Technology News Era

When immersive experiences first became accessible to everyday consumers in the form of headsets like the Oculus Rift and Google Glass, it seemed like the industry was ripe for mainstream acceptance. A few years later, the hype around VR and AR seemed to have died down, and it seemed we’d have to wait some time before the hype built up again. Then Facebook (the company) changed its name to Meta and signaled its investment in the metaverse. Suddenly everyone cared about VR and AR again. Yet I still find many people still aren’t quite clear on what all these terms… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/nbEAP7xVD

There are few more compelling story lines at the intersection of Wall Street and Fear Street than China‘s rise to global prominence in the field of artificial intelligence. You don’t have to look very far to find a military or financial expert who believes China‘s AI program will some day surpass the capabilities of its democratic counterparts in Silicon Valley. But, as we’ve written before, the idea that China is in second place behind the US is a bit misleading. Sure, it’s technically correct, but we’re talking about a very distant second place. Currently, it would be a huge stretch… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/QrRotfbKG

If you’ve been on any social media platform in the past two weeks, you’ve probably seen a grid of green, yellow and black squares. This is the latest pandemic phenomenon called Wordle – a free online game that gives users a new word puzzle each day. It was created by Josh Wardle for his crossword-loving partner. As of January 10, the game has 2.7 million players. In Wordle, players have six tries to guess a target five-letter word. Every time they make a guess, they are told which letters in their guess are in the word and in the correct… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/4293cOpfv

Last week, the US Department of Transportation Secretary announced the National Roadway Safety Strategy launch. The strategy aims to respond to a national crisis: deaths and serious injuries involving cars and heavy trucks. It’s a collaborative effort between a range of government departments, such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, to centralize many tasks and responsibilities under a central plan. It gets its funding from the bipartisan Build Back Better bill. I took a look through the 40-something page document, and I’m summarising the main points for you and offering some analysis.  The… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/kjimJtYc9

The modern world hurts my brain. Let’s take the news that Apple enables users to store their COVID vaccination certificates in the Wallet and Health apps as an example. When I first heard about it, I was pumped. Flashing my QR code to enter a restaurant or grab a coffee would be far simpler if it sat in my Apple Wallet. Friends, the time I’d save! But, of course, the world had something to say about that. While putting my digital certificate of vaccination in an easy-to-access place is cool… is it safe? And because I can do it, does that… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Apple from The Next Web https://ift.tt/XpiOzatK8

After its introduction in 2014, Apple Pay has made spending seamless for swathes of people. Now, the company wants to move to the other side of the aisle. This time, to accept payments. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Apple is planning to introduce a new feature in the coming months that will let merchants accept card payments directly through their iPhones. In short, it wants to make its device a payment terminal or a point of sale (POS) machine.  How will it work? The report noted that this feature will be part of a software update in the coming months. So… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Apple from The Next Web https://ift.tt/rE1guxIwA

Earlier this year, a viral article on Fast Company gained attention around the world. In the piece, entitled ‘How to spot a toxic culture by reading between the lines of a job ad’, writer Stephanie Vozza discussed how to interpret some of the key phrases company’s use to get down to what the work culture is really like. For example, if a job advertises free snacks, meals and drinks, could that mean that you’ll be expected to work long hours and not leave the office during lunchtime? Or, if a business says they have a small “tight-knit team” could you… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/cA7IrMzNZ

To cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half within a decade, the Biden administration’s goal, the U.S. is going to need a lot more solar and wind power generation, and lots of cheap energy storage. Wind and solar power vary over the course of a day, so energy storage is essential to provide a continuous flow of electricity. But today’s batteries are typically quite small and store enough energy for only a few hours of electricity. To rely more on wind and solar power, the U.S. will need more overnight and longer-term storage as well. While battery innovations get a lot of… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/F2IWewHQk

Sony has had a rough few days. The Japanese tech giant has lost a whopping US$14 billion (£10 billion), or about 9% of its total value, since rival Microsoft’s announcement that it is purchasing popular videogames maker Activision Blizzard for nearly US$70 billion. While some of Sony’s loss is arguably due to short-term panic selling across the wider market, the company is clearly in a corner. PlayStation is Sony’s largest, most profitable, and fastest-growing business, and the loss of a key supplier of games content to its arch-rival could make its consoles less attractive to gamers around the world. Sony… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/Vgh8AyJ41

