Technology News Era

Brain-computer interfaces are slowly edging into the mainstream. After a string of scientific breakthroughs, neurotech companies are starting to commercialize their research. Among them is Blackrock Neurotech, which is restoring functions that have been impaired by disabilities or accidents. The company is best-known for developing a neural implant that enabled a paralyzed man to control a robotic arm with his mind. In 2022, the Utah-based firm plans to launch its first commercial device. “From an engineering point of view, all the components are there,” Florian Solzbacher, Blackrock’s co-founder and chairman, tells TNW. “What we’re going to be launching initially is… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3zdolIV

A team of scientists in the US is calling for the return of Pluto‘s planetary status. For everyone who’s been clamoring for the little underdog to get its big label back, we have only this to say: be careful what you wish for. The former head of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, called for the reinstatement of Pluto‘s planetary status back in 2019, citing that “it’s the way I learned it, and I’m committed to it.” My favorite soundbyte of the day that probably won't make it to TV. It came from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. As a Pluto Supporter, I really… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3eFi8Mq

If you’re a fan of velomobiles and love the retro style, then I think you’ll find the Kinner Car intriguing — and not just because of its hybrid car-bike nature. While the Kinner is described as a primarily human-powered vehicle, you’ll still get electrical assistance. Meet the Kinner. Credit: Kinner Car Still a work under progress, the current prototype is 285cm long, 100cm wide, and has a 220cm wheelbase, allowing it to be legally classified as an electrically assisted bicycle — in Europe, at least.  It fits two riders and has room for luggage under the hood. The Kinner has… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3EEYmet

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! And no, we don’t mean because it’s the holiday season. While festive lights and unexpected presents are great, there’s something else to get excited about this December, hiring season is just around the corner. With hiring budgets topped up and ready to go, January and February tend to be the best time of year to land a new job. So, if you’re fed up in your current role, looking to make a career change, or just open to opportunities, now is the time to start getting ready. So, here are a few… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3JvYbFT

When I think of mobility failure in 2021, unfortunately, one mode of transport comes first to mind — escooters. And both micromobility providers and manufacturers are feeling the pain. To many, escooters seem like the vital cog in last-mile mobility solutions in urban areas. They’re highly accessible, environmentally friendly, affordable, and there’s plenty of variety to choose from. Just this morning, I counted four different brands blocking the sidewalk in my street.  I feel like in 2021 we were just starting (at least in Europe) to see escooters transition from something that drunk people and teenage boys ride short distances… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3qzA2pv

An international team of researchers are claiming to have performed the first ever experiment successfully ‘quantum entangling’ a multi-celled organism. The team, whose research was recently published in a pre-print paper, says it’s managed to place a tardigrade – a tiny critter affectionately known as a “water bear” – in a state of quantum entanglement between a pair of superconducting qubits. In other words: the researchers managed to put a tardigrade in a state where it was directly connected to the qubits in such a way that anything that happens to the water bear or the qubits would simultaneously affect… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3pE1FOH

It’s been a massive year for trucks, especially electric trucks from SUVs and pickups to mid-range and long-haul vehicles. Let’s look at some of the news of 2021 and what it means for the year ahead: Notable truck investments in 2021 You couldn’t move in 2021 for news of truck investments. Well, they’re so many that we’re gonna focus on the most notable: March Trucking app company Fluid Truck raised $63 million in Series A. June Fleet management developers KeepTruckin raised $200 million in Series E. August Autonomous trucking company Gatik raised $85 million in Series B. November Rivian raised… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3ezUiBx

Bootcamps, bootcamps, bootcamps… They’re everywhere, and everyone has an opinion. On one end of the spectrum are the hard-skeptics. The hard-skeptics believe that bootcamps are selling snake oil–it’s impossible to teach what they claim in three months. If you went to a bootcamp you were a victim. On the other end of the spectrum are the evangelists. In their view, the fact that software engineering bootcamps work proves one of their priors: traditional education is broken, bloated, and corrupt. School has a lot to learn from bootcamps. If you’re only exposed to strong opinions, it can be disorienting. It’s challenging… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/31bQEe9

