The peoples movement

Common honey bees can be trained to recognize individual people, according to a paper published by Dr. Adrian Dyer in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The training consisted of showing the bees a series of black-and-white pictures of human faces. The bees got tasty or sour rewards, depending on their performance. The face series is exactly the same one used by psychologists to test human memory. How do bees do it? Bee brains are just one-twenty thousandth the size of a human brain. The experiment implies that there is a simpler solution to the problem of face recognition than has been discovered so far by biometric security researchers. I'm getting this mental picture of a swarm of friendly, well-trained honey bees humming through an airport terminal, looking for known terrorists. And they even have a way to incapacitate their prey! On the other hand, since stinging kills the bee, you'd be losing highly trained assets... In his chilling novel The Green Brain , … [Read more...] about Bees Recognize People

The big picture: Robinhood, the financial services company best known for offering commission-free trades of stocks and ETFs, added cryptocurrency to its platform nearly three years ago but it wasn’t until this year that the service really took off. The company this week revealed that it has welcomed more than six million new customers to Robinhood Crypto so far this year. In comparison, the number of new crypto customers on Robinhood peaked at 401,000 in a single month last year with a monthly average of around 200,000 users trading on the platform for the first time in 2020. Robinhood bills itself as a platform for all investors, no matter how much money they have to invest. So far this year, the average transaction size has been around $500, or a little more than double what it was on average across 2020, no doubt a result of the increased interest in crypto and Reddit-influenced trading of stocks like GameStop, AMC and BlackBerry. Robinhood currently supports … [Read more...] about Millions of people are flocking to Robinhood to trade cryptocurrencies

I really wish I hadn't broken my collarbone. But one silver lining from the experience has been learning how well technology lets me live my life with one arm immobilized in a sling. Far and away, the best feature has been speech-to-text tools that let me type without a keyboard. Honorable mentions go to swipe keyboards on phones, biometric authentication and password managers. Cut through the chatter Subscribe to CNET's Mobile newsletter for the latest phone news and reviews. After two weeks with my arm in a sling, and at least four more to go, I have a much better appreciation for what accessibility technology offers people who have longer-term disabilities. My frustration at being unable to lift a box or tighten my belt contrasts with the liberation I feel seeing my words almost magically appear on a screen as I speak. My ignominious bike crash I crashed, my ego is sad to report, while mountain biking on a very easy trail. Fractured collarbones are a classic injury … [Read more...] about How speech to text, password managers and other tech helped me work with a broken collarbone

Flying cars got another step closer to reality when a prominent player in the space pledged to create an Urban Air Mobility network over California's largest city by 2024. Archer , which is designing and developing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that can carry passengers for 60 miles at speeds of up to 150 mph while producing minimal noise, is partnering with the City of Los Angeles on the project. Special Feature Special Report: Autonomous Vehicles and the Enterprise (free PDF) This ebook, based on the latest ZDNet / TechRepublic special feature, examines how driverless cars, trucks, semis, delivery vehicles, drones, and other UAVs are poised to unleash a new level of automation in the enterprise. Read More The testbed is well-chosen. Southern California has severe mobility challenges, including consistently gridlocked traffic, under-utilized or poorly developed mass transit, and a seemingly inability to make solutions like … [Read more...] about Flying cars over Los Angeles by 2024

...and the kitchen sink Facebook has Messenger and WhatsApp, but Instagram is one of its most overlooked messaging platforms. Michael Allison 26 Feb 2021 0 Source: Joe Maring / Android Central When it comes to messaging apps and services, there are a fair few stalwart apps you'd expect to see brought up in conversation. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are obvious. Despite many people hating the primary platform, both offshoots have seen great commercial success and now boast billions of users. If you're messaging someone in 2021, there's a very high chance you're using one of those. Then there's Signal and Telegram, a pair of apps interlinked only by their focus on privacy and their shared desire to topple the duo at the top. Finally, there's iMessage and Google Messages, one of which has succeeded at being the default message service for all users on its platform, and the other of which hasn't gotten its message out on why you should use it. … [Read more...] about Instagram is the low-key biggest messaging app that no one talks about