Technology News Era

During the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, and the early decades of the 20th century, U.S. captains of industry such as William Randolph Hearst and Jay Gould used their massive wealth to dominate facets of the economy, including the news media. They were, in many ways, prototype oligarchs – by the dictionary definition, “very rich business leaders with a great deal of political influence.” Some have argued that the U.S. is in the midst of a Second Gilded Age defined – like the first – by vast wealth inequality, hyper-partisanship, xenophobia and a new crop of oligarchs using… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/KmutM8W

Wall Street has long been likened to a casino. Robinhood, an investment app that just filed plans for an initial public offering, makes the comparison more apt than ever. That’s because the power of the casino is the way it makes people feel like gambling their money away is a game. Casinos are full of mood lighting, fun noises, and other sensory details that reward gamblers when they place coins in slots. Similarly, Robinhood’s slick and easy-to-use app resembles a thrill-inducing video game rather than a sober investment tool. The color palette of red and green is associated with mood,… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/48VJUzn

Artificial intelligence has become a buzzword in the tech industry. Companies are eager to present themselves as “AI-first” and use the terms “AI,” “machine learning,” and “deep learning” abundantly in their web and marketing copy. What are the effects of the current hype surrounding AI? Is it just misleading consumers and end-users or is it also affecting investors and regulators? How is it shaping the mindset for creating products and services? How is the merging of scientific research and commercial product development feeding into the hype? These are some of the questions that Richard Heimann, Chief AI Officer at Cybraics,… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/39BiXcS

Meta recently announced a long-term research partnership to study the human brain. According to the company, it intends to use the results of this study to “guide the development of AI that processes speech and text as efficiently as people.” This is the latest in Meta’s ongoing quest to perform the machine learning equivalent of alchemy: producing thought from language. The big idea: Meta wants to understand exactly what’s going on in people’s brains when they process language. Then, somehow, it’s going to use this data to develop an AI capable of understanding language. According to Meta AI, the company… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/lZrUF4s

Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky on Thursday announced the company’s 5-point plan to enable employees to live and work anywhere, all the time. Ostensibly because “The world has become more flexible”, and “We also had the most productive two-year period in our company’s history — all while working remotely” (presumably, also: massive decrease in operating costs; consequent increase in profit margins). More highlights from Chesky’s thread include the ability to move anywhere in the US without any change in compensation; in-person team gatherings facilitated quarterly; and the implementation of a multi-year roadmap with two product releases per year, to… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Airbnb from The Next Web https://ift.tt/io3Vv4f

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta/Facebook, recently remarked in a podcast interview that when it came to hiring new staff, his preference was people whose “values aligned in the things that you care about”. This, he said, was akin to “choosing a friend or a life partner”. He went on to state that many young people were too “objective-focused” and “not focused enough on connections and … people”. This speaks to one of the eternal questions for managers in deciding who to hire: do you choose the candidate who has objectively higher ability or the one whose values are more… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/tRj5Ens

On Thursday, ahead of this weekend’s Monaco E-Prix, FIA and Formula E finally unveiled their next electric race car. It’s called Gen3 — as in, the third generation vehicle used by the series — and comes with some BIG upgrades and claimed world’s firsts. Inspired by a fighter jet, the Gen3 features a completely reworked exterior that makes it look kinda like a modern F18 aircraft on wheels. Credit: FIA/Formula E Formula E believes that the new car design, which is both smaller and lighter than the Gen2 model, will enable faster, more agile wheel-to-wheel racing, as it’s built for… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/Sk9l4sp

There might not be an easy answer to how Elon Musk wants to achieve “free speech absolutism” on Twitter. But there’s another issue he has to tackle with his new purchase: making money. Musk has taken hefty loans from banks with his Tesla shares as collateral. Some of these loans have interest rates as high as $1 billion per year. So he’ll likely want the social network to mint more money toot-suite, and help repay these debts. Cutting down on ads The upcoming Twitter owner has had a few ideas before he made a bid to acquire the social network.… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/irstgzS

