Feb 05
You’d be forgiven if you thought that the Olympics had just happened—the delayed summer Olympics, postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic, were on a mere six months ago!
Feb 05
Mini-Neptunes and Super-Earths: How puffy planets could be the missing link
Posted in: Today's Chili<img width="1280" height="720" src="https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/puffy-1280×720.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image" alt="Puffy planet illustration" loading="lazy" style="margin: auto;margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%" data-attachment-id="710682" data-permalink="https://www.slashgear.com/mini-neptunes-and-super-earths-how-puffy-planets-could-be-the-missing-link-04710680/puffy/" data-orig-file="https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/puffy.jpg" data-orig-size="1440,810" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="puffy" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="
Adam Makarenko (Keck Observatory)
” data-medium-file=”https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/puffy-1280×720.jpg” data-large-file=”https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/puffy-1280×720.jpg” />When astronomers look at planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets, often they have only minimal information they can use to classify them. Two key factors they often do know are the planets’ size and their mass, from which they can determine their density. This helps to categorize them into groups similar to the planets we know, such as rocky … Continue reading
Feb 05
With the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing underway, there are more ways than ever to watch Team USA and athletes from around the world compete, including in 8K VR. This month, NBCUniversal and parent company Comcast will stream more than 150 hours of interactive content from the games. To watch that coverage, you’ll need a TV Everywhere login and a Quest 2 headset from Meta.
Once you download the NBC Olympics VR by Xfinity app, you can look forward to watching live and on-demand coverage of six sports, including figure skating, hockey and snowboarding from a 180-degree perspective. With some events, NBC will also offer multiple viewpoints of the action. Additionally, the broadcaster plans to stream features and highlights from 10 other sports throughout the Olympics, including alpine skiing, bobsled and speed skating.
If you missed the Opening Ceremony, or want to see it from a new perspective, you can also rewatch the event from the point of view of athletes who took part in the parade of nations. When the 2022 Olympics finish later this month, NBC will offer interactive coverage of the Closing Ceremony too.
If you don’t have access to a Quest 2 headset, you can still enjoy the games in 4K HDR and immersive Dolby Atmos audio. NBCUniversal will stream the higher-resolution broadcasts during primetime and Prime Plus, with figure skating, skiing, snowboarding, hockey, bobsled and other sports set to get the special treatment.
Feb 05
Since its debut in 2015, Apple Music has offered one of the more generous free trial periods in the streaming industry. As a first-time subscriber, you could use the platform to listen to music for free for up to three months before the company asked you to start paying. That’s no longer the case.
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget
In a change spotted by Japanese blog Mac Otakara and subsequently reported by MacRumors, Apple now offers a shorter one-month free trial in many countries where the service is available, including the US, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and Japan. You can already see the change reflected on the Apple Music website. “One month free, then $9.99 per month,” the US portal says when you visit.
At the moment, Apple Music pricing remains the same, with the $5 per month Voice Plan as the most affordable way to access the platform’s library of tracks. The change broadly aligns Apple with competitors like Spotify, which, outside of promos, typically offer one-month free trials to new subscribers.
While we’ll likely never know Apple’s official reason for shortening the trial, there’s a good chance the decision came down to simple economics. When the company first came out with Apple Music, it didn’t pay royalties for tracks users streamed during their free trial period. Apple later famously changed that policy after Taylor Swift published a letter criticizing the company. By shortening the trial period, the company can more quickly recoup the costs of attracting new subscribers to the platform.
Feb 05
Queen Elizabeth Interrupted By Canine Gate Crasher As She Views Mementoes Of Reign
Posted in: Today's Chili“And where did you come from? I know what you want,” the queen chirped as her dog Candy — a cross between a dachshund and a corgi — trotted over to her desk.
