Lost at the bottom of the North Sea almost eight millennia ago following the end of the ice age, a vast land area between England and southern Scandinavia -- the home to thousands of stone age settlers -- is about to be rediscovered by scientists. From a report: Marine experts, scientists and archaeologists have spent the past 15 years meticulously mapping thousands of kilometres under water in the hope of unearthing lost tribes of prehistoric Britain. On Wednesday a crew of British and Belgian scientists set off on their voyage across the North Sea to reconstruct the ancient Mesolithic landscape hidden beneath the waves for 7,500 years. The area was submerged when thousands of cubic miles of sub-Arctic ice started to melt and the sea levels began to rise worldwide at that time.

The ancient country, known as Doggerland, which could once have had great plains with rich soils, formed an important land bridge between Britain and northern Europe. It was long believed to have been hit by catastrophic flooding. Using seabed mapping data the team is planning to produce a detailed 3D chart which will indicate the rivers, lakes, hills and coastlines of the country. Specialist survey ships will take core sediment samples from selected areas to extract millions of fragments of DNA from the area's plants and animals.

Intel announced today that it is opening new Project Athena Open Labs in Taipei, Shanghai, and Folsom California, to test and certify the new Athena designs that will come to market in 2020. From a report: Intel announced Project Athena, a new initiative designed to user in the next wave of powerful laptops, at CES 2019. The program is reminiscent of Intel's Ultrabook initiative that pushed the transition to thin-and-light designs, but Athena focuses on increasing performance and responsiveness within the form factors we're accustomed to, meaning the company isn't pushing for thinner devices. Athena-based designs will also deliver up to 20 hours of battery life, near-instant resumption from sleep states (the laptop will pop to life immediately when you open the lid), 5G connectivity, and AI technologies to improve productivity. These new devices will come to market from laptop OEMs, but Intel will co-develop and certify the products.

It's easy to see this push for what it is: a new class of laptops to address the rise of Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Always Connected PCs (ACPCs), but that should help usher in a new wave of innovation. Intel says the first fruits of this program will come to market in the latter half of 2019, so we expect to see new designs debut at Computex later this month. Some of the first products will come wielding Intel's 10nm Ice Lake processors, but Intel also plans to support new Athena-based designs with its Y- and U-series processors.

Ben Thompson, writing for Stratechery: For a company famed for its engineering culture, you wouldn't expect a video at Google's annual I/O developer conference to have such emotional resonance. And yet, just watch (I have included the context around the video in question, which starts at the 2:33 mark): "I liked that very much." This was the most direct statement of what was a clear theme from Google's entire keynote: "Technology, particularly Google's technology, is a good thing, and we are going to remind you why you like it."

As he opened the keynote, CEO Sundar Pichai, as he always does, repeated Google's mission statements: "It all begins with our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, and today, our mission feels as relevant as ever." Pichai, though, quickly pivoted to something rather different than simply organizing and presenting information: "The way we approach it is constantly evolving. We are moving from a company that helps you find answers to a company that helps you get things done... We want our products to work harder for you in the context of your job, your home, and your life, and they all share a single goal: to be helpful, so we can be there for you in moments big and small over the course of your day."

In short, the mission statement may be the same, but what that means for Google and its products has shifted: "Our goal is to build a more helpful Google for everyone. And when we say helpful, we mean giving you the tools to increase your knowledge, success, health, and happiness. We feel so privileged to be developing products for billions of users, and with that scale comes a deep sense of responsibility to create things that improve people's lives. By focusing on these fundamental attributes, we can empower individuals and benefit society as a whole." This set the stage for the rest of the keynote, including the video above: Google spent most of the keynote demonstrating -- both with actual products, and whole bunch of vaporware -- how Google could take a much more proactive role in its users' lives in ways they ought appreciate. Further reading: Sundar Pichai's op-ed on the New York Times. A NYT columnist adds: "Someone asked me today why Google gets less privacy flak than Facebook despite collecting more (+ more intimate) data. My theory is that Google takes people's data in exchange for useful things (maps! docs! mail!) while FB exchanges data for things that make them sad and angry."

The United States will raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent from 10 percent effective on Friday, according to a notice posted to the Federal Register on Wednesday. From a report: The U.S. Trade Representative's office will establish a process to seek exclusions for certain products from additional tariffs, the Federal Register notice said. U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet that he would be "very happy with over $100 Billion a year in Tariffs filling U.S. coffers."

