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They’re usually heavy, for one. They’re generally thief magnets because they’re so easy to spot in the wild. And they cost a ton too. I’ve tested lightweight and stealthy ebikes, and I’ve tested affordable models, but never anything that quite combines all these factors. The Ride1Up Roadster V2 does just that. I weighed my unit at 35 lb — a featherweight by ebike standards. The battery is neatly integrated into the frame, and most people won’t notice it’s an ebike without close inspection....

Obviously, the smartest thing to do is to locate, isolate, and remove bad apples before they can poison others. That’s pretty easy to do when the apples are literal, but what about when they’re a metaphor for systemic racism run rampant in the justice system? The simple fact of the matter is that nothing less than top-down systemic upheaval at the grandest scale can solve the issues plaguing US law enforcement....

The CCPA has arrived with little of the fanfare that greeted the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018. GDPR was headline news for months, and European companies of all shapes and sizes took notice in the rush to become compliant. Of course, the CCPA’s relatively low profile in Europe makes sense, with businesses so focused on their responses to COVID-19. [Read: How to choose the right mentor for your startup] And, after all, it is a piece of state-level legislation, not even prescribed at the federal level....

When they aren’t investing in space shuttles, underground Hyperloops and sprawling tech campuses, the super-rich are looking at a range of mind-blowing methods to increase their lifespan. We’ve dug into some of the strangest and most extravagant approaches billionaires have turned to in their quest for immortality (or at least get a few more years in than the rest of us). Billionaire PayPal co-founder turned venture capitalist Peter Thiel has made headlines over the past few years for his rumored interest in this process, specifically related to a start-up company called Ambrosia....

The trick here is creating a public relations plan that maintains the necessary secrets while still creating enough brand awareness that when the secrets are no longer so, they are able to garner the appropriate level of attention. While there are companies that must hold initiatives a secret, the most common situation, and one I can detail from personal experience, is when you are working for a startup that is launching a product in stealth....

Over the course of Ottens’ lifetime, cassette tapes came to redefine listening habits, which until then had been limited to the much more unwieldy vinyl record. Car stereos and the iconic Sony Walkman suddenly made individual listening experiences possible outside of the home. The re-recordable nature of the format, meanwhile, helped music fans collate and circulate their own mixtapes. At its peak in 1989, the cassette tape was shifting 83 million units per year in the UK alone....

The move is meant to reduce the country’s reliance on US technology companies, and ensure that all communication and data transmitted over the service will be stored locally in the country. This also includes email services like Gmail, which have become the de facto means for official communication. “We need to make our communication insular,” an unnnamed official was quoted as saying in the report. “We should have email, messaging, all sorts of systems, at least for government communication, which doesn’t depend on outside players....

Every advertising innovation claims to solve the measurement conundrum. And that age-old problem grows even thornier as marketers defend shrinking budgets and grapple with new privacy regulations that are phasing out third-party cookies. But at a time when advertising approaches are changing to more privacy-forward, contextual strategies, is “what’s the ROI” or “what’s the CPM?” even the right questions anymore? Perhaps the better question is: how can we adopt new success metrics and KPIs to reflect the new marketing landscape?...

I’ve been truly impressed with the Pixel series’ cameras for years, but never quite got my hands on one. So naturally, my expectations were high. I couldn’t wait to put the Pixel 4 to the test. But now I’m hesitant to take it out for a spin. Here’s the thing: a big part of the photography process is taking all the guesswork out of a scene. Without a dedicated pro mode that lets you fine-tune the camera settings to your surroundings, you leave all that to the phone itself — and that makes me uncomfortable....

Reuters reports that Honda will purchase a 1% stake in Chinese electric vehicle (EV) battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology, better known as CATL. The two are reported to be working together to develop EV batteries. [Read: How you can watch BMW unveil its hotly anticipated iX3 EV next week] You might not know the CATL name, but you’ll probably know many of the companies that they supply — Tesla being one of the most well-known....

The push came in September, when tensions over Brexit were high and there were concerns that the government was being dishonest about its motives for suspending parliament for five weeks – a move that was ultimately ruled as unlawful by the Supreme Court. Clearly parliamentarians thought important information was being shared on these platforms that the public needed to know about. In a rather telling move, the government refused to comply with the request....

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....

AMD has been going through something of a renaissance the last few years. It was just in 2015 that analysts predicted the company would go bankrupt. Now the company’s CPUs have gone from being occasional alternatives to being, by most current metrics, flat out better than the competition. Likewise, the company has sought to strengthen its position in the PC graphics market (AMD has a good foothold in console gaming, making graphics for both the PS5 and Xbox Series X), culminating with the announcement of the Radeon RX 6000 family of GPUs in late 2020....

It doesn’t have to be this way. Research teams like mine are working on a way of reducing the time and money that goes into maintaining pipes, by developing infrastructure robots. In the future, these robots will work around and for us to repair our roads, inspect our water and sewer pipes, maintain our lamp posts, survey our bridges and look after other important infrastructure. They will be able to go to places difficult or dangerous for humans, such as sewer pipes full of noxious gases....

But science is usually a slow-moving process – a series of steps towards a better understanding, rather than individual “eureka” moments. Getting to the truth is often not straightforward, and scrutinising claims and counter-claims is an inherent part of the scientific method. Individual studies need to be replicated to see if the original observations are robust, and often they turn out not to be. But now we are seeing – necessarily and understandably – a rush of studies attempting to add to our modest knowledge of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and provide answers to all of the other important questions emerging from the pandemic....

A post shared by Karl Read (@karlreadart) on May 9, 2020 at 11:36pm PDT Projection art has come a long way since the earliest projectors, or “magic lanterns,” used reflectors to project images from a glass slide to a surface. One of the first signs of video mapping (or projection mapping) came in 1969, when a projector illuminated irregular objects and surfaces. Disney Imagineer Yale Gracey created the optical illusions — which included five singing busts otherwise known as the ‘Grim Grinning Ghosts’ — via a 16-mm film projection for the opening of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride....

To solve this, Mozilla, a free software community, created “Common Voice” in 2017, a tool that crowdsources voices as a dataset to diversify AI and represent the global population, not just the west. Common Voice works by releasing its growing dataset publicly so any company can use it for research and to build and train their own voice-enabled applications, ultimately working to improve vocal recognition for all regardless of language, gender, age, or accent....

Some of the new EVs on the market, like the Polestar 2, make the sputtering, petrol-powered cars of today look like a relic of the past. As such, you might be thinking about making the switch yourself. Currently, a good portion of the EVs on the market are branded as “luxury vehicles”, and indeed there is a luxury to having a smooth, silent ride. But this, and the appended price tag, tend to give potential EV buyers pause....

Waitrose’s system, where customers can fill their own reusable containers with an array of food, alcohol and cleaning products, reminds me of time spent with my grandparents in Kent as a child. We would walk into Walderslade village and visit a shop to purchase custard powder, flour and cereal – packaging free. Barrels were lined up next to each other inviting you to scoop out, weigh and pay for as much as you needed....

In my opinion, yes and no. Based on my own experience, I’m gonna share five pieces of advice that will bring you closer to becoming a designer, no matter what you’re doing right now. It was during my Bachelor’s thesis that I first came into contact with user research; and after that, I fell in love with anything usability and UX design. Today, I’m a UX Manager and take care of a wide variety of design topics....