Tag: makes

  • Open social net browser Surf makes it simpler for anybody to construct customized feeds

    Surf, the new app from Flipboard for looking the open social net, is making it simpler for folks to create and uncover their very own customized feeds targeted on their pursuits. As an alternative of getting caught in an algorithmically generated timeline designed by a social community’s proprietor, customized feeds help you construct an expertise targeted on belongings you truly care about, like your favourite hobbies, sports activities, communities, or every other subjects you need to comply with.

    With Thursday’s introduction of Starter Units, Surf is simplifying the method of constructing these customized feeds, personalizing them, and even publishing them off-platform, if you happen to select.

    Making feed creation simpler permits extra folks to take management of their social media expertise and wrest management of their feeds again from tech giants like Meta and Google. Startups like Graze and SkyFeed already let Bluesky customers build their own custom feeds, however these instruments are designed with extra technical customers in thoughts, not essentially a mainstream social media client.

    Starter Units, alternatively, are geared toward anybody who needs to strive their hand at feed-building however isn’t positive how you can start.

    Picture Credit:Flipboard

    Launched late last year into an invite-only beta, Surf is part two of Flipboard’s authentic mission to curate the online. The corporate’s flagship Flipboard app had allowed folks to gather and manage posts from blogs, information web sites, and mainstream social media providers, which have been become customized magazines. However as social providers (like X) locked down their APIs, limiting entry to their content material, Flipboard regarded to the open social net as a substitute. That in the end led to the creation of a brand new app, with Surf.

    Surf enables you to curate and discover feeds that embrace the content material from social networks constructed on open protocols, like Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and others, together with Meta’s newest app, Threads, in addition to content material from blogs, podcasts, YouTube movies, information websites, or anything with an RSS feed.

    The brand new Starter Units, created by its staff, are organized round common classes and pre-populated with beneficial sources.

    As an example, if you happen to select to begin a “Hobbies” feed, you possibly can faucet on that class after which search for sources so as to add throughout plenty of subtopics, like biking, gaming, Legos, books, baking, climbing, dancing, guitar, comics, crusing, and rather more.

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    Picture Credit:Flipboard

    Plus, you possibly can add your personal social account feed from both Mastodon or Bluesky and have it filtered by the chosen matter. You can too use the search bar so as to add particular sources of your personal, then use further instruments to filter these sources so that they’ll solely embrace posts that match the feed’s matter. (This could possibly be helpful in case your favourite tech pundit additionally actively posts about politics, for instance, however you solely need to observe what they must say about tech.)

    One other newer characteristic enables you to publish your customized feed to Bluesky.

    To take action, faucet the three-dot menu on the feed’s header, then faucet “Publish to Bluesky,” and the feed will seem within the Feeds tab of your Bluesky profile. (This feed will solely embrace Bluesky content material when considered on Bluesky’s app, nevertheless.)

    Surf remains to be invite-only however commonly provides from its waitlist.

  • New Examine Makes use of AI to Reveal Dry Origins of Mars’ Mysterious Slope Streaks

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    The origin of Recurring Slope Linea, the lengthy, darkish markings that stretches throughout the slopes of Martian floor for a whole lot of toes, has been a subject of debate for a very long time. They seem throughout hotter season they usually had been seen as one of the compelling indicators that liquid water may nonetheless exist on Mars, suggesting a uncommon pocket of habitability on an in any other case arid planet. Nevertheless, this view has been challenged by a brand new research by a gaggle of researchers Brown College and the College of Bern. Utilizing machine studying and leveraging satellite tv for pc photos, they’ve discovered proof in regards to the dry processes being the origin of those streaks.

    Machine studying breakthrough brings new evidences

    In keeping with Adomas Valantinas, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown who coauthored the research with Valentin Bickel, a researcher at Bern, an enormous focus of Mars analysis is knowing modern-day processes on Mars, together with the potential of liquid water on the floor. This research reviewed these options however discovered no proof of water. Their mannequin favours dry formation processes.

    Valantinas and Bickel built-in over 86000 high-resolution satellite tv for pc photos with a machine studying algorithm for evaluation. They created the primary international map of Martian slope streaks, cataloguing over 500,000 particular person options throughout the planet’s floor. This database allows an unprecedented statistical evaluation for the origin and placement of those streaks.

    Researchers used the whole streak map to check the places of those options with environmental elements like wind velocity, temperature, mud accumulation, and floor hydration. They didn’t discover any correlation between the streaks and water or frost. Fairly, these options are extra widespread in areas with excessive wind exercise and dirt deposition.

    Way forward for Mars exploration

    This research offers insights in understanding the floor actions of present Martian surroundings. The streak websites had been was once handled with warning due to environmental contamination considerations. Ruling out the potential of liquid water as origin of streaks, the research nearly cancels out the possible threat of Earth based mostly contamination.