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Hubble Finds Medusa in the Sky

The Medusa merger, was not always one entity, but two. An early galaxy consumed a smaller gas-rich system, throwing out streams of stars and dust into space. These streams resemble the writhing snakes that Medusa, a monster in ancient Greek mythology, famously had on her head in place of hair, lending the object its intriguing

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Twitter misses Q3 estimates with revenue of $823.7M, up 9% YoY vs. $874M expected; 145M monetizable DAUs, up 17% YoY; stock down ~20% in pre-market trading (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Twitter misses Q3 estimates with revenue of $823.7M, up 9% YoY vs. $874M expected; 145M monetizable DAUs, up 17% YoY; stock down ~20% in pre-market trading  —  Twitter today reported its earnings for the quarter that ended September 30, and the numbers delivered a big surprise, falling on both sales and

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Scientists are trying to build a conscious machine — here’s why it will never work

Many advanced artificial intelligence projects say they are working toward building a conscious machine, based on the idea that brain functions merely encode and process multisensory information. The assumption goes, then, that once brain functions are properly understood, it should be possible to program them into a computer. Microsoft recently announced that it would spend

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Zuckerberg tells Congress he’ll delay Libra until regulatory issues are sorted (yeah right)

Facebook‘s billionaire co-founder Mark Zuckerberg stood before US Congress yesterday, in an attempt to change the rhetoric around his company‘s controversial ‘cryptocurrency’ Libra. During the lengthy session, Zuckerberg sought to defend the digital currency, which has faced mounting criticism from lawmakers and regulators, and suffered several blows after some of its high profile partners withdrew their support from

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New report says the proliferation of right-wing content on YouTube is driven by both supply and demand rather than the platform's recommendation algorithm (Paris Martineau/Wired)

Paris Martineau / Wired: New report says the proliferation of right-wing content on YouTube is driven by both supply and demand rather than the platform’s recommendation algorithm  —  In a new report, Penn State political scientists say that it’s not the recommendation engine, but the communities that form around right-wing content. New report says the

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Former FBI general counsel explains why US law enforcement needs to embrace encryption to protect the country against existential cybersecurity threats (Jim Baker/Lawfare)

Jim Baker / Lawfare: Former FBI general counsel explains why US law enforcement needs to embrace encryption to protect the country against existential cybersecurity threats  —  I. Embrace Reality and Deal With It  —  From 2012 to 2014, I worked for Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund located in Connecticut. Former FBI general counsel explains why

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UK research project StreetWise led by FiveAI debuts London trials of self-driving vehicles with safety drivers, to pick up passengers along a 19km public route (Chris O'Brien/VentureBeat)

Chris O’Brien / VentureBeat: UK research project StreetWise led by FiveAI debuts London trials of self-driving vehicles with safety drivers, to pick up passengers along a 19km public route  —  StreetWise, a collaborative research project led by FiveAI, announced that it will soon begin the U.K.’s largest test of self-driving vehicles on public roads. UK

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Elon Musk: Tesla’s full self-driving mode could arrive before the year’s end

During Tesla’s quarterly earnings call, the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, said it could roll out its long-awaited full self-driving (FSD) mode in “early access” mode to select customers. Musk wasn’t sounding confident about the beta version shipment, as he said the timeline “might be tight.” He added the feature completion is “not for sure,” but “appears to

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