Technology News Era

This article was originally published on .cult by Luis Minvielle. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries, and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world. Many people might feel old in 2022 (remember how the 2012 London Olympics seem to have happened just yesterday? The 10-year-anniversary YouTube promotional video might drop anytime), but being aging and cranky shouldn’t stop anyone from attempting to become a programmer. With an ever-demanding tech market, researchers expect the German IT market to be worth US$129 billion in 2025 — boosting… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/zJMqEdi

Over the last decade, the maritime industry has undergone a digital transformation to increase efficiencies, save money, gain greater insights into vessels and cargo, and develop new business models. But digitization has created a playground for cybercriminals who are benefiting from the industry’s security shortfalls across cargo ships, cruisers, boats, yachts, and passenger ferries – and their infrastructure.  Historically, ship owners protected themselves from pirates with weapons. Today, criminals also use an arsenal of digital weapons to attack. And globally, the maritime industry is struggling to keep up as cybercriminals get faster and smarter.  Fortunately, Europe is leading in the… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/vLxDAgF

The future is green, because it has to be. There’s no denying our climate is in crisis. In the last year, we have seen soaring summer temperatures across Europe, raging forest fires in parts of North America, and terrifying floods in Australia and Pakistan. To save our planet and our future, we need innovative ideas and new ways of thinking. Different business sectors have been scrambling to become more eco-conscious, but one area that is driving change is mobility. Mobility covers a wide range of products and services from electric bikes and scooters, to car-sharing apps, and electric vehicles, right… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/TrK6Cez

Content provided by IBM and TNW. Today’s AI systems are quickly evolving to become humans’ new best friend. We now have AIs that can concoct award-winning whiskey, write poetry, and help doctors perform extremely precise surgical operations. But one thing they can’t do — which is, on the surface, far simpler than all those other things — is use common sense. Common sense is different from intelligence in that it is usually something innate and natural to humans that helps them navigate daily life, and cannot really be taught. In 1906, philosopher G. K. Chesterton wrote that “common sense is a… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/UlCx9Xg

Content provided by IBM and TNW. Babies learn to talk from hearing other humans — mostly their parents — repeatedly produce sounds. Slowly, through repetition and discovering patterns, infants start connecting those sounds to meaning. Through a lot of practice, they eventually manage to produce similar sounds that humans around them can understand. Machine learning algorithms work much in the same way, but instead of having a couple of parents to copy from, they use data, painstakingly categorized by thousands of humans who have to manually review the data and tell the machine what it means. However this tedious and… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/7sLhOql

This article was originally published on .cult by Luis Minvielle, Inês Almeida. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries, and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world. You’ve probably read this before: the Netherlands is an English-speaker’s paradise. Tied with the Nordic countries for proficiency, more than 90% of Dutch people speak English fluently. Indeed, language does not seem to be a barrier for developers looking to settle in the Netherlands, since companies seem to evaluate experience over speaking Dutch. Our research shows that in 2022… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/RGNEhQT

This article was originally published on .cult by Mikaella C, Inês Almeida. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries, and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world. Last year we brought you our first comprehensive breakdown of developer salaries in Germany. We used extensive data gathered over the course of five years, breaking down all the variables that go into making up that magic number: your salary. In 2021, we found that while COVID-19 impacted developer hirings, it didn’t make a noticeable difference in salary. In… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/xFKBujc

A UK scale-up this week unveiled an industry-first approach to identity verification: asking users to turn their heads. Onfido, an Oxford University spin-out, launched the software amid surging identity fraud. Growing economic pressures, increasing digitization, and pandemic-fuelled upheaval recently led politicians to warn that a “fraud epidemic”  is sweeping across Onfido’s home country of the UK. Similar developments have been observed around the world. In the US, for instance, around 49 million consumers fell victim to identity fraud in 2020 — costing them a total of around $56 billion. These trends have triggered a boom in the ID verification market.… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/j1zToAK

References: Didn’t they go out with the ark? These days we are far more inclined to think that all the power in job hunting lies in employee referral programmes or social media recommendations, and as a result, lots of job seekers forget about the power of a good reference. According to a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey, 92% of employers conduct background checks, usually during pre-employment screening (87%). Some even repeat checks on an annual basis (15%) or when an employee is promoted (10%). Top tech companies such as Google, Stripe, Meta, and Microsoft all rely heavily on… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/HeFPOg2

