Latest Science and Technology

Podcasting platform Stitcher said number podcasts have grown by 129,000% (that’s not a typo) in the last decade. In its annual podcasting report, the company said creators published 7 million episodes on the platform in 2019, as compared to 350,000 episodes published in 2010. Stitcher said that while people are publishing more podcasts, the average episode length is now 2.4 minutes shorter, as compared to an average episode in 2013. The report has some interesting tidbits about genres (true crime being the #1), formats, listening habits, and age group of listeners. I wish the study covered the topic of podfasters — people… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Podcasts from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3gJ9r3i

Law enforcement has more tools than ever to track your movements and access your communications. Here's how to protect your privacy if you plan to protest. from Security Latest https://ift.tt/2XgVxOm

Mud volcanoes on Mars could be the cause of distinctive features that most researchers had thought were left over from ancient lava flows. Tens of thousands of channels spread out over the Martian surface. Hundreds of kilometers long, and tens of miles wide, these ribbon canyons reach far across the ruddy landscape of Mars. Planetary science suggests these features were carved out as massive floods, comparable in size to the largest ever seen on Earth, tore across the surface of Mars long ago. As the water settled into the Martian crust, it (naturally) formed mud. Rapid freezing could have led… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2TVzZEU

This article was originally published by Sarah Wray 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. Tourists may soon be able to explore the picturesque cross-timbered houses and historic churches of Herrenberg via virtual reality (VR), thanks to a digital twin developed with the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS). Nicolai Reith, Head of the Control and Communication department and advisor to the Mayor of Herrenberg, told Cities Today: “You don’t… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2MbTzsa

TLDR: With TrueMail’s bulk email verifier, you can check the validity of every email address on your marketing list before your emails go out. Sure, social media is young and flashy and sexy with some unquestionable advantages. But if you ask companies about the tactics that truly make an impact on their bottom line, they’ll tell you that email marketing remains the king. For small to midsize businesses, over 80 percent of those companies still look to email marketing as their primary source for finding new customers and retaining their old ones. Of course, email campaigns are only as effective… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2Xizbfl

Services like Google Translate only support 100 languages, give or take. What about the thousands of other languages—spoken by people just as vulnerable to this crisis? from Ideas Latest https://ift.tt/2McpbOv

Did you know we have an online conference about product design coming up? SPRINT will cover how designers and product owners can stay ahead of the curve in these unprecedented times. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” While getting people to visit a website is important, what businesses actually want is a conversion. In other words, grab fickle visitors who may be interested enough in the company’s unique value proposition to sign up, subscribe, stay updated, share with friends, and become loyal customers. That being the case, a landing page designer’s primary goal is to create… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2TQV4QM

SpaceX created history today as it successfully launched astronauts in the space for the first time. The space agency became the first commercial agency to carry out a crewed space flight. NASA Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are making a trip to the International Space Station (ISS), and will stay there from 6 to 16 weeks. The liftoff was successful in the second attempt after the first attempt on May 27 had to be called off due to the bad weather.  Earlier today, NASA said that there was a 50% chance the launch would be canceled again because of bad weather.… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: SpaceX from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3doJVi4

In a 2019 study, 18 senior citizens took a stroll on some treadmills while armed to the hilt with fitness trackers. They had devices strapped to their wrists and ankles, fastened to their belts, and wrapped around their chests. But even with all these trackers, the seniors couldn’t get an accurate step count because their movements were too slow to trigger the sensors in the devices. Commercial fitness trackers are being used for all kinds of things other than tracking steps. They measure heart rate, track sleep patterns, and calculate basal metabolic rate and calories burned. They’re used in clinical… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3gyIqQl

Plus: A LiveJournal hack, Qatar's contact tracing privacy failure, and more of the week's top security news. from Security Latest https://ift.tt/2TQlZwg

TLDR: The courses in The 2020 Social Media Marketing Bootcamp Certification Bundle explain how to launch effective digital campaigns to drive sales on all the top social media platforms. There’s more to being a social media expert than logging into Facebook every day or making sure you’re keeping a close eye on your Twitter mentions. True social media experts need to fully understand their target audience, where they congregate and how to connect with them effectively. And with dozens of venues and approaches to choose from, that’s no simple task. With training like The 2020 Social Media Marketing Bootcamp Certification… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/36UYpnr

