Bookmarks (541)

NASA is scheduled to release the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12, 2022. They’ll mark the beginning of the next era in astronomy as Webb – the largest space telescope ever built – begins collecting scientific data that will help answer questions about the earliest moments of the universe and allow astronomers to study exoplanets in greater detail...

Reinforcement learning is one of the exciting branches of artificial intelligence. It plays an important role in game-playing AI systems, modern robots, chip-design systems, and other applications. There are many different types of reinforcement learning algorithms, but two main categories are “model-based” and “model-free” RL. They are both inspired by our understanding of learning in humans and animals. Nearly every book on reinforcement learning contains a...

A future of cars powered by electric batteries is inevitable. But what about trucks, ships, and planes? Hydrogen? Possibly. But there’s another chemical that could be used — and it’s abundant in your pee. What is ammonia, and why use it to power vehicles?  Ammonia is a combination of Hydrogen and Nitrogen (NH3), and is one of the few liquid chemical compounds. It rapidly...

The streaming wars are heating up. In March, Disney delayed the release date of Obi-Wan Kenobi to May 27 to coincide with the launch of Netflix’s top show, Stranger Things. This on the back of Google’s announcement YouTube Shorts had matched TikTok’s 1.5 billion subscribers in the short-form video market. Facing increased competition, falling subscriber numbers, and loss of content, Netflix and TikTok are...

It goes without saying that railway maintenance is crucial, but most workers have to walk long distances to inspect and fix faulty lines — which reduces both efficiency and safety. Artist Heqi Wang has come up with a unique solution to this problem. He has designed a dual-utility electric motorbike that can easily hop on railway tracks and function as a stylish ride on...

Less than two months since its launch, the bZ4X — Toyota’s first mass-produced EV — is being recalled due to an increased risk that the tires could loosen and eventually come off the vehicle. According to the automaker, the problem is caused by a malfunction in the wheels’ hub bolts: The hub bolt that’s attached to the tire may loosen due to repeated sharp...

A team of scientists at the Max Planck Society recently published astounding new research indicating they’ve pushed the field of “organoids,” to a bold new frontier. Up front: Organoids are synthetic biological constructs that mimic human organs to various degrees. Scientists grow organoids by programming stem cell clusters. Essentially, they feed the clusters the necessary components to spark their growth, and then they employ...

The year is 2030 and we are at the world’s largest tech conference, CES in Las Vegas. A crowd is gathered to watch a big tech company unveil its new smartphone. The CEO comes to the stage and announces the Nyooro, containing the most powerful processor ever seen in a phone. The Nyooro can perform an astonishing quintillion operations per second, which is a...

This week, Italian micromobility vendor Helbiz announced it signed a letter of intent to acquire US escooter company Wheels. Doing so will create a powerful fleet that encompasses ebikes, escooters, mopeds, adaptive vehicles, and Wheels’ two-wheeled, sit-down device.  There are a lot of reasons why I think this is an excellent partnership:  Targeting an underserved portion of riders  I’ve been a big fan of...

This article was originally published on .cult by Yasas Sri Wickramasinge. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries, and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world. All the successful product engineering teams have one common practice: a winning product development strategy. But, it is not realistic to find a universal...

The line between startup and scaleup can be quite murky, but most agree that a startup becomes a scaleup once the “growth chasm” is crossed –– meaning they’ve solved challenges like market research and development, and have identified a scalable business model. According to academics, a scaleup is, “a high growth firm whose accelerated cycle of growth and wealth creation is fundamentally based on...

Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, remains a bellwether for the sector. It hit an all-time high of more than US$68,000 (£55,600) in November 2021, when the overall value of the cryptocurrency market was close to US$3 trillion. In the months since, however, most major cryptocurrencies have fallen by more 70% and bitcoin itself has dropped below US$18,000. Is this just another crash in the volatile...

VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft are coming — but not anytime soon. Aircraft progress ranges from conceptual designs to complete prototypes and early test flights. But commercial aviation is a while away. Further, a focus on the aircraft and the required regulations has overlooked the management of their journeys. I recently spoke with Corvin Huber, CEO, and CTO of Skyroads, to find out...

Work-life balance or integration? Remote, hybrid, or return to office? In the past few years, tech companies have tried to redefine the best approach to work. But as groundbreaking as some of these new ideas are, many still miss the point: there’s no one-size-fits-all solution in a post-COVID working world. Work-life debaters generally fall into two main camps: the separators (or balancers) and the...

Edward Snowden’s faith in cryptocurrencies hasn’t faded during the current market crash. Quite the opposite, in fact. Snowden believes crypto winters separate the scams from the legitimate uses. “The only people that remain are the people that are either using these networks functionally… or the people who are there for the long term,” the whistleblower said at TNW Conference 2022. When the ground has...

You’ve brought your team together, built a product you believe in, and spent countless hours massaging your message in accelerators, meetups, and VC pitches. Now you need to tell the world about your hard work. It’s time to start pitching AI journalists. I don’t envy you. A day in the life I just saw your recent marketing email about your AI startup called (company...

Nvidia has made another attempt to add depth to shallow graphics. After converting 2D images into 3D scenes, models, and videos, the company has turned its focus to editing. The GPU giant today unveiled a new AI method that transforms still photos into 3D objects that creators can modify with ease. Dubbed 3D MoMa, the technique could give game studios a simple way to...

Ahh, NFTs. I’m not a fan of art ownership through collectible tokens. There are just too many instances of art plagiarism. But according to Sandra Ro, CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council, things are just getting started in the world of NFTs, and it goes far beyond art.  At this year’s TNW Conference, Ro shared an insider perspective of where we are with...

After 27 years, Microsoft has finally bid farewell to the web browser Internet Explorer, and will redirect Explorer users to the latest version of its Edge browser. As of June 15, Microsoft ended support for Explorer on several versions of Windows 10 – meaning no more productivity, reliability, or security updates. Explorer will remain a working browser, but won’t be protected as new threats...

Know when you click on a link? And it takes you to a weird page? One that asks you to select all the motorcycles in a picture? Or to try and decipher some bizarre wiggly text that could well be an incantation to raise some sort of vengeful spirit? Well, in iOS 16, that may no longer be a problem. Why? Because Apple is...

By: Todd Feathers, Simon Fondrie-Teitler, Angie Waller, and Surya Mattu A tracking tool installed on many hospitals’ websites has been collecting patients’ sensitive health information—including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments—and sending it to Facebook. The Markup tested the websites of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America. On 33 of them we found the tracker, called the Meta Pixel, sending Facebook...

While the vast majority of citizens in North Korea don’t have access to the global internet, the country has become a hacking superpower — but how? Speaking at the TNW Conference 2022, Author and Investigative Journalist Geoff White addressed this perplexing contradiction. “The case of North Korea is unique in the world, and therefore its computer hackers are absolutely unique in the world as...

Take a wander down the skincare aisle of any health and beauty retailer and you’ll be met with a bewildering array of creams and sprays, promising to protect you from various threats to your skin. You might have noticed skincare companies claiming their products can protect you from the effects of blue light. If you hadn’t thought about blue light before, you’d be forgiven...

There are plenty of VCs keen to impart their knowledge on how to get funded, but what if you could gain insights from investors who have first-hand knowledge of seeing investment?  At this year’s TNW Conference, three VC partners who’d previously made the jump from successful founder to investor presented a panel on the crucial efforts they learned along the way.  The panelists were:...