Everyone has a house chore they don’t like. In fact, many of us have several. Despite this, cleaning and tidying is just something that we have to do. It’s either that, or live in squalor. But, there is one thing that can turn a terrible chore into something sorta enjoyable. And that thing? Technology. Yep, there’s little better than getting a piece of kit that makes a laborious task almost enjoyable....
Black Friday deals are perfect for checking loads of names off your holiday shopping list. They’re also great for helping you pick up a few cool items for yourself, maybe stuff you’ve been eyeballing for a while. But you may not think of Black Friday as a means to expand your professional skill sets or even change your entire career. If you’ve been considering some changes, these 10 deals package up some amazing training opportunities at some seriously Black Friday prices....
Yes, Myst, that bizarre first-person adventure game you might remember from the 90s. The game that reinvented and reinvigorated the adventure game genre. The game which is, if you trace the ancestry back far enough, at the root of just about every walking simulator game currently on the market. Why Myst? I guess the only reasonable response is “Why not Myst?” I kind of want to see what the heck they do with this series....
Funding is, therefore, an important resource in any conflict, similar to that of artillery, fuel and boots on the ground. The burden of finance traditionally falls to governments, often in the form of issuing war bonds. Ukraine is currently issuing US$270 million in war bonds for that very purpose. Interestingly, however, Ukraine is also drawing on options that were not available until very recently. Several days after the Russian invasion, Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister of Ukraine and minister of digital transformation, called on people around the world to show solidarity with Ukraine by making crypto donations....
According to a statement, the gang stole Bitcoin from at least 4,000 victims across 12 countries. This is likely just the start, as more are beleived to have been affected; victims continue to come forward. Following a 14-month long investigation, the group of five men and one woman were arrested at their homes in the south of England, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam, in a coordinated operation yesterday. Beyond this, details are sparse, but it appears the group was running a website that impersonated a “well-known online cryptocurrency exchange,” Europol said in the statement....
The way Netflix does things now involves artificial intelligence and necromancy. The company gathers data on everything its users do on the platform, and then feeds that data to a bunch of machine-learning algorithms that continuously funnel users into titles that’ll keep them watching. It’s good old-fashioned psychological manipulation to keep us focused on the screen and not those monthly payments. I don’t have anything to back up the necromancy part but in light of how we’re being manipulated by AI, death magic doesn’t seem like a big deal....
This week, Canadian news outlet CBC reported the story of Clayton Brander, a secondhand Nissan Leaf owner, who has been on a quest for a new battery for his electric car to restore its range to factory spec. Unfortunately, he’s not having much luck. Brander bought a 2013 Nissan Leaf with the hopes that it would help reduce his personal carbon footprint three years ago. At the time, the dealership told him that if the need arose, he’d be able to replace its battery for about CAD$5,000 (about USD$4,000)....
For those new to Crudele, he is sort of like your local know-it-all who camps on a beer crate in front of the liquor store from dawn till dusk, smugly spewing nonsense to everyone who has the misfortune to step in the vicinity of his imaginary pedestal. He’s also a columnist for the NY Post, where he routinely embarrasses himself with his airheaded musings on cryptocurrency. Crudele has made a habit of voicing his belief (because, really, that’s all it is) that Bitcoin is an elaborate scam which will soon be worth nothing....
The Cambridge University team studied depictions of AI systems in stock images, movies, TV, search results, and robots. They found that found the vast majority of them were portrayed as white. The researchers fear these depictions are creating a homogenous tech workforce who bake racial bias into their algorithms. “People trust AI to make decisions. Cultural depictions foster the idea that AI is less fallible than humans. In cases where these systems are racialized as white that could have dangerous consequences for humans that are not,” said study co-author Dr Kanta Dihal....
Did you know there is a company that sells boxer briefs for women? You may not have heard of TomboyX when they got started making less girly clothing designs for women with $76,000 in Kickstarter seed funding back in 2013, but their little Shopify store has tripled in sales since. How did they do it? Well, that’s the real secret sauce, isn’t it? While it never hurts to have a great idea like womens’ boxers, a big piece of a business’ Shopify success can also just come just from knowing the platform, all its hidden features, and how to use them....
