Worldcrunch
People in Asia already trust robots enough to let them take care of their loved ones and deliver the evening news. Meanwhile, a hitchhiking robot’s world tour successfully passed through Germany, the Netherlands and Canada, but the American leg of the journey was cut short when it was decapitated and beaten to death in Philadelphia. […]
Machines replacing us humans: Depending on where you stand (and where you work!), this may sound like a dream or a nightmare. Societies have long been fascinated by the idea of handing over difficult jobs to robots, but individuals quickly start to fear what that may entail for their futures. For all the talk about […]
Love them or hate them, electric scooters are changing the very ways we think about mobility and transportation in a city.
The self/other theory of immunology rests on the xenophobic assumption that ‘others’ are always dangerous and need to be removed.
It is telling that parents in Silicon Valley, who would know, are restricting and even banning screen time for their children. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has just released a new set of guidelines on how much time parents should allow young children to spend with screens: Kids younger than 1 year old should have […]
Monday marks the debut of the third stage of Energy Observer’s revolutionary six-year journey toward a cleaner, hydrogen-fueled future. After four months of updating its equipment and infrastructure, including custom photovoltaic panels, the state-of-the-art ship has embarked from French harbor Saint-Malo, this time heading towards Northern Europe. This first major vessel in the world powered by hydrogen is led by Victorien Erussard, founder and captain of Energy Observer, and Jérôme Delafosse, expedition leader and documentary filmmaker. The odyssey began in Saint-Malo June 26, 2017, as the vessel travels the world’s waterways in search of innovative solutions for the environment. Here’s […]
Two and a half centuries after his birth, the famed German explorer and scientist is still remembered for his brilliant mind and boundary-testing taste for adventure.
Pigeonly is one of several applications that were designed by ex-cons and are transforming the way U.S. prisoners communicate with the outside world.
AI, Big Data and blockchain are some of the expensive tools that are necessary for precision farming, but their contribution to cost-effective and greener agriculture is making them essential to any farmer wanting to produce food for world markets.
Elon Musk’s company has asked Washington to intervene about its top European competitor receiving public subsidies. It’s an odd twist in the larger trade battle, as well as the evolving world of space business.
The era of driverless cars is dawning. But are we really ready to just let our vehicles take over?
MUNICH — Do machines replace humans? Since the beginning of industrialization 200 years ago, we earthlings have been plagued by this fear. From the early uprisings of the weavers to the 1970s “job killer computer” slogan, and up until the 2013 thesis of researchers Michael Osborne and Carl B. Frey, according to whom machines could […]
Researchers are sending remote-controlled aircraft into residential neighborhoods to figure out just who’s burning what in their stoves or fireplaces.
The digital behemoths Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have long sold dreamy ideals. In reality, their business models are very conventional. Their extraordinary power is founded solely on their digital leverage.
-OpEd- PARIS — When Amazon realized that its AI recruiting tool favored men, the company quickly shelved it. Back in 2016, a chatbot released by Microsoft turned into a sex-obsessed neo-Nazi machine in only 24 hours. These incidents, along with others, played right into the hands of all those who say there is too much […]
Outside of Naples, researchers have turned land polluted by illegally-dumped chemicals into a living laboratory.
The digital relationship between the Asian neighbors has rapidly evolved over the past decade, and India must now think strategically about China’s ambitions in the way Western countries have been forced to do.
Dubbed ‘the International,’ a young Egyptian computer programmer had built a program to scrape user data from Facebook. But the same practice is routinely done by the government and large corporations.
Voice messages are unilateral and time-consuming: this is bad communication innovation.
LE MONDE Monstrous Times Call For Monstrous Fiction: A French Manifesto Against the omnipotence of “reality-show novels’ and costume fiction, a group of young French authors want to reassert the novel as a contemporary art. SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG The Real Invisible Threat To Democracy: Poverty Even in economically powerful Germany, poverty threatens the social fabric. And […]
The procurement of raw materials and the difficulties in recycling batteries show that electric vehicles are not as green and sustainable as we’re prone to believe.
LE MONDE Full Translation Of French Anti-#MeToo Manifesto Signed By Catherine Deneuve Some 100 prominent French women artists and intellectuals have issued an open letter in Le Monde condemning the movement to call out inappropriate male behavior that erupted in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. CLARIN Interview With A Recovering Hippie Named Paulo […]
The Earth also rises … On Dec. 24, 1968, on the first human orbit of the Moon, astronaut Williams Anders looked out the window of Apollo 8. Reaching for his camera, and its color film, Anders would capture an image that would change human perspectives of our planet, ourselves and our place in the universe.
Google tried and failed to play the social media game. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the tech giant, which is doing just fine by sharing the tech market with California rival Facebook.
BARCELONA — It’s a large, bright open space, in which 80 people work, sitting behind brand new desks. The grey of the carpet is still pristine, the walls too white, impersonal. Except for a large sticker, whose shape, known throughout the world, provides an indication of what’s going on precisely in this room: it’s a […]
If cars are supercomputers, why are we not programming them for fewer emissions and speed?
Ethical concerns about last week’s CRISPR breakthrough in China are valid. But they can evolve quickly.
This is a story about love, hate and Mark Twain. The object of Twain’s desire (then resentment): the typewriter. Twain first laid eyes on a “newfangled typing machine,” as he called it, sometime in the early 1870s. He was, by then, on his way to becoming the world’s most famous writer and humorist. At the same time, the tools of writing were undergoing a profound transformation — from fountain pens, with their leaking and smudging ink, to the pleasant sound of tapping a key whose corresponding letter was magically stamped to paper. The new technology did not emerge with the […]
Engineers in Antioquia decided to cross-reference data on solar radiation and cloud cover to encourage greater use of solar panels.
Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists gathered in Gangtok, India earlier this month for an unlikely meeting of the minds.
Algorithms can certainly speed things up. But are they an appropriate tool processing residency and asylum claims that are nuanced and complex by nature?
One study says it will take at least 100 years to bridge the global gender gap. And 217 years to close the pay gap. But we can do something now.
-Analysis- CARACAS — Artificial Intelligence is opening up new opportunities for the economy and society. But it will also affect millions of human jobs, and thus poses a huge challenge for public policymakers, warns a 2016 White House report on AI’s projected impact on the U.S. economy. Among other things, the report predicts that AI […]
BEIJING — A video is making the rounds across China’s internet. On a bus in the western city of Xi’an, an elderly man is seen shouting at a pregnant woman that she should give up her seat. “I am an old person! Can’t you see?” His attitude was so appalling that commentators online came down […]
The project ‘The Ocean Cleanup’ wants to use its system to rid the oceans from plastic waste. The founder thinks big about the planet and beyond. And he’s not a jerk.
Wind power has its drawbacks, especially in central German region of Hesse, where developers want to erect generators in wooded areas like the Reinhardswald, of Brothers Grimm fame.
The U.S. web giant may be planning a return to China. But would web users there actually embrace it? An online pull (that mysteriously disappeared after just a few hours) offers some hints.
Since 2011, the Caribbean islands have been attacked by rafts of algae which give off a pungent odor as they decompose.
China’s efforts to maintain control over citizens now include implementing volunteer ‘stability-maintenance information officers.’
-Analysis- MUNICH — As far as industrial strategies and international competition are concerned, there’s no greater contrast than that between Europe’s resignation and China’s iron determination. It’s not surprising that it was China — and not Europe — that proposed to form an alliance against Trump’s raving protectionist madness. With little success: Even Washington’s harassment […]