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So, Steve Jobs never liked styluses. This began publicly at the launch of the original iPhone, where — when talking about the device’s physical keyboard-less design — he famously asked “who wants a stylus?” You think that’s it? Well, let me tell you about something else. It was in a presentation for iOS 4 back in 2010 — and Steve Jobs broke the hearts of stylus fans everywhere. In a rant about the iPad (guess it was more of a chat than a rant, but we’ve got to up the drama here somewhat), Jobs said that “if you see a stylus, they blew it....

The faster a car goes, the more it has to fight drag – essentially the air pushing back on a moving object. In general, the lower the vehicle’s drag coefficient, the easier it is for it to ‘cut’ through the air, and the better its mileage will be (all else being equal). While some worried the Cybertruck’s angular design would hamper its aerodynamics, the vehicle appears to compare favorably to existing trucks....

But CBDCs also present an opportunity that has gone unnoticed – to vastly reduce the exorbitant levels of public debt weighing down many countries. Let us explain. The idea behind CBDCs is that individuals and firms would be issued with digital wallets by their central bank with which to make payments, pay taxes and buy shares or other securities. Whereas with today’s bank accounts, there is always the outside possibility that customers are unable to withdraw money because of a bank run, that can’t happen with CBDCs because all deposits would be 100% backed by reserves....

It seems the US has already sorta kinda got the message, except it’s buying the wrong type of vehicle. According to figures from automotive market analyst Tyson Jominy at JD Power, the number of hybrid vehicles sold in the US is growing faster than the sale of plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs). It’s understandable that hybrids are winning, though. If the country’s EV charging network was better, I’m sure more would gravitate to pure EVs....

One idea that has gained traction over recent years is generating electricity using bacteria in devices called microbial fuel cells (MFCs). These fuel cells rely on the ability of certain naturally occurring microorganisms that have the ability to “breathe” metals, exchanging electrons to create electricity. This process can be fuelled using substances called substrates, which include organic materials found in wastewater. At the moment microbial fuel cells are able to generate electricity to power small devices such as calculators, small fans, and LEDs – in our lab we powered the lights on a mini Christmas tree using “simulated wastewater....

This new search engine from ex-Googlers, Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, guarantees two things: an ad-free experience and advanced features for all its customers. What’s on offer? The company launched last year with a subscription-only model. This cost $4.95 per month. Now it’s trying to expand its footprint with a free tier. It will offer ad-free search with customizations, and integration to accounts such as Gmail, Microsoft Office, and Dropbox....

To make matters worst, in 2017 the Trump administration rolled back the ban on hunting elephants’, allowing elephants remains to be imported into the United States. Last week, PETA released a new undercover investigation that revealed video footage of a California man gunning down a curious young elephant just outside Kruger National Park in South Africa, where no hunting is allowed. And if that wasn’t enough, United Parcel Service, a company we all use and trust, makes itself available to ship elephant body parts to America for wall decoration....

This data is used by tech companies to develop their products and provide more services. While film and music recommendations might be useful, the same systems are also being used to decide where to build infrastructure, for facial recognition systems used by the police, or even whether you should get a job interview, or who should die in a crash with an autonomous vehicle. Despite huge databases of personal information, tech companies rarely have enough to make properly informed decisions, and this leads to products and technologies that can enhance social biases and inequality, rather than address them....

Which brings us to the obvious question: is it even possible for humans to “live” inside of a computer simulation? One way to answer that would be to build one of our own. If we could successfully trick a human brain into thinking a computer-generated reality was actually base reality, it would act as a proof-of-concept for the idea that we could all be living in a higher level simulation....

DevOps can help here, with teams collaborating on how to get software out faster and more efficiently. Yet for IT security teams, the rise of DevOps has led to problems with managing security and risk too. I am reminded of Stealers Wheel’s Stuck in the Middle With You, where the singer is in the middle and surrounded by “Clowns to the left of me / Jokers to the right.” For DevOps and security teams that want to improve their approaches, how can they avoid being “stuck in the middle” and instead stick to the right processes in the future?...

