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When Keith Urban was a youngster, he learned to play guitar by slowing down records like Dire Straits’ Sultans of Swing with his fingers, figuring out songs note by note until he knew how to play them perfectly. While that approach paid off for Urban, it definitely is the painstaking path to guitar mastery. Nobody said learning to play the six string like a country star would be easy, but it certainly doesn’t have to be that grueling....

One any given day, you can do a quick Google search and pull up a dozen stories. Thousands of people without power in Great Falls, Montana after a substation failed. Or thousands more in the dark after equipment failure in Denver, Colo. Or thousands more still without electricity after severe thunderstorms rolled through California’s Coachella Valley. Every day, thousands of people worldwide are suddenly forced to make do with no power....

Credit: Avaamo Avaamo’s Project COVID uses a deep learning system called natural language processing to turn our questions about the pandemic into website and database queries. It works a lot like Google or Bing, you input text and the AI tries to find the most relevant information possible. The big difference is that Avaamo carefully guards the gates against misinformation by only surfacing results from reputable websites such as CDC, NIH, WHO, and Johns Hopkins....

The new four-meter (157 inch) instrument (the largest solar telescope in the world) recorded images and video of turbulent plasma on the surface of the Sun, providing an unprecedented level of detail for solar researchers. “Since NSF began work on this ground-based telescope, we have eagerly awaited the first images. NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope will be able to map the magnetic fields within the sun’s corona, where solar eruptions occur that can impact life on Earth....

Design-wise, the SQUAD resembles a two-seater upper-class golf cart, although it comes with fully removable doors to accommodate a range of seasons. According to the company, it’s compact, but offers room for two (tall) people plus luggage. The battery-powered vehicle offers a 62-mile (100km) range and has a removable battery. The company plans to offer a battery swapping service for fleet managers, but the vehicle can also be charged utilizing a standard 220V outlet that’s found in most homes....

The numbers surrounding the true cost of identity theft are staggering. It costs the U.S. mortgage industry $1 billion every year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The health sector eats another 60 billion, while corporations as whole absorb nearly $1 trillion in losses every year. While those numbers are garishly high, they may be too big to make an impact. But consider this — in just the first half of 2020, a half-million cases of identity theft were reported to the FTC....

— Tony Hawk (@tonyhawk) May 12, 2020 The new versions will feature the classic locations and characters, remade in 4k — the trailer below briefly shows off how they’ll look compared with the originals, and it’s a thing of beauty. According to Polygon, all but a few songs from the original soundtracks have also been licensed for the remaster. They will also feature local and online multiplayer, as well as Create-a-Park and Create-a-Skater tools....

However, with so many sources of online news information, it’s easy to fall for exaggerated claims with a poorly researched background. This is plain wrong really! Therefore understanding how to properly wade through the muck and land the best news is really important. Here are some tips that could be of help. Know who is behind the information Some news sites make it really difficult to know who is in charge....

The order, titled “Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources,” calls for an international effort to determine how we should all divvy up outer space. On the surface that sounds like a good idea. The US is on the verge of setting up a permanent Moon base and now seems like a great time to sort out the economical and financial logistics. Per a White House statement describing the order: The above part seems fine....

We might not be getting an edit button anytime soon, but we might get the next best thing: an undo send button. Tipster extraordinaire Jane Manchun Wong tweeted today that the social network is testing this very feature. From the GIF she posted, we could see that the timer lasts for about five to six seconds before the tweet is sent. So, if you made a typo, you have just five to six seconds to cancel the tweet, and correct your mistake....

Dorsey said he’s resigning of his own accord, but rumors are swirling that he walked before he was pushed. Regardless, Agrawal had a low profile that may have appealed to Dorsey’s detractors. His appointment, however, has sparked debate about one contentious topic: the balance between free speech and content moderation. New rules Twitter’s moderation strategy shifted during Dorsey’s stint as CEO. While the company once had a laissez-faire approach, it became more hands-on amid mounting concerns about misinformation and hate speech....

Shockingly, the Wonderboom 2 is the second version UE’s entry-level Wonderboom range. They retail for around $100, which is cheaper than the BOOM 3. They also differ aesthetically from this range, being smaller and rounder than the cylindrical BOOM speakers. Basically, Wonderbooms look like this: The Wonderboom 2 comes with a number improvements over its already impressive predecessor. The rugged exterior and waterproofing (as well as its floating ability) all remain, but UE has made upgrades to the sound, battery life, and functionality....

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) — an independent government advise body — is asking the British government bring the petrol/diesel car ban forward another three years, Autoexpress reports. The CCC also wants the sale of new internal combustion engine motorcycles to be banned as well. When the government first announced its internal combustion ban, it said it would come into force in 2040. However, earlier this year it brought the ban forward by five years, to 2035....

A 9th grade girl took to Snapchat to vent her frustrations after learning she hadn’t been selected to the varsity cheer squad at her Pennsylvania high school. While her message was explicit, “fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything,” it certainly didn’t appear threatening. However, when one of the cheer coaches was made aware of the post via a screenshot (Snapchat posts are intended to be temporary, lasting only 24 hours), the girl was suspended from cheer activities for the entire subsequent school year....

The Oslo-based company today became the first browser to integrate Mastodon — just weeks after launching its own server on the federated social network. The moves aim to accelerate the uptake of Mastodon, while attracting more users to Vivaldi’s privacy-focused browser. They arrive amid a backlash against Silicon Valley’s closed platforms and lock-in algorithms, which spread deeper into the mainstream after Elon Musk bought Twitter. Since the world’s richest person took over the bird app, Mastodon’s active user base has soared from 300,000 to 2....

The game, called Find Unlimited, requires players find and interact with “Vatoms,” unique, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) generated by and stored in a blockchain operated by startup BLOCKv. Over a two-hour period every day this week, 36 Vatoms will appear in Central London, spread across six “high-footfall” locations. Participants can collect the tokens by zapping them with their phone’s camera, later redeeming them for special prizes (like an iPhone 11). Anyone can participate in the game, but marketing materials confirm Vodafone customers receive clues to the whereabouts of the tokens in advance....

These concerns have obscured another even more troublesome problem that has received very little attention: Apple’s new feature uses design elements shown by research to backfire. One of these new features adds a parental control option to Messages that blocks the viewing of sexually explicit pictures. The expectation is that parental surveillance of the child’s behavior will decrease the viewing or sending of sexually explicit photos, but this is highly debatable....

Okay, that’s a lie. But it does make for the most compelling use of DeepFake technology we’ve ever seen. You simply have not lived until you’ve seen Gerard Butler as Leonidas and the creepy Agent Smith from The Matrix singing out the lyrics. Behold: The above video was made using a DeepFakes program called Wave2Lip which was created using code from the paper “A Lip Sync Expert Is All You Need for Speech to Lip Generation In the Wild....

Many conversations are just one person waiting for the other person to stop talking so they can tell their own story. How do I know? Ehm… well maybe I find myself too often in that situation. Sometimes it’s fine though, and you’re both just associating freely, letting one thought lead to another. But other times, it’s just because you’re bored by someone’s story and want to impress others with your own better story....

Just because restaurants and businesses in the U.S. are reopening in the wake of coronavirus shutdowns, that doesn’t mean most Americans are ready to rush back to their pre-COVID routines just yet. According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research study, 83 percent of Americans are at least somewhat concerned that lifting restrictions will lead to more infections, with 54 percent saying they’re very or extremely concerned that reopenings will cause a spike of COVID-19 cases....