2021 has been a year of spinning wheels and electrified hill climbs as sales and investment in ebikes have soared. We talked to Cowboy co-founder/CEO Adrien Roose about the industry’s potential in the coming year. Ebikes are going high tech  The Bosch eBike Flow app in action. This year we saw ebike software evolve, with Bosch releasing the white label ​​Bosch eBike Systems and their eBike Flow app. We also saw Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems  (ADAS) monitoring used in safety applications to help riders understand what’s behind them and in their blind spots as they ride.  According to Roose: Specifically, “smart”… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/32JTuHK

The prevailing theory on the origin of our universe goes like this: about 13.7 billion years ago a single particle exploded. The resultant blast created an ever-expanding universe that, eventually, became home to the planet we call Earth. The Big Bang theory first appeared in a scientific paper in 1931. Physicist Georges Lemaitre is credited with its creation. And the bulk of our assumptions about the universe and its rate of expansion are based on his ideas. In 2019 that rate of expansion, called the Hubble Constant, was put into question by various teams that determined either the rate of… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3x9KjKX

Your employees’ relationships with their work environment are just as meaningful as their home environment when it comes to mental health. Improving the work environment means improving productivity, retention, and growth — it’s as simple as that. So, let’s optimize the corporate mission statement and revitalize the communal ethos. Let’s open communication channels of transparent optimism and patience. Just kidding. If you try searching for “improving company culture,” you are going to get plenty of buzz words and empty sentences. Most advice columnists in the corporate sphere offer the appropriate advice, but because it lacks context, it also lacks focus… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3Hm3eXF

Elon Musk made some wildly bold claims on the Lex Fridman podcast yesterday. While he’s certainly no stranger to sensationalism, it’s clear now that the line between trolling humanity and getting-high-off-his-own supply is blurrier than ever for the world’s richest man. He’s now claiming that the Tesla Robot could be an “incredible buddy like C3PO or R2D2” and that it will be able to “develop a personality over time that is unique” because, according to Musk, “it’s not like all robots are the same.” Musk told Fridman that Tesla would likely have a “decent prototype” by the end of next… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Tesla from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3qy42SH

Have you experienced a shortage of particular foods in the grocery store or been waiting ages for that car you ordered at Christmas last year? Well, it’s been a year of spectacular woes in all things supply chain, impacting consumers, manufacturers, and transporters. Let’s look at the highlights:  Suez Canal blockage  In March, a 400-meter cargo ship called Ever Given wedged itself in the Suez Canal for nearly a week due to high winds and poor visibility.  The Suez canal blockage resulted in significant supply chain challenges. It was responsible for memes like: Folks, I’m not feeling optimistic about the… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3FG0PGK

AI had a memorable 2021, although not always for the best reasons. The field unleashed an arousing blend of breakthroughs, applications, and ideas — but also discharged a steady stream of bigotry, BS, and big tech barbarity. At Neural, we aspire to be like Fox News in its prime: fair and balanced. In this equitable spirit, we’ve compiled an even mix of AI’s best and worst of 2021. Without further ado, here are five stories that made us cherish our robot overlords — and five that had us reaching for the off switch. 10. Bad: Slaughterbots coming to your neighborhood… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3FESrr4

Nine out of ten organizations will be combining remote and on-site working in the post-pandemic future of work. That’s what the latest McKinsey research says. This new model will dramatically change the way we function and the way we meet. Getting meetings right will be imperative for any business leader — whether they run a startup or big corporation — to create an inclusive and productive environment where people can thrive. Here are five tested meeting design tactics that have worked for me and my team. 1. Ask everyone to join from their own computer Even if there’s just one… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3mCbTxq

The People’s Republic of China recently published a “position paper” detailing the nation’s views on military AI regulation. Having thoroughly perused it, we’ve come to the following conclusion: it’s gibberish. Up front: The first thing you want to know when a global superpower releases official government documentation detailing its views on the use of artificial intelligence for military applications is whether the signatory intends to develop lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). China’s position paper makes absolutely no mention of restricting the use of machines capable of choosing and firing on targets autonomously. Instead, it dances around the topic with obscuring… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/32Gqhh1