Though his executive order follows a line of misguided, bipartisan swings at the protections for online platforms, this one is distinctively terrible. from Ideas Latest https://ift.tt/2Me1QMd

This article was originally published by Sarah Wray 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. A fleet of 100 remote-controlled scooters is being piloted at the city-owned Curiosity Lab technology testing ground in Peachtree Corners, Georgia. It is understood to be the first trial of its type on public roads. Citizens will be able to hail a scooter via an app and the vehicle will be automatically returned… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2XPRGqK

TLDR: Word Pigeon cleans up content creation by turning a Google Doc into a WordPress website post with just one mouse click. WordPress is usually a godsend for most people looking to build and maintain their own website. Its drag-and-drop simplicity and truckloads of customization options make it easy for almost anyone to get a site up and running, even if they’ve got no programming experience.  But creating content in WordPress? That can often be a different story. Copying and pasting a post you wrote in Microsoft Word or a Google Doc into WordPress often creates a whole batch of… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3gEWuaI

Long before animals roamed the Earth, before the first bacteria, and even before the development of DNA, tiny molecules found they could make simple copies of themselves. Cosmic rays pouring down from space constantly bombarded those molecules as they replicated, and developed over time. These particles, raining down from distant stars and galaxies, could have played a significant role in the what would become the chemistry of life. Mirror, mirror, on the wall… Molecules can take on various shapes as they form during reactions. Some of these molecules can be mirror images of molecules having the same number and types… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/36Uu8Fj

Google has launched Android Studio 4.0, adding a host of new features to the app development environment. The most eye-catching of the upgrades is a souped-up Motion Editor, Android’s interface for creating MotionLayout animations in apps. In previous versions of Android Studio, developers had to manually create and modify complex XML files to design their animations. The new Motion Editor generates the XML files for you, allowing you to create complex animations through a simply click-and-drag interface. [Read: Building mobile apps isn’t a mystery when you have these dev courses] Android has also added new ways to look at your app’s design. They include… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Android , Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3ew8mtN

Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino revealed in a recent interview that he believes The Social Network is the best film of its decade. He’s wrong. Space Boobs in Space is the best film of the 2010s. Space Boobs is a perfect film, it told the whole story. The Social Network, on the other hand, has plenty of room for improvement (2010? Ha, those were the innocent days for social media). That’s why I think it’s time for a sequel. And since Tarantino’s such a biiiig fan, he should direct. Don’t get me wrong, David Fincher is a legend (he brought us Se7en, ’nuff… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2zJuJx5

After months of trickling out information about the PlayStation 5, Sony‘s finally putting on a show. Specifically, it’s going to reveal some of the games that’ll be available on its new console. It’s likely not going to be a console reveal, but at least it’s something. Join us Thursday, June 4 at 1:00pm Pacific time for a look at the future of gaming on PlayStation 5: https://t.co/Yr8fafcOVd #PS5 pic.twitter.com/F0yBbDmOtC — PlayStation (@PlayStation) May 29, 2020 The event will be held on June 4, a Tuesday, at 1pm PDT, and will last for an hour. You’ll be able to view the… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Playstation , Sony from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3gzWvwL

It’s a big day for Elon Musk. The enigmatic billionaire just unlocked almost $800 million worth of cheap Tesla shares — the first payout in what’s considered the largest compensation package of its kind in history. Indeed, Musk can now buy around 1.7 million Tesla shares for $350.02 each, a total cost of just over $595 million. Tesla stock opened Friday trade at $808.32, which means Musk hypothetically stands to profit around $778.6 million in just two trades. [Read: A look at the $17 billion stock portfolio of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] Musk earned the shares by keeping the trailing average of… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Tesla from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2yIP0T1

This is from Plugged In, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter on gear and gadgets. Subscribe to it (and our other great newsletters) here. Let’s start with simple question: have you ever bought a bit of (non-erotic) tech because you thought it’d help you weasel your way into someone’s nether-regions? No, me neither. But these people must exist. Surely. I mean, what other explanation is there for LG advertizing its new phone with a TikTok highlighting its ability to snap upskirt photos? As absurd and ridiculous and fucking stupid as this is — and it is deeply absurd and ridiculous and fucking stupid — don’t write it off… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3cgwhMe

