It turns out humans don’t actually need eight hours’ sleep – our ancestors got by on six and a half hours October 16, 2015 Eight hours' sleep: it might be a goal for many people, but the majority of us rarely get more than seven hours. We can all stop feeling bad about it, though, after new research suggested the idea of eight hours' sleep is actually a myth. In fact, our ancestors got by on about six and a half [...]
Barclays is teaming up with blockchain startups Chainalysis and Wave as the bank’s bitcoin experiment expands October 15, 2015 Barclays has signed contracts with two blockchain startups in what the bank is calling a “game-changer”. This is one of the first times a major bank has opened up for such a cooperation with blockchain clients, as many bitcoin companies have had difficulties gaining access to banking services. Barclays chief design and innovation officer Derek [...]
UK bioscience sector secured a record £1.2bn investment last year, but scientists warn cuts will hold Britain back October 15, 2015 Britain's biosciences sector netted a record amount of investment last year, according to research by the BioIndustry Association (BIA) and professional services firm EY. Over the 12 month period, it secured £1.2bn in public equity and venture capital funding – more than double the £498m it raised in 2013, and the highest level since the [...]
Peeple, the controversial human-reviewing app, has the right idea. Let’s start rating one another constantly October 15, 2015 Peeple, the controversial new rating app that’s been dubbed “Yelp for people”, launches this week amid concerns that giving star ratings to fellow human beings is unethical, creepy and will render us all vulnerable to a horrifying new realm of online abuse the likes of which the internet has never seen. Which is all well [...]
Rock Band 4 review: The plastic guitars are back October 15, 2015 Rock Band 4 | ★★★★☆ Xbox One, PS4 Remember all of those rhythm action music games? They were here for a while, and then they went away. But they were fun, weren’t they? With the pretend guitars and the pretend drums and the parties and the jumping around. It was the mid 2000s, we were younger, more [...]
Airbus designs next-generation Concorde 2 that can fly from London to New York in an hour October 14, 2015 Airbus has won a patent to design the next-generation “Concorde 2”, capable of flying from London to New York in an hour The “hypersonic” plane, which has the ability to travel at 4.5 times the speed of sound, would be fuelled by a system of ramjets, turbojets and a rocket motor. Read more: Airbus files patent [...]
Four things Jack Dorsey got right in his email to staff about layoffs October 14, 2015 Poor Jack Dorsey. Not even back with the Twitter flock on a permanent basis for more than a week, and he's already had to play the bad guy. Wielding the axe to chop eight per cent of its workforce is the kind of tough decision the social network needs to make in the face of sluggish [...]
It’s totally fine for GCHQ and MI5 to spy on MPs’ communications like the rest of us, tribunal rules October 14, 2015 MPs keep insisting they're just like the rest of us. But now judges have ruled they actually are – when it comes to spying, at least. A tribunal has ruled spy agencies such as GCHQ and MI5 are allowed to eavesdrop on the communications of MPs in the same way as they would anyone else. Read more: Web inventor Tim [...]
It turns out worker ants are actually lazy layabouts October 13, 2015 We’ve all been duped: Despite their name, worker ants are nothing but slackers. This is according to a new study published in the journal Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, which has found that a significant proportion of ant colonies’ so-called “workers” spend most of their time “completely inactive”. Just three per cent of worker ants were [...]
Twitter confirms 336 jobs will go a week after Jack Dorsey joins flock permanently October 13, 2015 Twitter has confirmed it's making job cuts just a week after founder Jack Dorsey made a permanent return to the flock as chief executive. Up to 336 staff will go – around eight per cent of the company's global workforce. "The restructuring is part of an overall plan to organise around the company’s top product [...]