Within just 50 light-years from Earth, there are about 1,560 stars, likely orbited by several thousand planets. About a thousand of these extrasolar planets – known as exoplanets – may be rocky and have a composition similar to Earth’s. Some may even harbor life. Over 99 percent of these alien worlds remain undiscovered — but…
Microsoft’s been on something of a creative roll lately, but I’m not just talking about its influx of new hardware and crazy form factors. Rather, the company has been innovating in another important, but decidedly user-friendly way: it’s making its hardware a whole lot easier to repair. The company made a big deal over its…
Amazon has big plans for its virtual assistant. One day, perhaps sooner than you think, Alexa will take a proactive role in directing our lives. It’ll interpret our data, make decisions for us, and summon us when it has something to say. Rohit Prasad, the scientist in charge of Alexa‘s development, recently gave MIT Technology…
When Motorola announced the G8 Play and Plus last month, we were a bit surprised to hear there were no plans to bring the devices to the US. Now we may know why: ever-reliable leaker Evan Blass showed off photos of a triple-camera, plain G8 today, indicating Motorola still has another budget option on the…
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. From November 12, startup digital-only challenger bank Revolut will share user data with credit bureaus, social media companies, and analytics firms, Silicon Republic reported. On one hand, data sharing helps…
It’s become increasingly clear as we reach its limits that deep learning – a specific subset of AI technology – isn’t going to magically lead to human-level artificial intelligence. deep learning may still go a bit further but I agree with the general sentiment here. https://t.co/nLiYj9iA1k — Gary Marcus (@GaryMarcus) November 7, 2019 If we…
The climate crisis is a heavily partisan issue in US politics. Thought it’s not a hard-and-fast rule, most Democrats believe the fossil fuel industry needs to be heavily-checked and nearly all Republicans accept money from oil companies. There are Democrats who take money from big oil and Republican climate-activists, but those are exceptions. Whether you…
Can Robinhood users actually call themselves Robinhood’s, or is it just another tool for the rich to rob the average Joe? In this series we’re diving deep into Robinhood’s public data, to uncover insights on its users’ activity. Welcome to part 1, where we give a general intro into the series, and touch the surface…
This month marks a year since thousands of Google employees and contractors from around the world — most of whom were mainly women — protested against the tech giant in a “walkout” amid claims of its handling of sexual harassment allegations, among other claims including gender-based discrimination and racism. Yesterday, Alphabet’s board of directors launched…
Every year, Adobe lets its engineers have some fun with experimental projects to be demoed at the company’s Max conference. Called ‘Sneaks,’ the experiments often become integrated into Adobe products down the line. Perhaps the most interesting Sneak this time around was a feature called ‘About Face,’ which can detect when a face has been…
