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The company pledged to use $4.5 billion for corporate moves, like acquisitions, and funnel the other $5.5 billion into environmental and social initiatives. Alphabet said the latter represents “the largest sustainability or green bond by any company in history.” “Although a number of companies have issued green bonds (directed solely to environmental uses), sustainability bonds differ in that their proceeds support investment in both environmental and social initiatives,” said Alphabet in a statement....

That’s no small feat, considering the fact that AMD was behind the previous generation and that Nvidia’s new cards are one of its biggest generational leaps ever. Yet if AMD’s performance metrics are to be believed, the RX 6800 ($579), 6800 XT($649), and 6900 XT($999) offer real competition to the RTX 3070 ($500), 3080($700), and 3090($1,500), respectively. The RX 6900 XT in particular looks like a fantastic deal. AMD claims its new RDNA 2 technology offersup to twice the performance of the prior generation while drawing roughly the same amount of power (and less than the Nvidia equivalents)....

Hey, P— Hey, P— Hey, P— Fuck. Let me stand still for a second… Hey, Plugged In is back again, and this time we’re talking about portable CD players. Longterm readers will know I’m a man of many “phases” and, currently I’m in what I’d call my Compact Disc Renaissance™. I’d like to talk about this further (and believe me, there’s little more I want to do right now) — but that’d ruin the exciting bit of ?...

A new report from the research firm Counterpoint shows how different manufacturers have pushed updates in the past year (Q3 2018 – Q2 2019). It notes that Nokia leads the race for pushing updates, with 96 percent of the phones it’s shipped in the past year running Android Pie 9.0. The Korean giant Samsung is in the second spot with 89 percent of its devices running the latest Android version....

— Billy Ellis @ Blackhat/Defcon (@bellis1000) August 8, 2019 The company made the announcement at the Black Hat conference today, an update to the bug bounty program it launched three years ago. The deeper access should make researchers’ lives a lot easier, able to access deeper iOS functions without waiting for a jailbreak to be available for every update. Even though researchers won’t have quite the same level of access as Apple itself, it’s a huge step in the right direction – one that should make it easier to catch an increasing number of attacks on Apple’s software....

Big Sur has been in beta since WWDC, and it brings a multitude of aesthetic and under-the-hood changes to modernize Apple’s OS. And, of course, Apple is dropping the old OS X moniker it’s used for the better part of two decades; macOS better matches the naming of the rest of the company’s software lineup. Among the notable changes, the UI looks a lot more iOS-like in its icons and use of transparencies....

We’re constantly shuffling back and forth from one app to another to carry out daily tasks. But this can be cumbersome, a drain on devices, and time-consuming. It’s not unusual for people to use a combination of apps simultaneously to carry out one task. Just think about all those times when you had to switch to your email, while using another app, because you needed to verify something in your inbox....

That all changed when I received the new ASUS ROG 3 gaming phone to review. To be honest, it’s mainly about two things: the AirTriggers and the speakers. If you’re buying a new phone sometime this year and enjoy games, I strongly recommend you consider this. Yes, there are other options out there, and you can get similar performance from a range of phones these days. But ASUS has tricked out the ROG 3 with a bunch of clever features to tangibly improve your gaming experience, and I’m going to miss this phone when I return it....

Officials said on Tuesday that driver Rafaela Vasquez was charged with negligent homicide on August 27 over the crash in Tempe that killed 49-year-old Elain Herzberg, the Associated Press reports. It was the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving vehicle. The charge comes in light of allegations that Vasquez was distracted moments before the self-driving Uber she was monitoring struck Herzberg who was crossing the road. [Read: Another UK escooter trial is on hold because people are breaking the rules] Vasquez told investigators that she didn’t use her phone before the accident....

The app will require high levels of engagement from lots of people if it’s to be useful. So, while the delay is disappointing, it’s also an opportunity to incorporate knowledge from behavioral science into the app’s design and the communications around it, to influence how it’s used. Ultimately, it will be the public’s behavior that determines whether the app and track and trace system are successful. For the app to have an impact, people need to do four key things: There is no published research on how people engage with COVID-19 track and trace apps, but we know there are a wide variety of potential barriers to people taking up these behaviors....

