Nations all over the globe started to wake up to the reality of a currency controlled by the data hoarding Goliath that is Facebook. A number of countries including India and the US already told the social media giant to hold its horses before plowing on with its plans for global domination Libra. The big F faced one of its biggest hurdles last night, when Facebook’s head of Calibra, David Marcus, faced rigorous questioning from the Senate....

I think it’s a bit far-fetched, given Wear OS’ and Google’s hardware history. Why do I think so? Let’s dive into some reasons. What do we know? Last night, Insider first reported about the watch, noting that the device’s internal codename will be ‘Rohan.’ Whose Indian parents pressurized the company to do this? Apart from this silly name, we know that it’ll have a round dial. Plus, it’ll offer basic fitness tracking capabilities like heart rate monitoring, step count, and calorie count....

On Tuesday, ABB announced the installation of its Terra 360 charger in the country’s second largest city, Bergen, and in Geilo, a ski resort. How fast is the Terra 360 really? ABB introduced the charger in September, promising a 360kW maximum output — hence the name. According to the company, this kind of power enables EVs to fully charge in less than 15 minutes, and get a 100km-range boost in less than three....

From your weight to your money, there’s a tracking app for everything nowadays. Sure, they can make our lives more convenient, and they give us a sense of control, but just the fact that they exist doesn’t mean we should actually use them. In fact, some are simply abusing our laziness to gather personal information for commercial purposes. Previously, we’ve showed you how to track your stock portfolio, and how to manage your personal budget with Google Sheets....

Scattered across these research papers might be the pieces of the puzzle that will unlock the cure or vaccine for COVID-19 or new ways to treat patients and prevent the spread of the virus. Unfortunately, no single person can go through tens of thousands of documents, and the thousands more that are being added every week. This is where the artificial intelligence community enters the scene. Among other efforts to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, AI researchers are fast busy developing tools that will help medical scientists navigate the fast-growing corpus of literature surrounding coronavirus....

From a list of more 50,000 phone numbers, journalists identified more than 1,000 people in 50 countries reportedly under surveillance using the Pegasus spyware. The software was developed by the Israeli company NSO Group and sold to government clients. Among the reported targets of the spyware are journalists, politicians, government officials, chief executives and human rights activists. Reports thus far allude to a surveillance effort reminiscent of an Orwellian nightmare, in which the spyware can capture keystrokes, intercept communications, track the device and use the camera and microphone to spy on the user....

Today, all of those solutions can be “purchased” using a credit card and paying a monthly fee. Very few companies are hosting email onsite, file storage can quickly be done in the ‘cloud,’ and there are countless solutions for a company to manage their accounting online. In just over a decade, all of the core solutions required for a company to operate have gone from extremely expensive to becoming ‘turn-key’ solutions that only need a credit card to set up....

The worst thing about the imposter syndrome is that it manages to convince you it’s real, even when you know it’s not. Here’s how imposter syndrome affected me in my first month as a developer. I want to share this with juniors in the same situation, as well as seniors who have to work with them. But it’s also for people at every level because imposter syndrome affects everyone. Bringing this to light allows all of us to deal better with this ugly monster and its impact....

If you’ve used any modern Android devices, you’ll have come across the current unlocking trend: the in-screen fingerprint scanner. Over the past decade of smartphones, one of the clearest usability evolutions has been how we unlock our devices. We’ve moved from typing in passcodes, to fingerprint scanners, to facial recognition, but the method most seen at the moment is the aforementioned in-screen fingerprint scanner. For those not in the know, this — as the name suggests — is a fingerprint scanner that sits underneath the screen....

Yesterday, Google added support for search engines such as Yandex, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo, in various countries. That means, if you don’t want to use Google for searches, you can use one the other ones including Yahoo, Bing, and these aforementioned services. Here’s how you can change the default search engine on Google Chrome: On Desktop Open Google Chrome on your desktop. Head to Settings and scroll down to the Search Engine section....

