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In a recent announcement, the UK government said that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could be ferrying vital personal protective equipment (PPE) from the English mainland to NHS staff on the Isle of Wight as soon as early May. The Windracers Ultra fixed-wing drones, which can transport 100kg for over 600 miles, should be able to make the crossing in ten to 15 minutes. This is just one example of the radical technological change that is being nodded through to help meet the unprecedented challenge of COVID-19....

When animals eat plastic, it can block their digestive system, causing a long, slow death from starvation. Sharp pieces of plastic can also pierce the gut wall, causing infection and sometimes death. As little as one piece of ingested plastic can kill an animal. About eight million tonnes of plastic enters the ocean each year, so solving the problem may seem overwhelming. How do we reduce harm to whales and other marine animals from that much plastic?...

You know Word. You understand Excel and PowerPoint and Outlook. But once you get past some of Microsoft’s heavy hitters, you start to realize there are still a whole slew of Microsoft apps that you know absolutely nothing about. You might have seen them elbowing for attention in a Microsoft Office bundle once, but you really have no idea what they can do or the full range of their powers....

When you picture a master thinker, you might envision someone like Plato, Aristotle or maybe William Shakespeare. Or maybe your mind goes to a scientific wizard like Galileo, Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein. It’s likely that most people don’t include themselves in the class of master thinkers. But millions of people have a firm grasp of thinking skills, the very fine-tuned mental processes humans use to solve problems, make decisions, build plans, organize information or create....

One solution is dubbing. Last week, just after Parasite won the Oscar award, Mother Jones claimed dubbing is superior than translated subtitles. But let me tell you it sucks. I’ve seen plenty of English language movies dubbed in Hindi, and I either can’t stand them or I die laughing. Lip-syncing is often off, and dubbing seems quite unnatural. [Read: New Zealand’s first AI police officer reports for duty] Now, researchers from the International Institute of Information Technology from the southern city of Hyderabad, India have developed a new AI model that translates and lip-syncs a video from one language to another with great accuracy....

Meet the new digital university president: The system is a digital twin of Keith Whitfield, the human president of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “I had this kind of grandiose desire to talk to every single student, and I think I said that and the whole room just got quiet and said, ‘he’s lost his mind’,” Whitfield told 13 Action News. The president presumably brushed aside their concerns — and sought an AI doppelganger....

Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Dundee developed the system for people with motor disabilities, who often use computers with a speech output to communicate. Unfortunately, these tools are generally slow and error-prone. Research shows that people normally type between five and 20 words per minute, but speak between 100 to 140 words per minute. As a result, people who rely on computers to communicate can struggle to have meaningful conversations....

From Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos, from Bill Gates to Richard Branson, from your first boss to your current boss, no two leaders are exactly alike. Some leaders are born, some are made, and some are leaders in name only. Some are experts of logistics and strategic planning, others are masters of the soft skills that would make almost anyone follow them. Still others can’t do either. No matter what type of leader you are or what areas are your strengths and weaknesses, the training in The Ultimate Business Leadership Bundle ($25, over 90 percent off, from TNW Deals) can help shore up your entire managerial game with a full collection of courses that prove there’s always a path to improvement, even for the boss....

Hindustan Times reports that the director general of police for the Northern state that is home to over 10 million people,Ashok Kumar, said that cops will look for anti-national posts before approving documents such as passports and gun licenses: He added that previously, cops used to monitor social media and register a case against some for serious offenses. While cops arrest people for inciting violence or distribution of images of child sexual abuse over social media, in India, it has made arrests based on critical posts about governments as well....

You must have heard about ‘life hacks’: pieces of actionable advice that, if followed, claim to bring about noticeable improvement in someone’s quality of life. A life hack can be something small, like a particularly efficient way of folding laundry. Or it can take the form of an elaborate process, like John Walker’s Hacker Diet that approached weight-loss as an engineering problem. From personal-finance gurus to productivity experts to ‘pick-up artists,’ the world is full of people who seem to have ‘cracked’ the system, and are eager to share the insights they’ve gained....

