— Twitch Sings (@TwitchSings) September 4, 2020 The feature was really more of a game — a Rock Band-ish game, to be precise. If you’ve never played it, essentially the streamer would sing along to a song of choice, and their viewers could request certain songs or challenges and cheer the streamer on. While Twitch Sings hasn’t exactly been the site’s biggest draw, I did see streamers doing it as a novelty on community nights and for charity streams....

The company’s product lead, Kayvon Beykpour, tweeted today that the social network is rolling out a test that lets you see retweets with comments — meaning all quote retweets. When you’ll tap on the retweets label of a tweet, you’ll be able to see retweets with and without comments. — Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) April 23, 2020 [Read: Here’s how to enable 2FA to keep your Nintendo Switch safe] If you can’t see this feature, for now, you can follow our guide to use the QuotedReplies account and see all quoted tweets....

At the end of February, an impassioned op-ed appeared in The Chicago Crusader, a well-established Black newspaper in the city. Titled “Why Independent Workers Want to Stay Independent,” the op-ed argued that gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft are a “lifeline” to communities of color by providing “a flexible way to work.” One week later the exact same op-ed was published in the bilingual El Dia Newspaper. Two months later, a version of it appeared again in Crain’s Chicago Business newspaper....

Uber confirmed the deal in a Monday press release after a flurry of reports over the weekend. The acquisition comes less than a month after Uber’s talks to buy out Postmates rival GrubHub fell through, leading the European JustEats to acquire GrubHub instead. The company noted it intends to keep the “consumer-facing Postmates app running separately,” but it’ll be backed by a combined merchant and delivery network. According to Uber, this should ultimately lead to more consumer exposure for restaurants — and hopefully (for Uber) it also boosts the service’s overall market share....

Bearing a green strip down the left side, they’re easily distinguishable from the regular number plates. This means the public can identify these people as the saints of sustainable transport they are. At least, that’s what the government thought. Green number plates will help increase awareness of cleaner vehicles on our roads, demonstrating that a more environmentally friendly transport future is within our grasp. #ZEVs pic.twitter.com/tZ0OrxI8b3 — Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) December 8, 2020 But… it turns out that the message wasn’t so well received by the drivers....

“This year we’re going to put our trust in teachers rather than algorithms,” said Education Secretary Gavin Williamson. The decision will come as a relief to the thousands of students who last year initially had their marks downgraded by a statistical model, after tests were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Around 40% of students were marked down from their predicted grades by the algorithm, which used a formula based on a school’s historical results and each pupil’s attainment....

But last month the grant was scrapped with immediate effect. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, given that the amount buyers were able to claim back had gradually been whittled down from £5,000 to £1,500; or that it was recently available only for new vehicles costing less than £32,000 (the average cost of electric cars is around £43,000). In fact, the government had been trying to scrap the grant completely for a while....

In short The bill requires all passenger and light-duty vehicles sold or registered in 2030 or later to be powered by electricity. That’s five years earlier than California, which has been seen as a progressive trendsetter in the US. But not anymore! It seems Washington is set to take that crown. An important detail It sounds simple enough, but there is a caveat, and the state isn’t simply banning cars. The new bill runs alongside the roll-out of a road-usage charge....

Musk’s Neuralink startup posted a video today of a primate playing Pong with its mind. The nine-year-old macaque, called Pager, has a Neuralink implanted in his brain. Pager was first trained to play Pong with a joystick in return for a banana smoothie reward. As he played, his neural activity was captured by a 1,024 electrode device, called the N1 Link. This data was transmitted to a decoder that mapped Pager’s neural patterns to his joystick movements....

The series was first introduced back in 2012, during Ubisoft’s annual E3 press conference. The reveal trailer for the series’ first instalment blew the gaming audience away. Graphically the first trailer was miles ahead of its competition, and the gameplay looked equally futuristic. We saw the first game’s protagonist, Aiden Pearce, make his way through a futuristic version of Chicago, hacking everything from billboards, to bridges, to traffic lights, to every single pedestrian walking down the streets....

