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Is the Internet bad for you? Huge study reveals surprise effect on well-being

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A woman and a man sit in bed in a dark bedroom, distracted by a laptop computer and a smartphone respectively.

People who had access to the Internet scored higher on measures of life satisfaction in a global survey.Credit: Ute Grabowsky/Photothek via Getty

A global, 16-year study1 of 2.4 million people has found that Internet use might boost measures of well-being, such as life satisfaction and sense of purpose — challenging the commonly held idea that Internet use has negative effects on people’s welfare.

“It’s an important piece of the puzzle on digital-media use and mental health,” says psychologist Markus Appel at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “If social media and Internet and mobile-phone use is really such a devastating force in our society, we should see it on this bird’s-eye view [study] — but we don’t.” Such concerns are typically related to behaviours linked to social-media use, such as cyberbullying, social-media addiction and body-image issues. But the best studies have so far shown small negative effects, if any2,3, of Internet use on well-being, says Appel.

The authors of the latest study, published on 13 May in Technology, Mind and Behaviour, sought to capture a more global picture of the Internet’s effects than did previous research. “While the Internet is global, the study of it is not,” said Andrew Przybylski, a researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, who studies how technology affects well-being, in a press briefing on 9 May. “More than 90% of data sets come from a handful of English-speaking countries” that are mostly in the global north, he said. Previous studies have also focused on young people, he added.

To address this research gap, Pryzbylski and his colleagues analysed data on how Internet access was related to eight measures of well-being from the Gallup World Poll, conducted by analytics company Gallup, based in Washington DC. The data were collected annually from 2006 to 2021 from 1,000 people, aged 15 and above, in 168 countries, through phone or in-person interviews. The researchers controlled for factors that might affect Internet use and welfare, including income level, employment status, education level and health problems.

Like a walk in nature

The team found that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences and contentment with their social life, compared with people who lacked web access. Online activities can help people to learn new things and make friends, and this could contribute to the beneficial effects, suggests Appel.

The positive effect is similar to the well-being benefit associated with taking a walk in nature, says Przybylski.

However, women aged 15–24 who reported having used the Internet in the past week were, on average, less happy with the place they live, compared with people who didn’t use the web. This could be because people who do not feel welcome in their community spend more time online, said Przybylski. Further studies are needed to determine whether links between Internet use and well-being are causal or merely associations, he added.

The study comes at a time of discussion around the regulation of Internet and social-media use, especially among young people. “The study cannot contribute to the recent debate on whether or not social-media use is harmful, or whether or not smartphones should be banned at schools,” because the study was not designed to answer these questions, says Tobias Dienlin, who studies how social media affects well-being at the University of Vienna. “Different channels and uses of the Internet have vastly different effects on well-being outcomes,” he says.

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Samsung reveals more details about how it plans to produce 1000-layer QLC NAND chip that are vital for a Petabyte SSD — hafnia ferroelectrics identified as key ingredient to ramp layer count beyond 1K

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It’s no secret that the race is on to produce the first 1000TB SSD. At its Tech Day in 2022, Samsung revealed ambitious plans to “stack over 1,000 layers” in its most advanced NAND chip by 2030, meaning a petabyte SSD could arrive by then. 

Last year the company dropped hits that it might be in a position to deliver it much sooner, but that looks to have been wishful thinking on the tech industry’s behalf.

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French startup reveals quasi-immortal sensor that doesn’t need energy to work — SilMach’s ultra cheap microsensors can be used in a dizzying array of use cases

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France 2030 is a strategic €34 billion investment by the French government aiming to kickstart economic growth in the country. 

As part of this initiative, the SIRCAPASS project (Surveillance of Road Infrastructures by Passive Sensors) has chosen French firm SilMach to provide ultra-cheap microsensors to monitor and ensure the structural health of bridges across the country.

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The Boys season 4 trailer reveals ties to Gen V and a battle for America’s soul ahead of hit Amazon show’s return

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Amazon has unveiled a new trailer for The Boys season 4 – and, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t have superpowered, violent farm animals on my bingo card for the show’s next installment.

Revealed yesterday (May 3) during The Boys season 4 panel at Mexico Comic-Con – and released online immediately after its world premiere – the series’ latest trailer teases another blood-soaked entry on Prime Video. Not only that, though, it also confirms that key storylines from companion show Gen V will carry over into the main series. Oh, and that all-out war between the titular vigilantes and the Seven, the most-famous superhero team in The Boys universe, is about to erupt. And yes, those are Compound V-injected, Supe-d up farm animals – including an Alien-like, chest bursting flock of chickens and a group of flying sheep.



