The Webb Telescope’s dazzling nebula image supports a long-held theory

The image of the Serpens Nebula you see above, taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), not only looks mesmerizing but also captures a never-before-seen phenomenon. The aligned, elongated “protostellar outflows” visible in the top left support a longstanding theory. As suspected, the jets shoot out in alignment from the swirling disks of surrounding material, showing evidence that clusters of forming stars spin in the same direction.

NASA says the bright and clumpy streaks in the image’s upper-left area, which somewhat resemble JJ Abrams-style lens flare, represent shockwaves caused by outward-shooting jets that emerge when the interstellar gas cloud collapses inwards. As forming stars condense and twirl more rapidly, some material shoots out perpendicular to the disk.

“Astronomers have long assumed that as clouds collapse to form stars, the stars will tend to spin in the same direction,” Klaus Pontoppidan of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in a blog post. “However, this has not been seen so directly before. These aligned, elongated structures are a historical record of the fundamental way that stars are born.”

The aligned jets (which look a bit like JJ Abrams-style lens flare) indicate the forming stars spin in the same direction.

The Serpens Nebula is only one or two million years old and sits around 1,300 light years from Earth. NASA says the dense cluster of protostars at the image’s center includes stars less than 100,000 years old. Serpens is a reflection nebula, meaning the gas and dust cloud shines by reflecting light from stars inside or nearby.

The JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) captured the image, which covers about 16 trillion miles by 11 trillion miles. The black rectangles you see at the full image’s lower left and upper left represent missing data. NASA says its next step is to use the telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) to study the Serpens Nebula’s chemical breakdown.

You can check out NASA’s instructional video below for a closer look at specific details from the glorious image.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-webb-telescopes-dazzling-nebula-image-supports-a-long-held-theory-210229206.html?src=rss 

New York Governor signs two new bills into law protecting kids from social media

New York has passed two new laws restricting how social media companies interact with and collect data from users under the age of 18.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed two bills into law on Thursday including the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and the New York Child Data Protection Act.

SAFE requires social media companies like Facebook and X to restrict addictive feeds to minors on its platforms. These include feeds that are “algorithmically driven” to prevent “unhealthy levels of engagement,” according to a press release.

The New York Child Data Protection Act also prevents online sites and devices from collecting, sharing or selling the personal data of anyone under the age of 18.

Both laws require companies to obtain consent from parents before allowing kids to access feeds driven by algorithms or collecting data from them. The new laws also require social media companies to create age verification and parental consent controls for its platforms based on guidelines set by New York’s Attorney General.

New York passed two new laws restricting how social media companies interact with and collect data from users under the age of 18. Governor Hochul said in a released statement that these new policies will “provide a safer digital environment, give parents more peace of mind and create a brighter future for young people across New York.”

Other parts of the country have passed laws restricting or limiting children’s access to phones and online platforms. The California State Senate approved a bill similar to New York’s SAFE Act that would also prevent social media apps from sending notifications to minors during school hours and from midnight to 6 a.m. throughout the year. The Los Angeles Unified School District instituted a ban that restricts students’ phone usage during school hours. California Governor Gavin Newson responded to the decision by promising to work with lawmakers on a similar statewide law.

These new policies and laws aren’t just about keeping kids off of their phone while they’re in school. They are designed to address mental health issues caused by social media platforms. The New York Times published an op-ed on Monday from US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy calling social media an “important contributor” to the detriment of mental health in teenagers and called for social media companies to post a warning label for adolescents on its platforms and apps.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/new-york-governor-signs-two-new-bills-into-law-protecting-kids-from-social-media-211935749.html?src=rss 

One of our favorite webcams is on sale for only $48

If you’re in the market for a new webcam, you can save 20 percent on one of Engadget’s top picks for video calls. The Anker PowerConf C200, our top budget pick even at its standard price, is on sale for only $48.

Anker PowerConf C200 Webcam captures video in up to 2K resolution. Although 1080p will suit most people just fine (and you can lower it to that, 720p or 360p if you want), we appreciated the extra sharpness and clarity the 2K feed brought to our calls. The plug-and-play webcam has a fast autofocus and an ƒ/2.0 aperture to let in more light and help brighten up darker scenes.

