After a global dip during the start of the pandemic, Europe’s startup scene is buzzing yet again. 2021 saw a record-breaking €100bn being injected into European startups, and 100 new unicorns being born across sectors. And with Brexit coming into effect, 2021 also saw a shake-up of European titans, with London possibly losing hold of its startup-ecosystem crown. One region that might snatch said crown is Benelux — the Western European region comprising Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. C
Telegram has had an option to send ephemeral messages in its encrypted Secret Chat mode since 2013. Last year, it rolled out a new timer feature — that could be enabled for either 24 hours or 7 days — to auto-delete messages for all Telegram chats. Over the weekend, the app updated this function to allow a custom auto-delete timer for all conversations. Plus, unlike the previous version, it doesn’t require you to delete chat history on the Android app. Before you use this feature, make sure to u
The “brain in a jar” is a thought experiment of a disembodied human brain living in a jar of sustenance. The thought experiment explores human conceptions of reality, mind, and consciousness. This article will explore a metaphysical argument against artificial intelligence on the grounds that a disembodied artificial intelligence, or a “brain” without a body, is incompatible with the nature of intelligence.[1] The brain in a jar is a different inquiry than traditional questions about artificial
This article was originally published on .cult by Patrick Zawadzki. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world. Software development as a career has exploded over the last couple of years. And with the popularity of boot camps and lateral movements, it’s a great time to get involved. Yet behind all the fluff and pizazz of software engineeri
Artist’s impression of a giant planet forming. NASA, ESA, STScI, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) How do planets form? For many years scientists thought they understood this process by studying the one example we had access to our own Solar System. However, the discovery of planets around distant stars in the 1990s made it clear that the picture was much more complicated than we knew. In new research, we have spotted a hot, Jupiter-like gas giant in the process of forming around a star about 500 light-y
This article is part of our coverage of the latest in AI research. Artificial intelligence research lab OpenAI made headlines again, this time with DALL-E 2, a machine learning model that can generate stunning images from text descriptions. DALL-E 2 builds on the success of its predecessor DALL-E and improves the quality and resolution of the output images thanks to advanced deep learning techniques. The announcement of DALL-E 2 was accompanied by a social media campaign by OpenAI’s engineers an
This article was originally published on .cult by Hannah Augur. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world. What’s the first thing that people think of when they hear the word ‘developer’? For many people, it’s probably ‘money’ or maybe companies like ‘Facebook’ or ‘Google’. However, these topics don’t really reflect the work that developer
Our universe is a ridiculous place. It’s where all the silliest things we’re aware of happen. And chief among the silliness is the wacky idea of time. Don’t get me wrong, the metaverse is a strong second. Especially Facebook’s Meta’s agonizingly dysfunctional approach to building it. But time’s even stranger than changing the name of the world’s most widely-known technology company to something that literally means “self-referential.” Time is the opposite of self-referential. If it exists in a t
Social media has become a primary source of information for news-hungry audiences around the world trying to make sense of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, it’s being used by the governments of Russia and Ukraine to set the agenda for wider media reporting. Official Russian government accounts have been found to be amplifying pro-Russia disinformation on Twitter. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government has taken to the platform to appeal to its two million followers for support. Ha
Ever since artificial intelligence (AI) made the transition from theory to reality, research and development centers across the world have been rushing to come up with the next big AI breakthrough. This competition is sometimes called the “AI race”. In practice, though, there are hundreds of “AI races” heading towards different objectives. Some research centers are racing to produce digital marketing AI, for example, while others are racing to pair AI with military hardware. Some races are betwe