It’s not often that the sudden appearance of a new impact crater on the Moon can be predicted, but it’s going to happen on March 4, when a derelict SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will crash into it. The rocket launched in 2015, carrying Nasa’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) probe into a position 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth, facing the Sun. But the expended upper stage of the rocket had insufficient speed to escape into an independent orbit around the Sun, and was abandoned without an option to steer back into the Earth’s atmosphere. That would be normal practice, allowing stages… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://bit.ly/3AHwK8c

Can you believe Makayla was dropped from Bama Rush? Do you think Couch Guy was cheating? Did you see Gabby Petito’s last post before she went missing? If you don’t spend much time online, you may not recognize these names. But on TikTok, their stories became sensationalized, memeified, hashtagged and rehashed. The most recent is “#WestElmCaleb.” Women took to TikTok to share their experiences of being peppered with affection, strung along and ultimately ghosted by a New York City-based designer named Caleb, who became the exemplar for the worst aspects of online dating culture. Together, these stories represent the emergence… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://bit.ly/3s3woEP

The runaway anti-work train had a brutal crash on Fox New this week. The driver of the mangled vehicle was Doreen Ford, a moderator of the wildly popular r/rantiwork subreddit. The sub had exploded from 180,000 subscribers in October 2020 to almost 1.7m this month. That growth was dramatically stalled by Ford’s appearance on Fox. The interview was an obvious setup. A right-wing network had found an ideal target to denigrate a leftist movement: a 30-year-old dog walker who works 20 hours a week and wants to teach philosophy. When the cameras started rolling, she appeared unprepared and uncomfortable. The… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3u98V7T

The only difference between science fiction and science is patience. Yesterday’s mainframes are today’s smartphones and today’s neural networks will be tomorrow’s androids. But long before any technology becomes reality, someone has to dream it into existence. The worlds of science and technology are constantly in flux. It’s impossible to tell what the future will bring. However we can make some educated guesses based on recent breakthroughs in the fields of nuclear physics, quantum computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, and… Facebook’s name change. Let’s set our time machines to “January 28, 2100” to take an imaginary gander at the four most… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3r8LB8o

“Holy sharks, Batman, it’s periodic!” I exclaimed on Slack. It was the first lockdown of 2021 in Perth, and we were all working from home. And when astronomers look for something to distract themselves from looming existential dread, there’s nothing better than a new cosmic mystery. In 2020, I gave an undergraduate student, Tyrone O’Doherty, a fun project: look for radio sources that are changing in a large radio survey I’m leading. By the end of the year, he’d found a particularly unusual source that was visible in data from early 2018, but had disappeared within a few months. The… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3r8SkPW

In recent weeks, a web-based word puzzle called Wordle has become a popular daily distraction. Suddenly, millions of people are focused on their vocabulary of five-letter words, and are newly aware of concepts like letter frequency and letter position as they strategize about the best opening words and faster solutions. For these people, Wordle is captivating. Previous research can help us understand how our brains respond to word games, and why we love them. Wordle is a single-player puzzle that combines elements of several games, including Scrabble and Battleship. My colleagues and I have studied Scrabble as a way of… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3r3Njbb

Let me start by clarifying the headline: I know Windows tablets exist. I’m one of the rare nerds who’s been using 2-in-1 PCs as my primary device for over a decade. I’ve been on the tablet train before the Microsoft Surface even existed, back when 2-in-1’s were just called tablet PCs. And yet, after all this time, tablet PCs have been never been great at being, you know, tablets. Usually, it’s not been for the lack of decent hardware — manufacturers have been able to put out devices with good designs and nearly iPad-matching performance. Instead, it’s the dearth of software that… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Android from The Next Web https://thenextweb.com/news/android-apps-windows-tablets