The UK’s roads are some of the main culprits of its greenhouse gas emissions. And in 2020, 92% of passenger kilometers traveled in the UK was made by cars, vans and taxis. That means getting around by private vehicle has a disproportionately large negative impact on the environment. What’s more, only 5.8% of vehicles on UK roads are ultra-low emission. Even electric vehicles, though they create less pollution when driven, have a substantial environmental impact thanks to the materials used to create them. Getting rid of them has an environmental cost, too. And in some areas, car ownership is growing – the county of Hertfordshire is expected to become… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/v7YDrA1

Stephen Hawking once suggested Albert Einstein’s assertion that “God does not play dice” with the universe was wrong. In Hawking’s view, the discovery of black hole physics confirmed that not only did God play dice, “but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.” Are we here by chance or design? A more pragmatic approach to the question, considering the subject matter, would be to assume that all answers are correct. In fact, that’s the basis of quantum physics. Here’s the simplest explanation of how it all works that you’ll ever read: imagine flipping a… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/r170aJZ

I’m one of countless people who are foolishly faithful to Chrome. Despite the browser’s horrible rep for privacy, memory-hogging, battery-draining, and role in Google’s monopoly, I can’t call it quits. We had too many good times together — and the old bastard is still pretty. Our relationship, however, may soon face a new threat. According to a page on the Microsoft website that was spotted by Neowin, the software giant has developed a built-in VPN for the Edge browser. The service remains a preview feature for now, but it could be available in an upcoming version of Edge. Named the “Microsoft… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/Rtvuknx

Unlimited annual leave — it’s the dream, right? Going from a set number of days at your previous employer to a new company where the world is your oyster (in holiday terms) can feel exciting, liberating — and potentially a little bit scary. Will you ever get any work done? The concept of unlimited holiday leave originated in the mid-1990s within the tech industry in Silicon Valley. IBM was an early adopter, and despite often being decried as a PR, rather than HR, tool its adoption has spread globally and there are now UK-owned and operated tech companies offering it… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Slack from The Next Web https://ift.tt/Zgu3TXP

“Everyone wants free public transport, but no one wants to pay for it” is a claim I often hear writing about mobility. But an equally pressing challenge is often excluded from the conversation: equal access to public transport. It’s a challenging problem for transport providers. They have to contend with servicing the busiest routes. This is often at the expense of more disparate locations and times. And the further away you live from highly-populated inner urban areas, or need services outside of standard peak hours for daily commuters, the more likely you are to experience transport poverty.  In recent years,… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/6HzVGCy

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, seems set to purchase the social media platform Twitter for around US$44 billion. He says he’s not doing it to make money (which is good, because Twitter has rarely turned a profit), but rather because, among other things, he believes in free speech. Twitter might seem an odd place to make a stand for free speech. The service has around 217 million daily users, only a fraction of the 2.8 billion who log in each day to one of the Meta family (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp). But the platform plays a disproportionately large role… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/0sPetkr

Are you a would-be founder looking for the right industry to build, grow, and scale? Are you an engineer looking for a new challenge? Do the words ‘earth observation’ and ‘geospatial data’ get you going? Then SpaceTech might be the next frontier for you. In the past, space was dominated by missions run by big space players, the US, Russia, and China. But the EU has set its sights to the skies, announcing a 20% increase in the European Space Agency’s budget at the end of 2021 — the largest the agency has seen in 25 years. Meanwhile, its upcoming… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/JLdReAg

Yesterday, Meta announced its second quarterly results after its major rebranding, and things were a bit more positive this time around. The company gained daily active users (1.96 billion from 1.92 billion last quarter), and posted $27.9 billion in revenue with a year-on-year growth rate of 7%. While it was the slowest growth the tech giant has ever posted, Wall Street was happy with this performance. From its earnings call, we got to learn that the company is putting in more money towards building its metaverse — but it might take more than a few years to see a fully… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/wxkZnye

The lines between fiction and reality are blurry for John LePore. As a futurist and creative director who works on both movies and products, LePore not only crisscrosses these borders — he helps shape them. Much of his work has been done with Perception, a New York-based design lab. The Emmy-nominated team creates future tech for sci-fi blockbusters and real-world devices, from gadgets in Marvel films to gauges for rocket ships. The two worlds frequently inspire each other. “It’s not a one-way street — it’s a never-ending loop,” LePore tells TNW. Perception conceptualized Tony Stark’s smart mirror, glass phone, and… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/yma4VLd