OpenAI has quietly unveiled the latest incarnation of its headline-grabbing text generator: GPT-3. The research lab initially said its predecessor’s potential to spread disinformation made it too dangerous to share. The decision led terrified journalists to warn of impending robot apocalypses — generating a lot of helpful hype for GPT-2. Now, OpenAI has unveiled its big brother. And it’s enormous. The language model has 175 billion parameters — 10 times more than the 1.6 billion in GPT-2, which was also considered gigantic on its release last year. [Read: Remember that scary AI text-generator that was too dangerous to release? It’s out now] The research… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2Ma1ne3

TLDR: A two-year subscription to an Iconscout Unlimited Icons Plan gives you access to more than 2 million royalty-free icons to use in any of your web design projects. In one quick glance, you get it. That’s the whole purpose of an icon. If your eye can scan across a screen, find a simple recognizable symbol and instantly understand why it’s there and what it means, then your icon has done its job. Icons are key signposts pointing users to what’s important in your web page or app. Rather than having to craft each one from scratch, Iconscout takes out… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2yJFAqp

Chinese carmakers taking too much inspiration from western brands isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, but one China-based EV maker has zero-chill and is now even copying Tesla‘s web design. [Read: UK automotive production at lowest level since WW2, to cost industry $15B] Spotted by an unnamed individual, who then tipped off Electrek, Xpeng appears to be copying Tesla‘s website design. I say appears, but take a look a the screenshots below and decide for yourself. The similarities are clear. Putting the actual vehicles to one side, the website shows the car moving swiftly against a cloudless blue sky. The name… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Tesla from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3dqFXpb

You won’t have to endure annoying notification popups from random sites when using Chrome for much longer. Google has announced it’s cracking down on sites that abuse notifications starting from Chrome 84, which will drop on July 14. Sites with intrusive notifications and permission requests will be filtered under a “quieter notifications UI,” which will also warn users that the site might be trying to trick them. “Abusive notification prompts are one of the top user complaints we receive about Chrome. A large percentage of notification requests and notifications come from a small number of abusive sites,” Google explained. “Only… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3diMFNK

A substantial part of humanity is slowly emerging from weeks of lockdown. What we have experienced is truly rare: a real global threat, menacing to all wherever we lived. But how did humanity respond to this pandemic? Did people consistently stay at home as most governments asked them to? And if they didn’t, where did they go? We can answer these questions thanks to Google. It has released data on people’s movements gathered from millions of mobile devices that use its software (Android, Google Maps and so on). Never before has this level of detail been available. For infamous pandemics… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Google Maps , Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3cem1nU

Having failed to curb the president's falsehoods, social platforms have reached a dispiriting impasse. from Ideas Latest https://ift.tt/3gz34zO

Quarantine has meant something different for men than it has for women—just look at who’s doing what. from Ideas Latest https://ift.tt/3cdLkXd

In the late 1990s, cosmologists made a prediction about how much ordinary matter there should be in the universe. About 5%, they estimated, should be regular stuff with the rest a mixture of dark matter and dark energy. But when cosmologists counted up everything they could see or measure at the time, they came up short. By a lot. The sum of all the ordinary matter that cosmologists measured only added up to about half of the 5% what was supposed to be in the universe. This is known as the “missing baryon problem” and for over 20 years, cosmologists… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3euxQI1

Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin every fucking day. Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Stephen Hawking used to say: Let’s get this bread! Bitcoin price We closed the day, May 28 2020, at a price of $9,525. That’s a respectable 3.71 percent increase in 24 hours, or $340. It was the highest closing price in eight days. We’re still 52 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017). Bitcoin market cap Bitcoin’s market cap ended the… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Samsung from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3dqv8n3

With auto factories closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, it’s clear that production was going to take a hit. Now we know just how big an impact it had in the UK. In the month of April, carmakers based in the United Kingdom produced 197 premium or luxury vehicles, just 45 of these actually made it to customers. That’s a 99.7% drop compared to the same time period last year, BBC reports. [Read: CVS is testing driverless vehicles in Houston for safe, socially distanced medical deliveries] According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders it’s the lowest output the… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2ZP5EvA

