Science and Technology

TikTok may be adding a new skill to its resume: the disco time machine. The social platform, normally populated by countless Gen Z dancers – mostly in short choreographed routines that have been practiced and perfected – has recently been infused with the energy of a surprising demographic: their Gen X parents. In viral videos, adult children ask their parents to dance as they would to the 1984 song “Smalltown Boy,” by British synth-pop band Bronski Beat. Most of the posts are tagged #momdancechallenge, #daddancechallenge or #80sdancechallenge and have amassed tens of millions of views. The reactions were perhaps unexpected,…

Apple announced that later this year it will improve messaging between iPhone and Android users by adopting advanced communications services, a standard that Google and others built into their messaging apps years ago. Texts sent between iPhone and Android will remain green, but images and videos will be higher quality. Losing your Apple wallet For iPhones, the reference app for making mobile payments in shops is Apple Wallet and for Android users the equivalent app is Google Wallet. The experience of using each wallet app was identical: I loaded my credit cards and the Clipper card for Bay Area Rapid…

California lawmakers last month advanced about 30 new AI measures aimed at protecting consumers and jobs, one of the largest efforts yet to regulate the new technology. The bills aim to impose the toughest nationwide restrictions on artificial intelligence, which some technologists warn could kill entire categories of jobs, throw elections into chaos with misinformation and pose national security risks. California's proposals, many of which have won broad support, include rules to prevent AI tools from discriminating in housing and health services. They also aim to protect intellectual property and jobs. The California legislature, which is expected to vote on…

Spending time in cemeteries and libraries may not be everyone's idea of ​​summer fun, but for those interested in finding their roots, gathering information about their ancestors AND a “family” holiday. Sure, genealogy sites have made researching ancestral history much easier with digitized record archives, family tree-building software, and community forums. Hand Nothing it's online. As you visit libraries, archives, and cemeteries in search of your roots, keep your smartphone or tablet handy—it can help with translation tools, document scanners, and more. Here are some tips that can make your research trips more efficient. Decipher the text Old newspapers, religious…

A closer look, however, would have revealed that individual BNN journalists were publishing long stories as many as multiple times a minute, writing in generic prose familiar to anyone who has tinkered with the AI ​​chatbot ChatGPT. BNN's "About Us" page featured an image of four children looking at a computer, some bearing the gnarled fingers that are a telltale sign of an AI-generated image. The ease with which the site and its errors entered the ecosystem for legitimate news highlights a growing concern: AI-generated content is disrupting, and often poisoning, the supply of information online. Many traditional news organizations…