Of all the grand ideas that Elon Musk has for Twitter, the one that he’s pitched most fervently is making the platform’s algorithms open source. The Tesla tycoon proposed the plan before his buyout bid was disclosed, reiterated it the day his offer was revealed, and pitched it once again after the deal was confirmed. Musk outlined his proposal at the TED2022 conference on April 14: It’s just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely within the bounds of the law. So one of the things that I believe Twitter should… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/opKFIYE

Right now, agtech and new food startups are hot in terms of funding, technical innovation, product development, and ROI. Today Startup Genome, in partnership with the Global Entrepreneurship Network launched  the Global startup ecosystem report (GSER):Agtech and new food edition. And it’s definitely worth a deep dive. Looking for the latest trends or need to know information for your own startup or even your next investment? The GSER provides comprehensive, data-driven research on startups, with 280+ entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems and 3 million startups.  Let’s look at some of its findings and profile some cool startups in the agtech and new… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/MoVNvxm

Have you ever made a mistake that you wish you could undo? Correcting past mistakes is one of the reasons we find the concept of time travel so fascinating. As often portrayed in science fiction, with a time machine, nothing is permanent anymore — you can always go back and change it. But is time travel really possible in our universe, or is it just science fiction? Our modern understanding of time and causality comes from general relativity. Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein’s theory combines space and time into a single entity — “spacetime” — and provides a remarkably intricate explanation… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/Z1yEmCJ

I always thought Mini Coopers were pretty cool, so I was pleased this week to learn that the Cooper Car Company, the original designer of the Mini Cooper, rolled out not one, but four electric bikes. They sit under the dedicated two-wheel division, Cooper Bikes.  The Cooper Bikes Company was founded in 2009 aiming to build innovative bikes for the urban environment. And they look a treat! Cooper has rolled out four bikes based on a central configuration. Credit: Cooper Bikes These ebikes don’t resemble the somewhat space-age futuristic chunky offerings that some other companies are rolling out.  With a… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/RP6Srwh

We’ve really waited for a long time for Google to put out a really good competitor to the Apple Watch. And we might see that happen in just a few months from now, if not a few weeks. A recently registered trademark has hinted toward the “Pixel Watch” name — and I really like that. This week, we’ve had a chance to look at more than just renders or trademarks. An Android Central report gave us a glimpse of what the Pixel Watch might look like with real-life photos. The images came through a person who found the watch left… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/Rh2NP0T

I’ve been using a Mac for a few years now, and I regularly take quick notes — it might be to jot down a phone number, remind myself about a task, or make a list of groceries I need to order. Usually, I’d open the Spotlight search tool (Cmd + Space), type in ‘notes’, and write a new note in the app that shows up. It’s not a bad process, but it’s a tad lengthy. Thankfully, I accidentally found this amazing trick to launch the Notes app and start writing. It was so simple that I am still kicking myself… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/Dcf1HhM

Ethereum is preparing for an upgrade that’s been described as “the single most important event in crypto history.” The transition would overhaul the infrastructure of the world’s second-largest blockchain. Analysts predict the changes could cut the network’s energy costs by 99% and push the price of Ether, but the plans have been beset by delays. Here’s everything you need to know about the long-awaited “merge.” What is the Ethereum merge? The merge aims to make the Ethereum blockchain more efficient by switching from a proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS) system. PoW, which was pioneered by Bitcoin, is secured… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/wXOf7DM

When you think of public transport, one of the most compelling arguments is that it should be free for everyone, especially for people from low-income backgrounds. But while everyone loves a costless ride, the impacts vary among different socio-economic groups. In fact, the biggest winners in free public transport already benefit the most from public transport. Let’s take a look why:  Living close to public transport is expensive In countries such as America and Australia, living close to public transport is expensive. Mapping by researchers at RMIT University in Australia found that, unsurprisingly, public transport in inner urban areas is more frequent… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/hu8DlgC

