Scientists Are Trying To Build A Conscious Machine Here S Why It Will Never Work

So far, though, attempts to build supercomputer brains have not even come close. A multi-billion-dollar European project that began in 2013 is now largely understood to have failed. That effort has shifted to look more like a similar but less ambitious project in the U.S., developing new software tools for researchers to study brain data, rather than simulating a brain. Some researchers continue to insist that simulating neuroscience with computers is the way to go....

December 22, 2022 · 4 min · 785 words · Betty Nestor

Scientists Put Penis Rings On Bisexual Men To Prove They Exist

In other words, the researchers questioned the existence of male bisexuality by claiming that sexuality was determined by arousal. And, according to the paper, the amount of arousal generated by people conforming to one of two binary gender constructs was the primary determining factor in a person’s sexual orientation. [Read: Why queer representation is so important in STEM] There’s a lot wrong with this. It denies the existence of people on the asexual spectrum – a percentage of the population estimated to be roughly equal to the number of people who self-identify as bisexual....

December 22, 2022 · 5 min · 935 words · Mary Diaz

Seoul S Smart Poles Will Soon Be Able To Charge Drones And Evs

Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) is installing new ‘smart poles’ which act as streetlights, traffic lights, environmental sensors, footfall counters, smartphone chargers, Wi-Fi access points, CCTV, and more. Twenty-six smart poles have already been installed in six areas of the city, with each pole’s functions customized to the needs of its location in the city. SMG plans to continue rolling the poles out as well as piloting a version of the infrastructure which can also charge drones and electric vehicles, and detect parking violations....

December 22, 2022 · 3 min · 504 words · Esther Landreth

Some Teslas Have Been Tricked Into Speeding By Tape Stuck On Road Signs

McAfee security researchers placed the slither of black electrical tape over part of a 35mph speed limit sign to slightly extend the middle of the “3”. This tiny alteration made the car’s camera misread the sign as 85 mph. The cruise control system then immediately accelerated towards this target — until the driver hit the brakes. Tesla’s 2016 Model S and Model X cars were both deceived by the trick....

December 22, 2022 · 2 min · 389 words · Lawrence Simmons

Soundsnap Serves The Audio Needs Of Creatives And Marketers Get A Library Of Stock Audio And Sounds For 25 Off

Creators need assets to create. Whether you’re a video editor, a sound mixer, a music producer or a podcaster, you never know when you’re going to need just the perfect sound effect or audio clip to put the perfect button on your creative moment. And just in case you’re got visions of grandeur, going out and recording sound yourself without the right equipment or training is a whole lot harder to do than you might imagine....

December 22, 2022 · 2 min · 421 words · Kimberly Thompson

Space Telescopes Are Great So Why Do We Still Build Ground Based Ones

For well over a dozen generations, every great observational discovery in astronomy was discovered using telescopes sitting firmly on the ground. The atmosphere above the heads of astronomers distorted images from space, but there was little other choice — until the advent of space travel. Amateur astronomers are familiar with disturbances caused by the atmosphere, while many people only see the effect as they gaze at the night sky, watching the stars twinkle....

December 22, 2022 · 4 min · 724 words · Debra Fallin

Spacex Aims To Provide Consumers Broadband Through Starlink By Next Year

Shotwell mentioned during a media roundtable the company needs to launch six to eight batches of satellites to achieve it. In May, the company launched 60 of its Starlink satellites successfully to operate at 500 km from the Earth’s surface. Shotwell said it needs 24 more launches to achieve global coverage, and it is planning to complete this target by the end of the next year. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2019 SpaceX‘s aims to provide 1Gbps internet in rural areas through 12,000 Starlink satellites....

December 22, 2022 · 1 min · 135 words · David Green

Spotify S Only You Feature Will Say You Re Special But You Re Probably Not

The streaming giant today launched Only You, a new feature that generates personalized playlists and pays you fawning compliments for your “unique” listening habits. The experience is similar to Spotify Wrapped, with a visual breakdown of your streaming patterns, a Stories-like interface, and new insights about your tastes. You can find a “unique audio pairing” of tracks you play back-to-back, songs you listen to at certain times of the day, and the years of musical history that you frequently stream....

December 22, 2022 · 2 min · 296 words · Brenda Boozer

Streaming Only Films Now Eligible For Academy Awards Sort Of

Specifically, the Academy decided during a meeting Tuesday to suspend its traditional rules governing which films are eligible. If you aren’t aware of the ins and outs of Hollywood’s relationship with streaming-based services, the Academy has a rule that means a movie must be available to watch in a theater. Specifically, the rule was a film must be available “for paid admission in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County … for a theatrical qualifying run of at least seven consecutive days....

December 22, 2022 · 2 min · 314 words · Deborah Stewart

Study Blaming Mass Shootings On Video Games Is Based On Racial Discrimination

However, a new report suggests this assumption is not only wrong, but also based on damaging stereotypes about race. As first reported by MIT Technology Review and published in the journal “Psychology of Popular Media Culture,” the study was made up of two separate experiments. The first part had researchers analyze over 200,000 news articles about 204 mass shootings in America over the last four decades. It ultimately found that shooters of different races were illustrated by journalists in very different ways....

