“Technology from the past comes to save the future from itself.” That’s how Graydon Hoare, the creator of Rust, describes what he wants to achieve. That’s one of the key hallmarks of Rust: using technologies that are well-known to academia but rarely implemented in contemporary programming languages. Technologies that are old, reliable, and sometimes forgotten. But which, above all, work extremely well. These technologies are used mainly for one thing: safety. Sounds boring? It is not, if you as
If you’ve shopped for high-end headphones recently, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve come across something called the ‘Harman target curve,’ or perhaps just the ‘Harman curve.’ Maybe you read a review that said a pair of headphones sound amazing because they’ve been tuned to said target. Or perhaps you saw an edgy comment suggesting headphones tuned to the Harman curve suck. But why exactly are more manufacturers, audiophiles, and reviewers paying attention to the Harman curve? There is a lot
Just days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, thousands of people in Canada joined a truckers’ protest movement called the “freedom convoy” to oppose government health measures. To support the protest movement organizers launched a fundraising campaign on the GoFundMe platform. However, the social funding platform seized the approximately $10 million in donations that were raised, alleging that the movement failed to both prohibit the promotion of violence and harassment and adhere to sancti
When you use the internet, you leave behind a trail of data, a set of digital footprints. These include your social media activities, web browsing behavior, health information, travel patterns, location maps, information about your mobile device use, photos, audio and video. This data is collected, collated, stored and analyzed by various organizations, from the big social media companies to app makers to data brokers. As you might imagine, your digital footprints put your privacy at risk, but t
If you’re an iPhone user, check your storage now by selecting Settings, then General, and then iPhone Storage. You’ll probably see a lot of recognizable categories eating up your storage — apps, photos, and so on. But there is one, often rather large category, that may raise concerns: “Other”. It’s shaded light grey and often represents a significant proportion of the overall storage available. There is one, often rather large category, that often raises concerns: ‘other’. Author provided What i
All the publishers and editors out there thinking of replacing their journalists with AI might want to pump their brakes. Everybody’s boss, the Google algorithm, classifies AI-generated content as spam. John Mueller, Google’s SEO authority, laid the issue to rest while speaking at a recent “Google Search Central SEO office-hours hangout.” Per a report from Search Engine Journal’s Matt Southern, Mueller says GPT-3 and other content generators are not considered quality content, no matter how conv
OpenAI has unveiled a new AI tool that turns text into images — and the results are stunning. Named DALL-E 2, the system is the successor to a model unveiled last year. While its predecessor generated some outputs, the new version is a major upgrade. This picture in the style of Claude Monet illustrates the improvements. Credit: OpenAI DALL-E-2 adds enhanced textual comprehension, faster image generation, and four times greater resolution. “When approaching DALL-E 2 we focused on improving the i
Scientists have long understood that the human brain changes in size as we age, but until now there’s never been a method by which we can chart its growth. An international team of researchers led by Cambridge University’s Richard Bethlehem recently published the world’s first growth chart for brains. Up front: How are you supposed to tell if your brain is growing properly? It’s an important question. And we’ve had no answer until now. Most people don’t spend their lives connected to brain imagi
Tesla’s “Cyber Rodeo” party, a grand opening event for the company’s new gigafactory in Texas, had a flamboyance and excessiveness to match Elon Musk’s personality. Fireworks were shot and thousands of drones were deployed in the sky to form a map of the state of Texas, the Cybertruck, and a Shiba Inu dog. Elon gloriously entered the stage wearing a stupid cowboy hat and riding a first-generation Roadster — mind you, to the chill tunes of Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.” Behold the stage of the party! C
There’s a lot of attention right now on the idea of making public transport free. In the first instance, you might think it’s a no-brainer. You can ride public trains, trams, buses, and ferries at no charge. That sounds too good to be true, but they’re a reality in many parts of the world. Over 100 cities have some form of free public transport, but there are many different models of free public transport, each with its own intention and actual impact. What do they achieve when it comes to econo