Technology

Throughout the years, modes of generating electricity from various types of waste have been developed, but a new study has found a way to convert sweat from our own fingertips into usable energy. A group of nano-engineering researchers from the University of California San Diego have found that fingertips produce 100 to 1,000 times more sweat than other body parts. According to their paper posted on science journal Joule, the team conducted a test to generate electricity by attaching an absorbent band-shaped device to the tip of a finger. Electrodes are loaded with enzymes that generate electricity by inducing a chemical reaction between lactic acid and oxygen molecules contained in sweat. The more you sweat, the more electrical energy is stored in the battery at the back of the band. Afte...

Twitter has significantly increased the amount of moderation over the second half of 2020. In the period spanning from July 1 to December 31 last year, the social media platform took action against more than 1.1 million accounts for hateful content and more than 946,000 accounts for abusive behavior. The two represent a 77 percent and 142 percent increase respectively when compared to the first six months of 2020, according to a transparency report the company published this week. Twitter’s increased moderation comes amid ongoing efforts to “increase the health of public conversation,” and the tech giant attributes its recent success to two main factors. The first is a collection of changes it made throughout last year to its hateful conduct policy, which introduced “content that incites f...

Candace Parker has become the first WNBA player to appear on the cover of an NBA 2K game. The Chicago Sky forward, a six-time WNBA All-Star, two-time WNBA MVP, and 2016 WNBA Finals MVP, is featured on the cover of the WNBA 25th Anniversary Special Edition of NBA 2K22, which will be released on September 10th. “I grew up a video game fanatic, that’s what I did, to the point where my brothers would give me the fake controller when I was younger where I think I was playing and I wasn’t,” Parker tells ESPN. “All I wanted to do was just be like them. As a kid growing up, you dream of having your own shoe and dream of being in a video game. Those are an athlete as a kid’s dreams. To be able to experience that, I don’t take it lightly.” Extremely proud and humbled to be the first female cover ath...

A Facebook-backed initiative aiming to let people type by thinking has concluded with new findings published today. Project Steno was a multi-year collaboration between Facebook and the University of California San Francisco’s Chang Lab, aiming to create a system that translates brain activity into words. A new research paper, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, shows potential for implementing the technology for people with speech impairments. But alongside the research, Facebook made clear it is backing off the idea of a commercial head-mounted brain-reading device, and building out wrist-worn interfaces instead. The new research has no clear applicability for a mass-market tech product, and in a press release, Facebook said it is “refocusing” its priorities away from head-...

Until now, using WhatsApp web on your desktop or any other device has required having a phone that’s powered on and connected, but a new beta test is trying out support for multiple devices without needing a phone in the mix. In a June interview, WhatsApp head Will Cathcart and his boss, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, commented on the technical challenge of maintaining end-to-end encryption. With a blog post today, Cathcart explains more about what has been done behind the scenes to maintain security. WhatsApp’s message architecture.Image: Facebook As the image comparing the legacy and new systems (above) tries to explain, previously, a user’s phone managed the key determining their identity and ability to encrypt/decrypt messages. The encrypted synchronization also applies to message histo...

A report this spring from The Information said that Netflix was seeking an executive to lead its push into gaming, with an eye toward offering an Apple Arcade or Xbox Game Pass-like subscription bundle. Now, as first reported by Bloomberg, the streaming company has hired Mike Verdu as its vice president of game development reporting to COO Greg Peters. A Netflix spokesperson confirmed the hire to The Verge. According to Bloomberg, Netflix could offer games right next to its other streaming content “within the next year” listed as a new genre just like documentaries or anything else, without charging extra for the experience. Verdu is a former exec who has experience with mobile gaming companies like Zynga, ran EA Mobile for a year, and most recently has been working at Facebook acquiring a...

Amazon is adding support for AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to two of its Fire TV Edition TVs in a free update, the company announced on Wednesday. Both the 2020 Toshiba 4K UHD Smart Fire TV with Dolby Vision and the 2020 Insignia 4K UHD Smart TV will receive the features, before they arrive on Amazon’s less expensive Fire TV sticks and set-top boxes. On these specific TV sets, AirPlay 2 should function the same on Apple’s own Apple TV, allowing you to send audio and video from your phone, tablet, or computer to the big screen and control playback from your device. Integrating with HomeKit, Apple’s smart home ecosystem, requires a little extra legwork: you’ll have to enable HomeKit in your TV’s settings under Display & Sounds > AirPlay & HomeKit > Set Up, and then add it as a device i...

Apple on Wednesday launched its popular “Today at Apple” series on YouTube, beginning with a video on how to turn yourself into a character from the beloved children’s program Peanuts.  Each video in the series tackles creative projects across photo, video, art and design, with techniques inspired by global artists. In episode one, Apple Creative Pro Anthony teaches viewers how to draw themselves as a Peanuts character on Pages, with the help of Apple TV+ The Snoopy Show showrunner Mark Evestaff and storyboard artist Krista Porter. Today at Apple has been a place for customers to find inspiration and learn about new technology inside of Apple stores for over 20 years. The YouTube debut of the series brings the educational tools to viewers around the world from wherever ...

Plex, the popular build-your-own streaming service, has added 15 new channels to its ad-supported streaming offering for free TV. All of the new channels available on Plex’s free Live TV feed arrive on the service today, and most will be available globally (though a spokesperson told The Verge that some are available in Latin America or the US only). Plex originally launched the free TV feature last year as a collection of pre-programmed, continuous channels rather than traditional over-the-air streams. So it’s not quite live TV, but it does offer a similar linear experience if you’re just looking to throw something on. Of these new channels, some notable additions include MMA TV, USA Today, USA Today Sportswire, and the Tribeca Channel. The full list of channels added today are, with summ...

General Motors said Wednesday that two recent Bolt EV fires happened in vehicles that had already received the fix meant to prevent the battery pack from igniting, raising new questions about the recall announced last year. In the meantime, the automaker is warning owners of 2017-2019 model year Bolts not to charge the electric cars overnight, and to park them outside in case they catch fire. GM recalled nearly 69,000 Bolt EVs in November 2020 after a handful of reports of fires that apparently started in the electric vehicles’ battery packs. The company warned owners at the time to park their Bolts outside until it could figure out the cause of the fires and settle on a fix, but it didn’t say anything at the time about not charging overnight. GM also issued an interim software update that...

The OnePlus 9 Pro went on sale on April 2nd, but to date, the $969 base model, which comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, hasn’t been available to actually buy in North America. The company had told Android Police on April 3rd that the base version was still on the way, but now, according to a new statement given to Android Police, it actually won’t make its way to the US or Canada due to “unforeseen supply constraints.” Here’s the full statement, from Android Police: “The OnePlus 9 Pro 8×128 GB variant was originally set to be sold in North America for $969. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen supply constraints specific to North American devices, we recently concluded it is no longer possible to bring this configuration to the United States and Canada. In North America we are pr...

Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) reported on Tuesday that SolarWinds software was attacked with a zero-day exploit by a group of hackers it calls “DEV-0322.” The hackers were focused on SolarWinds’ Serv-U FTP software, with the presumed goal of accessing the company’s clients in the US defense industry. The zero-day attack was first spotted in a routine Microsoft 365 Defender scan. The software noticed an “anomalous malicious process” that Microsoft explains in more detail in its blog, but it seems the hackers were attempting to make themselves Serv-U administrators, among other suspicious activity. Update Serv-U as soon as possible SolarWinds reported the zero-day exploit on Friday, July 9th, explaining that all of the Serv-U releases from May 5th and earlier contained the v...