List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

The Cypriot energy minister says Cyprus and Israel are working on a deal to build a pipeline that will take natural gas from both countries to the eastern Mediterranean island nation, where it will be liquefied for export by ship to Europe and potentially elsewhere

It might sound more like the kind of idle daydream billionaires like Elon Musk would have, but could flooding the Sahara actually be the best way of tackling climate change in the future? The idea of creating a new “sea” in Africa is being discussed, and it’s not the first time that the notion of a great oasis in the Sahara has been discussed among the scientific community. As the ongoing climate crisis continues to worsen, the notion of flooding vast areas of the desert is being returned to once again [via IFL Science]. A new “sea” was first proposed following the study of the Messinian salinity crisis – which saw a dried-out area of the Mediterranean rejuvenated by the Zanclean flood, reconnecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean around 5.33 million years ago. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Given how the Mediterranean was transformed by the flood, the idea of flooding the Sahara to achieve similar results has been thrown around in the scientific community as far back as 1877, the Scottish engineer Donald McKenzie suggested flooding the El Djouf basin in Western Africa. The idea is now returning to popularity as the world looks for solutions to the climate crisis. One proposal centres on the Middle East’s Dead Sea and flooding the area using water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea Depression. A vast sea in Africa could represent a hugely innovative step towards tackling climate change and fostering a new hub of life – but even the people suggesting work such a project acknowledge just how expensive and dangerous it is. Even Y Combinator is a US startup accelerator who has described “desert flooding” as “risky, unproven, even unlikely to work”. Only time will tell whether the notion of a new sea in the Sahara coud ever work, or whether it’ll remain the stuff of dreams. 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.

Poland has received its first shipment of U.S.-made HIMARS rocket launchers as part of a defense upgrade amid security concerns due to the war in neighboring Ukraine

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.”

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.”

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.

Three quarters of the Irish data watchdog’s GDPR decisions were overruled by European regulators, a report has found. The report indicates that 75% of the Data Protection Commission’s decisions in EU cases over a five-year period were overruled by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB). The EDPB had demanded tougher enforcement action in these cases, the report by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) said, with only one other country in one other case overruled in such a manner. The figures include final decisions from January 2023 that are not yet included in the EDPB register of final decisions, from which the figures are based. If these three cases are not included, the figure is 88% of DPC decisions overruled. The report said that the DPC tends to use its discretion under Irish law to choose “amicable resolution” to conclude 83% of the cross-border complaints it receives, instead of using enforcement measures. The ICCL report claims that Ireland remains “the bottleneck of enforcement” for major cross-border cases in Europe. “When it does eventually do so, other European enforcers then routinely vote by majority to force it to take tougher enforcement action,” it said. As Google, Meta, Apple, TikTok and Microsoft have headquarters in Ireland, the Data Protection Commission is the lead authority investigating data privacy complaints about tech giants in Europe. Some 87% of cross-border GDPR complaints to Ireland’s DPC also involve the same eight companies: Meta, Google, Airbnb, Yahoo!, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, and Tinder. On EU-wide cases, the ICCL report found that since May 2018 – when GDPR laws came into effect – and late 2022, 64% of the 159 enforcement measures were reprimands, stating that enforcement against tech giants in Europe “remains largely paralysed”. The EDPB register of EU-level decisions shows there were 49 compliance orders issued over four and a half year years. The report called on the European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders to “take serious action” to enforce GDPR laws across Europe. Last summer, the Irish Government announced that two additional data protection commissioners would be hired, and that Helen Dixon would be promoted to chairwoman of the DPC – in an attempt to better resource the watchdog in recognition of its growing workload. The DPC has been carrying out a review of its governance structures, staffing arrangements and processes since last summer. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Kate Winslet calls on Government to ‘criminalise harmful content’ Humans could be controlled by robots, AI firm’s founder warns AI pioneer warns UK is failing to protect against ‘existential threat’ of machines

China's Communist Party had "supreme access" to all data held by TikTok's parent company Bytedance, including on servers in the United States, a former employer who is bringing a wrongful termination lawsuit has alleged.

Google is adding two new features to its image search to reduce the spread of misinformation, especially now

By Miho Uranaka TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan's Rakuten Group Inc is finalising plans to raise about $2.2 billion by issuing new

BENGALURU (Reuters) -Apple Inc supplier Foxconn will invest $500 million to set up manufacturing plants in the southern Indian state

The agency tasked with securing America's airports is testing the use of facial recognition technology at a number of airports across the country