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Madrid’s controversial low-emissions zone (LEZ), Madrid Central, is set to be scrapped following a ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court. Environmental group Ecologists in Action had fought to keep the zone in place, but was informed this week of the court’s decision to reject its appeal. The group had challenged a ruling from the Madrid High Court in July 2020, which cancelled the LEZ over procedural technicalities, leaving enforcement in a state of legal limbo....

Why were you looking at Proxima Centauri? Proxima Centauri is the closest star to this solar system. A couple of years ago, a team discovered that there is a planet – called Proxima b – orbiting the star. It’s just a little bit bigger than Earth, it’s probably rocky and it is in what is called the habitable zone, or the Goldilocks zone. This means that Proxima b is about the right distance from the star so that it could have liquid water on its surface....

If humanity ever wants to travel easily between stars, people will need to go faster than light. But so far, faster-than-light travel is possible only in science fiction. In Issac Asimov’s Foundation series, humanity can travel from planet to planet, star to star or across the universe using jump drives. As a kid, I read as many of those stories as I could get my hands on. I am now a theoretical physicist and study nanotechnology, but I am still fascinated by the ways humanity could one day travel in space....

McDonald’s announced it would begin testing its new plant-based burger in select markets starting in 2021, before potentially expanding to other regions. The company trialed a plant-based burger using Beyond Meat patties last year in Canada, and indeed Beyond told CNBC it co-created the new burger with McDonald’s. It’s not clear, however, to what extent Beyond will be involved with the McPlant as a final product. McDonald’s has declined to clarify who will be making the end product, saying it has not “made a decision yet about how we’re going to be and which suppliers are supporting our global rollout....

With this in mind, Hard Fork spoke with developers Ross Nicoll and Michi Lumin to find out what it takes for Dogecoin to go beyond its meme status and their plans to build it into a legitimate cryptocurrency. But first, here’s some background. The Doge days are over Dogecoin has been in development since 2013. Its original creators, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, wanted to create a cryptocurrency that wasn’t as stuffy or boring as Bitcoin....

The company has open-sourced an AI model that translates over 200 languages — many of which aren’t supported by existing systems. The research is part of a Meta initiative launched earlier this year. “We call this project No Language Left Behind, and the AI modeling techniques we used from NLLB are helping us make high quality translations on Facebook and Instagram for languages spoken by billions of people around the world,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post....

In my experience, the former has tended to be more responsive, while the latter had way more features built-in for power uses. But then the former would often get new features before the latter, as if the apps were being developed in parallel. It’s honestly been a bit of a headache to keep up with which version can do what, and I often found myself switching between the two. It’s quite annoying....

You’ve got a big chunk of white staring right at you. But as spotted by Paul Thurrott, Microsoft is currently testing a full-fledged dark mode that actually turns the white page a dark gray, and makes black text white(the feature is currently limited to Office Insiders). Colors remain the same overall hue, but “will be shifted to accommodate the new color contrast” and “mute the overall effect of the color palette and look more visually pleasing with the new dark background....

The details — disclosed by University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and TechCrunch — reveal that the targets were sent specifically tailored malicious web links over WhatsApp, which, when opened, exploited browser vulnerabilities on iOS and Android devices to install spyware, and surreptitiously steal private and sensitive information. The researchers have traced the campaign back to a single operator they call POISON CARP. “The campaign is the first documented case of one-click mobile exploits used to target Tibetan groups,” Citizen Lab said....

The non-profit has revamped its RegretsReporter tool to examine unwanted YouTube recommendations. The updated browser extension will explore whether the platform truly allows users to reject recommendations. YouTube’s algorithmic controls include buttons such as “Not interested,” “Dislike,” and “Don’t recommend channel.” Your choices train YouTube’s algorithm to not surface similar content. RegretsReporter was designed to determine whether the controls work as advertised. The extension lets you click a “Stop Recommending” button that’s placed on the thumbnail of each video that’s recommended or watched....

