for sound quality over convenience, that’s what I thought too — until I actually started to use Microsoft’s latest headphones. Though I had mixed impressions of the original model, with the latest iteration, Microsoft gets just about everything right. On paper, the headphones don’t seem any better than your typical set of noise-canceling headphones, but it’s the small touches and attention to detail that make me keep on choosing the Surface Headphones over the dozens of alternatives in this reviewer’s home — at least during my workday....