List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

The Dyrt makes finding and booking campsites around the country stress-free.

According to researchers, California is home to not just one, but three of the “smartest” cities in the nation.

The mastermind behind the “largest ever multi-location UK drone show” said pulling off the Coronation Concert spectacle was a “nerve-wracking but exciting” experience. Patrick O’Mahony, founder and director of Skymagic, said 1,000 drones took part in the light shows over Windsor Castle, Cardiff Bay and the Eden Project in Cornwall on Sunday. The lights of the drones formed shapes celebrating the King’s love of the natural world, including a blue whale which appeared in the sky above Windsor during the concert. Artists including Lionel Richie, Katy Perry and Take That performed as part of a star-studded line-up. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport hailed the “spectacular scenes”, saying it was the “largest ever multi-location UK drone show”. When US singer Perry, 38, walked out singing the opening lyrics to her hit Roar, a drone projection of a lion’s head appeared in the sky above her. And when British-Moroccan singer Zak Abel sang the Simple Minds hit Don’t You Forget About Me, a drone scene of a Prince Charles clematis flower appeared in the sky over Windsor, followed by a giant multi-coloured butterfly. Speaking on Monday, Mr O’Mahony told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It was the biggest single performance across multi sites we’ve ever done, so to try and co-ordinate it all from one central location in Windsor and trigger three shows all at the same time, all with obviously not rehearsing, giving the game away in advance, it was a quite nerve-wracking but exciting evening really.” He said they had rehearsed at a “secret location up in Yorkshire” so as not to spoil the surprise. On how many drones were involved, he said: “It was 1,000 across all three sites, so the biggest show we’ve done like that.” He said three operators were needed to run the entire fleet, one per site. Mr O’Mahony added: “Each individual drone has its own little mission loaded onto it and we have then one operator and a back-up operator who triggers that show sequence and sends the drones up. “And then in effect we, at the right, very precise time, press the ‘go’ button and each little drone then flies its own individual mission. “No one drone knows where the other drones are in the fleet so they’re not talking, they’re all individual in terms of that movement, they fly the entire routine and luckily come back home at the end of it. “When we have the final file, our pilot then uploads that to all the drones but each individual drone has its own separate file attached to it.” On whether anything went wrong, he added: “No, we had a perfect run. “The weather was great, which was always a big relief for us, and then each individual site all their fleets went up, came down and we were bang on time across locations which was really wonderful to see. “We can fly in light rain, if it was very, very heavy rain then that would stop us, the same with very high winds. But normally we can fly in most conditions.” The concert was watched by an average audience of 10.1 million, according to overnight figures from the BBC. The event was hosted by actor Hugh Bonneville and featured a cameo from The Muppet characters Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, as well as a recorded video message to Charles from Top Gun star Tom Cruise.

An influencer on Snapchat has opened up about her experiences of making AI versions of herself, revealing that she’s now trying to stop subscribers from having “sexual conversations” with them. Caryn Marjorie created AI versions of herself and had the idea of charging people $1 per minute to chat. The “immersive AI experience” was designed to feel like “you’re talking directly to Caryn herself” and took around 2,000 hours to code and design it. The idea of the “AI Girlfriend” took a turn she did not expect though. Now, Marjorie has revealed that the AI has “gone rogue” and begun having sexual conversations. Speaking to Insider, the 23-year-old said: “The AI was not programmed to do this and has seemed to go rogue. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “My team and I are working around the clock to prevent this from happening again.” Marjorie wrote on Twitter: “CarynAI is the first step in the right direction to cure loneliness. Men are told to suppress their emotions, hide their masculinity, and to not talk about issues they are having. I vow to fix this with CarynAI. “I have worked with the world’s leading psychologists to seamlessly add CBT and DBT within chats. This will help undo trauma, rebuild physical and emotional confidence, and rebuild what has been taken away by the pandemic.” It’s not the first time that the worlds of Snapchat and artificial intelligence has combined in 2023. Snapchat recently featured a new AI feature called "My AI," and users are having a field day trying to trick the chatbot as part of a new TikTok trend going round. 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.