An anonymous reader shares a report: In a private school where tuition is high, students can bicker about clothes, shoe brands, cellphones, or video games. At Paul Towler's middle school, where he teaches English to seventh and eighth graders, some kids "have enough money to be comfortable and others' parents are owners of giant nationwide restaurant chains," he says. Towler is used to seeing such disparities play out in the real world through objects that you can physically hold. But after battle royale sensation Fortnite exploded, the fights between students took an unexpected turn. Fortnite's virtual clothes became a status symbol, and some of Towler's pupils started policing what their classmates wore in-game.

The confrontations could get ugly. One student in Towler's class "begged his parents for [money] to buy a skin because no one would play with him" because he wore basic virtual clothes. While the bullying wasn't always Fortnite-specific, Towler recalls that it seemed "vicious for [the student] to have another avenue for the meaner kids to attack him." Things got better for that kid, but when your social scene begins and ends with Fortnite, having nobody to play with is like a mark of death.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: [T]he ability to quickly and easily desalinate water has long been a goal of scientists around the world. And now, a group of researchers from Columbia University believe they've found a way to do it. The process is called Temperature Swing Solvent Extraction (TSSE) and it's designed to purify hypersaline brines (water that contains a high concentration of salts, making it up to seven times as salty as seawater). This kind of waste water is produced by industrial processes and during oil and gas production and it poses a major pollution risk to groundwater.

The research team, led by Columbia Engineering's assistant professor of earth and environmental engineering Ngai Yin Yip, mixed a solvent (dyed red) in with a sample of hypersaline brine (dyed blue). The liquids appear to stay separated in the jar, but after heating them, and then decanting the red solvent into another jar to be heated separately, the team was left with a layer of clear water. While the science is complicated, the above video shows the process in a pretty simple way (no chemistry PhD required). What's most exciting about the process is its implications. The team was able to remove up to 98.4% of the salt, which is comparable to the current "gold standard" process, reverse osmosis. But unlike reverse osmosis or other methods of desalination, this process doesn't require high temperatures or high pressures -- just a low-grade heat of less than 70C (158F). The study has been published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

Hackers have stolen over $40 million worth of bitcoin from Binance, world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, the company said on Tuesday. From a report: In a statement, the company said hackers stole API keys, two-factor codes and other information in the attack. Binance traced the cryptocurrency theft -- more than 7,000 bitcoins at the time of writing -- to a single wallet after the hackers stole the contents of the company's bitcoin hot wallet. Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, said the theft impacted about 2 percent of its total bitcoin holdings.

Suren Enfiajyan shares a report from Fast Company: Ultra Testing, a New York-based software testing and quality assurance startup, employs over 60 workers remotely across 20 states, 75% of whom are on the autism spectrum. Not only was the company open to hiring neurodiverse employees, but it actively sought them out. Though small, the company punches well above its weight class, growing an average of 50% year-over-year since its founding in 2013, with 60% of revenues coming from Fortune 500 clients and the remainder from hypergrowth startups. Its innovative employment and talent management strategies have also received accolades and praise, including an honorable mention in Fast Company's World Changing Ideas awards.

CEO Rajesh Anandan founded Ultra Testing alongside his former M.I.T. roommate Art Shectman after discovering research on the overlooked strengths common among autistic individuals. Anandan's wife, who worked with autistic children at a community mental health clinic in Oakland, had also pointed out how much energy is spent trying to improve the skills that are lacking rather than nurturing the children's often remarkable natural talents. "Individuals on the autism spectrum are more likely to have strengths around pattern recognition, logical reasoning ability, enhanced focus, and so on," says Anandan. "That's not to say that everyone on the spectrum has those abilities, but based on peer-reviewed studies published in scientific journals, there is evidence that there is an over indexing of those abilities -- and those very abilities are exactly what you would look for in quite a few roles, especially around quality engineering or quality assurance." The report goes on to say that the company utilizes Slack for all of its communications, which makes it much easier for their staff to communicate because many people on the autism spectrum struggle with their communication skills.

"Furthermore, after one teammate quipped how great it would be if humans came with a user manual, Anandan developed the 'BioDex' and attached it to each employee's Slack profile," reports Fast Company. "The 28-point BioDex includes instructions on how each team member prefers to receive critical feedback, their preferred communication medium, their typical response time, and more. [...] The company also polls every team member daily at 5 p.m. with a single question related to inclusion and well-being via Slack and shares responses anonymously with the rest of the team."

