According to the latest CipherTrace report, losses from digital crime, in which cryptocurrency was the main haul, reached $4.4 billion over the first nine months of the year. It’s not even the end of the year yet, and this figure is already 150 percent up on the total money lost to cryptocurrency-related crime over the whole of 2018. Last year, just $1.7 billion was lost to digital currency crime. “The 150% increase in crypto theft and fraud reflects how criminals are adapting for bigger and better scores,” Dave Jevans CipherTrace chief executive officer said to Reuters....

When the pandemic forced the globe to stay home and find new ways of communicating, conducting business, and managing our finances, video calling and teleconferencing played a big part in keeping what was left of our socio-economic fabric together. Now video conferencing platforms are out in full force and almost every commercial industry is taking advantage of video calling capabilities. Big banks have similarly been pushed to adopt this change quickly or risk losing customers to new fintech banks that have become major competitors in recent years....

Vivo says it’s baked a bunch of novel features into its Apex 2020 concept, including a selfie camera hidden beneath the curved display. The handset has apparently “increased the transmittance of the screen over the camera to six times” that of previous iterations, and uses algorithms to avoid optical interference and stray beams of light in photos captured by the 16-megapixel snapper. There’s also a ‘gimbal-stabilizing’ 48-megapixel rear camera that promises to reduce jitter in videos and long-exposure photographs by 200% more than previous efforts....

The Skysphere is a rear-wheel-drive, two-door electric convertible that can transform from a luxurious grand tourer to a sporty roadster. Yes, it transforms. Thanks to its variable wheelbase, the concept car’s entire front end can extend or contract. Specifically, it can change from a long-wheelbase, stable grand tourer to a 9.8-inch-shorter (24.8cm) and 0.4-inch-lower (1cm) driver-centric roadster. When you make the switch, the interior transforms as well. During the grand tourer mode, the steering wheel and pedals move into an invisible area, expanding the passenger room, and the car goes into self-driving mode with Level 4 autonomy....

Sign us the hell up. First spotted by News Atlas, the robot has a a large human-like torso and terrifying, mechanical claw-hands. It’s mounted on a hydraulic crane, which rides around the rail system on a specially made vehicle. As per the company, its main job is to enable human workers to lift and manipulate heavy equipment across the rail system without exposing them to the risk of electric shock, or falling....

With the surge in video content on the web over the past decade, it’s probably no surprise that video has become a hugely critical piece in devising any marketing strategy. What may surprise you, however, is how astoundingly effective the simple webinar is over other video methods today. A resounding 73 percent of marketing and sales leaders say webinars are one of the best ways to amass quality leads that may actually translate into sales....

Kardashian West, who is of Armenian descent, was interviewed on stage today by Magdalene Yesil, a venture capitalist and business author. She was then joined in a panel discussion by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Giphy founder Alex Chung, and PicsArt founder Hovhannes Avoyan on how tech has democratized entertainment, media, and journalism. I’m sad to report that Kardashian had nothing of substance to share over the course of an hour and a half....

But like many other goals in AI, computer vision has proven to be easier said than done. In 1966, scientists at MIT launched “The Summer Vision Project,” a two-month effort to create a computer system that could identify objects and background areas in images. But it took much more than a summer break to achieve those goals. In fact, it wasn’t until the early 2010s that image classifiers and object detectors were flexible and reliable enough to be used in mainstream applications....

With that date soon approaching, it’s time to speculate about what might make an appearance, and what we’re unlikely to see. This year, there haven’t been that many leaks ahead of time, which makes me hope the company has something juicy that it’s kept tightly under wraps. Still, we can make some guesses. Android 12 Well, this one isn’t a surprise. We hear about a new version of Android every year, and the company has already released several betas of its upcoming OS....

Things such as dumb cars that can’t figure out how cul-de-sacs work without a human operator. And Tesla FSD’s proclivity towards driving the wrong way down clearly-marked one-way streets, for example. Up front: Rumors of the advent of truly driverless cars have been, for the most part, widely exaggerated. Elon Musk’s now infamous 2019 claim that Tesla would have one million fully-autonomous robotaxis on the road by the end of 2020 has aged exactly as well as the experts have said it would....