December 22, 2022 · 2 min · 365 words · Lauren Bryant

Tesla Should Be Worried About Ford S All Electric F150 Pickup Truck

Earlier this week, Ford Motor Company’s COO, Jim Farley, spoke with CNBC and revealed the company will launch an all-electric F150 pickup truck and Transit van in “the next 24 months.” [Read: How mysterious EV startup Nikola overtook Ford in one night — without selling a single car] The company has previously said it would launch the F150 in late 2021. So it seems Ford is delaying the vehicle somewhat....

December 22, 2022 · 5 min · 898 words · Charles Rice

Tether Yep We Sort Of Kind Of Definitely Used Our Reserves To Buy Bitcoin

The stablecoin issuer, which shares management and ownership with cryptocurrency exchange service Bitfinex, has admitted it used its reserves to invest in Bitcoin and other “assets,” according to court transcripts obtained by The Block. The court documents further show New York Supreme Court Judge Joel M. Cohen is growing increasingly suspicious of Bitfinex’s and Tether’s dealings – especially after the companies recently admitted the stablecoin is not entirely backed by cash (which is Tether’s main marketing claim)....

December 22, 2022 · 2 min · 255 words · Florence Bennet

The 10 Questions You Never Thought You D Hear A Founder Ask

At SeedLegals, having worked with over 25,000 startups across the UK, I know this all too well and I’m happy to have become somewhat of a troubleshooting source for the founders in our network — offering advice on founder issues, funding, and company growing pains. Many of these questions cover similar ground, but of the hundreds I receive, some of them genuinely make me stop and think. From misbehaving CTOs, bust-ups with co-founders, and entrepreneurs at the end of their tether, no one founder’s situation is completely unique....

December 22, 2022 · 8 min · 1582 words · Wayne Martin

The 3 Cs Of Building Strong Teams In A Remote Work Environment

Much less happens organically through osmosis, or at the literal watercooler, but at the same time many of the challenges all teams face, like communication and collaboration, are exacerbated when we’re distributed across locations and time zones. The common ways of building and leading teams just can’t be applied easily. That means as leaders, we often need to get much more creative. Despite being co-located we can still create stronger, more deliberate distributed teams and produce the same, or even better results, than teams that share the same lunch table....

December 22, 2022 · 6 min · 1234 words · Johnny Meyers

The Downside To Surveilling Your Neighbors

In late August, a resident of Mobile, Ala., posted a video on Nextdoor, a social media app that advertises itself as a place for neighbors to connect. The clip, from a home security camera, showed a man—”Race- black Age- teenager or early 20s”—taking a leaf blower from the poster’s property. “Let’s set up a sting and I will have my AK-47 ready for the next one,” a neighbor responded. In the days before and after that post, Mobile residents discussed other suspicious activity on Nextdoor and similar apps....

December 22, 2022 · 7 min · 1298 words · Lauren Mcglinchey

The Electric Hummer Is Real And It S As Fast As The Cybertruck

One of the most surprising rumors of the past few months was that GMC was planning to bring back the Hummer as an electric vehicle. It seemed too ironic, given the Hummers were often ridiculed for being emblematic of America’s gas-guzzling culture. They were obnoxiously large and loud, ranked poorly in safety ratings, and had some of the worst fuel economy on the market. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, its drivers were apparently jerks, receiving five times as many tickets as the average driver....

December 22, 2022 · 2 min · 274 words · Tammy Steinberg

The Ewaste Crisis Could Be Avoided If We Made Batteries Cheaper And Easier To Recycle

These trends, coupled with a growing volume of battery-powered phones, watches, laptops, wearable devices and other consumer technologies, leave us wondering: What will happen to all these batteries once they wear out? Despite overwhelming enthusiasm for cheaper, more powerful and energy-dense batteries, manufacturers have paid comparatively little attention to making these essential devices more sustainable. In the U.S. only about 5% of lithium-ion batteries – the technology of choice for electric vehicles and many high-tech products – are actually recycled....

December 22, 2022 · 5 min · 1042 words · Paul Houser

The Impact Of Semiconductor Chip Shortage On Your Car Buying

The worldwide semiconductor chip shortage has been slowing down car production for a while now. Toyota announced last month it would reduce production by 40% and a recent survey shows US automakers are set to produce 1.28 million fewer cars this year. But what does it mean for the rest people buying cars? How bad is the problem, and how did we get here? To find out, I went straight to the source and asked car makers, researchers, and those working in manufacturing and supply chains for their take....

December 22, 2022 · 5 min · 998 words · Magaret Nasworthy

The Importance Of The Space Industry In A Post Pandemic World

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the hope of a growing space industry was palpable. Ribbons were cut, buildings were dedicated, and Australia’s space industry was going to triple in size in just ten years. But a few weeks into March, Europe and then Australia were slowly grinding to a halt as the reality of COVID-19 set in. Satellite images from ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission in space showed the extent to which the virus lockdown was affecting major cities....

December 22, 2022 · 4 min · 758 words · Adam Pynes

The Monolith Myth Why All In One Tech Suites Aren T The Solution

You know the players without me needing to name them. Even by their colors — reds and blues mostly. As the saying goes “Nobody ever got fired for buying [suite vendor].” They sell a vision of a suite of user-level tools that can solve the problems of a marketing and content professionals in a seamless way — from web content management to e-commerce to analytics. It makes sense in theory — you’ve got one big name that you can trust, and because everything falls under the same brand and works on the same infrastructure....

December 22, 2022 · 3 min · 638 words · Wesley Eaton