Detroit's Public Lighting Authority has filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the manufacturer of nearly a third of the city's 65,000 streetlights, after it found that upward of 20,000 LED lights are "prematurely dimming and burning out" and putting the city's revitalization progress "in jeopardy." The city estimates a fix would cost millions. Detroit News reports: The issue was discovered last fall during routine surveys of the lighting system, and it's tied to defective units that were either "charred, burned, or cracked," according to a February letter from the lighting authority's law firm. The California-based manufacturer (Leotek Electronics USA) acknowledged in a December letter to the lighting authority that it had experienced "a higher number of reports of failures" in models dimming city streets, primarily in west side neighborhoods and a number of Detroit's major thoroughfares.

In the Dec. 17 letter, Leotek administrator Hy Nguyen said the company had determined "the problem is excessive heat that can burn the lens directly above the LED." "We apologize for the problem you have experienced and will work with you to correct the problems," Nguyen wrote. But in recent weeks, Leotek officials have gone silent, according to the lighting authority. A representative for Leotek did not respond Monday to requests for comment. The lighting project has been held up by Mayor Mike Duggan and others as an early success in the city's effort to restore basic services. Before the three-year, $185 million overhaul, about 40% of Detroit's 88,000 streetlights didn't work. The LED lights provided by Leotek were anticipated to last for at least a decade.

After more than six months of no updates, Google has finally updated its Android distribution data. Android Pie, the latest version of Google's mobile operating system, has passed the 10% adoption mark. VentureBeat reports: The Android developer website hosts a distribution dashboard that details the adoption of Google's mobile operating system versions. With over 2.5 billion active Android devices out there, this is useful information that Google used to update on a monthly cadence. For anyone who makes decisions regarding Android, it's incredibly valuable to know how widely (or narrowly) an Android version -- or more importantly, an API level -- has been adopted.

The distribution numbers were last updated in October 2018. In early December, Google added a small note below the chart: "(update coming soon: data feed under maintenance)." Months passed and the company would not explain what was going on, until today, when it finally updated the numbers. In short, Google is blaming a technical glitch, says it has resolved the issue, and is promising to keep the dashboard updated again. But those updates won't come on a monthly cadence anymore -- about quarterly is more likely, Google told VentureBeat. The Android adoption order now stands as follows: Oreo in first place, Nougat in second place, Marshmallow in third, Lollipop in fourth, Pie in fifth, KitKat in sixth, Jelly Bean in seventh, ICS in eighth, and Gingerbread in last. It will be a few more months before Pie can break into the top three.

A new study from the University of Oxford claims screen time doesn't have a detrimental impact on young people's brains, like so many researchers have claimed. Instead, it says family, friends and school life all had a greater impact on wellbeing. An anonymous reader shares the report from ZDNet: The researchers' skepticism was based on the Grand Theory of Chicken and Egg. As one of the lead researchers, Amy Orben explained: "The previous literature was based almost entirely on correlations with no means to dissociate whether social media use leads to changes in life satisfaction or changes in life satisfaction influence social media use." Quite. Does social media make kids -- or anyone else, for that matter -- miserable? Or do miserable people turn to social media in search of, well, something?

These researchers spoke to 12,000 UK teens and concluded that the effect of social media on their life satisfaction was tiny. Indeed, as another of the lead researchers, Professor Andrew Przybylski told the BBC: "99.75 percent of a person's life satisfaction has nothing to do with their use of social media." Nothing has really changed, he said. Family, friends and school life are still the dominating factors in teen happiness. Moreover, Przybylski took the time to completely contradict Apple CEO and his pained worries about screen time. Przybylski put it quite baldly: "Parents shouldn't worry about time on social media. Thinking about it that way is wrong." For perfect measure, he added: "We need to retire this notion of screen time."

At its annual I/O developer event, Google announced a bunch of new features available in the latest Android Q beta. Engadget reports: The most obvious new feature is dark mode, which will be released system-wide in Android Q. It's accessible via a toggle switch in the quick settings area and it'll also be activated when you turn on battery saver mode. We just saw a quick screenshot of it, but it looks like it'll apply to any apps you're using regardless of whether they're Google-made or from other developers. Another notable new feature is called Live Caption. If you're watching a video, Google's machine-learning algorithms can now add captions on the fly by just pressing the volume button and then a "live caption" button that'll show up on on the onscreen volume slider. From there, you can expand and contract the panel as you see fit, and move it up and down on the screen so it doesn't obscure your video. Google is also able to do all of this on-device, so it's more secure and also doesn't need a network connection.

