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An upcoming bike called the Superstrata, launching for pre-order on Indiegogo today in both regular and electrified versions, claims to push the boundaries of lightweight ebikes even further by using a 3D-printed, unibody carbon fiber manufacturing process. Coming in at around 24.2 pounds for the electric model, dubbed the Superstrata Ion, the bike is not only lighter than practically every other ebike out there, but it also claims to be far more durable than existing carbon fiber, steel, and aluminum models....

The concept is simple but clever. If you’ve ever heard of the Pomodoro method, which asks you to work in roughly 25-minute intervals with a short (say, five minutes) break in between, the TickTime is essentially that in physical form. The device is shaped like a long hexagon, and each side corresponds to a different timer: 3, 5, 10, 15, 25, or 30 minutes. Lay the timer down such that your preferred setting faces up, and the timer starts automatically — it works instantly, no buttons or touchscreens required....

Attacks of mass disruption are similar to the latest ransomware attacks on SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline — imagine several co-ordinated similar attacks. For the time being, organizations should prepare for increasing disruptions and data losses caused by ransomware. Attacks of mass disruption may not cause massive casualties, but nations could lose their ability to function and respond to adversaries, economies can be crippled and governments may be undermined. The 2015 cyberattack on Ukraine presented a scenario of grounding a nation using a well co-ordinated cyberattack....

We know money isn’t everything when it comes to choosing a job, but we can’t deny that it’s fairly important. The mortgage isn’t going to pay for itself at the end of the day, is it? So, before you take a leap into a role, you may be interested to know which are the highest paying tech jobs for engineers in the UK right now. We had a look through Indeed’s Salary Calculator, and identified the top five: Chief Technology Officer Average annual salary in the UK: £85,396 A chief technology officer is an executive position within a corporation....

In the long term, BMI devices may help monitor and treat symptoms of neurological disorders and control artificial limbs. But they could also provide a blueprint to design artificial intelligence and even enable direct brain-to-brain communication. However, for the time being, the main challenge is to develop BMIs that avoid damaging brain tissue and cells during implantation and operation. BMIs have been around for over a decade, helping people who have lost the ability to control their limbs, for example....

Apple AirPods are almost synonymous with earbuds these days. Sure, there are literally hundreds of wireless earbud models out there, but the AirPods seem to dominate in terms of sales and public awareness. Of course, if you scratch beneath the surface, you quickly find that there are several earbud varieties from a handful of quality manufacturers that can not only hang with AirPods step for step, but can actually run circles around them in one key area: price....

Enter DeskSpacing, a web-based tool that lets you design your desk setup before you buy your things. There’s multiple desk variants to choose from, including the popular Linnmon model you’ll find in IKEA (and it looks just as plain and fragile as the real thing). You can also select between different sizes. The cool thing about the app is it has a list of items and pre-selected sizes you can choose from — anything from desks hardware like screens and keyboards to miscellaneous items like coffee cups, lamps, and books....

It’s much easier to respect one of those image editing apps with all the firepower and versatility than it is to love it. Despite all of the amazing photo manipulation something like Adobe Photoshop can do with all of its possibilities, most picture takers don’t need to spend hours Annie Liebowitz-ing every shot into an unvarnished work of art. For many amateur shutterbugs, it’s more than enough to have an app that can take a quick pass at any image, then offer up a few ways to scrub out imperfections, make adjustments, or give the shot an entirely new spin, all with the push of a single button....

Composer Glenn Marshall paid homage to the group by using AI to generate a music video for their 2001 track “Voyager.” Marshall produced the film with a program called Story2Hallucination, a modification to the text-to-image generator Big Sleep. Story2Hallucination uses Big Sleep to convert text inputs into continuous animations. It enables users to divide entire paragraphs into short phrases and then animate the footage piece-by-piece. [Read: How do you build a pet-friendly gadget?...

Now more than ever, you’re probably acutely aware of a curious fact about work from home life. Meetings, even digital ones, are an enormous timesuck. No one would question that staying in touch with members of your work team is not only important, it’s vital in today’s fragmented business world. But those meetings also tend to drone on forever, often losing direction and spiraling into digressions that can kill 30 minutes, an hour or maybe even more....