It’s happened again. Scammers struck the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) universe and stole some tokens. But, don’t worry, you can’t blame web3 for it. Nope. Not at all. Hackers used good old web 2.0’s trick of hacking the project’s Instagram, and luring people to click on unsolicited links. Here’s what happened: after BAYC’s account was hacked, attackers posted a message about claiming land on the project’s metaverse through an airdrop. It asked people to connect their MetaMask (or any other equivalent cryptocurrency wallet), to claim the land. this is what the link showed for those wondering pic.twitter.com/noG3TCniXQ — jatuur… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/ScJvwYQ

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. Tired of Facebook too? We’ve got a guide for that. Oh, and Instagram? Yep, here’s how to delete that too.  Updated 4/25/22: So Elon Musk just bought Twitter for 44 billion dollars. Coincidentally, you’re also thinking now’s about the right time to get rid of your Twitter account. Maybe it’s best to just get away from it all and watch the imminent chaos from the sidelines. Or maybe you don’t care about Musk, but… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/kr7IZth

Elon Musk’s the topic du jour, once again, as his teased takeover of Twitter has come to its inevitable end. It’s a done deal: the world’s richest man has purchased Twitter. Cue the Imperial March. While we’re all waiting to see what happens now, it’s worth speculating on what the ramifications of the soon-to-be completed takeover could mean. Here’s what we know so far: Musk intends to take the company private. He intends to change Twitter’s moderation practices. Going private Twitter is currently a publicly-traded company, but it’s almost certainly going to be in Musk’s best interests to take the… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/sfzDrdk

Elon Musk has purchased Twitter. In what’s become the biggest “will they/won’t they” story since Ross and Rachel, the Twitter board has finally decided to accept Musk’s $44 billion takeover offer. Early speculation on Monday morning led Twitter stock to rally after a weeks-long slump. Ironically, the stock’s recent decline in performance had been attributed to a lack of confidence in the Musk/Twitter deal. That’s over with now, and we can expect stocks to take at least a short-term hike in the wake of the massive deal. Where it started The whole kerfuffle began earlier this month when Musk purchased… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/iD9H1fA

“You can do it quickly, you can do it cheaply, or you can do it right. We did it right.” These were some of the opening remarks from David Toback, leader of the Collider Detector at Fermilab, as he announced the results of a decadelong experiment to measure the mass of a particle called the W boson. I am a high energy particle physicist, and I am part of the team of hundreds of scientists that built and ran the Collider Detector at Fermilab in Illinois – known as CDF. After trillions of collisions and years of data collection and… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/jmAlWUg

After successfully entering the Indian escooter market, in January, Ola Electric started teasing its debut in the electric car segment — quite a bold move for a five-year-old micromobility company. On Saturday, Bhavish Aggarwal, the company’s CEO, made some even bolder statements about Ola’s EV, as reported by Indian outlet News18. Speaking at the company’s manufacturing plant in Tamil Nadu, Aggarwal said that Ola will be entering the autonomous vehicle segment. Specifically, it’s developing autonomous driving features that will debut in its upcoming four-wheeler both for the Indian and the global markets. Here’s a look at what the EV will… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/eF1Alqz

The pandemic brought a new slew of challenges for CEOs and managers of startups: offices closed down, companies pivoted to remote work, and there was a whole slew of challenges in weathering the financial and logistical impacts of the pandemic. But there were also many workplace initiatives throughout the pandemic that exemplified leadership, boosted company results, improved workplace culture, or set an industry example. Alisa Cohn is an executive coach for startups and companies, including Venmo, DraftKings, and Etsy, and the author of From Start-up to Grown-Up. I spoke to her to learn how stand-out CEOs excelled during the pandemic,… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/riNT947

The Lectric XP 2.0 ebike was one of the best bargains we’ve tested, with a powerful motor, folding frame, and decent components for a thousand bucks. But while the XP 2.0 is a well-rounded ebike for people who just want to get from point A to B, Lectric’s newest ebike, the XPremium, seeks to bring value to a higher performance bracket. I haven’t had the chance to test ride the XPremium myself yet, but I did a double-take when I saw the specs and components on offer for $1,999 ($1,799 for the first few days). The bike packs three features that… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/6laGVJN

