Posts

This has attracted numerous mining companies, with their focus especially on one lake in northeastern Chile called Salar de Atacama. This is estimated to contain almost 30% of the globe’s known lithium. But as promising as this sounds for our beloved EV batteries, it comes with a high cost: the area’s biodiversity. A new study suggests that mining operations around the lake are linked with the decline of two threatened flamingo species residing in the basin....

With that attention comes scrutiny, and one of the things new users found questionable was Mixer’s rules on how streamers can dress. One of the first people to apparently call attention to it was Emily “Fremily” Bello, a Twitch streamer, who posted a screenshot of the rules: Anyone else wildly uncomfortable at the idea of any visible skin not being family friendly?? Crop tops or visible shoulders are always 18+....

Let’s get to it. For about five minutes over the weekend, the Bitcoin and Canadian dollars trading pair flash-crashed down from around CAD$11,000 ($8,000) to CAD$101 ($75) per Bitcoin on the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, according to a Twitter user. Some Redditors spotted that one user sold 1,155 BTC for CAD$101 each, bad times. Kraken is yet to comment on the incident. Over the weekend, numerous members of the cryptocurrency community have reported being SIM-swapped, in what is believed to be a coordinated series of attacks, ZDNet reports....

Twitter might seem an odd place to make a stand for free speech. The service has around 217 million daily users, only a fraction of the 2.8 billion who log in each day to one of the Meta family (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp). But the platform plays a disproportionately large role in society. It is an essential infrastructure for journalists and academics. It has been used to coordinate emergency information, to build up communities of solidarity and protest, and to share global events and media rituals – from presidential elections to mourning celebrity deaths (and unpredictable moments at the Oscars)....

The average employee sends and receives an average of 122 emails a day, according to the Radicati Group Email Statistics Report. And if you’ve wondered why so many now come with elaborate email signatures featuring bolded text, graphics, call to action links and more, it’s because they work. Technology capable of tracking a viewer’s attention when they open an email shows the eye instantly settles on those clear, iconic signatures....

TL;DR: It’s nitrogen-dioxide. Up front: Finding evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life in an infinite universe is, perhaps, the most monumental undertaking a scientist can endeavor to. In order to narrow the field down from trillions of stars, we need search filters. The NASA-funded team decided to look for signs of technology using our own planet’s unique atmospheric condition as inspiration. According to the researchers: In other words, we can use our knowledge of how Earth’s nitrogen-dioxide levels have changed over millions of years to deduce whether or not a similar planet is experiencing the tell-tale signs of intelligent, industrial, life: pollution....

Voyager 2, launched August 20, 1977, is now racing through space just beyond the edge of the Solar System. “On Oct. 29, mission operators sent a series of commands to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft for the first time since mid-March. The spacecraft has been flying solo while the 70-meter-wide (230-foot-wide) radio antenna used to talk to it has been offline for repairs and upgrades. Voyager 2 returned a signal confirming it had received the “call” and executed the commands without issue,” NASA reports....

We need more time to make the tech work and, in the interim, a stepping stone fuel between gasoline and electric batteries. That’s where natural gas comes in. Comprising methane as its primary component, natural gas is an intriguing alternative to regular fuel. It’s abundant, has an established distribution network, a high hydrogen-to-carbon ratio, and, in turn, moderate carbon emissions compared to gasoline. Mind you, natural gas is still a fossil fuel, meaning it’s also damaging for the environment — but it’s the lesser of two evils on our way to electrification....

Stranger Things 3: The Game will be released on July 4 – that coincides with the release of the new season of the show – on Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. Additionally, a location-based puzzle RPG for mobile devices will be released sometime next year. The company has made the game in partnership with Finnish studio Next Games. The studio said players will get to experience the Upside Down – an alternative dimension that’s part of the Stranger Things universe – with events taking place on screen, based on their location....

The future realization of robot lifeforms is referred to by a plethora of terms – sentience, artificial general intelligence (AGI), living machines, self-aware robots, and so forth – but the one that seems most fitting is “The Singularity.” Rather than debate semantics, we’re going to sweep all those little ways of saying “human-level intelligence or better” together and conflate them to mean: A machine capable of at least human-level reasoning, thought, memory, learning, and self-awareness....

