List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

Dozens of popular Reddit communities have pledged to continue a blackout indefinitely after no resolution was reached over a pricing dispute. The protest was initially meant to last 48 hours, with moderators of the subreddit communities hoping the action would force Reddit’s chief executive to reconsider charges for third-party app developers. These charges have already forced the Apollo app to announce that it is shutting down, as they mean it will no longer be able to afford access to Reddit’s API (Application Programming Interface). Apollo is one of several platforms that Reddit members use to access the site, with several subreddits posting a message on Wednesday stating: “Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself).” The continuation of the protest will impact millions of Reddit users, with more than 300 subreddits committing to staying dark. They include r/music, which has 32 million subscribers, and r/videos, which has around 26 million members. Unpaid volunteers who moderate the communities claim that Reddit admins have been removing moderators who support the protest in order to force the sub-Reddits to open. One moderator of r/gaming also claimed the defiant stance was a response to Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman claiming that the protest “will pass”. In an internal memo to staff this week, Mr Huffman reportedly referred to the blackout as “noise”, despite more than 8,000 communities initially taking part on Monday. “Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well,” he wrote, according to The Verge. “We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.” Mr Huffman also warned staff members to not wear the Reddit logo in public, in case it made them the “object of [users’] frustrations”. The CEO claimed that the site-wide protest had not resulted in “any significant revenue impact”, though this is unlikely to remain the case if widespread blackouts continue. Read More ‘This will pass’: Reddit boss responds to major chaos at site Reddit is in chaos – and it’s boss has finally responded Reddit down amid major protest Reddit just went ‘dark’, and the site is in chaos

LONDON/HONG KONG Vodafone and CK Hutchison will merge their British operations, the two groups said on Wednesday, creating

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has announced £50 million in funding to develop trustworthy and secure artificial intelligence (AI) that can help solve major challenges. The investment, which will bring experts across different fields together, was revealed during this year’s London Tech Week. As part of the package, £31 million has been awarded to a group called Responsible AI UK (www.rai.ac.uk), led by the University of Southampton. Its aim is to create a UK and international research and innovation ecosystem for responsible and trustworthy AI that will be responsive to the needs of society. AI tends to be looked at by the tech community as AI that has been thoroughly tested Professor Gopal Ramchurn Led by Professor Gopal Ramchurn, the consortium will help people understand what responsible and trustworthy AI is, how to develop it and build it into existing systems, and the impacts it will have on society. Explaining what trustworthy AI means, Prof Ramchurn said: “Trustworthy AI tends to be looked at from a very technical perspective – ie it is tested and validated in well-defined settings. “However, that doesn’t mean it will be trusted by the public, government, and industry.” He added: “AI tends to be looked at by the tech community as AI that has been thoroughly tested. “It can be AI that is trustworthy by the technical functionality of the application and the particular closed environments it has been tested in, but it is not trusted because maybe it uses personal data, you know, uses your personal data in ways that you would not want it to do.” In addition, £2 million will be awarded to 42 projects to carry out feasibility studies in businesses as part of the BridgeAI programme. These will speed up the adoption of trusted and responsible AI and Machine Learning (ML) technologies. The projects will look at developing a range of tools to facilitate assessment of AI technologies, and successful ones will go on to receive a share of an additional £19 million to develop these solutions further. A further £13 million will be used to fund 13 projects to help the UK meet its net zero targets. Universities across the UK, from Edinburgh to Aberystwyth, and Leicester to Southampton, will lead these projects. The UK’s expertise in the field of AI is a major asset to the country and will help develop the science and technology that will shape the fabric of many areas of our lives Kedar Pandya, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UKRI has also awarded two new Turing AI World Leading Researcher Fellowships, to Professor Michael Bronstein and Professor Alison Noble, both based at the University of Oxford. Kedar Pandya, executive director, Cross-Council Programmes at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, said: “The UK’s expertise in the field of AI is a major asset to the country and will help develop the science and technology that will shape the fabric of many areas of our lives. “That is why UKRI is continuing to invest in the people and organisations that will have wide-ranging benefit. “For this to be successful we must invest in research and systems in which we can have trust and confidence, and ensure these considerations are integrated in all aspects of the work as it progresses. “The projects and grants announced today will help us achieve this goal.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live ‘Last Beatles record’ was created using AI, says Paul McCartney Put ‘public good’ at heart of AI and new tech, Starmer to say Ukrainian schoolboy to buy home for his mother after selling Minecraft server