Earlier this month, Slovenian small plane maker Pipistrel received the world’s first “Type Certificate” for its two-seater electric plane, the Velis Electro, Wings magazine reports. So what does that actually mean? [Read: Tesla Model S can finally drive 400 miles between charges — but only in North America] EASA Type Certificates are, in very simple terms, awarded after an aircraft has successfully satisfied industry engineering and safety criteria for a specific type of aircraft — which no electric plane of this type has achieved before....

For years, I made the mistake of writing a to-do list at the start and end of my working day, telling myself that crossing things off would bring me great joy and satisfaction (spoiler alert: it didn’t). Countless colleagues and managers who professed their love (and obsession) for to-do lists told me they would help me keep on track, manage my time, and be more productive. They couldn’t be more wrong....

Though the renewed order doesn’t explicitly name Huawei, it’s clearly aimed at the company, as well as others lawmakers have cited as potential security risks, like ZTE. That said, Huawei has still been allowed to work with some US companies, largely in the realm of 5G connectivity and other networking equipment. The company has a particularly strong presence in rural areas, which would be unduly affected by having to replace existing Huawei equipment on the fly....

The streamer, HeatheredEffect (real name: Heather Kent), was chatting live with a friend on Twitch and feeding her adorable child at the same time — she told Buzzfeed News the only time that particular friend was available was during her daughter’s lunch time. She also said she was curious to see if her community would take it well — and, according to her, they did. One viewer even posted a clip titled, “Normalize Breastfeeding....

In a bid to better understand how misinformation spreads online, Twitter has started an experimental trial in Australia, the United States and South Korea, allowing users to flag content they deem misleading. Users in these countries can now flag tweets as misinformation through the same process by which other harmful content is reported. When reporting a post there is an option to choose “it’s misleading” — which can then be further categorised as related to “politics”, “health” or “something else”....

Over the course of three years, the Freight Innovation Fund (FIF) will go to up to 36 SMEs to develop innovative technologies that can make industrial transport more “efficient,” “resilient,” and “greener.” “Each year in the UK, we transport 1.6 billion tonnes of freight using many different modes of transport, and it has never been quicker or easier,” Nicola Yates OBE, CEO at Connected Places Catapult — the government’s innovation accelerator — said in the associated press release....

Due to the pandemic, institutions worldwide have rapidly adopted exam software like Examplify, ExamSoft and ProctorU. Proctoring technology allows exam-takers to be monitored off-campus. They can sit exams in their homes, instead of a person having to watch them in a traditional exam room. Some programs simply enable a person to supervise students remotely. More sophisticated, automated proctoring software hijacks the student’s computer to block and monitor suspicious activity. These programs often use artificial intelligence (AI) to scrutinise exam conduct....

The demo itself is almost photorealistic, at least when it comes to the environment. It follows a young woman as she explores what appears to be one of Lara Croft’s lesser archaeological digs, culminating in a flying sequence where she wingsuits through a valley of crumbling architecture. While I’m skeptical of the notion that we should see generations of games solely in terms of their incremental graphical upgrades, I have to admit there were points where it made me gasp....

Per the press release, Senator Markey also found: Ring has no security requirements for the law enforcement offices that get access to users’ footage Ring has no restrictions on law enforcement sharing users’ footage with third parties Ring has no policies that prohibit law enforcement from keeping shared video footage forever Ring has no evidentiary standard for law enforcement to request Ring footage from users Ring refuses to commit to not selling users’ biometric data Ring has no oversight/compliance mechanisms in place to ensure that users don’t collect footage from beyond their property Ring has no oversight/compliance mechanisms in place to ensure that users don’t collect footage of children Ring has no compliance mechanisms in place to prohibit law enforcement from requesting and obtaining footage that does not comply with Ring’s Terms of Service...

The footage, shared on Twitter by a passenger by the name of Logan Webb, shows the plane’s spinner bouncing around the shaft of the engine. Deeper inside the turbine, you can notice a fiery orange glow – perhaps from the heat generated by the spinning. Here is the clip: — Logan Webb (@Micahlifa) July 9, 2019 “The flight crew of Delta flight 1425 from Atlanta to Baltimore elected to divert to Raleigh, NC after receiving an indication of an issue with one of the aircraft’s engines,” a Delta spokesperson told TNW....