If there’s one segment in the mobility sector that did spectacularly well in 2021, it had to be ebikes. This year we saw investments in ebikes explode. Many companies used the funding for R&D and market expansion. We also saw legal and infrastructural amendments in the US, UK, and EU to promote ebike ownership, and a series of new business models. Let’s take a look: Notable ebike investments in 2021 Rad Power ebikes had a bumper year for funding. 2021 was a fantastic year for ebike investments: February: Super73 (Netherlands) raised $20M February: Rad Power (US) raised $150M March Rebike (Germany), an… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3qtNivG

For more than 100 years, Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity has been our best description of how the force of gravity acts throughout the Universe. General relativity is not only very accurate but ask any astrophysicist about the theory and they’ll probably also describe it as “beautiful”. But it has a dark side too: a fundamental conflict with our other great physical theory, quantum mechanics. General relativity works extremely well at large scales in the Universe, but quantum mechanics rules the microscopic realm of atoms and fundamental particles. To resolve this conflict, we need to see general relativity pushed… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3etjjhZ

This article was originally published here.  I’ve been seeing more and more job postings for analytics engineers in recent months. Every company wants someone that has both data analytics and software engineering skills. It’s the best bang for their buck in hiring one person. I first became an analytics engineer 6 months ago, after working for 2 years as a data engineer. And I’ve never looked back. I’m glad I decided to apply for a position I had never heard of. It ended up being the perfect position for me. Here are some signs it may also be the ideal… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3JntSRI

Amidst the booming influx of electric vehicles worldwide, automakers and tech companies have been focusing on optimizing the most vital and expensive part of EVs: the batteries. They aren’t all alike, and manufacturers use a range of different kinds of batteries. So we’ve decided to select and rank the three most prominent (or promising) battery types: lithium, solid-state, and sodium-ion batteries. We’ll compare the batteries using four criteria: safety, energy density and charging time, sustainability, and price. But before we begin, let’s brush up the basics we need to know. How do the battery types differ? Lithium-ion and solid-state batteries… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3puH0g6

If you ask a physicist like me to explain how the world works, my lazy answer might be: “It follows the Standard Model.” The Standard Model explains the fundamental physics of how the universe works. It has endured over 50 trips around the Sun despite experimental physicists constantly probing for cracks in the model’s foundations. With few exceptions, it has stood up to this scrutiny, passing experimental test after experimental test with flying colors. But this wildly successful model has conceptual gaps that suggest there is a bit more to be learned about how the universe works. I am a… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3etrV82

A team of theoretical physicists working with Microsoft today published an amazing pre-print research paper describing the universe as a self-learning system of evolutionary laws. In other words: We live inside a computer that learns. The big idea: Bostrom’s Simulation Argument has been a hot topic in science circles lately. We published “What if you’re living in a simulation, but there’s no computer” recently to posit a different theory, but Microsoft’s pulled a cosmic “hold my beer” with this paper. Dubbed “The Autodidactic Universe,” and published to arXiv today, the paper spans 80 pages and lays out a pretty good… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Microsoft from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3saOrqR

The James Webb space telescope was successfully launched over the weekend. The $10B honeycomb array, which will serve as the spiritual successor to Hubble, is now on its way to Lagrange point two. There, it’ll sit in orbit a million miles away from the planet it was built on. ✅ Milestone achieved. @NASAWebb is safely in space, powered on, and communicating with ground controllers. The space telescope is now on its way to #UnfoldTheUniverse at its final destination one million miles (1.5 million km) away from Earth. pic.twitter.com/gqICd0Xojz — NASA (@NASA) December 25, 2021 If something goes wrong now, it’s… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: NASA from The Next Web https://ift.tt/32HhqLG

Artificial intelligence has entered all our lives, but few people have embraced it as firmly as I. Over the past year, I’ve tried to embed AI into every aspect of my futile existence. I envisioned creating a cyborg in a real-life sci-fi story, in which I’d play the parts of both Frankenstein and his monster. And if that didn’t work out, surely the algorithms would be adequate replacements for my useless brain. Right? Friends, lovers, and nemeses: this was my year with AI. The belly of the beast The first stop on my journey into automation was the kitchen. Why?… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3ptSkZV

This article is part of a series explaining how readers can learn the skills to take part in activities that academics love doing as part of their work. By far my favourite thing about my job as an astronomer is those rare moments when I get to see beautiful distant galaxies, whose light left them millions to billions of years ago. It’s a combination of pure awe and scientific curiosity that excites me about “galaxy hunting”. In astronomy today, much of our work is handling enormous amounts of data by writing and running programs to work with images of the… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3z3zhZB

