Bored Apes have become symbolic of the NFT craze. Horrendously ugly and ludicrously pricey, their value derives from artificial scarcity. It would therefore be a great shame if someone offered infinite free versions of the collectibles — which is exactly what Yannic Kilcher has done. The machine learning expert has built an app that generates as many Bored Apes as your heart desires. The system is powered by generative adversarial networks (GANs), which create new content by pitting two neural n
The big existential fear on everybody’s mind used to be losing our jobs to AI. That all changed when the pandemic hit and millions were faced with job loss that had nothing to do with automation. For many, the best solution to their COVID-related employment woes was to turn to the freelance or “gig-based” economy. This led to a huge uptick in value for companies specializing in connecting clients with freelancers, and Fiverr, an Israeli-based company, was no exception. But the tides are changing
I don’t own a TV (streaming all the way), but I’m always interested in car commercials to see what tricks advertisers are deploying in their efforts to make us want to shell out a large portion of our income on a new car. So when I saw that Ford released a new advertisement yesterday – with a decent amount of shade thrown at a competitor whose name starts with a T and ends with an a, I was all in. Let me walk you through it and share some thoughts. You can check out the ad in all its glory: R
Worldwide sales of fitness trackers increased from US$14 billion in 2017 to over $36 billion in 2020. The skyrocketing success of these gadgets suggests that more people than ever see some value in keeping tabs on the number of steps they take, flights of stairs they climb, time they spend sitting, and calories they burn. The manufacturers of these devices certainly want consumers to believe that tracking fitness or health-related behaviors will spur them to increase their activity levels and ma
While electric cars are gaining momentum, gradually replacing gas-guzzlers, the electrification of larger vehicles such as long-haul trucks and planes is proving to be a tough challenge. We need more time to make the tech work and, in the interim, a stepping stone fuel between gasoline and electric batteries. That’s where natural gas comes in. Comprising methane as its primary component, natural gas is an intriguing alternative to regular fuel. It’s abundant, has an established distribution netw
This article was originally published on .cult by Neil Green. .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. Becoming a tech lead is a tremendous accomplishment, and you should be proud to have been given that responsibility. Technology leadership is a stepping stone into management or architecture, so your career progression is on the right
Between remote strikes on people and oil refineries in the Middle East, and multiple Black Mirror episodes, drones get a bad rap. But as their capabilities increase through machine intelligence, mapping, and greater aerial surveillance, they are not only machines of destruction but tools for responding to complex environmental and societal challenges. Let’s take a look: Fighting deforestation Australian start-up AirSeed Technologies uses seed-dropping drones to fight deforestation using seed bo
The FIDO Alliance has been at the forefront of the passwordless movement. The organization has been working with many tech firms for years to urge them to adopt standards that don’t require passwords for authentication. Well, the people at the FIDO Alliance must be jumping for joy. In a new announcement, Google, Microsoft, and Apple have agreed to play nice with each other to enable passwordless sign-ins across their platforms. In March, the FIDO Alliance released a white paper that introduced t
Being able to climb that giant hill on your commute without breaking a sweat is one of the luxuries of riding an ebike. Less luxurious is trying to lug a 70-pound chunk of metal up a narrow staircase when you back get home. Ebikes are often the fastest and most versatile way of getting around cities, but their typically heavy and bulky frames often make them inconvenient to own in the very same neighborhoods. Most city dwellers don’t live on ground floors, nor do they have ground-level storage o
In 1950, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi asked a question that torments astronomers to this day: “Where is everybody?” His query has been immortalized in the Fermi paradox. The theory contends that there’s a conflict between the apparent absence of aliens and the probability that they exist. Proponents note that the universe is about three times older than our solar system, and contains more than a billion trillion stars. If stoopid humans can travel to the moon, why haven’t intellige