The iPod was released a little over 20 years ago, forever changing the tech industry and helping redefine Apple products as luxury items — not just gadgets. The iPod is now dead. Apple today discontinued the last iPod model it still sold, the iPod Touch. And lest you think the company has another media player around the corner, its press release made it pretty clear the iPod is no more. Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing, Greg Joswiak, says: “Music has always been part of our core at Apple, and br
It’s 2022, and there are plenty of NFT projects launching every day. But it’s hard to know which ones will remain popular past their drops. A lot of them launch pictures for proof (PFP) NFTs — think of them as image NFTs — with no utility attached to them. And there’s no clear plan for holders as to what value these might bring them, beyond trading. It might be easy for project leaders to team up with an artist and drop some NFTs, but they’d need more technical prowess to create their own token
IBM today launched its annual “Think” conference. The event begins with a two-day kickoff in Boston, then Big Blue’s taking the show on the road all summer long for a tour spanning 11 cities across the globe. In a virtual pre-conference press event attended by Neural, CEO Arvind Krishna discussed a number of the company’s plans for 2022 and beyond. The chief topics of conversation involved artificial intelligence, sustainability, and the most ambitious plan for quantum computing hardware advance
I love reading on the Kindle. It’s convenient, the novels sync across my various devices, and, importantly, I can read at night without disturbing my partner. There is one deeply frustrating element of Amazon’s ereader, though: Popular Highlights. I’m certain you’re aware of them already, but just in case you aren’t, they’re sections of text in a book that are underlined. The idea is to crowdsource the most impactful and interesting sentences and paragraphs. And when enough people highlight that
The resignation of Conservative MP Neil Parish has left many people wondering what could possibly lead someone to think it acceptable to watch pornography in their place of work. After being reported by female colleagues who witnessed his actions, Parish admitted that he had twice looked at pornographic content on his phone in the House of Commons chamber. As Parish found, using porn at work can be career-ending. It is almost universally deemed unacceptable and is typically viewed as gross misco
As the world’s need for large amounts of portable energy grows at an ever-increasing pace, many innovators have sought to replace current battery technology with something better. Italian physicist Alessandro Volta tapped into fundamental electrochemical principles when he invented the first battery in 1800. Essentially, the physical joining of two different materials, usually metals, generates a chemical reaction that results in the flow of electrons from one material to the other. That stream
Elon Musk’s accepted bid to purchase Twitter has triggered a lot of debate about what it means for the future of the social media platform, which plays an important role in determining the news and information many people – especially Americans – are exposed to. Musk has said he wants to make Twitter an arena for free speech. It’s not clear what that will mean, and his statements have fueled speculation among both supporters and detractors. As a corporation, Twitter can regulate speech on its pl
IT’S HERE. If you were eagerly waiting for NFTs to arrive on Instagram, the moment is has arrived. You can share NFTs on your feed, in stories, and in messages. But for now, you have to be in the US and you have to be one of the “handful of creators and collectors” chosen by Instagram to use the feature. So much for decentralization, eh? Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri, said in a video that you’ll be able to see NFTs with a “digital collectibles” tag. If you tap on it, you’ll see details like a d
Google’s annual developer extravaganza, Google I/O, is almost here. The conference is set to begin on May 11, starting with a keynote address at 10:00 AM PT (1 PM ET/7 PM CET/10:30 PM IST). As with last year’s conference, I/O 2022 will be free to ‘attend’ (virtually, that is), and everyone can stream the entirety of the event from the comfort of their pajamas. That said, the opening keynote usually has the most relevant announcements for everyday consumers, so that’s the bit you’ll want to be su
In early March, a manipulated video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was circulated. In it, a digitally generated Zelenskyy told the Ukrainian national army to surrender. The video was circulated online but was quickly debunked as a deepfake — a hyper-realistic yet fake and manipulated video produced using artificial intelligence. While Russian disinformation seems to be having a limited impact, this alarming example illustrated the potential consequences of deepfakes. However, deepfak