Category: Tech

To the people of Mbiabet Esieyere and Mbiabet Udouba in Nigeria’s deep south, sundown would mean children doing their homework by the glow of kerosene lamps, and the faint thrum of generators emanating from homes that could afford to run them. Like many rural communities, these two villages of fishermen and farmers in the community of Mbiabet, tucked away in clearings within a dense palm forest, had never been connected to the country’s national electricity grid. Most of the residents had never heard of solar power either. When, in 2021, a renewable-energy company proposed installing a solar “mini-grid” in their community, the villagers scoffed at the idea of the sun powering their homes. “We didn’t imagine that something [like this] can exist,” says Solomon Andrew Obot, a resident in his early 30s. The small installation of solar panels, batteries and transmission lines proposed by the company Prado Power would service 180 households in Mbiabet Esieyere and Mbiabet Udouba, giving them significantly more reliable electricity for a fraction of the cost of diesel generators. Village leaders agreed to the installation, though many residents remained skeptical. But when the panels were set up in 2022, lights blinked on in the brightly painted two-room homes and tan mud huts dotted sparsely through the community. At a village meeting in September, locals erupted into laughter as they recalled walking from house to house, turning on lights and plugging in phone chargers. “I [was] shocked,” Andrew Obot says. Read full article Comments

Anthony and Joe Russo’s new sci-fi adventure film, The Electric State, is adapted from the graphic novel by Swedish artist/designer Simon Stålenhag. So naturally the directors wanted to create their own distinctive look and tone—complete with a colorful array of quirky misfit robots who team up with their human counterparts to take down an evil corporation. (Some spoilers below but no major reveals.) The Electric State is Stålenhag’s third book, published in 2018. Like much of work, it’s set in a dystopian, ravaged landscape: a reimagined America in an alternate 1990s where a war between robots and humans has devastated the country. Paragraphs of text, accompanied by larger artworks, tell the story of a teen girl named Michelle (Milly Bobby Brown) who must travel across the country with her robot companion, Cosmo (Alan Tudyk), to find her long-lost genius brother, Christopher (Woody Norman), while being pursued by a federal agent (Giancarlo Esposito). Read full article Comments

Biohybrid robots work by combining biological components like muscles, plant material, and even fungi with non-biological materials. While we are pretty good at making the non-biological parts work, we’ve always had a problem with keeping the organic components alive and well. This is why machines driven by biological muscles have always been rather small and simple—up to a couple centimeters long and typically with only a single actuating joint. “Scaling up biohybrid robots has been difficult due to the weak contractile force of lab-grown muscles, the risk of necrosis in thick muscle tissues, and the challenge of integrating biological actuators with artificial structures,” says Shoji Takeuchi, a professor at the Tokyo University, Japan. Takeuchi led a research team that built a full-size, 18 centimeter-long biohybrid human-like hand with all five fingers driven by lab-grown human muscles. Keeping the muscles alive Out of all the roadblocks that keep us from building large-scale biohybrid robots, necrosis has probably been the most difficult to overcome. Growing muscles in a lab usually means a liquid medium to supply nutrients and oxygen to muscle cells seeded on petri dishes or applied to gel scaffoldings. Since these cultured muscles are small and ideally flat, nutrients and oxygen from the medium can easily reach every cell in the growing culture. Read full article Comments

Online Trump supporters have embraced a unique form of irony that is hard to parse — and easy to deploy with new technologies.

A Falcon 9 rocket launched four astronauts safely into orbit on Friday evening, marking the official beginning of the Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station. Although any crew launch into orbit is notable, this mission comes with an added bit of importance as its success clears the way for two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to finally return home from space after a saga spanning nine months. Friday’s launch came two days after an initial attempt was scrubbed on Wednesday evening. This was due to a hydraulic issue with the ground systems that handle the Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 39A in Florida. Read full article Comments

Since Amazon announced plans for a generative AI version of Alexa, we were concerned about user privacy. With Alexa+ rolling out to Amazon Echo devices in the coming weeks, we’re getting a clearer view at the privacy concessions people will have to make to maximize usage of the AI voice assistant and avoid bricking functionality of already-purchased devices. In an email sent to customers today, Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally and, therefore, avoid sending voice recordings to Amazon’s cloud. Amazon apparently sent the email to users with “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” enabled on their Echo. Starting on March 28, recordings of everything spoken to the Alexa living in Echo speakers and smart displays will automatically be sent to Amazon and processed in the cloud. Attempting to rationalize the change, Amazon’s email said: Read full article Comments