As most scientists will tell you, we are still decades away from building artificial general intelligence, machines that can solve problems as efficiently as humans. On the path to creating general AI, the human brain, arguably the most complex creation of nature, is the best guide we have. Advances in neuroscience, the study of nervous systems, provide interesting insights into how the brain works, a key component for developing better AI systems....

Mars is currently the most popular exploration target to search for evidence of life elsewhere. Yet little is known about its early history. Our research on a Martian meteorite provides new clues about early surface conditions on the red planet. Windows into the past Today Mars is cold and inhospitable. But it may have been more Earth-like and habitable in a bygone era. Landforms on Mars record the action of liquid surface water, perhaps as early as 3....

Nintendo nostalgics of the 90s, rejoice! The company has unveiled a brand-new controller for its Switch console which is identical to those that came with the iconic SNES, except it’s wireless and costs $30 a pop. The SNES Nintendo Switch Online Exclusive Controller will pair with your Switch without the need for a dongle, and charge using an included USB cable. It was first spotted back in August in an FCC database listing, and it’s nice to see it become a reality for retro gaming fans....

Known as Vid2Vid Cameo, the deep learning model is designed to improve the experience of videoconferencing. If you’re running late for a call, you could roll out of bed in your pajamas and disheveled hair, upload a photo of you dressed to impress, and the AI will map your facial movements to the reference image — leaving the other attendees unaware of the chaos behind the camera. That could be a boon for the chronically unkempt, but you should probably test the technique before you turn up in your birthday suit....

In fact, the United Nations warns this rise of “megabyte money” makes curbing the transfer of illicit funds more urgent than ever. Globally, estimates suggest between $800 billion and $2 trillion in laundered money flows through the financial system every year, and an overwhelming majority of it goes undetected. The Netherlands alone sees $16 billion in criminal money flowing through its financial system. Zooming out to Europe as a whole, the European Commission found just 1% of an estimated $190 billion in laundered funds were successfully confiscated between 2010 and 2014....

A new study, based on observations of distant galaxy clusters seen by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile reveal dark matter behaves differently than simulations predict, suggesting our models of dark matter may need to be refined. In 1933, astronomer Fritz Zwicky was observing the Coma galaxy cluster when he noticed something unusual — there was not anywhere near enough material to hold the group of galaxies together — yet, they are, somehow, gravitationally bound together....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. Okay, I have a confession to make. Despite covering security day in and day out, I realized I don’t exactly practice what I preach. I have written extensively about the importance of two-factor authentication (2FA) just through this very newsletter several times before. Every time the issue of personal online privacy has come up in here, I’ve urged you to turn on 2FA for an extra layer of security....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. During the first wave of COVID-19, contact tracing apps were touted as THE BIG SOLUTION to tackling the pandemic. Most countries rolled out their own versions, and later Apple and Google together built a unified exposure notification API that works across Android and iOS. This is all well and good, but there’s been no actual evidence yet they’re helping to stop COVID-19....

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has given the go-ahead for plans to transform the city’s Champs-Élysées into a 1.9-kilometer stretch of greenery featuring tunnels of trees, green spaces, and pedestrian zones. The £225million (US$307 million) makeover will halve the number of cars on the famous boulevard and turn the area around the Eiffel Tower into an “extraordinary park at the heart of Paris,” according to the mayor. Plans were first proposed in 2019 by local community leaders and businesses who have since lobbied the local government to renovate the iconic stretch of road....

Similarly, businesses also know that employee loyalty will help a company advance. From driving positive customer experiences to improved productivity and production, the benefits of employee loyalty are also well documented. So why then did a recent social media post on rewarding existing employees cause such a stir? The LinkedIn post in question was posted by Robert Sweeney, CEO at Facet and former Netflix employee, who detailed how he had been only working at Netflix a few months when the company hired someone new into the same position but at a higher salary....