If you’re going to write something like this in a reply to a tweet, the social network might soon ask you to reconsider before sending it. Last night, the company announced that it’s currently testing this feature with a limited number of users on iOS to gauge their response. Essentially, if you post slurs. epithets, or swear words in a reply, Twitter might reprimand you like your school teacher....

We are in contact with local leaders globally and expect to take similar action when needed elsewhere. — Uber (@Uber) March 17, 2020 Uber announced that it would be suspending the UberPool option in the US and Canada, as well as Paris and London. It’s also added an in-app message asking riders to reconsider non-essential trips, and to protect themselves and the driver by washing their hands and giving the driver distance....

Bloomberg’s Katharine Gemmell reports that the ride-hailing company has bought Autocab, a British company that specializes in making software for taxi firms. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here, tech companies acquire other firms all the time. This acquisition however, will increase Uber’s UK market presence from 40 locations to up to 170 in one fell swoop. [Read: Trade secret stealing ex-Googler sues Uber for $4B] Through integrating with Autocab’s UK systems, Uber users will be able to hail a ride from local taxi companies in markets that the Silicon Valley mobility company doesn’t currently operate in, such as Oxford and Exeter....

Trump’s team said the new social network will be a rival “to the liberal media consortium and fight back against ‘Big Tech’ companies of Silicon Valley.” Like we haven’t heard that one before. Okay, well, maybe not from a former US president. The ex-US President has established a new entity for this venture called Trump Media & Technology Group. The company is already inviting users to join the waitlist on its website while placing its app for pre-order on the App Store....

As reported in the Telegraph earlier today, Policy Exchange says the UK needs to up its install rate of 7,000 chargers a year to 35,000 over the next decade if it’s to meet charging demands. In other words, it needs to install EV chargers at five times the rate it’s doing now, otherwise it will not be able to service EV driver’s demands in the next 10 years. [Read: How much does it cost to buy, own, and run an EV?...

The report warns that hostile states and cybercriminals “will undoubtedly seek to use AI to attack the UK,” through malware that mutates to evade detection and automated social engineering attacks that trick people into divulging confidential information. It also predicts growing threats from deepfakes that manipulate public opinion and interfere with elections, and cyberattacks on national infrastructure. All of these attacks must be countered with AI, according to the report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defense and security think tank....

Up front: Project JEDI is a big deal. The US military needs a reliable cloud-service platform from which to operate its massive AI infrastructure. Unfortunately the project was mishandled from the very beginning. Now, two years later, the Pentagon’s calling for a reboot: Evolving requirements? Acting DOD chief information officer John Sherman is quoted in the press release as saying the Pentagon’s scrapping the project because “evolution of the cloud ecosystem within DoD, and changes in user requirements to leverage multiple cloud environments to execute mission” have necessitated an overhaul....

Instead of lifting off from the ground, the rocket carrying these Nasa satellites was slung under the wing of a modified Boeing 747, called Cosmic Girl. The plane carried them to a height of 11 km (6.8 miles) before launching the rocket. This was the first successful launch of Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket, marking the start of its commercial ventures. The company hopes to provide cheap, flexible satellite launching services, without the need to use sites on the ground....

MasterCard has terminated the use of its cards on Pornhub permanently, and has said it will look into this issue on other websites; it’s worth noting that Pornhub parent company MindGeek runs more than a hundred adult entertainment sites. Meanwhile, Visa is suspending its service until an investigation is completed. — Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) December 10, 2020 The news follows Pornhub’s actions from earlier this week to block free video downloads (only paid clips can be downloaded), and to allow uploads only from verified content creators going forward....

The company said it has modeled the main sensor on an actual gimbal to reduce any shakes and stutters when you’re holding the phone. The primary sensor in this gimbal-like system moves in the opposite direction of the shaking motions to provide a stabilized picture. Till now, companies have relied on Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) systems with up to five-axis of movements to stabilize images and videos. As compared to OIS in phones, external gimbals provider better stabilization, resulting in smoother videos....

