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— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 18, 2020 Nintendo revealed the new color would be released in conjunction with the new Animal Crossing game, New Horizons. Nintendo is also releasing an AC-branded Switch Classic in delightful green and blue. But still, that pink though. [Read: The legendary Nintendo PlayStation is on auction, and it’s already at $48K (Update: Now at $360K)] The pink Switch is the first color of the console I’ve actually liked in its entire lifespan — and I’m including both versions of the console in that....

You may think these two things are completely unrelated and, on one hand, you could well be right. On the other, I’ve literally just connected them, proving you irrefutably wrong for all time from this very moment. Now, I could easily sit here and rank all the new iOS 14.7 features by how much I “like” or “dislike” them, but that’d be the coward’s way out. I’ll save that for next time....

Dubbed by some the “great hybrid return to work”, employers across a range of industries are being forced to consider what the work environment will look like for staff. In an environment where labor is tight, just how much can businesses prod employees to come back into the office? And how can bosses design a solution to meet the needs of the collective after more than two years of work-from-home flexing where individual choice has reigned supreme?...

This article is the fourth in a series on the nature of human intelligence and the future of artificial intelligence systems. In the previous article, “The secret of human intelligence,” we found out that human intelligence can work as a classical binary system-symbiosis, functioning due to the structural features of transmembrane proteins in ion channels of brain synapses. At first glance, it might seem that this new and generally extraordinary neurophysiological concept is of interest only to doctors and biologists....

In other words, it’s not proper exercise. But if we look at an ebike in terms of fitness compared to a regular bike, is it cheating? Can it get you — and keep — you fit? What’s your definition of fitness? Firstly, fitness means a lot of things to different people. For example, it could be: Resting heart rate. Lung capacity. Calories burned. Stamina. Climbing three flights of stairs without feeling like you will die....

While ambitious, this does seem like an achievable goal. In a recent survey carried out by the European Invest Bank, over two-thirds of Europeans say they will opt for a hybrid or electric vehicle for their next car. This is great, obviously, but all of these cars will have to be charged somewhere.​​ At the moment, the main concerns for people considering the purchase of an EV are still the lack of (fast) charging infrastructure and range anxiety....

While Facebook’s identity and branding switcheroo will get headlines (especially as it’s a way to avoid its heap of problems), this is obscuring the real human story. Yes, I’m talking about the thousands upon thousands of people who now have a tattoo of Meta’s logo. After spending probably more than I’ll ever make in my lifetime on rebranding, F̶a̶c̶e̶b̶o̶o̶k̶ Meta ended up with a logo shaped like the infinity symbol that also kinda looks like an ‘M’?...

Some might just be lucky, but most – whether they realize it or not – will be using techniques based on scientific evidence. While you might feel you have little in common with people who overcome drug dependency, you can benefit from the techniques that have been shown to help this group. The two Ps Perseverance underpins most stories of successful change, and it can take anywhere from six to 30 attempts to quit for those dependent on drugs to become abstinent....

There are no easy solutions to shoring up U.S. national cyber defenses. Software supply chains and private sector infrastructure companies are vulnerable to hackers. Many U.S. companies outsource software development because of a talent shortage, and some of that outsourcing goes to companies in Eastern Europe that are vulnerable to Russian operatives. U.S. national cyber defense is split between the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, which leaves gaps in authority....

— Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) March 2, 2022 Apple’s event invitation features the tagline ‘peek performance,’ along with some AR graphics. That suggests we’ll get a look at some new Mac hardware, and perhaps some updates to AR features. We’ve also heard rumors of a new iPhone SE, an updated iPad Air, and more. Here’s what to expect from the event. A new iPhone SE Every few years, Apple releases a low-cost iPhone using modern components in an old body, and this year seems no different....

Since the dawn of the human exploration of space, illnesses and medical emergencies have stricken space travelers. The first missions to space took just a single occupant beyond the bounds of Earth. The number of people traveling on each mission went up to two, then three. Now, four to seven crew members typically take part in each flight, and the International Space Station (ISS) is usually home to six occupants....