A renowned theoretical computer science expert recently released an astonishing physics pre-print paper that tosses fuel on the fiery debate over… whether humans could use wormholes to traverse the universe or not. Don’t worry, I’ll explain what this has to do with self-aware robots in due course. Fun with physics First, however, let’s lay the foundation for our speculation with a quick glance at this all-new wormhole theory. The pre-print paper comes courtesy of French researcher Pascal Koiran. According to them, if you apply a different theoretical math metric to our understanding of gravity at the edge of a black… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3npxNol

It might be hard to believe but 2022 is just around the corner. While many of us are still stuck in March 2020 (at least in our minds). The world of tech has gone through a mammoth amount of change since the pandemic. From remote work to the Zoom boom, the way we work, communicate with our colleagues and even search for new jobs has completely changed. Of course, Covid-19 has also spurred on ‘The Great Resignation.’ Over the last two years, many people have reevaluated their priorities, examined their careers and contemplated making a change. As a result, we’re… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/32zhAVA

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was the greatest economist of the twentieth century. Less well known is that he had a parallel career as a successful investor: fairly successful early in his career, and spectacularly successful later on when he changed his strategy. After the first world war, his income depended more on his investments than his academic work. In addition to his personal investments, he managed the investments of King’s College, Cambridge, of which he was a member. Under his stewardship, the value of the King’s College fund increased twelve-fold over a period in which broader markets failed to even… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Bitcoin from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3mAUkh5

I love Twitter. While some people type out carefully curated tweets, most of us write what we want as if no one’s reading. But you know we’re really hoping that someone will read it. Bonus points if it makes us laugh, think or feel. Here’s a couple of my favorites overnight: pic.twitter.com/FOaayPuqDW — Unexplained Occurrences 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (@TalesOfBeyond) December 14, 2021 Good morning to everyone except that old guy on Willy Wonka who lazed around letting his daughter-in-law wait on him hand and foot for 20 plus years then leapt out of bed the instant he got an invite to visit… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3JnBZ0T

Eureka! A research team featuring dozens of scientists working in partnership with Google‘s quantum computing labs may have created the world’s first time crystal inside a quantum computer. This is the kind of news that makes me want to jump up and do a happy dance. These scientists may have produced an entirely new phase of matter. I’m going to do my best to explain what that means and why I personally believe this is the most important scientific breakthrough in our lifetimes. However, for the sake of clarity, there’s two points I need to make first: Time crystals are a… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3fdRQlg

Let’s say you’re a startup founder, who comes up with the next new idea in marketing, scaling, or strategic business development. If you are 100% sure that your randomly picked idea will work (maybe you’ve asked a fortune-teller or made a tarot spread), I won’t waste your time. But if you really need to sift diamonds from fakes and create a marketing campaign that will definitely work, here are my three favorite approaches to testing ideas that my team at Refocus.me uses. 1. Go to the shelf of ideas and divide them up by priority Start by evaluating ideas according… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3mCO1K1

As you can imagine, mobility is a massive sector – it’s everything from cars to ebikes to trains and buses.  Here at Shift, we’re keen to cover the lot, as well as topics like battery innovation, renewable energy (particularly solar and hydrogen), and EV charging. Emerging mobility solutions like hyperloops, eVTOLs, autocycles, and hovercrafts make us look forward to the future. Technology moves fast, and we strive to create explainers into the use of AI, blockchain, and metaverse in the mobility space. We also like to make space for fun and entertainment, ridicule Elon Musk every now and then, and cover… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3HehJwM

Earlier this year, Spotify announced a ‘HiFi’ upgrade tier for its streaming service that provides lossless audio, promising music free of compression artifacts. Although it’s still not available as 2021 comes to a close, Spotify HiFi promises “CD-quality” audio and aims to steer audiophiles away from other lossless streaming competition like Tidal and Deezer — and more recently, Apple Music and Amazon Music too. But even if you consider yourself an audiophile, you probably don’t need to pay extra for lossless music. At least, not in order to make your music sound better. It’s true that most music streaming services compress audio… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Spotify from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3mzbMSZ