The current crisis is first and foremost humanitarian, with 300k casualties to date worldwide and massive joblessness. It is also economic, with almost all companies having financial difficulties and many collapsing. However, a few sectors are currently booming (e.g. deliveries), some will benefit from a crisis-induced tailwind, while others will continue to suffer for years to come. Many countries are still largely shut down, while others are re-opening. Economies are initiating a reboot. Depending on the forecasting analysts, the 2020 automotive market may be down 10-15% in China and 15-25% in Europe and the USA. Even if it is too… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2TKa1nN

Self-driving vehicle startup Nuro announced yesterday that it will deliver medical prescriptions autonomously to residents in parts of one Texas city. It could be a boon for the health and safety of those made even more vulnerable because of the coronavirus pandemic. According to a company announcement, Nuro will partner with CVS, one of America’s biggest pharmacy chains, to deliver prescriptions to customers in a “pilot area,” which is made up of three zip codes in Houston, Texas. [Read: Uber scraps thousands of Jump ebikes, because recycling them is ‘too complicated’] Starting next month, CVS customers can choose the autonomous… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3gBnlo2

If you’re reading this it’s likely you’ve transitioned from an office-based role into remote working full-time due to the coronavirus pandemic. And while I’m not advocating for you to continue working from home or stating that the future of work will be fully remote, I think it’s important for employees to have the choice. So, if you’ve fallen in love with working from home over the past few months and would like this to be part of your “new normal,” here’s how you should communicate your wishes to your boss. [Read: 7 tips on lockdown career advancement — for employees… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2XE9TXX

Twitter has just hidden US President Donald Trump‘s tweet about the situation in Minnesota, saying it “glorified violence.” The company didn’t delete the tweet as it thought “it may be in the public interest for the tweet to remain accessible.” In the tweet, Trump was addressing civil unrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and threatened that law enforcement would open fire in response. This comes hours after Trump signed an executive order that holds social media companies liable for content hosted on their platform. The order aims to remove Section 230, which provides a safe harbor to social media companies; it relieves them from the responsibility for… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2TP7Teq

CSS developers are web professionals whose primary responsibility is to deliver a polished and styled product to the visitor’s browser. Practically every website uses CSS, but CSS is often not considered an “equal” in the modern web development stack. Unfortunately, this misperception can lead to CSS being taken for granted, or even overlooked to some extent. Allowing non-CSS developers to deal with CSS often results in the introduction of CSS hacks and bugs in your code, and can cause unnecessary frustration for developers. In this article, I would like to familiarize everyone with what the job encompasses so you can… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3d95S4m

Did you know we have an online conference about product design coming up? SPRINT will cover how designers and product owners can stay ahead of the curve in these unprecedented times.  Hello, Bonjour, Hola, 你好, Guten Tag, こんにちは, Привет, Merhaba, Jó Napot, Здраво! Designers at global companies frequently work with geographically distributed teams. We also regularly work on digital products designed for global consumption for clients located all over the world. Yet designers, forgetting there’s a wider world out there, continue to live in a bubble and tend to focus only on their local culture, traditions, and language. Cross-cultural design indisputably… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3dbWP2A

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. Earlier this month, we reported that Twitter is rolling out a ‘schedule tweet’ option to some users. Now, the social network is making the feature available for all desktop users, so you can set tweets to be published at a time of your choosing. The company said that apart from scheduling, it will also allow users to it will also let you save drafts of your tweets in the web app. However, you’ll be able to see… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Twitter from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3ch2mDM

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. Google has added a feature to Gmail that went missing with the death of Hangouts: namely, the ability for anyone to start a Meet video call right from your inbox. Here’s how it works. Google recently made Meet available free for everyone in the wake of the coronavirus — it’d previously only been available to its business and education G Suite users. The move is just as much an attempt to keep Zoom from capturing their… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Gmail , Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2X9Bph6

It’s (almost) time! Welcome to 🏳️‍🌈TNW Pride 2020🏳️‍🌈. We’ll be covering tech-related Pride stories and putting a much needed spotlight on the LGBTQPIA+ STEM community and its history all throughout the month of June. If you’d like to contribute, find details below.  I’m a 42-year-old queer technology journalist and the editor of Neural. This is my first job working in the tech industry. Just a few years back I was an almost 40-year-old intern. Before that, I worked in several different fields including a decade in the US military. Despite the diversity of my background I’ve never seen a more heteronormative… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/36Lg4Og

