One of China’s top battery-makers reckons it has cracked a technology to provide even cheaper and more powerful

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 17, 2023--

By Anna Tong SAN FRANCISCO In a frenzy unseen since the birth of social media in the early

Welcome to the world of TikTok's hidden codes that unlock some really cool - but secret - emojis

By Helen Coster NEW YORK The head of engineering for the company that operates former U.S. President Donald

Tristan Tate said that MrBeast's transformation is 'good for the world' amid his fitness milestone

Madison Beer made her debut on Twitch recently and while navigating its complexities, she revealed that xQc is her favorite streamer

Frankenstein’s monsters aren’t just for Halloween, as a team of US scientists have recently discovered. The experts at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) were tasked with analysing the remains of a supposed mummified “mermaid”, and what they found was pretty gruesome. The mummy was brought to America from Japan more than 100 years ago after being donated it to the Clark County Historical Society in Springfield, Ohio. It arrived at the society in 1906 but documents supplied alongside the strange specimen suggest it dates back to the mid-1800s. This means that for some 170 years, the true identity of the wisened, 29-cm-long creature remained a mystery. However, thanks to modern technology, the team at NKU has finally worked out that the sinister-looking “siren” is, in fact, a ghoulish hybrid of monkey, fish and lizard. Joseph Cress, who led the project, told Live Science that he and his colleagues used X-ray and CT scans to investigate the creepy cadaver. "This allowed us to see [the mummy] in almost every dimension in the hopes to see what was inside it," he explained. They determined that that the “mermaid” consists of the head and torso of a monkey sewed onto the body of a fish, and its “hands” are the clawed legs of a lizard – most likely a Komodo dragon. The scans also revealed a pair of wooden stakes hidden inside the chimeric corpse – one running from head to tail and another across the shoulder blades — which were presumably inserted to keep the monster in one piece. Cress and his colleagues are currently trying to reconstruct a more detailed model of the mermaid and its individual components, according to Live Science. Once these models are complete, they plan to send them to zoos and aquariums to help confirm the different parts on a species level. However, jaw-dropping this specimen may be, it's not the only “mermaid” to be debunked in recent times. In March 2022, researchers analysed a similar example that was found in a hidden box in a Japanese temple. They also expected the creature, which was 30.5 cm long and dated back to the mid-1700s, to be a monkey-fish hybrid. However, tests conducted in February this year revealed that it was, in fact, predominantly made of cloth, paper and cotton. It had been painted with sand and charcoal and held together by metal pins, while various animal parts, including fish skin and mammal hair, had been stuck to it. Experts believe that the two “mermaids” were made to resemble "ningyo" — hideous fish-like creatures with human heads and sharp claws from Japanese mythology. According to legend, a nun named Yaobikuni lived for 800 years and retained the youthful appearance of a young woman, after eating a ningyo. Her immortality made the creatures a symbol of longevity, so it’s likely that fraudsters tried to recreate the mermaids to sell them to wealthy seekers of immortality. Still, at least the owners of these two examples didn’t make the mistake of trying to eat them. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter 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

In the latest installment of ChatGPT-ifying everything, Mercedes-Benz is taking the AI chatbot for a

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 27, 2023--

Meta has unveiled a new series of artificial intelligence chatbots to challenge the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. Speaking at the tech giant’s annual Meta Connect conference, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the AI chatbots would feature different “personalities” based on celebrities. Among those to have already lended their personalities are the rapper Snoop Dogg, NFL star Tom Brady and YouTuber Mr Beast. The Meta AI virtual assistants, which will only be available in the US initially, will be able to answer queries or craft responses in a fashion similar to ChatGPT and other programmes. The firm also announced plans to launch an AI studio where users could custom build their own AIs. Users will be able to access the assistant and any created within its new AI studio from within any of Meta’s messaging platforms. This is where Meta is looking to differentiate itself from its rivals, by using its already extensively used social platforms to put AI chatbots in front of users, many for the first time. The company said it did not believe there will be “one single super-intelligent AI that everyone uses”, but rather “different AIs for different things”. This was the reason for creating AI Studio, Meta said, to enable users to “create your own AI that’s aligned with your goals, whether you’re a small business, a creator, or anyone really”. The company demonstrated several AIs it had created already, including a sous chef who could offer meal suggestions and a “personal editor and writing partner” called Lily. Meta said these different chatbots would be given their own profiles on its platforms to enable users to interact with them. Elsewhere at the conference, Mr Zuckerberg unveiled the newest version of the company’s virtual reality headset – the Meta Quest 3 – and reiterated his belief that the future of the internet would be based in the virtual world of the metaverse. In this space, users in such headsets will be able to interact with avatars of others as well as AI bots. Mr Zuckerberg said the metaverse would see the “physical and digital world come together”. The Facebook founder also unveiled a new pair of Meta smartglasses made by Ray Ban, which will be powered by the new Meta AI. “Smart glasses are the ideal form factor for you to let an AI assistant see what you are seeing and hear what you are hearing,” Mr Zuckerberg said. Over the last week, both Microsoft and Amazon have used live events to demonstrate their latest innovations in AI, with Microsoft announcing a new tool called Copilot is coming to Windows which users can call up at any time to help them with any computing, work or social task. While Amazon used its product event last week to unveil improvements to voice-based AI assistant Alexa that make it more natural and conversational, and better at understanding context and inference to help users complete tasks. On the same day as Meta’s announcement, OpenAI also unveiled a major update to ChatGPT that will give the viral chatbot direct access to the internet for the first time. Additional reporting from agencies Read More Meta unveils new Quest 3 headset and smart glasses that allow for virtual experiences in the real world Meta just took a step towards its dream of the metaverse Meta showcases new AR/VR tech at annual Connect conference Meta plans to develop ‘sassy robot’ chatbot for young users, report says

A South Carolina man was arrested after authorities said he robbed a convenience store with a fake gun designed to play a Nintendo video game.