Mumbai, the western city of India, has put out a tender to purchase 1,900 EV buses that will add to its existing fleet of 386. With this, the financial capital of India aims to become the biggest proponent of sustainable public transport. The Environment Minister of the state, Aaditya Thackeray, made the announcement on Twitter earlier this week. The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST), the civic body for transport and electricity based in Mumbai, already runs more than 3,300 buses in the city....

According to Musk, Tesla’s battery cell technology has improved and is improving at such a rate, that it won’t be much longer until it launches a 400-mile range Model S, Electrek reports. [Read: Tesla posts first annual profit — still loses $862M] The 400-mile range mark might sound like something of a milestone in the EV world. But it’s not actually that far away. According to figures from the US Environmental Protection Agency, the long-range Tesla Model S has a range of just over 370 miles (ca....

On Tuesday, NASA’s administrator Jim Bridenstine showed off the space agency’s latest, most diverse spacesuit yet. The red, white, and blue colored-suit — which took two years to design — was created specially for NASA’s 2024 Artmix mission, a journey that will see the first woman to step foot on the moon. During the launch, NASA’s spacesuit engineers, Kristine Davis and Dustin Hogmert, demonstrated how these suits give astronauts more flexibility than ever before....

We don’t need to tell you that it’s rough out there. Chances are, you’re among the more than 60 percent of Americans who didn’t receive a pay raise last year. With wages mostly stagnant, it’s no surprise that more Americans are picking up side hustles to make ends meet. We get it, and whether you’re considering picking up a side gig to make ends meet or upgrading to one that’s more lucrative than what you already have, the options you’ll find in The 2020 Side Hustle Bundle ($34....

We’re proud to bring beloved, influential stories like Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and My Neighbour Totoro to first-time viewers and high-flying fans alike. pic.twitter.com/955uiYAzA1 — Netflix ANZ (@NetflixANZ) January 20, 2020 If it feels like you’ve heard about Studio Ghibli’s films a lot lately, it’s because they’ve been a pawn in the streaming wars, having been snatched up by HBO for its new Max offering. The major companies behind the new streaming services have been busily divvying up every major intellectual property of the last 30 years, and Ghibli was a particularly noteworthy addition to the fledgling HBO option....

Courtesy of our primate ancestors that invented cooking over a million years ago, you are a member of the one species able to afford so many cortical neurons in its brain. With them come the extended childhood and the pushing century-long lifespan that together make human beings unique. All these bequests of your bigger brain cortex mean you can gather four generations around a meal to exchange banter and gossip, turn information into knowledge and even practice the art of what-not-to-say-when....

The system analyzes established measures of frailty to gauge a mouse’s chronological age and their so-called biological age — the condition of their physical and mental functions. It was created by researchers from Harvard Medical School’s Sinclair Lab, who say it’s the first study to track a mouse’s frailty for the duration of its life. They plan to use the predictions to quickly test interventions intended to extend the mice’s lives and move towards doing the same in humans....

They’re the first microscopic robots made of semiconductor components, according to their creators from Cornell University. This means they can be made to walk using standard electronic signals. Each robot has four legs comprised of tiny actuators, which are connected to patches of solar cells on the device’s chassis. When laser beams are shined on these patches, the legs bend to make the robot walk. [Read: 4 ridiculously easy ways you can be more eco-friendly] The robots also extremely small: about 5 microns thick (0....

With more than 30 million Americans currently out of work, there’s a lot of career reassessment happening right now from coast to coast. And as one of the most in-demand jobs anywhere, expect thousands to make the move to build a new professional future as a web developer in the coming months. However, deciding exactly where to start your training to become hireable is a tough question. We’d suggest starting with the programming language at the heart of today’s fiercest push toward the future, Python....

Security researcher Dinesh Devadoss tweeted their discovery of the malware yesterday. A detailed analysis of the malware can be read here. Contains code: Loads Mach-O from memory and execute it / Writes to a file and execute it@patrickwardle @thomasareed pic.twitter.com/Mpru8FHELi — Dinesh_Devadoss (@dineshdina04) December 3, 2019 The malware masquerades as a cryptocurrency arbitrage platform, a service typically used to take advantage of price discrepancies across other digital asset exchanges. According to researchers, the malware is designed to retrieve a payload from a remote server and then run it in the infected machine’s memory....