Imagine, if you will, a runner five miles into a marathon. At this stage they would have barely started, covering just 20% of the overall distance. Now picture that person stopping mid-stride and punching themselves in the face over and over again until they cascade into unconsciousness. That runner, friends, is Google. To sprinkle some context on the tale of self-pugilation: Google has discontinued its flagship tablet, the Pixel Slate. 9to5 Google noticed the tablet — which was launched in 2018 — was no longer listed on the company’s website. The Pixel Slate is dead. Google discontinuing a product or service isn’t much of a… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3He2kww

If that iPhone, PlayStation 5, or new you car you ordered was delayed in the last two years, blame the global chip shortage. The issue started last year, the COVID-19 pandemic, shut down of the factories, high demand of work from home gadgets, and a bunch of other factors like the US-China trade war, caused gadget makers and car companies to fumble to get chips needed to produce their marquee offerings. This resulted in delayed shipments and feature slashing from Apple, BMW, Sony, and Nissan. The chip shortage continued in 2021, and it hasn’t ended yet. In this story, we’ll… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3emLYVO

We tech reporters like to complain about tech a lot. Whether it’s the invasion of our privacy, worrisome use of AI, or the death of the headphone jack, we can be a fussy bunch. But as I emptied out boxes of old tech gear to start the new year fresh, I couldn’t help but be grateful for one of the best decisions the tech industry has made in the past few years: adopting USB-C. Back in 2015, when Apple first introduced USB-C to the mainstream with the redesigned MacBook, I called it the one port to rule them all. These… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/30YQ4R1

2021 will be remembered for a lot of things, but when it’s all said and done we think it’ll eventually get called the year quantum computing finally came into focus. That’s not to say useful quantum computers have actually arrived yet. They’re still somewhere between a couple years and a couple centuries away. Sorry for being so vague, but when you’re dealing with quantum physics there aren’t yet many guarantees. This is because physics is an incredibly complex and challenging field of study. And the difficulty gets cranked up exponentially when you start adding “theoretical” and “quantum” to the research.… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/32hHo97

A volcano in Iceland called Fagradalsfjall had been dormant for 6,000 years. Then it erupted spectacularly in March. It just so happens that a lot has changed in 6,000 years, such as the fact we humans have drones. So, of course, drone pilots like Bjorn Steinbekk are flying theirs right into the molten lava. Just watch; it’s worth 15 seconds of your time. Somehow, the drone survived flying right past chunks of lava spewing into the sky. Good thing too, because that drone just so happens to be the pricey new DJI FPV. I said that drone looked ‘stupid fun’ in my announcement post,… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3FxEPxR

The core idea is deceptively simple: every observable phenomenon in the entire universe can be modeled by a neural network. And that means, by extension, the universe itself may be a neural network. Vitaly Vanchurin, a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota Duluth, published an incredible paper last August entitled “The World as a Neural Network” on the arXiv pre-print server. It managed to slide past our notice until today when Futurism’s Victor Tangermann published an interview with Vanchurin discussing the paper. The big idea According to the paper: We discuss a possibility that the entire universe on… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3yZX8ZX

NASA’s  James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is set to launch real soon — on December 25 at 07:20am EST (12:20 GMT/UTC) to be precise — and the scientific community is buzzing with anticipation. Some scientists are excited at the prospect of ‘traveling through time’ to discover the origin story of our universe, while others hope it’ll help us connect the dots between classical and quantum physics. But at least one researcher believes the JWST could be a harbinger of ill tidings. In an interview over the weekend, world-renowned physicist Michio Kaku, one of the scientists responsible for string theory, told… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: NASA from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3JhDehP

The forthcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope offers unprecedented new opportunities for astronomers. It’s also a timely opportunity to reflect on what previous generations of telescopes have shown us. Astronomers rarely use their telescopes to simply take pictures. The pictures in astrophysics are usually generated by a process of scientific inference and imagination, sometimes visualized in the artist’s impressions of what the data suggests. Choosing just a handful of images was not easy. I limited my selection to images produced by publicly-funded telescopes and which reveal some interesting science. I tried to avoid very popular images which have… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/33VALJY

