2026-08-03
Alibaba's new Qwen model is also taking your job, but this time it's great
Alibaba is marketing its new AI model Qwen 3.8 with a video that shows the AI working while a person enjoys their hobbies. It's a deliberate contrast to the job loss warnings from OpenAI and Anthropic. Of course, it's still just marketing.<br /> The article Alibaba's new Qwen model is also taking your job, but this time it's great appeared first on The Decoder. [...]
2026-08-03
Solar energy just had its best-ever month in the UK — as the first plug-in solar kits prepare to go on sale within weeks
Solar energy just set a new record in the UK, supplying more power to the grid than in any previous month. And it will soon get another boost from the legalisation of plug-in solar in weeks. [...]
2026-08-03
No more boring back-to-school laptops: The 15.6" Lenovo LOQ with Ryzen 5 processor and RTX 4050 graphics is $300 off — and it's a dream for aspiring creators
Heading back to school? This Lenovo LOQ laptop with a Ryzen 5 processor and RTX 4050 graphics is $300 off right now. [...]
2026-08-03
Be careful, your computer might be lying to you
Imagine handing over a complex set of construction plans to your building contractor, fresh off your fancy $12,000 Xerox WorkCentre scanner/copier/printer (link in German), only to find there were errors in the blueprints that weren’t on the original. Or, imagine passing a set of budget figures to the CFO of your company that weren’t the ones you fed into your WorkCentre, one of Xerox’s mid [...]
2026-08-03
Americans don’t want to live to be 120—even if they could
Radical life extension—pushing humans’ maximum age well beyond the natural average—is all the rage. Self-proclaimed futurist Ray Kurzweil wants us to hit the supplements and reset our biochemistry, while theoretical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey says one of us alive today will live 1,000 years thanks to new anti-aging techniques that he believes will soon emerge. Russian media millionaire Dmi [...]
2026-08-03
Hippies and libertarians have become unlikely allies in a war against solar power
A weird thing is happening with solar power. For years derided as a sideshow energy source that was only for environmentalists, solar is now being seen as an imminent threat to both the mainline energy industry and at least one national economy. As a result, those harmless people with the shiny panels on their rooftops are suddenly being seen as dangerous freeloaders and, in some potential bellwet [...]
2026-08-03
You can now visit 85,000 square miles of the UK in Minecraft
Visiting Great Britain just got cheaper and a whole lot more low-resolution. The Ordnance Survey (OS), the official mapping body of the country, just made available a free, open version of its digital mapping data for England, Scotland and Wales as a downloadable map for the wildly popular and innovative game Minecraft. [...]
2026-08-03
It’s stronger than steel and paper thin, but graphene isn’t living up to its promise
If the film classic The Graduate were being made today, it’s likely that, in delivering his iconic line, Walter Brooke would lean into Dustin Hoffman’s ear and offer a new career path: “graphene,” instead of “plastics.” Perceived as the next big thing in science and technology, graphene, a super-thin layer of graphite, excites many with its promise of technological breakthroughs. It co [...]