Ability

The dawn of dairy farming in Europe occurred thousands of years before most people evolved the ability to drink milk as adults without becoming ill. Now researchers think they know why: lactose tolerance was beneficial enough to influence evolution only during occasional episodes of famine and disease, explaining why it took thousands of years for the trait to become widespread1. The theory — backed up by an analysis of thousands of pottery shards and hundreds of ancient human genomes as well as sophisticated modelling —…

Apple is toning down iOS 16's vaunted iMessage edit and unsend features. The company has released fourth developer betas of iOS 16, iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura that limit you to five edits for a given message within the available 15 minutes, and shrink the unsend window from 15 minutes to just two. You can also tap a message to see its edit history — previously, you would only see a notice that it had been edited. The company didn't explain the decision. We've asked Apple if it can share its reasoning. However,…

Shrinking flows of Russian natural gas to Europe have triggered a global race among U.S. allies to secure American gas exports, testing the country’s ability to meet fast-growing demand.Russia throttled deliveries of natural gas to Europe after the continent adopted a flurry of sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. That change has left Europe scrambling to secure alternatives, especially from the U.S. The continent’s liquefied natural gas, or LNG, imports from the U.S. more than doubled between March and June from the…

David Pierce / The Verge: Amazon announces changes to Alexa, including developer created and recommended Routines, shopping via skills, ability to coexist with other assistants, and more — A helper that increasingly doesn't need your help — Amazon is making a bunch of changes to the Alexa user experience … David Pierce / The Verge: Amazon announces changes to Alexa, including developer created and recommended Routines, shopping via skills, ability to coexist with other…

Windows 11 is coming later this year and it will not only bring an all-new user experience but also allow users to run Android apps natively. Microsoft showcased how it is bringing support for Android apps on Windows 11 through a quick demo during its virtual conference on Thursday. The Redmond company has partnered with Amazon to integrate Amazon Appstore within Microsoft Store to enable downloading of Android apps on Windows 11 PCs. However, the new operating system will also include Intel's proprietary runtime compiler…

Karen Hao / Wall Street Journal: Researchers say Alibaba's cloud platform that hosted Shanghai's now-leaked police database used outdated systems that didn't offer the ability to set a password — Cybersecurity companies say Alibaba's cloud platform that hosted Shanghai's police database used outdated systems that didn't offer ability to set a password Karen Hao / Wall Street Journal: Researchers say Alibaba's cloud platform that hosted Shanghai's now-leaked police database used outdated systems…

WhatsApp on Wednesday announced a series of updates for voice messages to make it easier for people to communicate with their contacts on the platform using voice notes. The updates include features such as the ability to pause and resume voice message recordings, waveform visualisation, out of chat playback, and draft preview that were already available to some users. WhatsApp also introduced a remember playback feature as fast playback on forwarded voice messages. In addition to the feature updates, WhatsApp announced…

WhatsApp has been spotted developing a new interface for business accounts where users will have the ability to share a short link with customers directly from the app. The change has appeared on a new WhatsApp for Android beta version, though it could be available to WhatsApp Business accounts on iOS as well. At present, WhatsApp allows both business users and regular consumers to share their profiles through a QR code. The app, though, does let its users manually create short links to their WhatsApp account…

Launched in 2017, the original Saregama Carvaan was a wireless speaker unlike anything else available in the segment. With its own built-in tracks focused on Saregama's vast repository of retro Indian music, the Carvaan was innovative, unique, and incredibly easy to use. Later Carvaan models have added features such as a battery for portability and Wi-Fi connectivity to stream podcasts. However, the core experience remains focused on ease of use, and quick access to music that appeals to older Indian audiences.Saregama's…

A rare condition that makes people unable to visualize images in their imagination could have further-reaching effects on the mind than we knew, scientists report.Aphantasia, sometimes referred to as being 'blind in the mind', has been known about since the 19th century, but has only attracted significant scientific attention in recent years.  Those studies are telling us more about how aphantasia manifests in people, while also revealing new insights into how important mental imagery is as a component of other brain…