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Sony Xperia 1 VI leak reveals new camera app and more features borrowed from Alpha cameras

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A wealth of information has leaked for the Sony Xperia 1 VI revealing almost everything there is to know about the smartphone. Specs, camera array, features; you name it and it’s probably there. According to news site MSPowerUser, the device is slated to run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset plus a 5,000 mAh battery that’ll reportedly last two days on a single charge. On the front is an OLED display. It’s unknown exactly how large the screen will be, but it’s said to have a 19.5:9 aspect ratio which is smaller than the Xperia 1 V’s 21:9 aspect ratio.

As impressive as these specs may be, the real star of the show is the software. MSPowerUser claims Sony is combining its Photography Pro, Videography Pro, and Cinema Pro apps into one useful tool. The report points out this is a move seemingly “inspired by [the company’s own] Alpha series cameras.”

Like the Alpha line, the Xperia 1 VI could receive “human pose estimation technology”, giving it the ability to focus on people even if they’re facing away from the lens or are obscured. Sony even apparently has plans to introduce an app called Video Creator, simplifying the video production process and helping users make content.

Sony Xperia 1 VI

(Image credit: MysteryLupin/X)

Camera upgrade



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Spotify Supremium leak reveals what the new tier and some features may look like at launch

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Screenshots have emerged online of what may be the user interface for Spotify’s long-awaited Supremium tier. Or should we say “Enhanced Listening”? This is apparently the new name for the tier according to user OhItsTom who posted seven images of the potential update on Reddit. They reveal what the new tier could look like on desktop and mobile devices. What’s interesting about the pictures is that they show some of the tools and text windows that may be present in the final product. 

Based on the four smartphone pictures, the hi-res audio feature will apparently be known as Spotify Lossless. This set consists of an introductory guide explaining how the whole thing works. It states subscribers can wirelessly stream music files “in up to 24-bit” via Spotify Connect on a compatible device. A Lossless label will seemingly light up letting you know when you’re streaming in the higher format. Spotify is giving users “pro tips” and a troubleshooting tool in case they’re not receiving lossless audio. The last screenshot says you can adjust song quality “and Downloads in Settings.” 

Spotify Lossless on mobile

(Image credit: Future)

Spotify Lossless on desktop

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Major Google Pixel 8a leak reveals promo pictures and hints at pricing

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There’s a good chance the Google Pixel 8 will be unveiled at Google I/O 2024 on May 14, so it’s perhaps no surprise the pace of the associated leaks is picking up – and the latest major leak we’ve seen covers Pixel 8a promo images and pricing.

This is via the usually reliable @OnLeaks and Smartprix, and to start with the pricing, it looks as though worries about a price hike may have been unfounded: the Pixel 8a pricing is said to be $499 ( with 128GB of storage), and $559 (with 256GB) in the US.



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Bird flu virus has been spreading in US cows for months, RNA reveals

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A Robotic milker, milks Jersey dairy cows in the milking parlor at the Twin Brook Creamery August 6, 2019 in Lynden, Washington, USA.

A cow is milked in Washington State.Credit: USDA Photo/Alamy

A strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza has been silently spreading in US cattle for months, according to preliminary analysis of genomic data. The outbreak is likely to have begun when the virus jumped from an infected bird into a cow, probably around late December or early January. This implies a protracted, undetected spread of the virus — suggesting that more cattle across the United States, and even in neighbouring regions, could have been infected with avian influenza than currently reported.

These conclusions are based on swift and summary analyses by researchers, following a dump of genomic data by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) into a public repository earlier this week. But to scientists’ dismay, the publicly released data do not include critical information that would shed light on the outbreak’s origins and evolution. Researchers also express concern that the genomic data wasn’t released until almost four weeks after the outbreak was announced.

Speed is especially important for fast-spreading respiratory pathogens that have the potential to spark pandemics, says Tulio de Oliveira, a bioinformatician at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. The cattle outbreak is not expected to allow the virus to gain the ability to spread between people, but researchers say it is important to be vigilant.

“In an outbreak response, the faster you get data, the sooner you can act,” says Martha Nelson, a genomic epidemiologist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in Bethesda, Maryland. Nelson adds that with every week that goes by, the window for controlling the outbreak narrows. “Whether we’re not too late, to me, that’s kind of the million dollar question.”