Disney announced a restructure of its media and entertainment arms in a Monday press release. The move centralizes those businesses into one entity that will oversee all distribution and monetization of Disney content, including its streaming platform Disney+. This will mean a significant boost in funding for original content. Disney’s pivot comes at the tail end of a tough year for the entertainment giant. Rolling COVID lockdowns in March obliterated its Parks, Experiences, and Products department, forcing the company to report a profit loss of 91% in 2020’s first quarter, and a $4....
There were over 3 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs last year. While part of that was undoubtedly due to the global pandemic, that world-changing event only exacerbated a problem that has been happening for years. Companies are having a tough time finding qualified talent to tackle those all important cybersecurity duties. That lack of viable candidates is an even more pressing worry in this post-pandemic world. In fact, 85 percent of companies report between remote work and mounting cyberthreats, cyber security is as important or more important now than before COVID....
This is not a trivial problem. Current global warming shows us that the climate can change considerably over the course of even a few centuries. Over geological timescales, it is even easier to change climate. Calculations show that there is the potential for Earth’s climate to deteriorate to temperatures below freezing or above boiling in just a few million years. We also know that the Sun has become 30% more luminous since life first evolved....
This article was written by Izaak Crook, the Head of Marketing at AppInstitute, a SaaS App Builder platform that allows anyone to create their own iOS and Android app without writing a single line of code. You can read the original piece here. September 19th, 1982 February 22nd, 1999 August 9th, 2007 October 23rd, 2008 November 21st, 2008 June 1st, 1993 Unicode 1.1.0, released June 1993, included characters reminiscent of emoji, but mainly sourced from the Zapf Dingbats font, and quite rudimentary by today’s standards....
Amid all the focus on emissions reduction, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says it will not be enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. The world must actively remove historical CO₂ already in the atmosphere – a process often described as “negative emissions.” CO₂ removal can be done in two ways. The first is by enhancing carbon storage in natural ecosystems, such as planting more forests or storing more carbon in soil....
The app uses Bluetooth to detect if people have recently been close to someone who’s tested positive for COVID-19. The government says the system’s “designed with user privacy in mind so it tracks the virus, not people.” Unlike the previous version, user data will stay on the phone rather than go to a central database. The app also includes a range of new features, including a symptom checker, self-isolation timer, test-booking, alerts about local infection risks, and a QR check-in for venues that notify users if they’ve recently been somewhere that’s had an outbreak....
On Monday, EU privacy regulators ruled that users of Meta’s platforms should no longer have to accept these sort of adverts, sources from Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reveal. The regulators declared that this kind of coerced consent falls foul of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU’s wide-reaching privacy law. This doesn’t mean it’s a done deal though. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission still needs to issue specific orders and decide on the fine in question....
The proposed legislation, per a leak obtained by Politico’s Melissa Heikkila, would ban systems it deems as “contravening the Union values or violating fundamental rights.” The regulations, if passed, could limit the potential harm done by AI-powered systems involved in “high-risk” areas of operation such as facial recognition, and social credit systems. Per an EU statement: The commission’s anticipated legislation comes after years of research internally and with third-party groups, including a 2019 white paper detailing the EU’s ethical guidelines for responsible AI....
Basically, when you open a new website, you need to manually opt in for non-essential cookies. If you don’t, the website doesn’t have any legal right to process your non-essential data. So if you see a pop-up saying you’ve received a cookie, with a pointless ‘ok’ button, then that website is breaking the law. This ruling will undeniablycause headaches for a lot of businesses, as the cookies in question are often used for targeted advertising and other fundamental operations....
In a statement on Thursday, EU judges said the data-sharing agreement doesn’t sufficiently protect the privacy of the bloc’s citizens. “The limitations on the protection of personal data arising from the domestic law of the United States on the access and use by US public authorities… are not circumscribed in a way that satisfies requirements that are essentially equivalent to those required under EU law,” the court said in a statement....