India has written a letter to WhatsApp asking it to withdraw its newly rolled out privacy policy. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has noted that this new policy violates several laws and rules. MEITY has given WhatsApp seven days to respond to this notice with a deadline of 25 May. It added that if the response from the Facebook-owned company is not satisfactory, the government can take lawful actions against the social networking giant....

Officially dubbed the ‘Together at Home’ sticker pack, the collection highlights a few aspects of our new normal, including working in pajamas, washing our hands, keeping social distance, or acknowledging that medical workers are our heroes. That said, WhatsApp says it also hopes the stickers will be useful once the crisis is over. A cat deciding to take a nap on your laptop’s keyboard, for instance, is a simple reality of life....

— Lionel Young, age 74, Launceston, Tasmania When we look out at the Solar System, we see objects of all sizes — from tiny grains of dust to giant planets and the Sun. A common theme among those objects is the big ones are (more or less) round, while the small ones are irregular. But why? Gravity: the key to making big things round … The answer to why the bigger objects are round boils down to the influence of gravity....

Do we actually need a startup competition focused on emerging markets? The tech entrepreneurship scene is largely dominated by Western startup stories, unicorns with unbelievable valuations and highly charismatic founders. What about the rest of the world? More than 85% of the world’s population lives in so-called developing countries, or what we refer to as emerging markets. Emerging because they carry deep historical burdens that have, in the past, prevented them from competing on a global level with international powers....

Two young women, Haneen Hossam, with 915,000 TikTok followers, and Mawada Eladhm, with 3.1 million TikTok followers) were also arrested for their social influencing videos. Renad Imad, another social media influencer, was arrested after allegations of posting indecent content and prostitution. In late June, belly dancer Sama El-Masry was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for posts to the TikTok video sharing platform and other social media. These and several other arrests follow on the heels of earlier cases, including singer Sherine Abdel Wahab’s arrest for insulting the Nile River at a concert, Rania Youssef’s arrest for wearing a revealing dress in 2018 and the 2015 arrest of novelist Ahmed Naji, said to be the first contemporary Egyptian writer arrested for violating public modesty....

Naturally, conversations on what that means for consumers have followed, touching on the clear privacy concerns of using social media and other implicit data. However, there are important questions that remain unsettled concerning how the use of the data will impact consumers’ life insurance policies. The life insurance industry strives to protect consumers from unfair discrimination. As new forms of data become accessible, we need to continue to avoid discrimination and bias....

Named Ameca, the android can convey an impressive range of facial gestures — and people are freaking out. — Jacob Brill (@JacobbBrill) December 2, 2021 These are predictable reactions. Whenever a machine shows another human-like capability, from dancing to speaking, it sparks fears of robot uprisings. These anxieties are somewhat misplaced. Why are people are more disturbed by robots that blink than combat drones and AI machine guns? It’s not the most rational priority, but there are a few good reasons for the fervor....

At the time of writing, the infographics are still available and no further explanation has been offered. The goal of the infographics was primarily to introduce the idea of the “COVID alert levels,” which go from one (COVID no longer present in the UK) to five (material risk of overwhelming the healthcare system). It’s a nice idea but, unfortunately, it’s practically useless. For starters, the choice of one to five scale is quite arbitrary....

Similarly to the nobility in the Middle-Age who loved enslaving poor villagers to make lords and knights rich and powerful, we, software developers, love titles. A glimpse at one’s title and you’ll know exactly what the developer is capable of, and how much value he’ll bring to the company. How useful! How magical! We don’t have lords, kings, and buffoons in our little Software Development World. However, your favorite recruiter, CTO, COO, CEO, or whatever C-level manager, might enjoy calling you “coder,” “programmer,” “developer,” “web developer,” “front end developer,” “software developer,” “software developer engineer,” “devops,” “architect,” and even “consultant....