Feb 05
Here's What Henry Kissinger Thinks About the Future of Artificial Intelligence
Posted in: Today's Chili
For some, artificial intelligence represents nothing more than one tool among many aimed at increasing productivity and maximizing economic output. For others though, AI looks like more of a destination, a couple of words pointing to a tectonic shift in global society capable of ripping the ground out from under…
Feb 05
We first heard an ethereal, sinister whisper that a live-action Goosebumps TV series might be coming to haunt us back in 2020. But now that whisper has become a piercing scream of utter terror, such as one might make when menaced by a sentient ventriloquist’s dummy, which shrieks, “That live-action Goosebumps TV…
Feb 04
<img width="1280" height="800" src="https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/apple_iphone_se_2020_2-1280×800.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image" alt="iPhone SE (2020)" loading="lazy" style="margin: auto;margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%" data-attachment-id="710691" data-permalink="https://www.slashgear.com/apple-event-for-iphone-se-5g-and-ipad-air-gets-leaked-march-2022-date-04710689/apple_iphone_se_2020_2-2/" data-orig-file="https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/apple_iphone_se_2020_2.jpg" data-orig-size="1440,900" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="apple_iphone_se_2020_2" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="
Chris Davies / SlashGear
” data-medium-file=”https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/apple_iphone_se_2020_2-1152×720.jpg” data-large-file=”https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/apple_iphone_se_2020_2-1280×800.jpg” />Talk of 5G spreading further through Apple’s range continues, and now we may have a date for the company’s first big hardware vent of the year. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, it’s looking like Apple will probably be holding its next big event on – or at least close to – Tuesday, March 8th, 2022. Gurman does warn that, according … Continue reading
Feb 04
The ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 is one of the most interesting so-called “NVIDIA Studio” laptops available on the market. This review shows another facet of the Creative Laptop market that we see skyrocketing in the past couple of years.ASUS has been catering to creative pros for years and is an innovation leader in many ways for that market segment. If anything, most people don’t know enough about ASUS’ history of […]
ASUS ProArt Studiobook 16 Review (5900HX, RTX 3070)
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Feb 04
The NFT marketplace is rife with people buying their own NFTs in order to drive up prices, according to a report released this week by blockchain data firm Chainalysis. Known as “wash trading”, the act of buying and selling a security in order to fool the market was once commonplace on Wall Street, and has been illegal for nearly a century. But the vast, unregulated NFT marketplace has shown to be a golden opportunity for scammers.
The report tracked instances of the same traders selling the same NFTs back and forth at least 25 times, a likely incident of wash trading. It identified a group of 110 alleged NFT wash traders who have made roughly $8.9 million in profit from this practice. Researchers also discovered significant evidence of money laundering in the NFT marketplace in the last half of 2021. The value sent to NFT marketplaces by addresses associated with scams spiked significantly in the third quarter of 2021, worth more than $1 million worth of cryptocurrency, according to the report. Roughly $1.4 million dollars of sales in the fourth quarter of 2021 came from such illicit addresses.
“NFT wash trading exists in a murky legal area. While wash trading is prohibited in conventional securities and futures, wash trading involving NFTs has yet to be the subject of an enforcement action,” wrote the authors of the report.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a new asset class of digital tokens that exist on the blockchain and are primarily purchased with Ethereum, a form of cryptocurrency. The crypto collectibles can consist of anything from a two-dimensional image to a GIF to a song. The NFT marketplace is estimated to be worth anywhere from $7 billion to $44.2 billion. The digital assets skyrocketed in popularity in 2021, and have been embraced by celebrities like Mark Cuban, Tom Brady, and Reese Witherspoon.
Skeptics have questioned the legitimacy and necessity of NFTs as the still relatively new space has spiked in popularity. High-profile NFT sales, such as last year’s record-breaking $69 million purchase of the artist Beeple’s collection, have been increasingly frequent. But since the digital tokens are not a security, they’re not subject to the same US laws and regulations governing stocks, for example. Numerous scams have cropped up in the NFT space in recent months, including counterfeit NFTs and money laundering.
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