[T]he company says that there are 50 new privacy and security settings in Android Q. Perhaps most notable are new location services settings that let you limit location tracking to only when the app is running. It'll also give you notifications to let users see when apps are using your location in the background. New settings also let you keep apps from accessing media on your phone and collecting information about your device like its IMEI and serial number. [...] Google's adding a new "focus mode" to help shut down various distractions. It'll block most app alerts and notifications while allowing important contacts like your family members to reach you. There are also more tools for parents to manage their kids' phone time -- it'll let you review how they're using their phone from your own device, set daily time limits, review app requests and more. There are also tweaks to the gesture-based navigation bar to make it more closely resemble the navigation gestures first introduced in the iPhone X. Google's also adding a new chat-focused interface called "bubbles" that lets users keep messaging conversations accessible regardless of what they're doing with the phone.

We can expect the final desert-themed name and release date later in the summer. The Q beta 3 is currently available on 21 devices, including all Pixel devices.

Microsoft teased its Edge browser for macOS yesterday, but now, download links have appeared online a little early. From a report: Twitter user WalkingCat discovered official Microsoft download links to both the daily Chromium-powered Canary builds of Edge for Mac [warning: direct download link] and the weekly Dev builds [warning: direct download link]. Microsoft has been working to support Mac keyboard shortcuts, and it has been experimenting with button placement so its browser looks and feels like a Mac app. Microsoft is also adding in Touch Bar support, with options for media control sliders and the ability to switch tabs from the Touch Bar. Rounded corners for tabs are also available in the macOS Edge version, and Microsoft is planning to bring this same UI to Windows.

At its Google I/O developer conference today, the company announced that Google and Nest are combining into a single smart home brand aptly called Google Nest. For now, the newly announced Google Nest Hub Max and Google Home Hub, which will now be called the Google Nest Hub, are the only products that will carry the new name in their official branding. CNET reports: Other products are expected to be rebranded in the future. All of Nest's smart home products will fall under this brand, which includes the company's famous smart thermostats and security cameras, although their names won't change retroactively. Google's smart speakers, including the Google Home; smart displays such as the Google Home Hub; Google Wifi routers and Google Chromecast streamers will also fit under the purview of Google Nest. Several products under the new brand are getting a price cut, including the Google Home Max, which now costs $100 less than before at $299.

As part of the new unified brand, customers with Nest accounts will be encouraged to merge them into Google accounts. You can control your Nest devices with the Google Home app. You won't be able to set up new Nest devices using that app yet, so customers can't remove the separate Nest app from their phones entirely. Nest accounts will be moved to a maintenance mode, where they will still get security updates, but Google will provide new features only to Google accounts. Similarly, companies that had joined the Works with Nest program will be encouraged to use Actions on Google -- a platform that allows third-party developers to create commands for Google Assistant -- to be compatible with the new joined brand. As for the Google Nest Hub Max, it's basically a big Google Assistant smart display with a camera on top that can be used for video calls and home security monitoring. It's coming this summer, and it will retail for $229. The Verge reports: Like the smaller $149 Google Home Hub, the Nest Hub Max has a matte display that adjusts its color temperature to match the room. The 10-inch screen often looks more like a regular photo in a frame than a standard LCD panel. It comes in both gray and white, though the bezel around the display will always be white. Also, it lets Google know when you're home, and it can recognize your face so it can show customized personal information on the screen. [...] The other thing that's bigger is the sound. There are two front-firing 10W tweeters and one 30W woofer on the back. I wasn't able to do a real sound-quality test in the couple of hours I spent with the Hub Max, but I can tell you that it's definitely louder than the smaller Hub, and it didn't obviously distort at high volumes. But a Sonos One or Apple HomePod this is not...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Charter is making it more expensive to cancel its Spectrum Internet service, as it will begin charging customers for the full month after they cancel instead of providing a prorated final bill. Charter broke the news to customers in the fine print of their latest billing statements. Stop the Cap reported the change yesterday, and we were able to confirm it on the May billing statement received by an Ars staffer in Texas who subscribes to a triple-play package with Spectrum TV, phone, and Internet service.