The firm was hit by the worst one-day slump in stock-market history. But that unwelcome landmark merely scratches the surface of Meta’s problems. To truly capture the turmoil, we need to dig into the numbers that are spooking investors. $200 billion: Meta’s loss in value After Meta reported a rare decline in quarterly profit on Wednesday, shares in the company plummeted by more than 25%. The one-day crash wiped over $200 billion off Meta’s valuation....

Dubbed “new-collar jobs” by former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty in an open letter to then-president-elect Donald Trump way back in 2016, the push to make technical job opportunities accessible through unconventional education and/or on-the-job training is not a new idea. The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the number of global, remote employment opportunities for new-collar career transitions into tech roles is, however, apparently unprecedented. Management consulting firm Oliver Wyman has reappropriated the term “New Collars” to refer to “blue-collar workers who used the pandemic to learn new skills so that they could find better jobs”....

In the future, BMW drivers could be able to add features to their vehicle as and when they please, by purchasing options — like cruise control and heated seats — from BMW through the vehicle’s ConnectedDrive store or the “My BMW App.” It’s not gone down well If you needed convincing that this is probably a terrible idea, read this piece by Jason Torchinsky over at Jalopnik. As he points out right away in the headline, “BMW’s new feature subscription plan idea needs to be stopped before it starts....

But why do we care? The mathematical constant pi (π) is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, and is approximately 3.1415926536. With only these ten decimal places, we could calculate the circumference of Earth to a precision of less than a millimeter. With 32 decimal places, we could calculate the circumference of our Milky Way galaxy to the precision of the width of a hydrogen atom. And with only 65 decimal places, we would know the size of the observable universe to within a Planck length – the shortest possible measurable distance....

Don’t get me wrong, AI that recognizes human sentiment and emotion can be very useful. For example, it can help identify when drivers are falling asleep behind the wheel. But what it cannot do, is discern how a human being is actually feeling by the expression on their face. You don’t have to take my word for it, you can try it yourself here. Dovetail Labs, a scientific research and consultancy company, recently created a website that explains how modern “emotion recognition” systems built on deep learning work....

Lactate is considered an important biomarker thanks to its involvement in anaerobic metabolism. The undesired accumulation of lactate in muscles can result in fatigue, so changes in the concentration of lactate in sweat can be used to monitor fatigue. At Simon Fraser University’s Additive Manufacturing Laboratory, we have developed a flexible sensor for sweat lactate. The benefit of using wearable sweat sensors is the capability for real-time, non-invasive and continuous monitoring of sweat....

Porsche seems to think so. The company is introducing new “digital twin” technology in its electric Taycan which goes way beyond the flashing engine lights of yore. Wait a minute — what’s a digital twin? Basically, a digital twin is a virtual simulation of a physical asset — which in this case is a virtual replica of a particular model of a Porsche Taycan. While this might still sound a bit like ‘engine lights with just extra steps’, the company is confident this will usher in a new era of smarter car maintenance....

The J.D Power Initial Quality Study surveys new model car owners. This year it found the top complaint to be Android Auto/Apple CarPlay connectivity. According to Dave Sargent, vice president of automotive quality at J.D. Power: He notes that while carmakers generally are at the coalface for owner complaints, but the problem is shared: 25% of all problems reported by vehicle owners fall under the category, and six out of the top 10 issues found are infotainment-related....

The Instant Pot isn’t your ordinary slow cooker. It’s an all-in-one machine that can do (almost) anything, from steaming vegetables, to sautéing meat. It’s for that reason why users rave about it, with aficionados of the machine called “potheads.” And now you can get one for $59.99. That’s nothing shy of impressive, when you consider they were going for roughly $240 in 2014. According to CamelCamelCamel, this is the Instant Pot’s lowest ever price....

I love headphones. I also love noise-canceling headphones. And, in particular, I love Sennheiser noise-canceling headphones. But, most of all, I love a big fat discount on a pair of the Sennheiser PXC 550 noise-canceling headphones. You read that right, currently you can get 34 percent (specifically, $119.98) off a pair of the cans. That means you can get your very own set of Sennheiser PXC 550 for only $229....