It seems like just yesterday the dinosaurs were frolicking about the canyons of Pangaea, living their last few oblivious moments before an asteroid changed everything. You don’t really notice it while it’s happening, but 65 million years goes by pretty fast. At least it does in the grand scheme of things. The universe has been around some 14 billion-or-so years according to the Big Bang Theory. In that context, 65 million years is just a few flakes of sand in a giant hourglass. And that makes it all the more scary to read a pre-print research paper suggesting that our… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3o3Dt7n

The development and expansion of the EV charging software ecosystem is a critical component to the mainstream adoption of electric vehicles. However, the industry has become complex and fragmented, with multiple isolated solutions and inconsistent technology standards. This slows and threatens the adoption of EVs. In response, PIONIX has developed a project called EVerest, an open-source software stack designed to establish a common base layer for a unified EV charging ecosystem.  EVerest has gained some serious cred in the developer world, with its biggest support LF Energy (the Linux open-source foundation for the power systems sector). I spoke to the project’s brainchild, Dr.… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/34dhu71

Neil Young has given Spotify an ultimatum: remove the Joe Rogan Experience podcast or Neil Young walks. In a letter to his management team and label, the 79-year-old rocker lambasted Spotify for spreading Rogan’s misinformation about COVID vaccinations. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” said Young to his management team and record label. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” Young is the first high-profile artist to condemn Spotify for its handling of COVID misinformation, but far from the first person to single out Rogan’s podcast on… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3fZKK3A

Last year, the UK became the first country to regulate the use of autonomous vehicles at slow speeds on motorways. Specifically, this means vehicles with automated lane-keeping systems (ALKS), able to control steering and speed within a designated lane. But the government’s expecting that automated driving systems (ADS) will soon develop to a point when an AV will be able to drive itself without a human paying attention to the road — as is now the case. And, naturally, this has profound legal consequences. For this reason, the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission have revised the Automated… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3r5zFEx

It’s hard to escape the hype of the metaverse even if you can’t experience much of it. Last year, both Microsoft and Meta (rebranded from Facebook), demoed their virtual worlds of the future. In the videos depicting these dreamlike spaces — where you could work with your colleagues or hang out and play games — I had a burning question about the avatars representing users: WHERE ARE THEIR LEGS? Hit the play button in Satya Nadella’s tweet below to watch a clip of Microsoft’s metaverse demo: The metaverse is here, and it’s not only transforming how we see the world… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3r4H0nN

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, working from home was something that was reserved for the lucky few. Now, it is a reasonable work perk that many employees are searching for. However, working from home doesn’t mean staying in your hometown. More and more people are taking advantage of this new opportunity and using it to explore different cultures, new cities and other continents. If you’d like to start living as a digital nomad this year, here are the best places to visit. Portugal Portugal ticks lots of boxes for tech nomads. It’s an expat-friendly country, the internet is excellent, the food… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3AzRRt8

Investing in crypto is a risky business — particularly when you’re betting with a country’s future. It’s nonetheless a gamble that El Salvador’s president has been eager to make. Nayib Bukele’s splurging on bitcoin has been lauded by crypto advocates, but criticized in the traditional financial world. The IMF has been among his most vociferous detractors. The International Monetary Fund has repeatedly urged El Salvador to ditch Bitcoin’s legal sentence — much to Bukele’s chagrin. Here’s a brief history of the dispute between the lender and the Central American nation. March 2021: El Salvador pursues IMF funding Days after Bukele’s… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/34cS9tz

Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump’s TRUTH network, a former California politician who once sued an imaginary cow over a Twitter beef, recently declared that the upcoming conservative conversation chamber would be “the most family-friendly of all social media sites.” In order to accomplish this, Nunes says the company’s hired the same artificial intelligence moderation firm as OnlyFans. Yes MAGA fans, Trump’s TRUTH will be censored using the same technology as every other social media site. Oh the irony: Hive, the AI firm in question, serves numerous high-profile clients including Reddit, Parler, and the aforementioned OnlyFans. And, according to its… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3u8yHcJ