For nearly two decades, TNW Conference has been a launchpad for the next big things in tech. The likes of Slack, Wise, Bolt, and Trello all made their mark on our stage before becoming global brands. Visionary leaders from Google, Meta, and Reddit have joined them to share the strategies behind their success, while star speakers Edward Snowden, will.i.am, and Lila Ibrahim have explored the frontiers of innovation.  On June 19-20, we will return to the iconic NDSM venue in Amsterdam with a renewed focus on our founding mission: elevating the startups and scaleups that will change the world. Today,… This story continues at The Next Web

Edge Impulse, a TNW community member that produces an AI platform for developers, has been acquired by American chip giant Qualcomm for an undisclosed sum.  Qualcomm said it had bought Edge Impulse to boost its machine learning software capabilities, particularly for its Dragonwing line of AI-powered chips.  Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm’s head of IoT, said the acquisition would strengthen his firm’s “leadership in AI” and bolster “critical sectors such as retail, security, energy and utilities, supply chain management, and asset management.” Under the deal, Edge Impulse will integrate its operations with Qualcomm’s, but maintain its own offices, employees, and website.     “Our team… This story continues at The Next Web

Test your Drupal website with Cypress cobadger Wed, 04/26/2023 – 03:00 If you don’t include tests in your Drupal development, chances are it’s because you think it adds complexity and expense without benefit. Cypress is an open source tool with many benefits: Reliably tests anything that runs in a web browser Works on any web platform (it’s great for testing projects using front-end technologies like React) Highly extensible Increasingly popular Easy to learn and implement Protects against regression as your projects become more complex Can make your development process more efficient This article covers three topics to help you start testing your Drupal project using Cypress: Installing Cypress Writing and running basic tests using Cypress Customizing Cypress for Drupal Install Cypress For the purposes of this tutorial I’m assuming that you have built a local dev environment for your Drupal project using the `drupal/recommended-project` project. Although details on creating such a project are outside of the scope of this piece, I recommend Getting Started with Lando and Drupal 9. Your project has at least this basic structure: vendor/ web/ .editorconfig .gitattributes composer.json composer.lock The cypress.io site has complete installation instructions for various environments. For this article, I installed Cypress using npm. Initialize your project using the command npm init. Answer the questions that Node.js asks you, and then you will have a package.json file that looks something like this: { “name”: “cypress”, “version”: “1.0.0”, “description”: “Installs Cypress in a test project.”, “main”: “index.js”, “scripts”: { “test”: “echo “Error: no test specified” && exit 1″ }, “author”: “”, “license”: “ISC” } Install Cypress in your project: $ npm install cypress –save-dev Run Cypress for the first time: $ npx cypress open Because you haven’t added a config or any scaffolding files to Cypress, the Cypress app displays the welcome screen to help you configure the project. To configure your project for E2E (end-to-end) testing, click the Not Configured button for E2E Testing. Cypress adds some files to

What’s new in GNOME 44? Jim Hall Tue, 04/25/2023 – 03:00 I use GNOME as my primary desktop environment on my Linux PC at home. GNOME gives me an easy-to-use graphical desktop that provides the flexibility I need yet doesn’t get in my way when I focus on my work. GNOME recently released GNOME 44 with a bunch of new features. I reached out to the GNOME team to ask about the latest version and what was in it. Here’s what team members Caroline Henriksen (brand manager), Matthias Clasen (GNOME developer and release team member), and Allan Day (design team) had to share. New GNOME features Jim Hall: What are some of the new and updated features in GNOME 44 that you’re most excited about? GNOME Team: I am very excited to see how fresh and modern our user interfaces look. Not just in the core apps like Files (the file manager, Nautilus) but also in our Settings, which have seen a lot of work in the last cycle—many Settings panels have been improved. If you have a chance, you should try the new Mouse & Touchpad panel and enjoy the animated illustrations. There’s a lot to like in GNOME 44. For example, I think that a lot of people are going to be really happy about the new grid view in the file chooser, as well as being able to easily connect devices from the new Bluetooth menu in the quick settings. Jim: The release notes mention GNOME Circle and that a few new apps have been added. What is GNOME Circle? Team: GNOME Circle is a collection of fantastic apps that use the GNOME platform. It’s GNOME’s way of promoting the best apps that use our technologies and supporting app developers. To be included in GNOME Circle, an app has to meet a set of requirements. Once it does, the developers get things like extra publicity and GNOME Foundation membership. That, in turn