The purpose of this article is to review recent ideas on detecting and mitigating unwanted bias in machine learning models. We will discuss recently created guidelines around trustworthy AI, review examples of AI bias arising from both model choice and underlying societal bias, suggest business and technical practices to detect and mitigate biased AI, and discuss legal obligations as they currently exist under the GDPR and where they might develop in the future....

Most marketers acknowledge the need to establish an online presence, yet 60 percent of business owners find it challenging to demonstrate their social media’s ROI. Sergey Grybniak, the founder of Opporty.com, took these stats seriously and decided to do something about them. He established an online platform whose primary goal is to aid entrepreneurs in increasing their firm’s visibility in the online marketplace. Adequate Online Exposure Should Not Be Overlooked A start-up becomes successful once it attracts its audience and manages to obtain more and more conversions....

Ever have that issue where you’re looking for an unusual or special letter or punctuation while texting, but it’s just not on your keyboard. Don’t worry, they’re there — here’s how to find them. Most phone keyboards are designed to look like most standard, physical keyboard layouts. The most common of them is the QWERTY keyboard, and both iPhone and Android maximize the real estate by having the numbers and characters in a separate keyboard....

What is a threat model? Simply put, this is a process designed to elevate an organization’s security posture by cataloguing all assets within a given system that need to be protected, identifying by whom and what directions they might be attacked, and how exactly they can be safeguarded. The industry often associates these exercises with the early stages of the software development lifecycle, but it also applies to firmware and hardware as well....

Whatever the reason, keep in mind that a product pivot isn’t a cure-all or something to take lightly. You should only consider pivoting when it’s clearly necessary. But how do you know when it’s time to pivot your product? Perhaps there is too much competition, and your product no longer stands out as an original solution. Maybe there’s one aspect of the product that gets the most traction, and the other areas seem to be moving slowly....

Smartphone apps have seemingly combined forces, each seeking to hijack our attention and leave us longing for a way to roll back the clock. Each of these devices promises a portal to the outside world, an entry point to the entirety of human knowledge. The world, however, is a noisy place. In 2019, our smart devices are becoming just as distracting as they are useful; but they don’t have to be....

WhatsApp is notorious for compressing its images, so that otherwise-beautiful pictures look like they were shot from a generations-old camera phone. I exaggerate only slightly. Luckily there’s an easy way to “trick” WhatsApp into sending a good image without having to download any third-party software or stressing yourself out. The screenshots for this article are for iOS, since I have an iPhone handy, but I’ll also describe the process for Android as well, since the basic mechanism is essentially the same: you have to make WhatsApp think you’re sending a document, rather than a picture....

I grew up loving the shutdown timer feature on my TV. With the ridiculous amounts of television I consumed, I often struggled to doze off unless I had the noise of some late-night show in the background. Things haven’t changed much since then: I still keep a season or two of The Office, Rick and Morty, or The Sopranos on Google Drive to put me to sleep. But recently I’ve started watching Twitch streamers when I hit the sheets, and unlike a standard episode, these people can go for hours, which means my laptop will stay on for hours....

But that argument makes one important assumption: you are already listening to Spotify Premium with optimal settings. The highest bitrate supported by the streaming platform is 320 kbps, which should be largely indistinguishable from lossless, but in most cases, the streaming app does not guarantee this playback quality. On most devices, Spotify defaults to a variable ‘Automatic’ setting and offers four fixed playback tiers: 24 kbps (Low), 96 kbps (Normal), 160 kbps (High), and 320 kbps (Very High)....

Artificial intelligence is as important as electricity, indoor plumbing, and the internet to modern society. In short: it would be extremely difficult to live without it now. But it’s also, arguably, the most over hyped and misrepresented technology in history — and if you remove cryptocurrency from the argument there’s no debate. We’ve been told that AI can (or soon will) predict crimes, drive vehicles without a human backup, and determine the best candidate for a job....