Marine biologists have been racing to restore degraded reefs by collecting corals from the wild and breaking them into fragments. This encourages them to grow fast and quickly produces hundreds of smaller corals that can be raised in nurseries and eventually transplanted back onto the reef. But if each fragment is an identical copy with one common parent, any resulting colony is likely to be genetically identical to the rest of the population....

Tether is a controversial ‘stablecoin’ issued by Tether Limited, which formerly claimed each token was backed by one US dollar. However, as previously reported by Hard Fork, an affidavit submitted in May showed that it is only 74 percent backed by cash and equivalents. The case first exploded in early April after NYSAG Letitia James began to build a case to sue Bitfinex and Tether. At the time, James claimed the company behind Tether had minted as much as $900 million worth of the cryptocurrency for Bitfinex....

“Today, we are used to hearing about artificial intelligence. Six years ago, the idea that you simply couldn’t keep all the bad guys out and that companies needed an AI-powered digital immune system to defend against attacks was radical,” Poppy Gustafsson, co-CEO of Darktrace, tells Growth Quarters. Fast-forward several years and Darktrace has become of the leading players in the cybersecurity space, in part due to Gustafsson going against the worst advice she ever received: Being told not to do something in a certain way because it went against convention....

Although scientists have known since the 1850s that some animals have this ability, it is only now becoming clear how it could teach us valuable lessons about human pregnancy, stem cells, and cancer. Which animals can do this? More than 130 species of mammal can pause their pregnancies. The pause can last anywhere between a couple of days and 11 months. In most species (except some bats, who do it a little later) this happens when the embryo is a tiny ball of about 80 cells, before it attaches to the uterus....

Of course it cannot. According to science – and the app’s own description on the marketplace it’s sold – there is no one gay gene. The only thing the “How Gay Are You” app can tell you about yourself, if you buy it, is that you make very poor purchasing decisions. You cannot tell how gay someone is with an app that interprets DNA. Depsite the fact that “gayness” has been linked to genetics, there isn’t a gay gene, group of gay genes, or any other method by which a person or AI could extrapolate “gayness....

According to a note sent to parliament on Monday, Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra and Ferdinand Grapperhaus, Minister of Justice and Security, want to limit the risks associated with cryptocurrencies and make the Netherlands a leader in the fight against money laundering. “Crime cannot pay. Not in the Netherlands, not in Europe, and not globally. This makes it possible for criminals to stay out of the reach of the government and to enjoy those proceeds undisturbed....

The study, from intergovernmental organization the International Transportation Forum (ITF), says fears over e-scooter safety “have been exaggerated.” What’s more, the ITF says that if alternative forms of transport like bikes and e-scooters get people out of cars it will make the roads safer further still. [Read: The UK is finally ready to discuss legalizing e-scooters, with consultations starting February] Figures cited by the ITF suggest most (80%) fatal e-scooter and bicycle crashes involve a motor vehicle (car or motorbike) too....

For more than a century, researchers have explored the idea of ocean thermal energy conversion. There’s nothing fundamentally new to the idea of extracting power from temperature differences. In fact, the underlying technology is similar to the way coal, gas and geothermal power plants create electricity, by using vapor to spin a turbine. The challenge is finding the right spot, where the temperature differences make it worthwhile. That means relatively close to the equator — think north of Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and off the coast of southern Japan....

Digital entrepreneurs are moving in a fast world. Transactions happen almost instantaneously and those fleet-footed small businesses need to know about it. From orders to payments to cleared transactions, having a firm overview of your economic health the minute anything new tips your balance sheet is vital. Unfortunately, if you’re getting payments from multiple PayPal and Stripe customers and accounts, keeping track of it all isn’t nearly as speedy as many would like....

According to Etsy’s announcement, it’s instituting a new Offsite Ads program, in which it’ll promote items on sites like Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Whenever a buyer clicks on an ad and buys the product shown, Etsy will collect either a 12% or 15% fee on the sale on top of the existing transaction fee (depending on how much your shop has earned in the last year). Etsy calls this “risk-free” because you don’t pay the fee if the person who clicked on the ad doesn’t buy the product....

