Mammoth vessel: China’s new 98,000-ton mega ship

A new 98,000-ton heavy lift mega-ship, one of the largest vessels of its type in the world, represents a mammoth addition to China’s shipping industry.

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Facebook To Convert Five Male Emoji Into Female Characters

Facebook is releasing a new set of emoji glyphs for Messenger tomorrow that's designed to be more representative of women. Five emoji that have been traditionally displayed as men —the pedestrian, police officer, jogger, swimmer and surfer emoji — will all be female characters in the new set.

The company is also allowing users to select an emoji skin tone, and making sure it renders the same way across various smartphone platforms.

Although the new emoji will still show up as male on your keyboard, when you select one, it will appear as female in the Messenger message itself. The app will show you a preview of how the emoji will look in the compose field before you send them.

"We're diversifying the genders to create a more balanced mix that's more representative of our world," the company said in a blog post.

In all, Facebook is offering its own design of over 1,500 emoji, and creating over100 new emojis.

Tony Leach, a product manager at Facebook who works on Messenger, said the company began the redesign to make emoji look consistent in Messenger no matter what platform you use. "If you send one emoji from the iPhone, it could look completely different when someone sees it on Android," he said. "Because this is how people communicate emotion, that can sometimes be kind of a big deal. Important details can left off, an emoji that you're trying to use to convey one feeling might come across as a completely different feeling."

Facebook isn't the only platform attempting to address gender disparity in emojis. Google recently proposed 13 new emoji to better represent women in the workplace.

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Can space tech help you hit like Tiger Woods?

Since golfers first bunted leather balls around Scottish links, they have searched for equipment to make them better -- and longer.



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What is a black box anyway?

What is a black box? Hear everything you need to know about the boxes that are key to every plane crash investigation.

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Twitter suspends parody accounts that mocked Putin and Russian officials

Twitter has suspended a number of popular parody accounts that mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin and other state officials. The move has prompted criticism of the platform over its censorship of what some users deemed as harmless spoofs.

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What to Watch on Your Google Cardboard

If you're not a gamer—and even if you are—it's hard to justify spending a small fortune on a VR headset such as the $600 Oculus Rift ($600) or HTC Vive ($800) to experience 360-degree video and i...

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What to Watch on Your VR Headset

If you're not a gamer—and even if you are—it's hard to justify spending a small fortune on a VR headset such as the $600 on the Oculus Rift ($600) or HTC Vive ($800) to experience 360-degree vide...

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