You’ve got a brand new MacBook? Perfect. Now’s the time for you to completely ruin its battery, to ensure it only lasts for minutes when you’re out and about. I mean, what’s the point in your laptop being portable? As far as I’m concerned, none. That’s why we’ve put together a handy guide outlining everything you should do to mess up your MacBook’s battery as quickly as possible. And yes, you are very welcome. Keep all your apps running all of the time Answer me this: what’s the fastest way to open that bit of software you sometimes need? You… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: MacBook from The Next Web https://ift.tt/pqCLi8c

It’s a bold new world for automobile makers. After a century of development and fine-tuning, the combustion engine is going the way of the dodos as Europe shifts to clean energy. But there’s more to the future of cars than just electric motors. The onset of fully autonomous vehicles may lie just beyond the technological horizon and the promise of a million-mile battery draws ever closer. In order to navigate the road to these technologies, European automakers are partnering with quantum computing companies at an increasing pace. The European automobile industry has a long, rich history of technological innovation. From… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/03fhNZI

Are you starting to get itchy feet? Well, you’re not the only one. Over the last two years, we have seen a record number of people leave their roles in a phenomenon called “The Great Resignation,” or more recently, “The Big Quit.” This mass exodus was spurred on by lots of different factors. Firstly, the Covid-19 pandemic led to a lot of workers re-evaluating what they want from their careers. Months of lockdown gave us all time to reflect on our goals and how we can achieve them. Many workers were faced with the stark reality that their current role… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/b9rpSNV

Vinyl has undergone one hell of a renaissance. In 2006, the format was effectively dead. But since then? Vinyl records have experienced year-on-year growth, with the US alone clocking 41.7m units sold in 2021, a 45-fold increase from 16 years ago. While in Germany, sales went from 0.3m in 2006, to 4.5m last year. Those numbers are somewhat misleading though — and their exuberance hides a darker story. Vinyl sales are strong, but the industry itself is at breaking point. From rising costs to a huge printing backlog, from mainstream label dominance to environmental concerns, and from material shortages to… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/bYOp3S4

European businesses, investors, and talent are all vying for a ticket on the metaverse hype train. Even political heavyweights are making moves — or, at least, pronouncements. French President Emmanuel Macron wants to build “a European metaverse” to challenge US and Chinese tech giants. The EU’s digital chief, Margrethe Vestager, meanwhile, is mulling new antitrust regulation. But their ambitions are a long way from being realized. “The reality is there is no European big tech player of relevance in that whole metaverse future,” says Rolf Illenberger, the cofounder of Munich’s VRdirect, a virtual reality platform for enterprises. “It’s being defined by… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/5ivZFcy

Influencers may crave attention by “occupation,” but a new AIexperiment shows they can’t always control their admirers’ gazes. Dubbed “The Follower,” the project tracks Instagrammers in the wild. In the process, it offers a glimpse at the terrifying capabilities of automated surveillance. The experiment is the brainchild of Dries Depoorter, a Belgian artist who previously caught our attention by monitoring politicians using phones at work. Credit: Dries Depoorter“The Flemish Scrollers” uses automatically tags lawmakers using phones during government meetings. For his latest demonstration of tech’s dangers, Depoorter analyzed feeds from open cameras, which offer easy access to images of public… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/Zzr5HeQ

What’s big, good for your brain, and about to land in Spain? That’s right, TNW València! On March 30th and 31st in 2023, we’re bringing our world famous tech event to España. To achieve this, we’ve partnered with the Ajuntament de València (that’s the city council) for two days of celebrating and showcasing the best of Southern European tech and startups. So… why València? Easy: it’s Spain’s fastest-growing entrepreneurial ecosystem. On top of that, it has the country’s highest number of startups per capita. You feel pretty silly for asking now, don’t you? “In València we firmly believe in public-private… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/AQy7MnX

The global AI explosion has supercharged the need for a common sense, human-centered methodology for dealing with data privacy and ownership. Leading the way is Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), but there’s more than just personally identifiable information (PII) at stake in the modern market. What about the data we generate as content and art? It’s certainly not legal to copy someone else’s work and then present it as your own. But there are AI systems that attempt to scrape as much human-generated content from the web as possible in order to generate content that’s similar.  Can GDPR or… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/mQgAa9v

Scientists at the University of Oxford recently published the results of a mind-blowing experiment wherein they entangled two atomic clocks at a record-breaking distance of two meters. Up front: Atomic clocks have been in popular use since the 1950s. They’re used in myriad applications ranging from managing fairness on the stock market to allowing spaceships to navigate at extreme speeds. The Oxford team’s experiment involved a relatively new wrinkle to the formula called an optical atomic clock. Where traditional atomic clocks typically rely on energizing atoms at precise frequencies (read: zapping them with microwaves), the optical variety uses a lattice… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/cACXF71