Instagram today revealed that, at long last, it’s rolling out a few ways for its creators to earn money directly from their posts. The platform is currently testing both ads for IGTV and a subscription service for those who use Instagram Live. It’s a start, at least. Ads on IGTV have been in the works for a few months now — we first heard of them back in February. The ads will be about 15 seconds long, and will appear after you click the “Watch IGTV Video” button from a preview. The company will test various ad formats in the… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Instagram from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3db9pix

When you need to give someone your location, you usually point them to an address. Here in NYC, you often point them to an intersection instead. But sometimes an address is just difficult to find — or you don’t have one at all. For those purposes, Google introduced Plus codes five years ago, allowing you to share your location in a short alphanumerical format, whether you simply can’t find an address or are in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem they were actually used all that much, so now Google is making it easier to share the Plus… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Google Maps , Google from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3ddtTHv

It’s now clear that the coronavirus pandemic made the world’s most powerful tech companies even stronger, but what if Bitcoin was a tech stock? Apple and Microsoft retained their trillion-dollar market caps through the ups and downs of the greater stock market, and worldwide lockdowns even helped both Alphabet and Amazon secure access to the exclusive cuatro comma club for the very time time. In fact, the NASDAQ 100 index — a popular benchmark that tracks the market performance of the US’ largest tech companies — is actually positive for the year; it’s up more than 6% while the broader S&P 500 index… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Bitcoin from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3gynHvF

In a rare public warning, the US spy agency says the notorious arm of Russian military intelligence is targeting a known vulnerability in Exim. from Security Latest https://ift.tt/3gwee8s

The US is joining the rest of the G7 in the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, in an effort to contain China‘s influence on AI. The initiative was launched in 2019 to build a consensus on AI ethics, but has made little impact since — partly because the US initially refused to join. White House officials feared the group would damage US tech firms, even though its recommendations aren’t legally binding and it can’t regulate private companies. Cédric O, France’s digital affairs minister, had warned the US that its decision would help China export its authoritarian approach to AI. “If you don’t want a Chinese model… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2AeUpBJ

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare‘s battle royale format, Warzone, is all the rage these days. Casual gamers love it, hardcores love it, I love it, everybody loves it. But a new in-game prank is about to catch a few poor saps completely off-guard — and it’s already claimed victims. Any Warzone enthusiast knows having the right loadout — a custom-made set of guns and perks (or special skills) — can tremendously increase your chances of winning. That’s why a band of Reddit tricksters are trying to design the worst guns possible, and leave them on the ground for other players to pick… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2TNMP81

Boris is the wise ol’ CEO of TNW who writes a weekly column on everything about being an entrepreneur in tech — from managing stress to embracing awkwardness. You can get his musings straight to your inbox by signing up for his newsletter! Many people are now struggling with adjusting to working from home, but I’ve always been a big fan of WFH. Way back in the day, I even started my second company in my spare bedroom — with employees and everything! The company was a wireless hotspot operator and we didn’t end up moving from my spare bedroom… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3dar61H

TNW Answers is a live Q&A platform where we invite interesting people in tech who are much smarter than us to answer questions from TNW readers and editors for an hour.  What if death wasn’t so final? What if the life of a family member could live on with the help of artificial intelligence? No, I’m not talking about that episode of Black Mirror, I’m talking about HereAfter, a conversational AI platform that creates interactive, life-story sharing chatbots, accessible through Amazon Alexa with the actual recorded voice of a loved one. In 2016, James Vlahos, the CEO of HereAfter, created… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2XAMs1W

In 2019, I was fortunate to interview Gary Vaynerchuk in Las Vegas and Armenia after he performed keynotes at a smorgasbord of tech conferences. I nodded in all the right places as he talked about a future dominated by tech that would pave the way for virtual conferences, concerts, and remote working. On the subject of podcasts, Vaynerchuk told me, “Joe Rogan is going to eventually sign a $100 million-plus deal to go exclusive on a platform because of the level of attention he has.” We all know what happened next. The world is now a very different place since we last spoke, and I find… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2TPmOp3