Update (01/11/2021): Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said in his PowerOn newsletter that Apple is planning to reveal its pricy mixed reality headset “with advanced chips, displays, sensor, and avatar-based features as early as next year.” It’s no secret that Apple’s investing in mixed reality. After introducing LiDAR sensors in iPhones and iPad, it seems the company’s readying to release a standalone device in the coming months, Bloomberg reports. The publication’s Mark Gurman noted that the Cupertino-based tech giant is planning to release a mixed reality headset in a few months through an in-person event....

This article is Part Three, the final of a series I’ve been writing on lithium-ion battery fires in escooters and ebikes. Part One explored the incidence of battery fires, while Part Two looked at causation. Today I’m focusing on prevention. Let’s jump in: Prevent the fire from occurring What if we could prevent a fire from happening in the first instance? The Thermarestor device offers preventative maintenance. The device monitors detection points and detects heat....

Today, a user in r/iOSBeta subreddit noted the company’s algorithm muted the word ‘fuck’ when recommending a title for the handwritten note. Apple seems to have introduced this feature in the new iOS 13 beta. I also tried this out on my phone, running the same software, and Apple did indeed censored the word ‘fuck.’ However, Apple doesn’t seem to be muting every cuss word. For instance, it didn’t mute ‘ass....

One of the primary culprits is the most obvious one: many Americans still aren’t wearing masks. Facebook now wants to try and convince more people to wear a mask by prominently displaying an alert atop people’s news feeds on Instagram and Facebook. You’ll see the alert along with links to Facebook’s coronavirus information center as well as the CDC’s official coronavirus page. Let’s be honest — if people are ignoring the death of fellow Americans because of their ‘freedom’ to not wear a mask, I doubt a message on their Facebook pages is going to do much....

And it is no wonder when you consider the size of the company, its technical capabilities, and most importantly the large volume of data that Facebook has collected about its users. After all, research shows that Facebook knows us better than our mums, so why wouldn’t it live up to its goal of creating “meaningful relationships”? But four years later, it hasn’t taken over the market – most people have simply forgotten about it....

A report by the New York Times noted that the suit alleged Facebook of violating Illinois biometric privacy law by collecting data of millions of users without their consent for the company’s photo tagging product. While the company denied the charges, it agreed to settle because it thought “it was in the best interest of our community and our shareholders to move past this matter. [Read: Shanghai is testing facial recognition at pharmacies to catch drug abusers] The lawsuit against Facebook was filed in 2015 by Illinois users....

The Federal Bureau of Investigation suspects Long Blockchain Corp., as it is now known, may be guilty of insider trading, Quartz reports. According to a request for a search warrant, the FBI is also searching for evidence of securities fraud. According to the warrant, FBI agents linked Long Blockchain Corp. to a separate fraud case involving securities fraud at separate firm. Two individuals, Oliver Lindsay and Gannon Giguiere, were arrested in relation to this case....

The company today unveiled a series of prototypes that give us a glimpse of what this insane amount of foldables could look like. The most eye-catching device is the S-foldable OLED display, which can be folded not just once, but twice! Unfurled, the 7.2-inch screen functions as a tablet, but double-fold it twice, and you’ve got yourself a smartphone. Another multi-purpose foldable that Samsung showcased is a 17-inch OLED panel....

UK-based regional bus operator Warrington’s Own Buses has installed air-cleaning devices from technology company AirLabs in driver cabins across its entire operational fleet as part of a COVID-19 safety drive. The ‘AirBubbl’ filters more than 95 percent of airborne viruses and contaminated particulate matter and floods the vehicle with over 30,000 liters of clean air every hour. AirLabs, which was founded in 2014, is also developing related technology – AiroSafe – which it says will create a “personal air space” for every passenger seat....

If you’ve ever done any live streaming, or even if you do regular video calling, you’ve probably thought about exactly what the person on the other end of that camera is seeing. And we don’t just mean you. We mean what’s going on behind you. We mean that mess of dirty clothes on the floor. Or the bad lighting. Or even just those ugly utilitarian while walls. The process of green screening cleans up your background, but green screens take up space and can cost time, money and energy to get right....