U.S. Treasury details EV tax credit rebate rules
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday issued new guidance on how a $7,500 electric
2023-10-07 00:19
Near Fourfold Surge in Rooftop Solar Slashes Eskom, City Revenue
South Africa’s near fourfold increase in rooftop solar power generation capacity in the year to March has reduced
2023-10-06 23:52
Games-Japan trounce North Korea 4-1 to retain Asian Games gold
By Michael Church HANGZHOU, China Japan successfully defended their women’s Asian Games soccer gold medal on Friday as
2023-10-06 22:47
Freeze and Frost Are Back in the US Forecast: Weather Watch
Freeze warnings and watches, as well as frost advisories, stretch from North Dakota and Minnesota south through the
2023-10-06 21:26
Woman says she was forced to change her name after Apple's latest system update
A new update has meant that Apple users can now say just "Siri" instead of "Hey Siri", but this modification has proven troublesome for one woman who has had to change her name as a result. Siri Price, a 26-year-old personal trainer from Edinburgh is used to having the same name as Apple's voice-activated digital assistant. While Apple's Siri stands for “Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface," the name Siri is also Old Norse and apparently means “beautiful woman who leads you to victory". Since sharing the same name, the old version of the voice assistant would be triggered by saying the words "Hey Siri". “I work in a gym with a lot of people around so everyone learned quite quickly not to say ‘Hey’ when they greet me or there would be a lot of bleeping going on," she told The Sun. “It was annoying but manageable." But now this command is just "Siri," for the voice to be activated so it means people cannot say Siri's name without causing the voice feature to activate on their phones. As you can imagine, Siri is pretty annoyed with this new update. "Now people can’t even say my name. I’m absolutely fuming," she said. "My workmates had to sit down and think of a workaround because people’s phones have been going off non-stop." Consequently, it means Siri has had to come up with a different name for herself - Siz. “I’m sure Apple could have picked something else instead — there’s plenty of people called Siri and their lives have become just unbearable because of this," Siz added. Although Siz is not alone as those with the name Alexa possibly have similar feelings as their name is also the name of Amazon's virtual assistant. When this happened, it resulted in the name dramatically declining in popularity - perhaps due to parents releasing their child may have the same problem as Siri's. Something for tech companies to keep in mind when they're naming their voice assistants... Sign up to 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.
2023-10-06 21:22
Gabon’s Post-Coup Government Keeps Focus on Forest Preservation
Gabon’s new forestry minister, appointed by the country’s military government after an August coup, has eased concern that
2023-10-06 20:54
Scientists are using AI to develop simple test to search planets for alien life
Scientists are using AI to search planets for alien life. Researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences say artificial intelligence can determine with 90 per cent accuracy whether a sample from another planet is biological or not. Scientists hope that their test could be used on samples already collected by the Mars Curiosity rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. The findings could also help tell us more about our own planet, revealing the history of mysterious and ancient rocks found on Earth. “The search for extraterrestrial life remains one of the most tantalizing endeavors in modern science,” said lead author Jim Cleaves of the Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, DC. “The implications of this new research are many, but there are three big takeaways: First, at some deep level, biochemistry differs from abiotic organic chemistry; second, we can look at Mars and ancient Earth samples to tell if they were once alive; and third, it is likely this new method could distinguish alternative biospheres from those of Earth, with significant implications for future astrobiology missions.” The technique was built by giving an artificial intelligent system data about 134 known samples, with information about whether they are biotic or abiotic. To test it, it was then given new samples – including those from living things, remnants of ancient life and other abiotic samples that did not point to life, such as pure chemicals. The system also started predicting another kind of sample type, dividing the biotic ones into “living” and “fossils”. That means it could tell the difference between a freshly harvested leaf and something else that died long ago, for instance. In the future, the technology could become even more advanced and detect other aspects of life. “This routine analytical method has the potential to revolutionize the search for extraterrestrial life and deepen our understanding of both the origin and chemistry of the earliest life on Earth,” said Robert Hazen, of the Carnegie Institution for Science, one of the leaders of the research. “It opens the way to using smart sensors on robotic spacecraft, landers and rovers to search for signs of life before the samples return to Earth.” Sign up to 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.
2023-10-06 20:49
Cyberpunk 2077 sequel in early phase of development
CD Projekt studio boss Adam Badowski has confirmed that a follow-up to the popular game 'Cyberpunk 2077' is in the initial phase of development.
2023-10-06 18:26
Goldman Sachs Says ESG Bonds Are Headed for Major Slump in US
Companies based in the US are on track to halve the amount of ESG-labeled debt they issue this
2023-10-06 17:56
UK regulator issues notice to Snapchat over privacy risks posed by AI chatbot
LONDON Britain's data watchdog said on Friday Snapchat had been issued with a preliminary enforcement notice over a
2023-10-06 17:56
Slack down: Work chat app goes down as the working day begins
Slack, the workplace chat app, has stopped working for some of it users. Users saw an array of error messages, indicating that “something went wrong”. Slack’s status page showed that the site was up as usual, and that it was not aware of any problems. But a wide array of users reported problems on Twitter, and tracking website Down Detector showed a large outage.
2023-10-06 17:20
Taiwan investigates firms that worked with Chinese companies reportedly supplying Huawei
Taiwan is investigating whether four of its firms broke US sanctions or its own investment rules when they provided services to Chinese companies that are reportedly helping Huawei build chip factories.
2023-10-06 17:15