It’s that time of year again: Samsung is gearing up to release its latest flagship phone. It’s an interesting year for Samsung, as the phone market has heated up with stronger competition from Google than ever and an increasing number of esoteric designs hitting the scenes. You can bet that Samsung is going to be trying its darndest to make the Galaxy S22 family feel relevant. Here’s what we know about the phones so far based on numerous leaks leading up to Samsung’s reveal. When are they coming? You won’t have too long to wait — Samsung announced that its… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Samsung from The Next Web https://ift.tt/33O47ua

When is a form of transport both legal and illegal simultaneously? In England, this is the reality for escooters, where their legality depends on whether riders own or hire them.  The battle between public and private escooters has meant that their low carbon footprint has been obscured mainly by police intervention and what some call over-policing. I wanted to understand the situation more. So I reached out to Dott, who is participating in Transport for London’s (TfL) escooter hire scheme, and also a private escooter retailer,  Escootered. But first, let’s take a walk through the legalities of escooters in the… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3rQSfzs

Before the pandemic started, the debate between open office proponents and haters was as hot as ever, with a new day and a new ‘study’ showing favorable results for rubbing elbows with colleagues. And the next day, one professing the evils of the incessant noise machine we’d created. Little did we know we’d soon all be doing our own unintentional ‘experiment’ into the benefits and evils of working solo. But now, after close to two years, offices in many parts of the world are asking employees to return to work. Needless to say, this is creating some tension between those… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3fYCDnX

12½ trillion hours spent online, a new milestone in internet adoption, and new records for social media use… If you expected digital to return to “business as usual” in 2022, you may want to reset those expectations. The new Digital 2022 Global Overview Report – published in partnership between We Are Social and Hootsuite – reveals that most of the connected world continues to grow faster than it did before the pandemic. Big stories in this year’s report include: Double-digit growth in social media users Big gains for YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok New insights into the world’s social media preferences The… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3o0hoqi

Google’s surveillance-based business model has attracted another prominent opponent. After surviving attacks from employees, human rights groups, Harvard professors, and rival firms, the company now faces a more powerful foe: a quartet of US attorneys general. The bipartisan group of AGs sued Google on Monday for allegedly deceiving users to profit from their location data. “Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access,” said Karl Racine, the Washington DC AG who is leading the campaign. “The truth is that contrary… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3fXvhRz

During the past few years, there’s been a flurry of electrified classic vehicle unveilings from newly launched independent firms, such as Lunaz, Electric Classic Cars, and Electrogenic, as well as an array from automotive giants. The latest carmaker that’s putting an electric motor into a classic model is Mini. Meet the Mini Recharged The idea was born when the brand showcased a one-off classic Mini Electric at the New York Autoshow back in 2018.  According to the company, the reactions were so positive that now a team of engineers at MINI’s Oxford plant have devised an EV conversion package for the iconic hatchback to… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3AEdcle

While waiting to board a plane on a recent trip out of town, an airline staff member asked me to momentarily take off my face mask to allow the facial recognition technology to check me in to expedite my boarding process. I was taken aback by the bluntness of the request — I did not want to take my mask off in such a crowded space and I had not given permission to have my face scanned. While this encounter felt like an invasion of my privacy, it also got me thinking about other biometric recognition devices which, for better… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3rKZHw1

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. If you want to experience a metaverse, buy NFTs, or trade in cryptocurrency, it’s essential to have a wallet that’s easy to create and use. MetaMask is a pretty popular choice these days. It’s free to use, and is available as a desktop browser extension and a mobile app. You can sign up to create a wallet to store your digital assets in just a few seconds, and it will also let you connect like… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3IF803l

A report by Protocol today claimed that Google is working on a new ‘Chromecast HD’ with a remote and the Google TV platform. It’s expected to be the first model to support the AV1 codec. Yes, the company just launched a new Chromecast in late 2020, but this rumored one has a trick up its sleeve: it’s almost certainly going to be dirt cheap — likely around the $30 price range, and perhaps even less. It’s also going to be just 1080p, which might seem weird in 2022. But from where I’m standing, a super cheap Chromecast makes a whole… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3AvT7gX