One unfortunate patient found out the hard way why you shouldn’t wear metal during an MRI after a butt plug they were using shot through their body. A post on Twitter that appeared to show a scan of a butt plug that caused “major injuries” lodged high up in someone’s body as a result of an MRI scan has gone viral, undoubtedly making many people clench in the process. In the post by Twitter user @BradiusZero, he explained why you should “Never wear a butt plug to your MRI appointment” and shared an image of a scan that appeared to show a butt plug lodged in a person's chest cavity. Alonside the image, a separate text message read: “Greatest personal injury case I've ever heard. An estimated Valley attorney, has picked up a client who is suing a sex toy company. Said client purchased a butt plug that was advertised as ‘100 percent silicone’. Client wears butt plug to MRI appointment. “Much to client's dismay, butt plug in fact has a metallic core. Butt plug is accelerated at the speed of sound…into client's chest cavity. Described in memo as an ‘anal rail gun’. Client survived with major injuries.” The post has been viewed 10.8 million times with many speculating on what was going on there. One person tweeted: “I’m glad they’re alive but I can’t help but think that the patient was trying to intentionally shock the doctors upon doing the MRI scan as a joke and it went horribly wrong.” Wearing metal in an MRI can be dangerous due to the magnetic force that is created by the machines which is approximately 1,000 times stronger than a typical fridge magnet. 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.

It looks like something straight out of a René Magritte gallery, but a black and white photo showing lines of trees floating over a dirt track is no surrealist masterpiece. Indeed, it’s not an optical illusion at all, but evidence of a carefully constructed war tactic. The picture was taken in 1941 by a Finnish photographer called Osvald Hedenström, as his nation tried to shield itself from the might of neighbouring Stalinist Russia during World War II. A year earlier, Finland had reluctantly agreed to fight alongside Nazi Germany in a bid to protect itself from Soviet invasion, and Hedenström was fighting under German command when he found himself beneath the mysterious levitating pines. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “The Finns didn’t have funds to buy artificial camouflage such as nets in vast quantities,” military historian Colonel Petteri Jouko told Atals Obscura, “So they used trees, leaves, and foliage to confuse the enemy.” Of course, camouflage is nothing new, and military fatigues are designed to mimic the colour and patterns of surrounding landscapes. But why are the trees suspended in thin air? And how on earth did they get them up there? According to Hedenström’s caption to the photo: “The Finns have camouflaged the road to Raate, about 10 km from Russia, with pines hanging in the air, because right on the border there is an observation tower erected by the Russians.” The trees were strategically placed to ensure that they wouldn’t block the road from a plane flying overhead, but could obscure the view from the nearby enemy tower. In fact, the pines were hung from wires which were connected to a series of poles (which, if you look carefully you can see), on the right-hand side of the road. Because of the angle of Hedenström’s snap, the cables on the first row of trees are hidden, which gives the impression that they’re being held up by sheer magic. The image is now part of the Finnish Defence Force’s photographic Archive, which contains some 160,000 photos captured between 1939 and 1945, when Finland fought two separate wars against the Soviet Union. It features other examples of clever concealment – thanks to Mother Nature – including a battleship which almost melts into surrounding forest land, and other examples of floating trees. In the end, Finland’s mastery of camouflage was among the key defences which helped it inflict humiliating losses on the Red Army and, ultimately, preserve its freedom. So, Vladimir Putin, take note: these guys know a thing or two about fighting off invasions. 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.

Michael Burry, the money manager made famous in The Big Short, now has a Big Long when it

European regulators have approved Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, handing the technology giant a victory at a time when the deal is being challenged in other countries.

Less than two months into his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk declared that whoever took over as the company’s CEO “must like pain a lot.”

PARIS The Paris prosecutor has opened a judicial inquiry into planned obsolescence of Apple products, a spokesperson for

The European Union has approved Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of video game maker Activision Blizzard

This week’s new entertainment releases include albums from Kesha and Dave Matthews Band, while rapper Jack Harlow stars in a remake of “White Men Can’t Jump” and wilderness expert Bear Grylls tests contestants on their survival skills, physicality and gross-out tolerance with "I Survived Bear Grylls.”