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What does it take to bring a burned-out founder back to the company he sold to Amazon? For Jamie Siminoff of the video doorbell maker Ring, it was the potential of AI — and the Palisades fires that destroyed his garage, the birthplace of Ring itself. Siminoff’s vision: turn Ring from a video doorbell company into an AI-powered “intelligent assistant” for the entire home and beyond. A handful of new features that advance that goal shipped just ahead of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, including fire alerts, alerts about “unusual events,” conversational AI, facial recognition features,…
Leaving water inside a sodium battery material boosts performance and enables desalination. Sodium-ion batteries could play a major role in the future of sustainable energy storage and may even help turn seawater into safe drinking water. Researchers at the University of Surrey have found a straightforward way to improve how these batteries perform by keeping […]Technology,Battery Technology,Energy,Green Technology,Sustainability,University of Surrey#Simple #Trick #SodiumIon #Batteries #Cheaper #Faster #Powerful1768344782
An indie app with only one function is currently all the rage in China. It’s called si le ma (死了吗), which translates literally to “Are You Dead Yet.” The app asks users to tap a button once every day, and if they fail to do so for two consecutive days, it automatically sends an email to a designated emergency contact, urging them to check on the user in person.Guo, one of the three Gen-Z developers behind Are You Dead Yet, says he has been building social and entertainment apps for a few years. But he wanted to pivot to something…
New York Governor Kathy Hochul plans to introduce legislation that would effectively legalize robotaxis in the state — except for its most populous metropolis: New York City. Hochul, who made the comments Tuesday during her State of the State address, said the legislation would advance the next phase of the state’s autonomous vehicle pilot program. Details on the proposed legislation and when it might be released are thin. However, there are some hints contained within a document that outlines an array of proposals and promises Hochul made in her State of the State address. Among them is language to expand…
If you’re an aspiring (or successful) streamer looking to upgrade your production value, the Elgato Stream Deck family is an excellent way to put your most important controls at your fingertips. Right now you can score the upgraded Elgato Stream Deck +, with eight buttons, an LCD screen, and four knobs, for just $160, a $40 markdown from its usual price.As a former (unsuccessful) Twitch streamer, I can attest firsthand to how useful the Stream Deck was for managing my broadcasts while also gaming and dealing with chat. The main draw here is close integration with streaming platforms like OBS,…
Shortly after Google announced its new Universal Commerce Protocol for AI-powered shopping agents, a consumer economics watchdog sounded the alarm. In a now viral post on X viewed nearly 400,000 times, Lindsay Owens on Sunday wrote, “Big/bad news for consumers. Google is out today with an announcement of how they plan to integrate shopping into their AI offerings including search and Gemini. The plan includes ‘personalized upselling.’ I.e. Analyzing your chat data and using it to overcharge you.” Owens is executive director of the consumer economics think tank Groundwork Collaborative. Her concern stems from looking at Google’s roadmap, as well…
Exceptionally preserved fossils from the Ediacaran period challenge what scientists thought was possible in sandstone. In the fossil record, creatures without hard shells or skeletons, such as jellyfish, are rarely preserved for long periods of time. Preservation is even less likely in sandstone, a rock made of coarse grains that is full of pores and […]Science,Evolutionary Biology,Fossils,Geological Society of America,Geology,Paleontology#AlienLooking #Fossils #Explain #Origins #Complex #Life1768337445
Just days after launching, Roblox’s much-hyped AI-powered age verification system is a complete mess.Roblox’s face scanning system, which estimates peoples’ ages before they can access the platform’s chat functions, rolled out in the US and other countries around the world last week, after initially launching in a few locations in December. Roblox says it is implementing the system to allow users to safely chat with users of similar ages.But players are already in revolt because they can no longer chat to their friends, developers are demanding Roblox roll back the update, and crucially, experts say that not only is the…
Although public backlash against data centers has been intense over the past twelve months, all of the tech industry’s biggest companies have promised additional buildouts of AI infrastructure in the coming year. That includes OpenAI partner Microsoft, which, on Tuesday, announced what it calls a “community-first” approach to AI Infrastructure. Microsoft’s announcement, which comes only a day after Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta would launch its own AI infrastructure program, isn’t unexpected. Last year, the company announced that it planned to spend billions to expand its AI capacity. What is a little unusual are the promises the company has now…
Viruses that infect bacteria can still do their job in microgravity, but space changes the rules of the fight. In a new experiment conducted aboard the International Space Station, scientists found that viruses which infect bacteria can still successfully infect E. coli under near-weightless microgravity conditions. While infection still occurred, the interaction between viruses and […]Biology,Bacteria,Bacteriophage,International Space Station,PLOS#Strange #Side #Viral #Evolution #Revealed #International #Space #Station1768333804
In President Donald Trump’s second term, everything is content. Videos of immigration raids are shared widely on X by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), conspiracy theories dictate policy, and prominent right-wing podcasters and influencers have occupied high-level government roles. The second Trump administration is, to put it bluntly, very online.Trump and his supporters have long trafficked in—and benefited from—misinformation and conspiracy theories, leveraging them to build visibility on social media platforms and set the tone of national conversations. During his first term, Trump was famous for announcing the administration’s positions and priorities via tweet. In the years since, social…
Ammonia might be the world’s most under appreciated chemical. Without it, crops would go unfertilized and billions of people would starve. Humans started making ammonia in large amounts just over a century ago, and since then the process used to make it, known as Haber-Bosch, hasn’t changed much. A new startup, Ammobia, says that it has tweaked the Haber-Bosch process to lower the cost by up to 40%. To prove the technology works on a larger scale, Ammobia has raised a $7.5 million seed round, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Investors include Air Liquide’s venture arm ALIAD, Chevron Technology Ventures,…
New research indicates that humans shaped their environments through hunting and controlled use of fire tens of thousands of years before agriculture emerged. According to the study’s co-authors, the findings offer a revised view of how early humans interacted with the landscape. Picture Europe tens of thousands of years ago as a landscape dominated by […]Science,Aarhus University,Archaeology,Neanderthals,Paleoanthropology,Prehistory#Ancient #Humans #Left #Bigger #Ecological #Footprint #Scientists #Thought1768330149
If federal immigration agents are coming to your area—or have already arrived—you may be frantically making plans to lay low at home, or perhaps grabbing your whistle and lacing up your sneakers to join a neighborhood watch. It’s a terrifying situation for undocumented residents and all American immigrants, and the climate has even become fraught for US citizens too. There are no simple answers for how to protect yourself and others in every scenario, but there are frameworks you can use for weighing your options.The presence of immigration agents in cities and towns around the country has starkly increased in…
Google on Tuesday updated its Veo 3.1 AI video-generation model with the ability to create native vertical videos for social platforms using reference images. The changes will also make the videos generated from reference images more expressive and dynamic. When producing AI-generated videos for YouTube Shorts or other platforms like Instagram or TikTok, Veo users can now natively choose the 9:16 vertical format to avoid any cropping. Google is also adding the feature directly to the YouTube Shorts and the YouTube Create app. Google first released Veo 3.1 in October 2025 with improved audio output and more granular editing controls…
Inspired by the remarkable camouflage abilities of octopus and cuttlefish, Stanford researchers have developed a soft material that can rapidly shift its surface texture and color at extremely fine scales. Octopus and cuttlefish are masters of disguise. Many species can quickly shift both the color and surface texture of their skin, and scientists have long […]Science,Engineering,Materials Science,Nanotechnology,Stanford University#Stanford #Researchers #Develop #Material #Color #Texture #Octopus1768326477