This article is part of our coverage of the latest in AI research. A new machine learning technique developed by researchers at Edge Impulse, a platform for creating ML models for the edge, makes it possible to run real-time object detection on devices with very small computation and memory capacity. Called Faster Objects, More Objects (FOMO), the new deep learning architecture can unlock new computer vision applications. Most object-detection deep learning models have memory and computation requirements that are beyond the capacity of small processors. FOMO, on the other hand, only requires several hundred kilobytes of memory, which makes it… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/GhWHIBo

Nicole Palmer is a lawyer who graduated from Columbia University. Her profile states that she “specializes in the application and protection of industrial design” and has “been building her career successfully for 30 years.” The only problem is that she doesn’t exist. And she helped me uncover an online scam operation involved in shady activities, including extorting backlinks from bloggers and website owners. I’ve spent a good part of the past week investigating Arthur Davidson, the so-called “law firm” Nicole works for. What I found was unsettling, a testament to how advances in technology have made it easy for scammers… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/rixnMy1

In 2021, an investment firm bought 2,000 acres of real estate for about US$4 million. Normally this would not make headlines, but in this case the land was virtual. It existed only in a metaverse platform called The Sandbox. By buying 792 non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, the firm then owned the equivalent of 1,200 city blocks. But did it? It turns out that legal ownership in the metaverse is not that simple. The prevailing but legally problematic narrative among crypto enthusiasts is that NFTs allow true ownership of digital items in the metaverse for two reasons: decentralization and… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/lqpNDEi

New documents have exposed a bizarre and futuristic array of tech explored by a shadowy US government unit. The ideas were investigated by the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP). The unit was funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and reportedly has roots in UFO research.  The Pentagon claims the AAWSAP has been shut down, but has provided little detail on its work — until now. The new revelations emerged from almost 1,600 pages of reports, contracts, presentations, briefings, and memos that the DIA released to Motherboard. They show that the program wasn’t only interested in UFOs. Motherboard has kindly… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/SZHz5cw

John Deere has been in business for nearly 200 years. For those in the agriculture industry, the company that makes green tractors is as well-known as Santa Claus, McDonald’s, or John Wayne. Heck, even city folk who’ve never seen a tractor that wasn’t on a television screen know John Deere. The company’s so popular even celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and George Clooney have been known to rock a Deere hat. What most outsiders don’t know is that John Deere’s not so much a farming vehicle manufacturer these days as it is an agricultural technology company. And, judging by how… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/BZUGpMO

After years of a tumultuous relationship with developers, Twitter’s now trying hard to win them over again. In its latest step, the company wants to promote third-party apps on its platform. The firm’s using Twitter Toolbox, a web page it launched in February, to highlight apps to a select number of users. As reported by TechCrunch, the experiment is starting off by suggesting safety-related apps to users, such as tools to filter out vile comments. Amir Shevat, Twitter’s head of Product for its developer platform, told the publication that the company wants to contextualize app suggestions for users based on… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/93ErKCt

Even during times of conflict on the ground, space has historically been an arena of collaboration among nations. But trends in the past decade suggest that the nature of cooperation in space is shifting, and fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted these changes. I’m an international relations scholar who studies power distributions in space – who the main players are, what capabilities they possess and whom they decide to cooperate with. Some scholars predict a future in which single states pursue various levels of dominance, while others foresee a scenario in which commercial entities bring nations together. But… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/EoNyIts

“Becoming a digital consumer goods company is our ambition,” says Atul Bhardwaj, Chief Digital and Technology Officer of The Lego Group, in a not entirely predictable statement statement — coming from the world’s most valuable manufacturer of physical toys. “We’ll always be anchored in the physical — just to be clear — but digital needs to come in and augment that physical build process,” Bhardwaj clarifies. “Our business has scaled a lot in the last two years; we need to make sure that our platforms and our systems also scale.” The Lego Group’s earnings for 2021 saw revenue grow 27%… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/hWUKJHT

By now, we all know the most known use of blockchain technology: cryptocurrency. Of course, this isn’t all there is though. In 2022, we’ve seen NFTs (non-fungible tokens that are part of the Ethereum blockchain) capture the public’s imagination — but outside of this, blockchain as a whole hasn’t translated into something most people use. In fact, the majority of news in this space often appears hyped or pointless. From an outsider’s perspective, it appears as though companies put things on the blockchain simply because they can. This led to things like ‘blockchainified’ salmon and baby milk formula that, you… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/H2k6OKo

