Australia's two most populous states are trialling facial recognition software that lets police check people are home during COVID-19 quarantine, expanding trials that have sparked controversy to the vast majority of the country's population. Little-known tech firm Genvis said on a website for its software that New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, home to Sydney, Melbourne and more than half of Australia's 25 million population, were trialling its facial recognition products. Genvi...

Over a decade ago, behavioral ecologist Diane Colombelli-Négrel was wiring superb fairy wrens’ nests to record the birds’ sounds when she noticed something odd. Mother fairy wrens sang while incubating their eggs, even though it would have made more sense to keep quiet to avoid attracting predators.

FTC Chair Lina Khan wants the commission to identify potential loopholes in its merger reporting guidelines that allowed some acquisitions to "fly under the radar," according to CNBC. That's one of the FTC's key takeaways after completing its inquiry into the unreported acquisitions by Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft from 2010 to 2019. The commission has published its findings over a year after it started the inquiry in February 2020, focusing on ...

The world’s first battery-electric freight train was unveiled at an event in Pittsburgh on Friday, amid a fresh attempt by some US lawmakers to slash carbon emissions from rail transport in order to address the climate crisis.

Amidst a sharp increase in deadly wildfires and flooding, increasingly violent storms, and extreme heat, new research published Tuesday found that refusal by governments to act on the climate emergency is causing a widespread sense of hopelessness and eco-anxiety in teenagers and young adults worldwide.

Despite a smaller notch, the iPhone 13 lineup will not show users their battery percentage in the status bar, or at least, not by default, according to the ‌iPhone 13‌ simulator embedded within Xcode.

Ten billion years ago, well before the formation of our solar system, a gargantuan explosion threw out vast amounts of highly energetic light. A star died in a dazzling supernova, and, though it happened so long ago, the flash was only seen in 2016 and vanished shortly thereafter. But if you missed it then, worry not: We’ll be able to see the blast again.

Cows can be toilet trained in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, researchers have said. In the study, which took place in Germany, scientists trained the animals to use a designated toilet. Their urine was then collected and treated. The ammonia from cows' urine turns into the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide when it's mixed with soil.

The Kidney Project’s implantable bioartificial kidney, one that promises to free kidney disease patients from dialysis machines and transplant waiting lists, took another big step toward becoming reality, earning a $650,000 prize from KidneyX for its first-ever demonstration of a functional prototype of its implantable artificial kidney.

Throughout history, creative human engineers have taken inspiration from artifacts of the biological world. Leonardo da Vinci designed flying machines, submarines and tanks with birds, fish and tortoises in mind. Today, artificial neural nets, a computer architecture directly inspired by animal nervous systems, are the cutting edge of machine learning. But none of those applications get to the deep structure of biology—likely a beacon of future creativity.

Deputies in Frio County, Texas salute a fallen colleague by forming a guard of honor for his son, Joziah Longoria, on his first day at kindergarten.

A buttery, gluten-free variation on a traditional Swedish cake, packed with almond flavour

An experiment that hung rhinoceroses upside down to see what effect it had on the animals has been awarded one of this year's Ig Nobel prizes. Other recipients included teams that studied the bacteria in chewing gum stuck to pavements, and how to control cockroaches on submarines.

The decision by Ford Motor Company to shutter plants in Sanand and Chennai comes after accumulated losses over 10 years and lack of growth. At least 4,000 employees to be affected by the move.

Sega announced that a Lost Judgment demo will appear through the PlayStation Store soon. Starting on September 10, 2021 PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 users will be able to download the Lost Judgment demo. However, Sega did not say if Xbox Series X and Xbox One users would receive this demo as well. [Thanks, Famitsu!]

There have been plenty of warnings about environmental catastrophe, food shortages and the erosion of reproductive rights in the US. After the horrors of the last week, it is more urgent than ever to heed them...

El Salvador officially adopted bitcoin as a legal tender Tuesday, and marked its dual-currency status by buying 400 bitcoins worth more than $20million. The Central American country made history Monday when it bought its first 200 bitcoins, becoming the first known nation to do so. The U.S. dollar had been the country’s official currency for the past two decades.

There is a growing sense, among young people as well as older demographics, that humanity is in deep trouble, and that extracting ourselves from our current predicament is going to take a concerted effort unlike anything our species has attempted in recorded history — if it's possible at all. The IPCC recently issued a "code red for humanity" about climate change, as the UN Secretary-General António Guterres put it, adding that "the alarm bells are deafening."

In honor of the special moments that were delayed during the pandemic, TODAY is celebrating the "Milestones We Missed," bringing together people who were separated by COVID-19 concerns.

Texas, which exterminated or displaced most of the Indigenous people in the state, now wants to cash in on them. While lawmakers support legislation that could further restrict how Indigenous history is taught in schools, a state agency appointed by Governor Greg Abbott is trying to make money by attracting tourists to Indigenous historical and cultural sites. The Texas Historical Commission hopes to work with Indigenous nations to expand the state’s multi-billion-dollar tourism programs – e...

IN 2007 A new documentary called The Pixar Story screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival. It covered the wild antics of the studio’s founders as they crafted a new kind of movie—a fully computer-animated picture bursting with riotous colors and textures, ultra-­vivid characters, and plotlines subversively seeded with mind-expanding wisdom. During a panel discussion afterward, the interviewer asked a provocative question.

Google is edging closer to rolling out its own central processing units, or CPUs, for its Chromebook laptops, according to a report from Nikkei Asia on Wednesday that cites people familiar with the matter.

Your current phone might get security patches for several years to come, at least if Germany has its way. C't reports the German federal government is pushing the European Union to require seven years of security updates and spare parts for smartphones as part of negotiations with the European Commission. That's two years longer than a recent Commission proposal, and would effectively give phones a more computer-like support cycle.

Apple now seems to be up for a custom chip for it’s rumored upcoming AR/VR headset. This chip is an SoC, this will require Apple to offload a few processor-heavy tasks to the device it’s connected to (like an iPhone or Mac). However, this chip sends and receives data, compresses or decompressed videos as per needs though being wireless. Thus, it’s gonna do a great job in streaming data, rather than putting the whole load of heavy processing on the headset. Apple has started working with this wit

Researchers have found evidence that hunter-gatherers started making bread 4,000 years prior to starting agriculture. Evidence of bread making was found in the north-eastern part of Jordan. The flatbread charred remains were found to have been made some 14,400 years ago.