NASA is best known for exploring space, but the agency’s technology is also touching down on Earth. A new book, called Spinoff 2022, shines the spotlight on the products that have emerged from NASA’s research. They include an air purifier that’s on tech for growing plants in space; blankets crafted from a substance that NASA created to chill rocket fuel; and underwear for race car drivers that uses material originally developed for spacesuits. Credit: Credit: SITKA GearTech developed for insulation in space is keeps people warm in the great outdoors The book also explores 20 recent NASA innovations that are ripe… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: NASA from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3tRW1LD

Most electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft owe their design to futuristic flying robots and insects. But there’s a more humble kind of flying innovation — the flying aircar. As the name suggests, these shape-shifting machines go from road cars to flying in the sky in minutes with only the need for a short landing strip. Overnight they were in the news, with an announcement from Klein Vision that their AirCar flying car had received a Certificate of Airworthiness from the Slovak Transport Authority, making it legal to fly.  The news follows 142 successful landings in Bratislava. At yesterday’s landing, inventor… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3nVNW4y

As the number of EVs on the streets grows, so does the number of electric vehicle charging stations (EVCS) needed to juice them up — and along with them the number of the internet-connected managing systems within those stations.  These management systems offer an array of valuable capabilities like remote monitoring, scheduling, and user billing. However, they come with a significant drawback: as with virtually every device connected to the internet, they’re prone to cyberattacks. An EV charging station in Thörey, Germany A team of researchers led by Elia Bou Harb, director of the University of Texas Cyber Center for… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3tVX25g

Toward the end of 2021, I was one of the countless tech workers who left one job and took another. The process surprised me in a number of ways. I needed to update my priors about a few things, and by writing this, maybe I’ll update yours, too. First, I thought it would be easy. My reasoning was as follows: I know how hard it is to hire great developers I know I’m a good developer… Everyone’s desperate to fill roles… So it should be a walk in the park. It turns out it wasn’t. It wasn’t radically hard, but… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/33GlVY6

We have accepted the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in complex processes — from health care to our daily use of social media — often without critical investigation, until it is too late. The use of AI is inescapable in our modern society, and it may perpetuate discrimination without its users being aware of any prejudice. When health-care providers rely on biased technology, there are real and harmful impacts. This became clear recently when a study showed that pulse oximeters — which measure the amount of oxygen in the blood and have been an essential tool for clinical management of… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3FQLFOd

I envy your internet if you don’t come across ‘NFT’ once a day. It’s not enthusiasts; even large tech companies want to explore and integrate this new tech into their services. Last week, Twitter became the first major platform to introduce NFT-based profile pictures. The trouble is it didn’t go down well with its user base at large. Here’s how this feature works on the bird site: If you have bought or minted an NFT on an Etherum-based marketplace, you can set it as your profile picture, and it’ll show up in the hexagonal shape. Tap on the tweet below… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3GWvssr

In her ode to the big apple, Alicia Keys said, ‘if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.’ Only to sing a verse later, ‘someone sleeps tonight with a hunger that’s more than an empty fridge.’ The song is 12 years old, but the message is current. Major cities like New York, London, and Hong Kong have become symbolic of ‘making it’. The wins are big, the falls are crushing. Innovation thrives, and so does inequality. This polarity has caused chaos for young people. Armed with expensive educations, low credit scores, and limited access to loans, young… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Fintech from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3rNzEnV

When I quit my full-time job and started freelancing five years ago, I figured it was just a stop-gap until I landed my next marketing job. I had never fancied myself a business owner and didn’t think I could command a freelance income that rivaled a full-time salary. But as time passed and I kept procrastinating my “real job” search, I started taking freelancing as a permanent career move more seriously. I’d always valued independence and had come away burnt out from my last job, so the flexibility and autonomy that freelance writing gave me was appealing. Coming from a… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3AmLrxn

Space exploration benefits Earth and everyone living on it in ways most people never expect — Here’s 10 reasons why investing in space is our best hope for humanity. Space exploration is the grandest endeavor the human race has ever undertaken. Reaching out beyond the planetary cradle on which we evolved represents the next logical step in the evolution of the human race. In the words of Gene Roddenberry, space truly is “the final frontier.” It is certainly tempting to think of exploration as coming at a tremendous financial cost. There are also many pressing needs right here at home,… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3IrDY2W