The future is becoming less car-centric. But in Germany, the autobahn runs a whopping 13,000 kilometers. It’s not only one of the longest and most dense road systems globally but a love letter to taking cars to the limit featuring stretches with effectively no speed limit for certain classes of vehicles.  But it also provides a critical test bed for the future of mobility, featuring a plethora of rapidly evolving technology in the wild. Let’s take a look.  Driving with your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road  In December 2021, the German Federal Motor Transport Authority… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/lPcf6yZ

You put your blood, sweat, and tears into building an amazing product that’ll solve your customers’ problems and blow the competition away. The problem is: no one knows about it. Sound familiar? You can spend all the time you want on product development, but without a well-defined brand, you’ll struggle to catch the eye of customers and investors, or stand out against competitors. The question is, where do you start? You need more than a business card to get started in the big wide business world. Think: a logo, website, and popping social media presence. Are you panicking because you… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/ofL3MRU

The ancient art of origami could have a future in space. Sweden’s first astronaut and the European Space Agency (ESA) this week unveiled a new project inspired by the paper-folding technique. The program will use technology designed by Stilfold, a Swedish startup that’s pioneered a manufacturing process called “industrial origami.” The technique uses robotic arms to fold sheets of steel over curves to form complex and lightweight shapes. Stilfold previously used the approach to bridge an electric scooter. According to the company, the techniques resulted in 70% fewer components, a 40%  reduction in weight, 20% lower material costs, and 25% lower… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/xblt4wD

 The end of summer also sounded the end of Germany’s €9 public transport ticket — a tenth of its usual price. Unsurprisingly popular with commuters, it left people wondering what was next.  This week the Berlin Senate has announced its plan to secure funds for reduced-price BVG tickets. According to Mayor Franziska Giffey, a monthly ticket price of €29 for zones A-C has been agreed upon, with further discussion for outer regions and the rest of Germany.   But what was the impact of a €9 ticket on the environment, and did it result in fewer car trips?  Did the €9… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/cNEDbzZ

In the age of Google, we all naturally turn to the internet when we’re facing a challenge. For example, “How do you snake a drain?”, “What’s the best way to get over a hangover?”, or perhaps even, “How do I land my dream job?.” If you’re currently in the market for a new career, you’ve probably spent a little bit of time trawling through websites and blogs searching for sound advice. On the whole, the message is generally the same: use your network, dress appropriately, create an impressive online portfolio, yadda yadda. For years, we’ve listened to the same advice.… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/phivaYR

The digital platform economy has exploded in the last few years. According to European Commission figures, over 28 million people in the EU work through digital labor platforms today. By 2025, their number is expected to reach 43 million. Workforce digitalization, which accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, has radically changed the European labor market. For some people, that means insecure contracts and stressful working conditions. While others are fortunate enough to freely embrace platform work as a way of escaping the 9-to-5 and increasing economic opportunities. It’s a really complicated issue, and these are the treacherous waters European policymakers are… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3NxT4U9

Lithium-ion batteries have become a key component in the rise of electric mobility, but forecasting their health and lifespans is limiting the technology. While they’ve proven successful, the capacity of lithium-ion batteries degrades over time, and not just because of the ageing process that occurs during charging and discharging — known as “cycling ageing.” Batteries also degrade when not in use Lithium-ion battery cells also suffer degradation from so-called “calendar ageing,” which occurs during storage, or simply when the battery is not in use. It’s determined by three main factors: the rest state of charge (SOC), the rest temperature, and… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/xoIYFX4

Researchers from DeepMind, the UK’s juggernaut AI lab, have forsaken the noble games of chess and Go for a more plebeian delight: football. The Google sister company yesterday published a research paper and accompanying blog post detailing its new neural probabilistic motor primitives (NPMP) — a method by which artificial intelligence agents can learn to operate physical bodies. Per the blog post: An NPMP is a general-purpose motor control module that translates short-horizon motor intentions to low-level control signals, and it’s trained offline or via RL by imitating motion capture (MoCap) data, recorded with trackers on humans or animals performing… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/CmnOGUF

When it comes to mobility, the future is electric, and that means a lot of batteries. Unfortunately, batteries can potentially catch fire or explode, causing fast, ferocious fires. But we might have a solution – or several solutions. This article is Part Three, the final of a series I’ve been writing on lithium-ion battery fires in escooters and ebikes. Part One explored the incidence of battery fires, while Part Two looked at causation. Today I’m focusing on prevention. Let’s jump in:  Prevent the fire from occurring What if we could prevent a fire from happening in the first instance?  The… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/xLbcviU