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. As a Windows veteran, I’ve lived under the impression I knew enough about the OS to get as much as I cared out of it. I failed to recognize I was an idiot, and was just plain wrong about the features and flexibility it currently offers. That’s all in the past: I’d now like to share with you some wisdom that has drastically improved my computing experience — a bunch of handy keyboard shortcuts. These… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Windows from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3H9OTO1

If everything goes according to plan on December 25, we will enter a new era of astronomy with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It’s an event that has been anticipated for a decade – it will be the largest and most expensive and complex telescope ever built, tested, and launched into space. At the time of writing, the US$10 billion (£7.5 billion) telescope has been fuelled for its flight and mounted atop the Ariane 5 rocket at Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana, which will carry it into space. The launch will be both exciting and terrifying… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3HbclKE

When I was in my teens I desperately wanted a pet, but my parents wouldn’t allow it, so they got me the next best thing: yes, a Tamagotchi. I loved it. It was my best friend for a while and I was feeling very attached to it. But then its constant demand for attention started driving me crazy, all these bleeps and bloops as it called out for food and petting made me hate it at times, but also deepened my relationship with it. Anyway. Soon enough, I outgrew it, stopped looking after it, and it died. Do I still… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3yZDiy3

Was one of the last DMs you received on Instagram a video of ducklings wearing flowers for hats, or floating in a sink full of water? An overly zealous cockapoo dancing on the couch with his human? A husky throwing a temper tantrum because he couldn’t come indoors? If sharing cute animal content is your love language, you’re not alone — you are part of a bigger cultural phenomenon called the cute economy. The cute economy is not only a network of cute content that people participate in making, sharing and circulating but also a multibillion-dollar business due to creators’… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/30U4FwS

This year I’v decided I’m going to ask explicitly what I want for Christmas. And all I want is the Opel Manta GSe ElektroMOD. Opel unveiled this beauty in May and since then I just can’t stop thinking about it. I mean, just look at it… Credit: Opel Yes, I’m sucker for reimagined classic vehicles, and I have to say that Opel has done an amazing job here. The traditional proportions of the new EV instantly recall the Manta A, the 1970s classic coupe, only now it’s equipped with an electric heart. And coming with a 108 kW electric motor… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3qoFdZi

Deepfakes are being used for a range of nefarious purposes, from disinformation campaigns to inserting people into porn, and the doctored images are getting harder to detect. A new AI tool provides a surprisingly simple way of spotting them: looking at the light reflected in the eyes. The system was created by computer scientists from the University at Buffalo. In tests on portrait-style photos, the tool was 94% effective at detecting Deepfake images. [Read: How do you build a pet-friendly gadget? We asked experts and animal owners] The system exposes the fakes by analyzing the corneas, which have a mirror-like surface that… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/33HnKU3

Surprise, surprise: Tesla‘s under formal investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NTHSA) again. This time, the NHTSA is investigating the Passenger Play feature. This “allows the gameplay to function on the front center touchscreen while the vehicle is in motion and may present a distraction to the driver,” according to the agency’s official report. As a result, on Wednesday the Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) opened a Preliminary Evaluation (PE), covering 580,000 Tesla Model 3, S, X, and Y vehicles from 2017 to 2022. How it all started In a summer over-the-air update, Tesla added three new games to… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Tesla from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3H4ljJG

How time flies. It feels like last week when Apple announced the AirPods Max, its first proper pair of over-ear headphones. At the time, the launch SEEMED momentous. People were shocked/appalled/excited about the headphones and Apple‘s aspirations, but a year later? There’s an overwhelming sense of “meh” around the devices. Much of this, I’m sure, is down to the inherent flaws in the AirPods Max. I’ve written about this extensively in the past, but I’ll sum up the major issues with them again: No proper lossless support No 3.5mm audio cable No power button Simply acceptable battery life Minimal Android… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Apple from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3pjdBFA

I’ve got a bad Netflix habit. Whenever I open the app, I scroll for ages before finding nothing substantial and rewatching shows I already love. Even when I search for specific keywords on Netflix, I don’t get appropriate results. All in all, disappointment galore. So, I decided that I needed to stop relying on Netflix for recommendations and build my own watchlist. Wasting my time scrolling should be a thing of the past. With this in mind, I created a guide on enhancing your Netflix experience. Before we start, I’d like to point out that this process might force you… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/32xa0KU