It's Tuesday, March 16, and aside from Elon Musk making weird NFT art on Twitter, the tech world is relatively quiet today. Yesterday, we got a peek at Tesla's all-electric semi truck, so today we thought it'd be fun to take a step back and examine the future of transportation more broadly.
Whenever the future of transportation gets brought up, autonomous cars tend to dominate the conversation. But despite the fact that they're the poster child of our imagined utopian future, cars are really just once slice of the larger transportation pie.
Other modes of transportation -- planes, trains, shipping containers, and even scooters -- are increasingly becoming automated as well. If things continue on their current trajectory, the future might just be driverless in every regard. Click below for a look at what's coming.
The Guinness Book of World Records officially recognizes the LG Gram 16 as the lightest 16-inch laptop in the world. Weighing in at just 2.62 pounds, it feels almost like it's empty when you pick it up -- but nothing could be further from the truth.
So what's it got under the hood?
2.62 pounds, 80 watt-hours of power
2 USB-C ports, 2 USB-A ports
One HDMI port, MicroSD card, and a 3.5MM audio jack
Core i7-1165G7 ptocessor
16-inch 16:10 display
Who else is trying to be the all light-y and powerful, you ask?
Well, Apple and Dell, with the Dell XPS 15 and the Macbook Pro 16, which are both much faster thanks to their 45-watt CPUs. While the Gram 16 doesn't feel as robust as other premium laptops, it will withstand your average computer abuse.
OK, do I buy it or not?
Yes. The LG Gram 16 is a solid productivity performer with stellar — really, unparalleled — battery life, and it's so darn light. Just make sure you note the performance differences compared to other similarly sized laptops. Read the full review below
The beauty bot: This freaky new A.I. scans your brain, then generates faces you'll find attractive
Imagine if some not-too-distant future version of Tinder was able to crawl inside your brain and extract the features you find most attractive in a potential mate, then scan the romance-seeking search space to seek out whichever partner possessed the highest number of these physical attributes.
We're not just talking qualities like height and hair color, either, but a far more complex equation based on a dataset of everyone you've ever found attractive before. In the same way that the Spotify recommendation system learns the songs you enjoy and then suggests others that conform to a similar profile — based on features like danceability, energy, tempo, loudness, and speechiness — this hypothetical algorithm would do the same for matters of the heart. Or, at least, the loins. Call it physical attractiveness matchmaking by way of A.I.
To be clear, Tinder isn't — as far as I'm aware — working on anything remotely like this. But researchers from the University of Helsinki and Copenhagen University are.
Spotting your brain's preferences
In their recent experiment, the researchers used a generative adversarial neural network, trained on a large database of 200,000 celebrity images, to dream up a series of hundreds of fake faces. These were faces with some of the hallmarks of certain celebrities — a strong jawline here, a piercing set of azure eyes there — but which were not instantly recognizable as the celebrities in question. The images were then gathered into a slideshow to show to 30 participants, who were kitted out with electroencephalography (EEG) caps able to read their brain activity, via the electrical activity on their scalps.
But why?
Generating attractive people who have never existed is certainly a headline-grabbing use of this technology. However, it could have other, more meaningful applications, too. The interaction between a generative artificial neural network and human brain responses could also be used to test out human responses to different phenomena present in data. "This could help us to understand the kind of features and their combinations that respond to cognitive functions, such as biases, stereotypes, but also preferences and individual differences," said the study's lead researcher.
Over time, the image quality on your computer monitor can start to look a little lackluster or even too bright. Before you consider upgrading your entire system or getting a new monitor, there might be a much simpler, quicker, and economical solution — calibrating your monitor.
You could take your monitor to a professional to have it done, but doing it yourself is a relatively quick and hassle-free way to greatly improve image quality. Here's a quick primer on how to do it, regardless of what type of monitor you have, or what operating system you're on.
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In news that probably won't shock you all that much, this year's Oscars reflect a year spent mostly indoors and not in movie theaters. The Academy has announced the nominees for the 2021 Oscars, and Netflix is, again, the frontrunner, grabbing 31 nominations.
All those nominations won't guarantee wins, sure, but David Fincher's Mank dominated the shortlist. Its 10 nominations included Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Gary Oldman) and Best Supporting Actress (Amanda Seyfried).
It wasn't just Netflix either. Amazon picked up nominations for Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm, and Hulu's The United States vs. Billie Holiday was also recognized. Disney+, even, the newest streaming service here, picked up a nomination for Soul, while Apple TV+ quietly grabbed two nominations.
The pandemic has given these services a huge chance at awards glory. We'll have to wait until April 25th to see who wins out, but I doubt it'll match the spectacle of last weekend's Grammys.
Managing Editor Terrence O'Brien wants more sleep. Video Producer Brian Oh does, too. That made them the perfect duo for trying out Bose' second-generation Sleepbuds. If you were desperate to completely block the outside world and struggled to fall asleep every night, they might be a great investment — if they were a little bit cheaper. As Terrence puts it: "A $250 wearable white noise machine is borderline absurd." Continue reading.
A few years ago, we wrote about Amazon's attempt to gameify work in its warehouses with some social mini-games. Yes, I shuddered, too. The company is reportedly in the middle of a "major expansion" of the program, called FC Games. What initially started in one warehouse back in 2017 has now rolled out across 20 states, according to The Information.
Naturally, Amazon says that employees have told it that they enjoy "having the option to join in these workstation games." The mini-games feature leaderboards and competitions against fellow employees, both at a single warehouse or against people at other facilities around the US. "The games aren't particularly good, although some people do like it because it helps make the mind-numbing boredom of a 10-hour shift better," an Amazon worker told The Information. In summary, the games have mixed reviews. Continue reading.
8BitDo has launched the follow-up to the SN30 Pro+ Bluetooth controller that came out in 2019, and it offers additional features for the same price. The $50 8BitDo Pro 2 has two back buttons you can assign any function to, so you don't have to take your thumbs off the thumbsticks. You can program the buttons or remap them using a connected app on iOS or Android. You can even make dedicated controller profiles for certain games or platforms through the new app. The controller is available to pre-order now. Continue reading.
BMW's iDrive infotainment system is one of the best, and it's about to get a thoroughly modern upgrade with natural language processing, gesture controls and cloud-based machine learning. iDrive 8 will arrive on the upcoming BMW iX and i4, and drivers will be able to give BMW's Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPA) a personalized name and cue up various in-vehicle functions and information readouts using verbal or non-verbal commands. Backing up the behind-the-scenes smarts is a new 12.3-inch curved display for your gauges and monitors, plus a 14.9-inch control (read, infotainment) display. Continue reading.
In the midst of Tesla's SEC filing, Elon Musk has apparently claimed a new title, the "Technoking of Tesla," for some reason. The company's CFO, Zach Kirkhorn, has a new position that's right out of Game of Thrones: Master of Coin. There's also probably a nod there to the recent Bitcoin machinations of both Tesla and Musk himself. Last month, Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin to help "diversify and maximize" its returns. The news juiced the price of Bitcoin further, hitting an all-time high of over $44,000.
The filing notes: "Elon and Zach will also maintain their respective positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer." Continue reading.