Single spillover

Federal officials announced on 25 March that a highly pathogenic bird-flu strain had been detected in dairy cows. The USDA has since confirmed infections with the strain, named H5N1, in 34 dairy herds in nine states. In late March and early April, the USDA posted a handful of viral sequences from cows sampled in Texas and a sequence from a human case, on the widely used repository GISAID.

On 21 April, the USDA posted more sequencing data on the Sequence Read Archive (SRA), a repository maintained by the NCBI. The latest upload included some 10 gigabytes of sequencing information from 239 animals, includings cows, chickens and cats, says Karthik Gangavarapu, a computational biologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, who processed the raw data.

Analysis of the genomes suggests that the cattle outbreak probably began with a single introduction from wild birds in December or early January. “It’s good news that there’s only been one jump that we can discern so far. But bad news, in many ways that it has been spreading for probably several months already,” says Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who has analysed the genomes.

“This virus is clearly transmitting among cows in some way,” says Louise Moncla, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who has studied the genomic data.

Nelson, who is analysing the data, says she was most surprised by the extent of the genetic diversity in the virus infecting cattle, which indicates that the virus has had months to evolve. Among the mutations are changes to a viral-protein section that scientists have linked to possible adaptation to spread in mammals, she says.

The data also show occasional jumps back from infected cows to birds and cats. “This is a multi-host outbreak,” says Nelson.

A single jump, many months ago, is “the most reliable conclusion you can make,” based on the available data, says Eric Bortz, a virologist at the University of Alaska Anchorage. But an important caveat is that it isn’t clear what percentage of infected cows the samples represent, he says.

Fill in the blank

That’s only one of many data gaps. Scientists lack information about each sample’s precise collection date and the state where it was collected. Such gaps are “very abnormal,” Nelson says.

The missing ‘metadata’ make it harder to answer many open questions, such as how the virus is transmitted between cows and herds, and make it tricky to pin down exactly when the virus jumped to cows. These insights could help to control further viral spread, and protect workers on cattle farms “who can least afford to be exposed,” says Worobey.

Worobey, Gangavarapu and their colleagues are now racing to analyse some metadata uncovered through online sleuthing by Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French national research agency CNRS in Paris. Gangavarapu says dates and geographic information for 152 of the 239 samples have been extracted from a USDA presentation posted on YouTube on 26 April.

Researchers also want more swabbing of cattle and wild birds to gain more insights into the outbreak’s exact origin and to decipher another puzzle. The genomic data reveal that the viral genome sequenced from the infected person does not include some of the signature mutations observed in the cattle. “That is a mystery to everyone,” says Nelson.

One possibility is that the person was infected by a separate viral lineage, which infected cattle that have not been swabbed. Another less likely scenario, which can’t be ruled out, says Nelson, is that the person was infected directly from a wild bird. “It raises just a whole slew of questions about what black box of samples we are missing.”

Shilo Weir, a public affairs specialist at the USDA, says the agency decided to post the unanalysed sequence data on the SRA to make it public as soon as possible. Weir says the agency will “work as quickly as possible” to publish curated files on GISAID with relevant epidemiological information, and will continue to make raw data available on the SRA on a rolling basis.

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DNA from ancient graves reveals the culture of a mysterious nomadic people

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Excavation works conducted by the Eötvös Loránd University at the Avar-period (6th-9th century AD) cemetery of Rákóczifalva, Hungary, in 2006.

Scientists sampled genomic data from 279 graves at a cemetery in Rákóczifalva, Hungary, where people of the medieval Avar culture were buried.Credit: Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary

Most people know about the Huns, if only because of their infamous warrior-ruler Attila. But the Avars, another nomadic people who subsequently occupied roughly the same region of eastern and central Europe, have remained obscure despite having assembled a sprawling empire that lasted from the late sixth century to the early ninth century. Even archaeologists have struggled to piece together their history and culture, relying on spotty and potentially biased contemporaneous chronicles that, in many cases, were authored by the Avars’ adversaries.

A deep dive into 424 genomes collected from hundreds of Avar graves is filling in crucial gaps in this story, revealing a wealth of insights into the Avars’s social structure and culture1. “These people basically didn’t have a voice in history, and we are kind of looking into them this way — through their bodies,” says Zuzana Hofmanová, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and one of the study’s lead authors.

The work was published today in Nature.

Nine generations

The researchers focused on four cemeteries in Hungary that were once at the heart of the khaganate, as the former Avar empire was known. Importantly, all four sites were fully excavated, giving the researchers access to DNA from every grave and enabling them to use genetic data to map relatedness for entire Avar communities.