The telecoms giant, which yesterday reiterated its support for the struggling ‘cryptocurrency’ project, stated that independent leadership was crucial to guarantee Libra’s success. “It needs a chief executive for that business,” Nick Read, Vodafone‘s chief executive, said. “The sooner a chief executive is appointed to lead it going forward that is not [from] Facebook, then people will then understand the ambition of the entity itself,” he added. Vodafone is one of the founding members of Facebook‘s Libra Association, the governing authority tasked with overseeing the ‘cryptocurrency....

It’s a move that’s rattled some employees, Reuters reports. “I can’t believe they aren’t letting us work from home all week yet,” one Wells Fargo mortgage banker told reporters. [Read: Alphabet’s site for free coronavirus tests is now live] New York is expected to soon impose a “shelter in place” order in response to the COVID-19 threat. This could see movement of more than 8 million people limited to those with essential jobs, such as healthcare workers, police officers, and even bankers....

And it’s unbelievably cool! This ultra-cute Lamborghini is made of wood from discarded trees and has a small electric motor that enables it to reach 25km/h. It’s difficult to select the best of its extraordinary features, but here are my favorites: colorful speedometer screen display, LED lights, and even scissor doors. Yes, Lamborghini’s V12 trademark! It took Truong 65 days to complete his project before he took it for a ride with his son....

The chopper recently hit a pair of new milestones: its farthest and fastest ever flights on the red planet. The rotorcraft traveled 704 meters at a speed of 19 kmph on its landmark 25th flight. That might not win a Grand Prix on Earth, but it’s pretty impressive on Mars. The red planet’s atmosphere is less than 1% as dense as ours, and its temperature can plunge to minus 130 degrees....

Driven by ex-F2 driver Max Chilton, the so-called McMurtry Spierling set a new record of 39.08 seconds on the 1.86km course. This shaved off about 0.8 seconds from the previous record holder, the Volkswagen ID.R. And, for your enjoyment, here’s footage of the Spierling smashing the record: The 90s Batmobile-like design isn’t the only distinct element of the Spierling. The race vehicle is also a fan car — an additional technology that motorsport hasn’t seen in quite some time....

More than six decades later, our AI systems are still struggling to replicate the basic cognitive functions of a human child, let alone the general problem-solving capabilities of an adult mind. We never managed to create human-level AI—instead, we moved the goal posts and split AI into narrow, general and super artificial intelligence. We can observe a similar trend in self-driving cars. A couple of years ago, the media was abuzz with the promise of self-driving cars....

The trouble is that regulations designed to breathe life into the AI dream could in fact do the opposite, if not approached with care and due diligence. Regulatory compliance is important across the spectrum of business, from retail to banking, but it is also incredibly complicated, especially with new technologies being implemented into business models on an almost daily basis. Due to constantly requiring updates and revisions, regulatory bodies’ ability to enforce such rules is becoming more challenging....

Stripping out the metadata in your photos is not too difficult. Here is a handy guide, but a simple trick is just to take a screenshot of your photo before posting it. The screenshot will contain metadata only about the time and location of the screenshot, not the time the photo was originally taken. But metadata is not all you should be thinking about. Tools and techniques that were once available only to intelligence agencies to collect “open source intelligence” (known as OSINT in national security parlance) are now available to amateur sleuths....

In 1921, he was studying radioactivity at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin, Germany, when he noticed something he could not explain. One of the elements he was working with wasn’t behaving as it should have. Hahn had unknowingly discovered the first nuclear isomer, an atomic nucleus whose protons and neutrons are arranged differently from the common form of the element, causing it to have unusual properties. It took another 15 years of discoveries in nuclear physics to be able to explain Hahn’s observations....

However, finding the right deep learning architecture for your application can be challenging. There are numerous ways you can structure and configure a neural network, using different layer types and sizes, activation functions, and operations. Each architecture has its strengths and weaknesses. And depending on the application and environment in which you want to deploy your neural networks, you might have special requirements, such as memory and computational constraints. The classic way to find a suitable deep learning architecture is to start with a model that looks promising and gradually modify it and train it until you find the best configuration....