"Effective on or after June 23, 2019 and consistent with the Terms and Conditions of Service, Spectrum will no longer provide a pro rata credit for services sold on a monthly basis that are cancelled prior to the end of the current billing month," the notice to customers says. Under these terms, a customer is better off canceling right at the end of a billing period. But customers will inevitably pay for days of service that they don't use if they move out of their homes early or midway through a billing period. Depending on when a new occupant moves in and starts up service, there may be cases when Charter collects from two customers at the same home for nearly a month.

The WordPress content management system (CMS) is set to receive an assortment of new security features today that will finally add the protection level that many of its users have desired for years. From a report: These features are expected to land with the official release of WordPress 5.2, expected for later today. Included are support for cryptographically-signed updates, support for a modern cryptography library, a Site Health section in the admin panel backend, and a feature that will act as a White-Screen-of-Death (WSOD) protection -- letting site admins access their backend in the case of catastrophic PHP errors. With WordPress being installed on around 33.8 percent of all internet sites, these features are set to put some fears at ease in regards to some attack vectors. Probably the biggest and the most important of today's new security features is WordPress' offline digital signatures system. Starting with WordPress 5.2, the WordPress team will digitally sign its update packages with the Ed25519 public-key signature system so that a local installation will be able to verify the update package's authenticity before applying it to a local site.

Google added two new mid-range devices to its phone line-up Tuesday: The new Pixel 3a is available for $399 effective immediately, while the larger Pixel 3a XL clocks in at $479. The company is also bringing its entire phone line-up, including last year's Pixel 3 and Pixel 3XL, to a range of new mobile carriers, including Sprint and T-Mobile. From a report: The big idea with the Pixel 3a models is to bring high end camera performance and the Pixel ~experience~ (ie: great hardware and design, and Android without any bells or whistles, for people who might find iPhones too basic and Samsung phones too garish/explode-y) to people who weren't going to spend upwards of $800 on a smartphone. So Google lowered the price by about half, reducing costs by using cheaper hardware and materials -- like a pokier processor and plastic housing -- in other parts of the phone while sticking with the same camera hardware. In a briefing ahead of the announcement, Google's VP of product management for Pixel, Brian Rakowski, said the phones are intended for people who would like to buy a Pixel, but are left behind by that phone's $800 (and up) price tag. (And based on the Pixel 3's disappointing sales numbers, there were a lot of people, for one reason or another, who may have been left behind!)

Google Duplex, Google's AI chat agent that can arrange appointments over the phone, will soon expand to more places -- namely the web. From a report: Today at I/O 2019, Google announced Duplex on the web, which will handle things like rental car bookings and movie tickets. "We want to build a more helpful Google for everyone," said CEO Sundar Pichai onstage in Mountain View, California. "We're going to be thoughtful [about this]." When Duplex on the web debuts, you'll be able to issue Google Assistant a command like "Book me a car from Hertz." That command will navigate to the relevant web page and automatically fill in details like your name, payment information, car preferences, trip dates (using information from Gmail and Chrome autofill), and more. Throughout the process, you'll see a progress bar. And whenever Duplex needs more information, like a price or seat selection, it'll pause and prompt you to make a selection. Once you're finished, a tap of the confirmation button will beam a receipt to your inbox. It'll launch later this year on Android phones.

Today Google introduced new features for Lens, its visual search and computer vision tool that can recognize plants, animals, text, celebrities, and over a billion shopping items. From a report: Google Lens will soon be able to highlight top meals at a restaurant simply by pointing your camera at the menu. The news was shared today at Google's I/O developer conference at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. Also coming soon: Split a bill or calculate a tip by after a meal by pointing your camera at your receipt, and read signs and other text for people who can't read or don't understand the native language.

Samsung said on Tuesday it cannot confirm the shipping date for its foldable device Galaxy Fold yet and apologized to its pre-order customers in the United States for the delay. From a report: The world's top smartphone maker delayed global sales of the splashy $1,980 foldable phone after reviewers discovered problems with its display, dealing a setback to Samsung and its efforts to showcase its innovation. "If we do not hear from you and we have not shipped by May 31st, your order will be canceled automatically," the South Korean tech giant's U.S. subsidiary told Galaxy Fold pre-order customers in an email late on Monday, which was confirmed by a Samsung spokeswoman. As per U.S. regulations, Samsung was required to notify customers that the pre-orders would be canceled in the event the product had not been shipped by May. 31, it said in a separate statement to Reuters.