This effort got an important boost from a computational method called ancIBD, which can connect even distant family members on the basis of their shared chromosomal sequences2. Co-lead author Johannes Krause, an archaeogeneticist at Max Planck, says that scientists have generally struggled to reassemble DNA-based family trees that extend past third-degree relatives, such as first cousins or great-grandparents. But by using tools such as ancIBD, Krause and colleagues were able to chart much more convoluted Avar family trees, including a massive nine-generation pedigree comprising 146 family members.

The data suggest that, after migrating to Europe, the Avars retained many cultural practices from their place of origin on the northeast Asian steppes3. For example, the Avars were very strict about avoiding inbreeding. There were no observed instances of marriage between relatives — even at the level of second cousins. Krasue says that was surprising, given that unions between first cousins were not unusual during much of European history. “It’s really remarkable that they can keep track over nine generations who is related to whom, and who can have children with whom,” he says.

On the other hand, there was also limited intermarriage with non-Avar neighbors: about 20% of the genomic sequences in the sampled Avar DNA could be traced to central European ancestry.

Gold figurine from the excavation at Rákóczifalva, Hungary.

A gold figurine excavated from an Avar burial site in Rákóczifalva, Hungary.Credit: Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary

The researchers recorded several examples of ‘levirate unions’, in which a widow married a male from the family of her deceased spouse, such as a brother. Such marital patterns were atypical in much of Europe, but were established features of Asian steppe-dwelling cultures, notes co-lead author Tivadar Vida, an archaeologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. “It was archaeologically very interesting to see the conservativism in the Avar society, lasting nine generations,” says Vida.

The Avars were also strictly patrilineal, with men acting as heads of family and daughters leaving their communities to join their husbands’ households. At the largest cemetery sampled, in the village of Rákóczifalva, Hungary, Hofmanová notes that there was only a single instance of both a mother and her adult daughter being interred.

Power play

The kinship data reveal what seems to be a shift in local political power that would have been difficult to detect with sparse DNA sampling. In the graves at Rákóczifalva, the researchers found that one male lineage predominated early in Avar history, but was displaced by a different Avar bloodline by the late seventh century. Intriguingly, archaeological evidence collected from those graves suggests that the subsequent family had different diets and burial rituals than did the displaced one, indicating that Avar culture shifted over time despite relatively modest levels of intermarriage with non-Avar individuals.

Carles Lalueza-Fox, a palaeogenomicist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain, says that this work demonstrates the richness of the insights that can emerge when researchers have the opportunity and resources to broadly survey and analyse DNA at sites of historical interest. “Only this scale of analysis would allow you to obtain a reliable picture of kinship and social processes,” he says, adding that his group is now embracing a similar approach in their archaeogenomic research. “I think ancient genomics is moving toward this direction to obtain a more democratic and nuanced view of the past.”

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Galaxy Z Flip 6’s first benchmark reveals juicy info

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In February this year, we reported that Samsung is going to launch its next set of foldable smartphones, which will have two devices, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and the Galaxy Z Flip 6, in July this year, which is earlier than usual. As such, it has started working on the production of these devices in full swing. Well, the company has now started benchmarking those phones. That’s right. Samsung has just benchmarked the Galaxy Z Flip 6 on Geekbench, which confirms key features of the upcoming device.

Geekbench has listed a smartphone from Samsung that the company hasn’t announced yet. It comes bearing the model number SM-F741U. According to a previous report, this device is none other than the Galaxy Z Flip 6. According to the benchmarking platform, Samsung’s upcoming clamshell foldable smartphone features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, one of the variants of the device has 8GB of RAM, and the phone runs on the Android 14 operating system, most likely with One UI 6.1.

Galaxy Z Flip 6 spotted on Geekbench

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 managed to score 15,050 points on the GPU test, which is similar to what the Galaxy S24 Ultra managed to achieve. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 is more compact than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. As such, it has less space for a cooling system. Despite that, it managed to achieve the same level of performance as the brand’s flagship phone, which is quite impressive. However, we suspect that the Galaxy Z Flip 6 might not be able to maintain that level of performance for as long as the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

According to a previous report, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 will feature a larger cover display than that on the Galaxy Z Flip 5. Reportedly, the cover display on the upcoming phone will a 120Hz refresh rate instead of a 60Hz refresh rate on its predecessor. Samsung is expected to offer the foldable with an Exynos chipset in some regions, and the it will be available with up to 12GB RAM. We already got to see the phone’s design, thanks to a previous leak, and according to another report, it will come in a new set of colors.

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