Soon, Hill confirmed their suspicions. “It is not my palette,” she said on Twitter. “They are FAKE!” The counterfeit palette had infiltrated Walmart’s website, but it wasn’t being shipped from Walmart warehouses. Instead, it was “sold and shipped by Mallroom Global Inventory LLC,” one of tens of thousands of “third-party sellers,” independent businesses that list their wares on Walmart’s app and website. Walmart is famously hands-on with the merchandise in its physical stores, working with manufacturers on design, packaging, and pricing....

But at least one researcher believes the JWST could be a harbinger of ill tidings. In an interview over the weekend, world-renowned physicist Michio Kaku, one of the scientists responsible for string theory, told the Guardian that he didn’t think humans should contact any aliens we find. Here’s the relevant snippet: It’s interesting that Kaku would bring up Montezuma and Cortes in the context of first contact. As legend has it, Montezuma II accidentally ceded the entire Aztec empire to Cortes, a Spanish Conquistador, over a language misunderstanding....

As the technology evolves we’ll no longer need to deal with soul-sucking spreadsheets, hours of searching for just the right cat photo or combing through and compiling heaps of user data. And that’s just the beginning. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Venture capitalist and technology writer Kai Fu Lee shared his prediction that AI will replace 40 percent of today’s jobs in the next 15 years. Which, he believes, doesn’t have to be bad news: “We will end up with the inevitable outcome that large numbers of routine jobs will be eliminated and large numbers of empathetic jobs will be created....

Interestingly enough, we ended up getting some impassioned responses from developers who love WordPress. Just visit some of the many Quora and Reddit threads about the CMS and you’ll find die-hard WordPress haters and lovers battling it out. We decided to dig deeper into this story. What’s actually fueling this rift within the developer community and what could WordPress do to appease Stack Overflow respondents? Seeing as we actually use WordPress here at TNW, we started by having a chat with a developer from our very own team....

Applauding our own actions can be perfectly fine, but is there anything morally praiseworthy about driving an electric vehicle (EV)? Many would say yes, others aren’t so sure since driving EVs might be environmentally neutral or even harmful when both manufacturing and production are considered — but we should leave those details to the relevant experts. As a moral philosopher, I study the way actions and behaviors acquire their moral statuses....

No, I’m not talking about the fancy metallic design, 5K resolution, nor its sextuple speaker system. Nor am I even making fun of the $1,600 price tag. Instead, I’m talking about the sheer flex of building a display that, for some reason, is basically as powerful as the company’s latest entry-level iPad. Apple would have probably helped many more users by making a really nice $500 monitor instead, but no, it just had to make an absurdly overpowered monitor instead....

Anyway, since the end of last year, this habit has accelerated. It’s hard to know why. Maybe it’s because I started my own movie-tracking spreadsheet, maybe it’s because of the Netherlands’ Cineville card, or maybe, just maybe, it’s because of my 4K Blu-ray player. Yes, you read that correctly, my preferred way to watch movies on my sofa is with a — whisper it now — disc. And in the spirit of everything moving picture related, this whole piece is also a video — something you can watch above....

However, even a lot of people value the importance of something material and worthy. Despite the advances in technology, nothing can ever replace the feeling of receiving a personalized postcard. Regardless of what occasion it is, a lot of individuals feel the warmth and love when they receive a card. The Imagery is a Big Part Part of the reason why Postcards can never die is the effort involved in making one....

While companies certainly need to enforce set guidelines for personal social media use in the workplace, business-oriented usage can ultimately help business owners get better results from their team — here’s how. Substituting emails There are already many social media platforms specifically geared for use in the office. Facebook Workplace, Slack, and Basecamp are just a few of the networks designed to help employees communicate and collaborate on work-related projects....

Nikkei Asian Review noted the Chinese company has been “temporarily restricted.” The alliance said in a statement it’s complying with the US commerce department order: This means Huawei’s upcoming devices can still use WiFi technology, but it won’t be certified by the alliance. In the short term. the company’s devices won’t be affected. The second blow of the weekend came through SD association. It has also delisted the Chinese company from its website....