AI for news production is one of the areas that has drawn contrasting opinions. On one hand, it might help media houses produce more news in a better format with minimal effort, on the other hand, it might take away the human element of journalism or take people out of jobs. In 2018, an AI anchor developed by China’s Xinhua news agency made its debut.  Earlier this month, the agency released an improved version that mimics human voices and gestures. There’s been advancement in AI with text-based news with algorithms writing great headlines. China’s search giant Baidu has developed a new AI… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3c4da8g

Have you ever wondered what’s behind the weather forecast TV reports? Or who is managing government satellites? Perhaps you’ve wandered across a sensor — where does that data go? In the Netherlands, that data is collected and managed by the KNMI, or the Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut — a.k.a., the government’s meteorological branch. The KNMI forecasts weather, researches climate change, and monitors seismic activity. Their reach goes far beyond the Netherlands. In 2017, the KNMI-built TROPOMI was launched into the atmosphere aboard the Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite. Recently, the TROPOMI measured and mapped the decline in nitrogen dioxide concentration over China from… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2AdOVqU

TLDR: Want to work doing what you love as a freelance professional? The Kickstart Your Freelance Career Course Bundle has some ideas for making that happen. If your time at home the past 10 weeks or so has made you appreciate the idea of never fighting traffic or trudging into the office every again…you aren’t alone. This WFH era has started the wheels spinning for thousands of Americans about the type of day-to-day work life we’d each enjoy. Of course, most freelancers have been big fans of the remote work model for years. In fact, 70 percent of independent freelancers… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2zELCcf

A fundamental part of living life as a good human being™ is learning how to be amicably passive-aggressive — or put in other words, unnoticeably mean and cruel when necessary. A good example is party invitations. Every once in a while you’ll meet a person you feel the need to invite, but genuinely don’t want to be around. Should you go through the risk of being confronted about a skipped invitation or should you just send the invite, and hope they don’t show up? Someone has created a better solution. Enter Straight2Spam, a new tool that lets you copy a… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3gvYUbJ

The Dutch bike-transit system should be our guide to not only encourage public transport use, but to also make it more efficient and attractive by offering higher frequency service with even better coverage. How is that possible? As we seem to be reaching the light at the end of the COVID-19 quarantine tunnel, many of us question what this might mean for mobility, and particularly, for public transport. The lockdown has generally had the same impact all around the world: car journeys fell 50–80% and public transport ridership plummeted by even more, while cycling and walking had a relative increase. Asian… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3gxcony

Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin every fucking day. Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Baudriallard used to say: Let’s get this bread! Bitcoin price We closed the day, May 27 2020, at a price of $9,181. That’s a respectable 3.88 percent increase in 24 hours, or $343. It was the highest closing price in three days. We’re still 54 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017). Bitcoin market cap Bitcoin’s market cap ended the day… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Bitcoin from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2M3J367

At some point, every one of us has had the feeling that online applications like YouTube, Amazon, and Spotify seem to know us better than ourselves, recommending content that we like even before we say it. At the heart of these platforms’ success are artificial intelligence algorithms—or more precisely, machine learning models—that can find intricate patterns in huge sets of data. Corporations in different sectors leverage the power of machine learning along with the availability of big data and compute resources to bring remarkable enhancement to all sorts of operations, including content recommendation, inventory management, sales forecasting, and fraud detection. Yet, despite… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/3ejyEzw

Attempting to predict and prepare for the future can be an arduous and alarming task for any entrepreneur or business. It may seem as though the risks are more prevalent than the opportunities, and it’s easy to get hung up on what could go wrong. It’s also difficult to break out of existing paradigms and imagine how things could be different. One antidote to this self-defeating thinking style is to engage the power of science fiction. Sci-fi is an incredible way to free up the imagination and construct alternative futures. At Singularity University (SU), my colleagues and I use a… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2TMx8Oo

New Zealand is indeed well supplied with renewable electricity. In recent years, New Zealand has averaged 83% from renewable sources (including 60% hydropower, 17% geothermal, and 5% wind) and 17% from fossil fuels (4% coal and 13% gas). In addition to being cheap and renewable, hydropower has another great advantage. Its production can ramp up and down very quickly (by turning the turbines on and off) during the day to match demand. Looking at a typical winter’s day (I’ve taken July 4, 2018), demand at 3am was 3,480 megawatts (MW) and 85% was met by renewable sources. By the early… This story continues at The Next Web from The Next Web https://ift.tt/2XECqN4