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Wow-a! It’s always fun when a new developer joins your team. But wait, you are tasked with onboarding this developer. How do you get started? What’s the most important information you should share to get the new colleague on board? What’s the most efficient process to introduce this developer to the code? Onboarding a developer is not an easy task. Still, too many development teams take this lightly while it’s a crucial step to make the developer feel comfortable and enjoy their role....

I suspect the specific titles will have to wait until next year’s E3 or perhaps a State of Play reveal of the actual console. But I think I might have a hunch what one of those launch titles will be. I noticed, while reading the official blog post from Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan, that he uses examples of particular games when speaking about the kinds of feedback offered by the new controller....

It’s official, straight from the Valve Twitter account. Half-Life: Alyx is coming out on March 23. More than a decade after the last official installment of the series, we’ll finally get a sequel of sorts. But if you want to experience it, you’ll need the appropriate gear. — Valve (@valvesoftware) February 13, 2020 Valve announced the next entry in its famous series last November, and up to now all we knew was that it’d be out sometime in March....

In generating power, its plants release 512 billion kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. The country’s road transport sector also contributes to the problem: it was responsible for 13% of the total share of energy-related carbon emissions in 2018. To reach its targets, South Africa must reduce emissions by 32% in the next 10 years alone. But Eskom is also the engine of the economy and struggles to meet current demand, with frequent rolling blackouts....

We know for some diseases that the dose of virus a person is exposed to will directly correlate with how severe the disease is. A good example of this is influenza. A 2015 study from the US showed that the higher the dose of influenza virus given to healthy volunteers, the worse their symptoms. Viruses are tiny particles that must get into our cells in order to replicate, so the logic is that the more starting virus particles there are, the more cells will be infected....

Sometimes you’ve gotta work with what you’ve got — and that doesn’t just apply to the intelligence and skills you’ve respectively been given from nature or obtained from nurture. It can also apply to what has been referred to as the new oil: data. It’s what runs through the veins of the new economy, replacing the industrial with the digital. And just as crude oil has to be processed to become a usable product, raw data needs to be cleaned or transformed— whether it’s to make it readable for users or just to ship it off on to the next stage of data processing....

A few years ago, I demonstrated that the heat losses in man-made honey bee hives are many times greater than those in natural nests. Now, using engineering techniques more commonly found probing industrial problems, I’ve shown that the current design of man-made hives also creates lower humidity levels that favor the Varroa parasite. Natural nests inside tree cavities create high humidity levels in which honey bees thrive and which prevent Varroa from breeding....

When you are looking for a job in tech, everything is about teamwork, agile methods, flat hierarchies and beer pong – at least that’s what every company claims for itself. I had to learn that there are companies that take this really seriously. Okay, maybe not the beer pong – but certainly everything else! The company I am talking about is Studitemps, a temping agency for students based in Cologne, Germany....

China’s smart speaker boom is one of the prime reasons why Baidu outshone Google. According to Canalys, shipments smart audio devices in China doubled in the last quarter to 12.6. million units. That’s also double the size of smart speaker shipment in the last quarter in the US, which stands at 6.1 million. Credit: Canalys Baidu started selling its smarts speakers based on its DuerOS in 2017. It’s the first model, Raven H, priced at RMB 1,699 ($237) failed to make a mark in the market....

Some UK care homes are to deploy robots in an attempt to allay loneliness and boost mental health. The wheeled machines will “initiate rudimentary conversations, play residents’ favorite music, teach them languages, and offer practical help, including medicine reminders.” They are being introduced after an international trial found they reduced anxiety and loneliness. These robots can hold basic conversations and be programmed to people’s interests. This is positive, but they are not a viable alternative to human interaction....

Although you need to be registered for The Global Boardroom, we’re also airing some of the sessions live on the FT.com as well as here on TNW. Live from The Global Boardroom: How is COVID transforming the business of sports? Panelists: Paolo dal Pino, Chairman, Serie A Timothy Leiweke, CEO, OAK view group Susan Whelan, CEO, Leicester City FC Patrick Hogan, CCO, Honeywell Building Technologies Moderated by Murad Ahmed, Sports Editor, Financial Times The pandemic has brought the sports ecosystem to a standstill, halting live game attendance and impacting the return of sponsorship and broadcasting deals....

This new study suggests the orbits traced out by the Martian moons can best be explained if a ring of rocks and ice once surrounded the Red Planet. The orbit of Deimos is tilted about two degrees relative to the equator of Mars. This detail — often overlooked — is likely the result of an ancient belt surrounding the planet billions of years in the past, researchers speculate. The video below shows a look at what Mars may have looked like billions of years ago, sporting a ring....

Memes are undoubtedly changing the way we communicate and reference popular culture online, it was even reported that memes are more popular than Jesus Christ. But for the 1.3 billion people living with some form of visual impairment globally, a substantial chunk of the internet is inaccessible. But researchers from Carnegie Mellon University are developing ways to make memes more accessible for everyone. In the study “Making Memes Accessible,” six researchers trained a system to classify and translate memes with up to 92 percent accuracy....

After seeing an initial spike in COVID-19 infections in February, South Korea implemented several measures to bring the disease’s spread under control, a progression I’ve followed as a researcher on public policy. South Korea was able to lower the number of new infections from 851 on March 3 to 22 infections as of April 17 and the mortality rate from COVID-19 hovers around 2%. Several measures contribute to Korea’s success, but two measures were critical in the country’s ability to flatten the curve: extensive testing for the disease and a national system for promptly and effectively tracking people infected with COVID-19....

The brain in a jar is a different inquiry than traditional questions about artificial intelligence. The brain in a jar asks whether thinking requires a thinker. The possibility of artificial intelligence primarily revolves around what is necessary to make a computer (or a computer program) intelligent. In this view, artificial intelligence is possible if we can understand intelligence and figure out how to program it into a computer. The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes deserves much blame for the brain in a jar....

As a distributed team, employees at Whereby are encouraged to explore opportunities to connect with individuals both inside and outside of the company. Recently, a few members of our support team participated in a mentoring program run through the Support Driven Community, and we wanted to share our thoughts on the experience and how mentoring can be extremely impactful for an employee’s growth.

As if it isn’t enough of a challenge to build a business that makes money, Christian Erfurt took on a more difficult proposition six years ago. He co-founded a company with a view to assist people with vision impairment, while also developing services for enterprises to adopt into their customer care and accessibility programs. That company is Be My Eyes, which is best known for its eponymous mobile app. The idea is that a blind person can use it to call for help with anything they’re having trouble seeing or identifying visually around them, and receive assistance via video chat with any volunteer around the world who responds quickly....

Because even when it comes to the word “perfect,” it’s subjective based on the results you’re looking for. But in this guide, I’ll start with the elements that every single content idea should have in order to greatly increase its chances of success. You can use it as a checklist when vetting ideas after you’ve done your brainstorming. Of course, even a perfect content idea might not thrive in the wild for various reasons....

The human brain is nothing short of a biological marvel, but sometimes (most notably around final exams) it can feel like our noodles can barely hold anything of value in there. Experts believe our short-term memory can only hold about seven items for about 20 to 30 seconds. Meanwhile, you have an average of 70,000 thoughts in a single day. Quick…blurt out as many as you can remember. Yeah…that’s what we thought....

Video calling is more important now than it’s ever been. To avoid getting sick, more and more of us are working from home, and we’re avoiding in-person tete-a-tetes with friends and family. I’m sure there are a number of you who have taken to socialization-via-vidcall like ducks to water. But not everyone wants (or needs) to become a Zoom or Google Hangouts expert. And creating accounts for a bunch of new video conferencing software can be a pain....