Many of us look to the stars for answers to life’s most complex questions. But actually, some of the greatest mysteries lie beneath our very feet. One might think we’d know the Earth pretty well by now but, in fact, our planet’s core remains shrouded in enigma. Indeed, there are two gigantic blobs located beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean that occupy around six per cent of the world’s entire volume. And yet, we’re still not entirely sure what they’re made of or where they came from. There are a number of hypotheses, including that they are piles of oceanic crust that have accumulated over billions of years. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter But a more interesting theory is that they are huge chunks of an ancient planet that hit the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago. To give an indication of just how massive these things are, the structure under Africa – an area known as Tuzo – is thought to be around 800km (497 miles) tall – the equivalent of some 90 Mount Everests stacked on top of one another, as IFLScience notes. The problem with determining the origin of these monster formations is that there are no direct ways of observing the Earth’s core. The deepest hole humans have ever dug – branded the "entrance to hell" – reached a pretty staggering 12,263m (40,230ft), but that doesn’t even come close to breaking through the crust to the layers beneath. Our most effective tool for analysing what lies beneath the ground is a technique called seismic tomography, which looks at how waves of energy travel when earthquakes occur. Since rocks and liquids have different densities, the waves move through them at different speeds. By measuring the tremors from different points on the surface, geologists can determine what kind of material the waves are travelling through and, in so doing, map out the Earth’s interior. It was by using this technique that the two unusual structures – known as large low shear velocity provinces (LLSVPs) – were found. Waves travel more slowly in these areas – fondly known as “blobs” – than through the surrounding lower mantle, indicating that they’re made of something different. We can’t tell what this material is based on seismic tomography data alone, but some scientists like to believe that they are the remnants of an ancient planet called Theia – an idea known as the “giant impact hypothesis”. According to this hypothesis, around 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized object collided with the Earth. This impact not only created the planet we call home today, but also threw off enough rock to form the moon that lights up our night skies. Some scientists suggest that some of Theia’s leftovers also sunk to the bottom of the planet, probably settling somewhere above the core – thereby forming at least one of the two LLSVPs. More Updates About Strange Blob Structures Inside Planet Earth youtu.be Experts have been investigating the area for decades but there’s still no way of knowing for sure just what these two giant blobs are. Still, studies into Theia have offered important insights into how the possible collision might have kickstarted key plate tectonic and mantle motion inside our planet – crucial processes for establishing the world on which we live. It’s also a useful reminder that we still have so much to learn about our planet and where we came from. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Sheila Dang Alphabet's Google said on Wednesday it is launching two new artificial intelligence-powered features for advertisers

By Stephen Nellis SAN FRANCISCO Amazon Web Services, the world's largest cloud computing provider, is considering using new

The warning comes ahead of the European Parliament voting on rules to regulate artificial intelligence.

Amazon Web Services was hit by a wide-ranging outage on Tuesday afternoon that impacted a large number of major websites, including the Boston Globe and New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority.

McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Delta were among dozens of websites that went down after Amazon’s cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services crashed. The outage, which took place on Wednesday afternoon according to DownDetector, also impacted The Associated Press as they tried to cover the criminal arraignment of former president Donald Trump. Amazon said that the cause of the issue was linked to a function called AWS Lambda, which allows customers to run code for different types of applications. Amazon said it was experiencing multiple error rates for multiple AWS services in an availability zone based in Northern Virginia, reported CBS News. The AWS Health Dashboard stated that issues in the US-East-1 region started at around 3pm ET. “Many AWS services are now fully recovered and marked Resolved on this event. We are continuing to work to fully recover all services,” the company posted at 5pm ET. Read More Amazon using AI to crack down on fake review ‘brokers’ Revealed: The delivery apps charging you double for your food shop Amazon staff spied on women private through Ring cameras, officials say

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has not sold either bitcoin or its native crypto binance coin, the company's CEO Changpeng

Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-computing arm is working to resolve an outage that disrupted a swath of websites and services,

Databricks Inc. said it generated $1 billion in annual revenue and has diversified its business with new products