Although the space race between Bezos, Branson, and Musk dominated the headlines last year, the growing SpaceTech revolution will be about more than billionaires blasting off to space in dildo-shaped rockets. Rather than seeing who can go furthest (or who’s got the bigger rocket), the much more quiet revolution will be about looking inwards. The democratization of satellite monitoring and data is bringing about a new era in which technologies like geothermal heat mapping, satellite-based IoT capabilities, and risk mapping can be harnessed by individuals to solve our most pressing problems here on Earth. A slew of ambitious new startups… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/amtOSUj

It used to be easy enough to record a phone call on your Android device, but that’s changing starting now. A recent update to the Google Play Store developer policy will force third-party call recording apps to stop offering their services. Google’s reasoning is the potential misuse of the accessibility API, which is utilized by most call recording apps to enable this function. The company noted “The Accessibility API is not designed and cannot be requested for remote call audio recording.” Truecaller, one of the most popular dialer and caller identity apps out there, said it will stop offering its… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Android from The Next Web https://ift.tt/EBegU4L

Like almost every car company nowadays Lincoln is entering the electrification era. On Wednesday, Ford’s luxury brand revealed its long anticipated Star Concept, which offers a preview of the designlanguage and possible features of its upcoming electric lineup. Behold! Credit: Lincoln Don’t get fooled by its minimalist exterior. Fully-electric concepts from many car makers rely on the idea of a lounge on wheels, but the Star Concept takes the idea to the next level. To maximize the feeling of space, the car comes with suicide doors and a large panoramic roof. The frunk lid up front is covered in electrochromatic… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/0Di9FWo

In the last few days, both the Brave browser and DuckDuckGo search engine announced features that actively block or bypass pages hosted on Google’s Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) protocol. That sounds important — and it is — but what does it mean for you? In this story, we’ll break down what AMP is, and why Brave and DuckDuckGo are going on an offensive against it. First, the basics. What’s AMP? Google first introduced AMP in 2015 with an aim to make pages and articles load faster on mobile. The company said it’ll “dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web.”… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/1vU7KTQ

As car manufacturers and battery cell makers race to develop more efficient and cost-effective EV batteries, there’s one material that’s been gaining significant traction in replacing graphite in the anode: silicon. To that end, California-based startup OneD Battery Sciences has produced silicon nanowires that can be fused directly onto the commercial graphite particles found in the anodes of batteries. The impact? Potentially tripling the energy density of the anode, reducing charging times, and lowering the overall cost of the battery. Why silicon could be a game changer According to research by the PNNL Laboratory, silicon has a theoretical energy capacity… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/ywfKnMm

Instagram this week announced several changes to its platform aimed at empowering creators. Most notably, the company has tweaked its ranking algorithm to highlight original content above reshared content. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said the following about the ranking change: “If you create something from scratch, you should get more credit than if you are resharing something that you found from someone else. We’re going to do more to try and value original content more, particularly compared to reposted content.” In other words, you should probably stop sharing TikTok and Twitter posts from other people and come up with… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Instagram from The Next Web https://ift.tt/ymKkUBN

Like many lonely children, Lucas Rizzotto had an imaginary friend: a talking microwave called Magnetron. As the years passed, the pals drifted apart. But Rizzotto never forgot about Magnetron. When OpenAI released the GPT-3 language model, Rizzotto saw a chance to rekindle the friendship. The self-described “full-time mad scientist” chronicled the resurrection in a YouTube video. Some of the story sounds too good to be true. We’ve asked Rizzotto for further evidence that it’s real. But while we await his response, we are sharing his yarn as a cautionary tale about the dangers — and delights — of AI. Friends… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/AjqUMRt

Tech hiring trends in the US indicate what the Wall Street Journal is calling “a giant shock to the workforce” as record numbers of controversially-called “blue-collar” workers are breaking into ICT roles on technical teams — sans the once prerequisite four-year college degree. 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… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/7Ym8fNu