This article is part of our reviews of AI research papers, a series of posts that explore the latest findings in artificial intelligence. Deep learning models owe their initial success to large servers with large amounts of memory and clusters of GPUs. The promises of deep learning gave rise to an entire industry of cloud computing services for deep neural networks. Consequently, very large neural networks running on virtually unlimited cloud resources became very popular, especially among wealthy tech companies that can foot the bill. But at the same time, recent years have also seen a reverse trend, a concerted… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3FPmdsv

Instagram‘s users flood the app with millions of posts every day. There’s always fresh content, but a lot of great stuff gets lost in the shuffle. When you’re using Instagram for your business, you can’t afford to doomscroll the day away—so you need to use Instagram‘s collections feature. Save posts for later, create custom collections, and spend less time trying to find what you need. Instagram collections: Your Pinterest board to-do list Instagram‘s Saves isn’t a public feature—the user who posted won’t be notified when their post has been saved, nor can a user’s saved posts be seen from their… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Instagram from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3AmV8f3

This article was originally published by Christopher Carey on Cities Today, the leading news platform on urban mobility and innovation, reaching an international audience of city leaders. For the latest updates, follow Cities Today on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, or sign up for Cities Today News. UK start-up Urban-Air Port (UAP) has announced plans to establish 200 hubs for flying taxis and cargo drones across 65 cities globally over the next five years. The firm is set to launch its first ‘vertiport’, dubbed the “worlds smallest airport”, in Coventry in April, and says a “significant investment” from Hyundai Motor Group’s urban air division Supernal will enable expansion to further sites. “We… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3tX4tce

Elon Musk’s Starlink is a divisive project. The satellite internet constellation aims to provide low-cost internet to remote locations, but it’s producing some alarming side effects. Here are the biggest problems posed by the SpaceX network, from spoiling views to damaging the ozone layer. Causing collision threats SpaceX recently fired the 2,000th Starlink satellite into orbit. The vast number of these devices has raised concerns of collisions with other objects in space. The issue caused uproar in China after the Tiangong space station reportedly had two near misses involving the satellites. “For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3ItqDa2

Love is unpredictable. You never know how it’s going to strike, so when it does, it’s often in the moments you least expect — and that’s precisely what happened when I fell in love with a 2TB LaCie portable SSD. It was a day, really, like many other days in my part of the world. The sky was grey. Drizzle coated the outdoors. And the postperson was tired with having to deliver me more shit. For weeks, a thought had been rolling around my mind: maybe the time is nigh for an external drive to enter my life. In my… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3GSw4ix

Say hello to the Microlonino 2.0, the adorable EV that wants to bring bubble cars back. And it’s coming to Europe very soon. Small and compact, it’s designed for the urbanites who might want a mini city-vehicle without the hustle of finding (or paying for) a large parking space. The electric two-seater measures 2.4m long, 1.5m wide, and 1.4m high (Credit: Microlino) Technically, the Microlino is a quadricycle, but we can definitely call it a retro electric bubble car, mainly due to its resemblance with the 1950s Isetta. The 1955 Isetta. Unlike the Isetta, the Microlino 2.0 is powered by… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3k1sBFA

If you work from home, getting your morning routine down to a tee will have a huge impact on how you work — and feel — for the rest of the day. Ultimately, it’s about doing what works for you, but here are a few pointers that will hopefully help you start your day right. Wake up at the same time When you work from home, it can be tempting to stay in bed until the very last minute possible. While it’s OK to treat yourself and do this on the odd occasion, I would advise you to be more disciplined… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/33RvNOi

Meta has already announced its plans to release an AR headset, while several reports have suggested Apple might release a mixed reality device in 2022 or 2023. And the latest entrant to hop on this bandwagon? Well, that’s Google. According to a report by The Verge‘s Alex Heath, the Big G is working on a new headset — under the Project Iris codename  —with a target shipping date of 2024. In this story, we’ll look at what to expect from this new device, and Google’s history with headsets. What will the device be like? The Verge’s report notes that Project Iris will… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/32l0w5T