In an interview with the Financial Times, Waymo’s Chief Executive John Krafcik said the process of developing autonomous vehicles is an “extraordinary grind.” Krafcik goes on to say that “it’s a bigger challenge than launching a rocket and putting it into orbit around the Earth,” because “it needs to be done safely over and over again.” Whereas, with rockets, you only need it to be safe once, whilst there are people on board....

In May, when the company released its first teaser, we got to know just a few things. It’s an SUV. It has a beautiful name. It’s called Solterra, from the combination of the Latin words “sun” (sol) and “earth” (terra) to “represent Subaru’s commitment to deliver traditional SUV capabilities in an environmentally responsible package.” It features a new, dedicated all-electric platform named the e-SUBARU Global Platform. It’s created in partnership with Toyota....

Examples are all too easy to find. In Burkina Faso’s largest university, the University of Ouagadougou, 99% of physics students are men. In Germany, women comprise only 24% of physics PhD graduates — creeping up from 21% in 2017. No women graduated in physical sciences at the University of El Salvador between 2017 and 2020. Australia fares little better. Australian National University Professor Lisa Kewley forecasts that on current settings, it will take 60 years for women to comprise just a third of professional astronomers....

However, Kodak’s latest pump was remarkably short-lived; after shooting to $13.06 in less than an hour, Kodak stock fell quickly to close 8% up by the end of the day. This represented roughly $210 million gained and lost from Kodak’s market value within a single trading session, after fighting to maintain a market cap above $90 million just one month ago. While absurd, those movements are tiny compared to the monstrous 2,000% rally sparked by Kodak’s $765 million government loan to fund an ambitious pivot to producing basic ingredients for drugs....

There’s nothing quite like a global pandemic to separate competent leaders from those who are merely in charge. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, is one of the former. He’s spent years working with leading medical experts to develop a measured response to a situation exactly like the one we’re in. Despite the fact he retired from his leadership positions at Microsoft so he could pursue philanthropic endeavors with his non-profit organization, The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, Gates has become big tech’s defacto pandemic leader....

Do they want press releases or embargoes? How can I, as well as other PRs and startup representatives, actually be useful for reporters? My team and I launched a survey to find out the answers, and it seems “proof” is the most important factor reporters pay attention to, and “lack of credibility” is the primary reason a pitch is turned down. So if you’re a fellow PR person, or perhaps a founder looking to create some buzz around your startup, then I suggest you pay close attention to what we found....

Google ‘cryptocurrency’ and the likelihood is you’ll see ‘exit scam’ somewhere in the results. But, what are they, how do they work, and more importantly, how can you spot one? What’s an exit scam? Put simply, an exit scam is a fraudulent operation orchestrated by unethical cryptocurrency promoters who disappear with investors’ funds during or in the aftermath of an initial coin offering (ICO). To do so, the scammers typically launch a new cryptocurrency based on a promising concept....

While we reported on this feature back in October, it originally only applied to group conversations. The most recent Beta includes code that suggests the feature will arrive for private chats as well, allowing you to set messages to self-destruct after an hour, a day, a week, a month, or a year. Credit: WABetaInfo The current implementation is less robust than the way the feature is implemented in other apps such as Messenger or Telegram, which allow you to create separate secret conversations with contact and give you more control over how long a message will remain....

What’s weird about it though, is that I’ve been convinced this isn’t just a cheap marketing stunt. It’s actually a great lesson for startups on the magic that can be unlocked when you stay true to your founding ideals… it’s also just great marketing. But before diving into the weird inception of Huboo’s corporate bard (always fun to keep some suspense), we need to explore the company’s original vision that led to it....

I understand the reasoning behind not doing a big product update on a Friday. The reasons may be technical but also tactical: all the teams involved in a big launch need to ensure there is a proper communication strategy, everyone is ready to answer questions from customers and the press, and the technical team is around to monitor and troubleshoot any issues. ‘No Friday deployments’ is an anti-pattern However, the phrase “We don’t deploy on Fridays” sounds unprofessional to me....