The startup has a free iOS and Android app that works with shelters and rescue organizations to help owners find their lost dogs in the US. It also uses AI to match a missing dog’s picture with images posted by shelters, as well as posts on social networks. The model finds potential matches to the missing dog’s photos, and then volunteers help the owner find the pet. A recent paper posted by researchers who worked with dog network pet2Net suggests that AI recognition solutions could achieve up to 95% accuracy in identifying individual dogs in social media images....

This funding brings the total valuation of Notion to $2 billion, way up from its previously-valued $800 million, reports the New York Times. [Read: What’s venture capital and why does it matter for startups?] Notion is another “all-in-one” workspace offering that competes with collaborative note-taking suites like Microsoft’s OneNote and Confluence. Think spreadsheets, templates, and project management tools — presented cleanly to help you concentrate. The San Francisco-based firm raised the money from Index Ventures, a technology-focused venture capital fund that’s made successful exits from the likes of Etsy, Dropbox, and Just Eat....

Ingenuity is designed to become the first vehicle to ever carry out a powered flight on another world. This unique aerial vehicle, although small and relatively simple, is a scientific experiment that could revolutionize how we explore other planets. On March 7, one week after launch, electrical systems started charging batteries onboard the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity for the first time. Following an eight-hour charge, battery levels reached 35 percent. Mission planners previously determined this low charge-rate is optimal for preserving the battery for the journey to Mars....

It looks like GM still has a way to go before we see its electric dreams realized on English-speaking shores. However, if we turn our gaze to China, GM is already helping to produce electric vehicles, and it turns out, the fruit of its labor is outselling Tesla, by a long way — last month at least. Let me introduce you to the Wuling Hong Guang Mini EV, the electric vehicle that’s stealing the show in China and is made in collaboration with GM, yes that General Motors....

For IEEE — the body that overlooks formations of networking-related protocols like ethernet — the challenge is to enhance the standard’s capabilities beyond data transfer. The aim of the upcoming 802.11 bf protocol is to enable devices like phones and laptops to sense things in the environment — like detecting your movement in a room, and responding to gestures you make in the air. That’s right, your Wi-Fi network will one day be able to do this....

Social media, a tool created to guard freedom of speech and democracy, has increasingly been used in more sinister ways. From its role in amplifying political disinformation in elections, to inciting online violence, and lowering the levels of trust in media — Facebook isn’t just a space to share “what’s on your mind,” and you’d be naive to believe so. As technology advances, it’s becoming increasingly hard to detect fake news and manipulated content online....

iPhone retention this year is down 15.2 percent in contrast to March 2018, according to data CNET obtained from phone-swap service BankMyCell. The stats cover the latest upgrade cycle and take into account all phone swaps BankMyCell facilitated in the period since October 2018. Samsung appears to have benefited the most from Apple’s decline in loyalty. The report stresses that while 26 percent of people swapped their iPhone X for another brand, only 7....

Perhaps ironically, software developers themselves have been on the forefront of efforts to solve this problem by creating apps that aim to help users disconnect from their devices. Some apps reward you for staying off your phone for set periods of time. Others “punish” or block you from accessing certain sites or activities altogether. But over the past year, Apple has been removing or restricting some of the top screen time or parental control apps from its App Store, according to a New York Times analysis....

Thankfully, the social network is fixing it with a new DM feature. The firm said last night that it’s rolling out a new feature to its iOS and Android app that lets you send a tweet to up to 20 conversations separately. Rolling out on iOS and web, and soon on Android. (2/5) pic.twitter.com/oHYseF3EJE — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) August 19, 2021 Now, you won’t have an awkward moment where you have put two unknown people in the same group....

While this blow to the ride-hailing giant’s business might come as a surprise to some, it has been brewing for over six years. Uber entered Brussels in 2014 with UberPop, where private individuals could register to transport people for a fee. But a year later, local taxi company Taxis Vert filed a lawsuit against it and the court ruled that such a service didn’t comply with regulations. Uber reformed its services in Brussels following the suit and has since only worked with drivers who have an VVB professional license — the same license held by limousine drivers....