Monthly Archives: November 2022

The angle at which dogs pee inspired optimal design for splash-free urinal

Enlarge / Can you spot the urinal design with the optimal splash-reducing angle? It’s the one second from right. (credit: Mia Shi/University of Waterloo) Scientists at the University of Waterloo have determined the optimal design for a splash-free urinal: a tall, slender porcelain structure with curves reminiscent of a nautilus shell, playfully dubbed the “Nauti-loo.”…

American EVs reduced gasoline consumption by just 0.54% in 2021

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Electric vehicles have never been more popular. Just about every automaker is in the midst of an electrification effort, spurred on by impending government regulations around the world aimed at reducing our dependency on fossil fuels. But is the movement having an effect? Here in the US, plug-in vehicles are selling…

Why researchers are teaching AI to play ‘Minecraft’

An artist’s approximation of a nuclear power plant model made in Minecraft. Planet Minecraft Nuclear fusion and Minecraft may have more in common than all the countless hours you can invest in them. As MIT Technology Review reported over the weekend, the artificial intelligence non-profit OpenAI recently built the world’s most advanced Minecraft-playing bot by…

Microsoft 365 faces darkening GDPR compliance clouds after German report

Legal trouble may be brewing for Microsoft in the European Union where an assessment by a working group of German data protection regulators that’s spent around two years looking into a swathe of privacy concerns attached to its cloud-based 365 productivity products — including by engaging directly with the tech giant to try to get…

Twitter says crowdsourced fact-checking system updated to better address ‘low quality’ contributions

Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-checking system, Community Notes, just received an update that the company claims will help to identify more “low quality” fact checks — meaning, the notes written by Twitter users that are appended to tweets to provide further clarification and context. As a result, more of the contributors who write these unhelpful annotations will…