How it works: Its charging solution powers EVs from electrical fields generated by copper coils under the asphalt A management unit transfers the energy from the electricity grid to the road infrastructure and manages communication with approaching vehicles Receivers are installed on the vehicles’ floor to transmit the energy directly to battery while driving In December, the company launched an E-bus shuttle, charged by Germany’s first wireless electric road system, which powers a bus line between a training center in Karlsruhe and the local public transport system....

Traditionally, drug discovery’s been a painstaking process involving trial-and-error. We’re talking eyeballs on microscopes, pen and paper graphs, and thousands of definite negatives for every possible positive. The advent of deep learning sped things up a bit. Read: Here’s what quantum computing is and why it matters As Neural’s own Thomas Macaulay recently pointed out in their article, “Drug discovery might be the best use of AI to tackle the pandemic,” the use of algorithms to sift through near-infinite chemical combinations is a gamechanger....

The Games took place in a “closed-loop” environment comprised of gated “bubble areas” that contained housing, event locations, and transport links. There were also no tickets sold to the general public, while many media professionals worked from home due to COVID concerns. The conditions left Getty Images, the official photo agency for the International Olympic Committee, with reduced support teams on the ground. To tackle the challenges, the team tapped into robotic cameras and remote editing....

The professor’s response? “I think about three inches.” Last month, Lichtman’s quip made it into the pages of a new report by the Royal Society which examines the prospects for neural (or “brain-computer”) interfaces, a hot research area that has seen billions of dollars of funding plunged into it over the last few years, and not without cause. It’s projected that the worldwide market for neurotech products — defined as “the application of electronics and engineering to the human nervous system” — will reach as much as $13....

In my recently-published book, I consider the possibilities, both terrifying and inspiring, offered by these “artificially intimate” technologies. On one hand, these tools can help deliver much-needed support. On the other, they risk increasing sexual inequality, and replacing precious in-person interaction with less-than-ideal substitutes. Three types of artificial intimacy At first mention of artificial intimacy, many people’s minds may jump straight to sex robots: lifelike robotic sex dolls that could one day walk among us, hard to distinguish from living, breathing, orgasming humans....

So you might have had to pay thousands of dollars as fees to get an NFT that might be worth a few bucks. Strap in for another weird web3 story. Yuga Labs, the creator of the infamous Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs, opened up its mint to its Otherside metaverse over the weekend. With many anticipatory participants, the mint raked in more than $317 million for the company. It sold 55,000 NFTs at a flat price of 305 ApeCoins ($5,800 at the time of mint)....

In 2019, it’s clear that digital innovations will continue to change society and the economy, but it’s uncertain whether these new technologies will benefit the global transformation to sustainability. Will digital technologies allow everyone to live in a world where their development isn’t dependent on exhausting finite resources and increasing emissions? There is certainly reason to be optimistic. Digital technologies can make energy and resource use more efficient. By analyzing the optimal amount of water each crop needs and by using a smart irrigation system accordingly, farming can become infinitely more efficient....

Instagram Stories are a handy way of sharing fleeting moments from your life without immortalizing them on your feed. But sometimes you might want to shield those ephemeral experiences from certain followers – family, partners, bosses, groups of friends your other groups of friends don’t know about, you name it. Well, there’s a simple way of picking and choosing who can see your Stories. No, scratch that, there are three simple ways of doing it:...

All of us take a ton of Zoom calls as part of the new normal. A few days ago, I joined one while I was “chatting” with my cat. I had assumed that I’d be muted, but I was wrong. Luckily, folks on the call just heard my cat for a few seconds. That made me realize that there should be a setting to join a call always on mute....

For years, if you owned an iPhone, you had to use Safari as your default browser. You could install and use Chrome, Firefox, or any other browser, but links would automatically open on Apple’s own browser. Now, with iOS 14, Apple is giving you an option to change the default browser. We’ll tell you how to make this change, but before that, make sure that you have the latest version of the browser you want to switch to....