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Communication and Technology news
Google Search will soon understand normal questions, not just keywords
2019-10-25

Ever had to search for something on Google, but you’re not exactly sure what it is, so you just use some language that vaguely implies it? Google’s about to make that a whole lot easier. Google announced today it’s rolling out a new machine learning-based language understanding technique called Bidirectional...

Hackers give Johannesburg government 3 days to pay over $30K in Bitcoin
2019-10-25

A group of cybercriminals calling themselves the “Shadow Kill Hackers” has reportedly attacked the City of Johannesburg (South Africa) administration website — and is threatening to upload the stolen data on the internet unless it receives a Bitcoin ransom. The hackers are requesting the city pays over $30,000...

Facebook’s return to News sees it tap into human-curation of stories
2019-10-25

After deprioritizing news in the News Feed and pivoting to video, Facebook is officially back in the news business again. The social media giant is rolling out Facebook News to select audiences in the US starting today, carving a dedicated home screen tab out of its digital real estate for users to explore their news...

Google just released a ‘phone’ made of paper, for your sanity
2019-10-25

All you need to go offline for a day is a printer. Our phones are making us unhappy, and companies like Google are wrestling with how to keep expanding a product like Android without destroying the soul of humanity in the process. The company’s designers have been outspoken on the topic, and they released a...

Watch Google, Facebook, and YouTube’s rise to dominance in this hypnotic video
2019-10-25

A mesmerizing 8-minute video shows how AOL, Yahoo, and MSN fell to the current web kingpins over the course of two decades. Today, AOL and Yahoo are near-worthless divisions of a phone company, as Verizon picks their digital bones to assimilate, sell off, or shut down what’s left. But two decades ago, AOL and...

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says “hell no” to joining Facebook’s Libra ‘cryptocurrency’
2019-10-25

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has said the popular microblogging site will never join Facebook’s controversial ‘cryptocurrency’ project. Speaking at a Twitter media event held in New York City yesterday, Dorsey replied “Hell no” when asked if Twitter would join Libra, The Verge reports. The CEO, who also founded...

Google just released a ‘phone’ made of paper
2019-10-25

All you need to go offline for a day is a printer. Our phones are making us unhappy, and companies like Google are wrestling with how to keep expanding a product like Android without destroying the soul of humanity in the process. The company’s designers have been outspoken on the topic, and they released a...

Why we need to stop idolizing big tech
2019-10-25

The provocative NYU Stern School of Business marketing professor and author of ‘The Algebra of Happiness’ argues that internet giants need to be cut down to size. It used to be, if somebody went off the rails, one of your kids, you’d immediately start praying. Now it’s Google. Google...

The techno-utopian visions of Google and Facebook are dead. What comes next?
2019-10-25

Today’s big tech companies need to embrace a new philosophy: techno-pragmatism. Just earlier this month, while meeting with Congress to discuss digital privacy, censorship, and transparency, Republican Senator Josh Hawley asked Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to divest of WhatsApp and Instagram. (You can...

Lawmakers want Netflix to warn users about a nuclear attack
2019-10-25

The READI Act would mandate that major streaming service providers send their users emergency alerts during times of local or national emergencies. U.S. lawmakers have reintroduced a bipartisan bill that would mandate that major streaming service providers send their users emergency alerts during times of local or...

This is your brain on improvisation—and why your creativity depends on it
2019-10-25

In this episode of Fast Company’s podcast ‘Creative Conversation,’ we analyze what happens in your brain when you improvise and how you’re better at it than you think. Listen to the latest episode of Fast Company’s podcast Creative Conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,...

Microsoft is hawking controller clips for phones to prep you for Project xCloud
2019-10-25

Ahead of the launch of its Project xCloud game streaming service, Microsoft has begun talking up a gaming accessory that holds your phone right above your Xbox controller, so you can have an easier time killing bad guys in titles that the company will beam to your phone from the cloud. The arrival of this controller...

Pardon the intrusion #3: It’s 2FA or bust
2019-10-25

Subscribe to this bi-weekly newsletter here! Welcome to the third edition of Pardon The Intrusion, where we explore the wild world of security. Almost everyone agrees that two-factor authentication (2FA) is the holy grail when it comes to keeping our accounts safe from breaches. Still, it’s unbelievable how many...

Google just got better at understanding your trickiest searches
2019-10-25

A new machine-learning algorithm is helping Google tell which words in queries matter most—and how they relate to each other. For Google’s namesake search engine, delivering the right results is about understanding what people are asking for. And understanding that involves zeroing in on the meaningful...

Apple and Google remove 50+ malicious apps that stole your data
2019-10-25

Apple and Google have cumulatively removed over 50 apps from their respective mobile app stores that were found serving malicious ads to millions of users. The findings were were disclosed separately by London-based mobile security firm Wandera and Slovakian security solutions provider ESET. Disruptive ad behavior...

Facebook is about to reveal its News tab
2019-10-24

Facebook is getting its own dedicated news tab later this week, apparently. The platform’s tricky relationship with news is now crystallizing into a partnership, in which Facebook will pay big publishers to post to the news tab. CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased this new announcement during his tete-a-tete with Congress...

This plant can take a selfie
2019-10-24

Plant-powered sensors and cameras could change forest monitoring. Pete is not your run-of-the-mill fern. The plant can do something most often associated with people who post on Instagram—it can take selfies.Read Full Story

Google is training an AI to predict a molecule’s smell
2019-10-24

With plenty of mics and cameras at disposal, AI has gotten good at ‘seeing’ and ‘listening.’ But one human sense it hasn’t got around much is smell. Now, researchers at Google are trying to develop a neural network that helps an AI identify the smell characteristics of a molecule. The company said...

The Iranian developer deadlock: Stuck between censorship and US sanctions
2019-10-24

On August 2, Iranian programmer Saber Mesgari received an email from Amazon Web Services stating that the company had to stop providing its cloud services because he lives in a country that is on the US sanctions list. Amazon shut down his account immediately after. AWS and other services such as GitHub and Google...

iOS 13 is the new arena for all the best app designers. Master it first for just $20
2019-10-24

This collection includes four courses that help you develop in and take full advantage of the iOS 13 environment. In The Complete iOS 13 Developer Course & SwiftUI, you get a full introduction to app creation, then actually get your hands dirty building several iOS 13 projects, including clones of Uber and...

Twitter’s stock plummets after shortfall on ad revenue and earnings
2019-10-24

Users grew a healthy 17% but Twitter’s advertising revenue fell short in Q3 2019. President Trump’s favorite social media network is having a rough morning.Read Full Story

The great rebranding of body hair
2019-10-24

Flamingo, Billie, and Fur want to give you permission to grow out your pubes. Thanks, brands! These days, I often find myself toodling around on Instagram, minding my own business, when boom! A brand serves me an ad about pubic hair. To be clear, I have no problem with body hair. To each their own. It’s just...

Zuckerberg tells Congress he’ll delay Libra until regulatory issues are sorted (yeah right)
2019-10-24

Facebook‘s billionaire co-founder Mark Zuckerberg stood before US Congress yesterday, in an attempt to change the rhetoric around his company‘s controversial ‘cryptocurrency’ Libra. During the lengthy session, Zuckerberg sought to defend the digital currency, which has faced mounting criticism from...

When you Google your company’s name — do you like what you see?
2019-10-24

In business, reputation counts for a lot. And its constituent parts, the contributing factors, are many and complex, from the opinions that customers form about your products or services, to the manner in which you interact with your various stakeholders, to your corporate governance and ethical practices – they all...

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