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Tesla opens Model Y pre-orders in the UK for early 2022 delivery
The Long Range All-Wheel-Drive model starts at £54,990.
The UK is considering starting a digital currency
The Bank of England and HM Treasury are jointly exploring a central bank digital currency that would co-exist alongside traditional cash and deposits.
Amazon workers plan Black Friday strikes and protests in 15 countries
Demands include improved pay and safety conditions, and transparency over privacy and user data.
Vivo phones are coming to Europe
Vivo has expanded its reach and announced its entry into the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. The Chinese tech manufacturer has also presented its first European line-up at an online media briefing broadcast from Dusseldorf, Germany, revealing that it’s hoping to win new fans in the region with the Vivo X51 5G. Aside from the new flagship, Vivo is making its European debut with a series of mid—range smartphones: the Y70, Y20s and Y11s.
Disney+ will hit the UK and four other European countries March 31st
Disney+ will officially debut in the US, Canada and the Netherlands November 12th, and Australia and New Zealand a week later. The rest of the world will need to wait a little longer to stream the likes of Avengers: Endgame and The Mandalorian on the service. But Disney fans in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain might want to mark March 31st on their calendars. That's when Disney+ will land in those countries.
YouTube will reduce conspiracy theory recommendations in the UK
YouTube plans to tweak its recommendation algorithm to cut back on conspiracy theory videos in the UK, eight months after it conducted a similar experiment in the US. The platform is in the middle of rolling out the update to its British users, a spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. It's unclear when exactly the change will occur.
How NASA will defend the Earth against plagues from outer space
In the summer of 1957, the Earth stood witness as a meteorite cratered in rural Pennsylvania, bringing with it a people-eating plague never seen: an alien amoeba with the taste for human flesh. While we had Steve McQueen around for the first invasion, humanity is now defended against microbial marauders from outer space by NASA and its international counterparts.
One week with Microsoft Cortana
"Never mind it. Never mind," I cursed, looking down on the poorly formed monstrosity that gazed back at me with a singular pulsing eye. No, not at me -- through me. This was not my trusty Google Assistant, with whom I shared a deep logistical and day-planning-based bond. This thing barely looked like the AI to which I was accustomed and -- even then -- only in passing. This alien program appears to have eaten my digital assistant and started wearing its skin -- and I'm about to spend the next week having it organize my life.
Will we be able to control the killer robots of tomorrow?
From ship-hunting Tomahawk missiles and sub-spying drone ships to semi-autonomous UAV swarms and situationally-aware reconnaissance robots, the Pentagon has long sought to protect its human forces with the use of robotic weapons. But as these systems gain ever-greater degrees of intelligence and independence, their increasing autonomy has some critics worried that humans are ceding too much power to devices whose decision-making processes we don't fully understand (and which we may not be entirely able to control).
France wants autonomous high-speed trains by 2023
According to reports from FranceInfo, the SNCF, France's national state-owned railway company, announced on Friday that it is actively working to develop and deploy autonomous trains that will operate along its high-speed TGV lines by 2023. The so-called "drone trains" should begin initial trials some time in 2019.
AI is already beating us at our own game
Although modern AI systems still have trouble deciding whether or not to flip that stranded tortoise in their path, they're already outpacing the intellectual capabilities of their creators in a wide variety of fields. From beating grandmaster Go players to outguessing cardiac surgeons, lipreading to audio transcription, neural networks and machine learning have already surpassed humans -- and that list is only going to grow longer.
'WannaCry' ransomware attack spreads worldwide (update)
England's healthcare system came under a withering cyberattack Friday morning, with "at least 25" hospitals across the country falling prey to ransomware that locked doctors and employees out of critical systems and networks. It's now clear that this is not a (relatively) isolated attack but rather a single front in a massive digital assault. Update 2 (5/13): In response to infections like the ones that crippled parts of the NHS system, Microsoft is releasing a patch for unsupported systems including Windows XP, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2003.
Robot that performs surgery inside your eye passes clinical trial
The next time you go under the knife for retinal surgery, it may not be a human hand holding the blade. That's because a revolutionary surgical system developed University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, which just passed its first set of clinical trials, is able to perform these intricate operations better than even the steadiest surgeon.
AI can predict heart attacks more accurately than doctors
An estimated 20 million people die each year due to cardiovascular disease. Luckily, a team of researchers from the University of Nottingham in the UK have developed a machine-learning algorithm that can predict your likelihood of having a heart attack or stroke as well as any doctor.
After Math: Merry Christmahanukwanzakkahs
It's been a festive week and, for once, not a complete socio-political trainwreck. I know, I'm just as surprised as you are, but some good things really did happen. Like, we found an effective vaccine against Ebola, Super Mario Run broke iOS download records, both the UK and France have come to embrace renewables and Canada set some impressive broadband speed rules. Numbers, because how else are we going to count down the million years until Sweet Meteor O'Death finally comes calling?
Amazon's 'Grand Tour' is the most pirated show ever (update)
Amazon's The Grand Tour, a reboot of the BBC's hit show Top Gear, has been an unmitigated success, with fans with its first episode alone garnering "millions" of views. It's also a hit with pirates who, instead of paying the annual $100 fee for Amazon Prime, have downloaded the first three episodes at unprecedented rates.
UK bookstores found selling banned US bomb-making handbooks
Three major online retailers in the UK have been listing a number of bomb-making manuals on their websites, according to The Guardian.
Google's Daydream View VR headset is available for pre-order
Google announced via Twitter on Thursday that its forthcoming VR rig, the Pixel-powered Daydream View is now available for pre-order. The offer currently only extends to customers in the US, the United Kingdom and Germany. The Daydream will retail for $80 and can be ordered from either Verizon or Google itself. The headset relies on the new Google Pixel phone to generate VR images so you're going to want to make sure you have one of those before plunking down your cash for this gadget. The headset is slated to ship in November.
'No Man's Sky' is being investigated for false advertising
After No Man's Sky hit shelves in early August, complaints arose around bugs and oversights made by its small studio Hello Games. But as the weeks wore on, a new uproar struck out at the differences between concept videos and the released game, which some players and press believe lacked many features promised in its early promotional material. Now the UK-based Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is launching an investigation into those disparities.
DraftKings loses its exclusive ESPN ad deal
Things keep getting worse for DraftKings, the embattled daily fantasy sports site. Not only is it currently under investigation (or already banned) by a number of state attorney generals for violating online gambling statutes and losing payment processing partners, Yahoo Finance reported on Tuesday that it's losing a deal to be the exclusive daily fantasy advertiser on ESPN.