It has dual stereo microphones built in, and you can use its companion software (AnkerWork) to change its pickup sensitivity from the default directional to omnidirectional (the latter for when more than one person is in your room). The webcam has a 95-degree field of view, but you can adjust it to 78 degrees if you prefer a tighter shot.

As far as tradeoffs, it’s a surprisingly short list for this price point. The Anker C200 lacks the fancy AI framing in some of the latest flagship models, and its cube-like shape makes it a bit more challenging than some competitors to adjust while on top of your screen. Its bundled USB-C to USB-A cable is also annoyingly short — not a big deal for laptops, but folks with standing desks or more sprawling desktop setups may need to swap it out for a longer one.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/one-of-our-favorite-webcams-is-on-sale-for-only-48-184715331.html?src=rss 

Khloe Kardashian Reveals the ‘Turn On’ From Her Ex Lamar Odom

The Good American founder revealed something that the former NBA player did early on in their relationship that really made him more attractive to her.

The Good American founder revealed something that the former NBA player did early on in their relationship that really made him more attractive to her. 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Covers Taylor Swift’s ‘Lover’ in Cute Birthday Tribute to Wife: Watch

The ’10 Things I Hate About You’ actor gave an impromptu performance of one of Taylor Swift’s best love songs while on ‘The Tonight Show.’

The ’10 Things I Hate About You’ actor gave an impromptu performance of one of Taylor Swift’s best love songs while on ‘The Tonight Show.’ 

Anthropic’s newest Claude chatbot beats OpenAI’s GPT-4o in some benchmarks

Anthropic rolled out its newest AI language model on Thursday, Claude 3.5 Sonnet. The updated chatbot outperforms the company’s previous top-tier model, Claude 3 Opus, while working at twice the speed. Claude users (including those on free accounts) can check it out beginning today.

Sonnet, which tends to be Anthropic’s most balanced model, is the first release in the Claude 3.5 family. The company says Claude 3.5 Haiku (the fastest in each generation) and Claude 3.5 Opus (the most powerful) will arrive later this year. (Those models will stay on version 3 in the meantime.) The Sonnet update comes only a few months after the arrival of the Claude 3 family, showcasing the breakneck speed AI companies are working to spit out their latest and greatest.

Anthropic

Anthropic claims Claude 3.5 Sonnet marks a step forward in understanding nuance, humor and complicated prompts, and it can write in a more natural tone. Benchmarks (above) show the new model breaking industry records for graduate-level reasoning, undergraduate-level knowledge and coding proficiency. It beats OpenAI’s GPT-4o on many of the benchmarks Anthropic published. However, the latest Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Llama models tend to score within a few percentage points of each other on most tests, underscoring the tight competition.

The company claims Claude 3.5 Sonnet is also better at interpreting visual input than Claude 3.0 Opus. Anthropic says the new model can “accurately transcribe text from imperfect images,” a skill it hopes will attract customers in retail, logistics and financial services who need to grok data from charts, graphs and other visual cues. 

Claude’s update also brings a new workspace the company calls Artifacts (above). When you prompt the chatbot to generate content like code, text documents or web designs, a dedicated window appears to the right of the chat. From there, you can prompt Claude to make changes, and it will keep the Artifacts window updated with its latest output.

The company sees Artifacts as a first step towards making Claude a space for broader team collaboration. “In the near future, teams — and eventually entire organizations — will be able to securely centralize their knowledge, documents, and ongoing work in one shared space, with Claude serving as an on-demand teammate,” the company wrote in a press release.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is available now for anyone with an account to try on its website, as well as in the Claude iOS app. (On both of those platforms, Claude Pro and Team subscribers get higher token counts.) You can also access it through the Anthropic API, Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI. It costs $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens — the same as the previous model.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/anthropics-newest-claude-chatbot-beats-openais-gpt-4o-in-some-benchmarks-170135962.html?src=rss 

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