The use of self-tracking and personal surveillance technologies has grown considerably over the last decade. There are now apps to monitor people’s movement, health, mindfulness, sleep, eating habits and even sexual activity. Some of the more thorny problems arise from apps designed to track others, like those made for parents to track their kids. For […]
Read More
If you’ve ever wondered how valuable a company is — or in other words, its capacity to bring in revenue, as well as what its assets are worth — the most common way to do it is to look at its market capitalization. It’s the result of a company’s historically reported and expected — by […]
Read More
GDPR is an incredible piece of legislation that protects our personal data from being abused by companies and organizations. It keeps data handlers in check and gives us a say in the process, but it’s effectiveness is only ensured because it applies to everyone that has our data — and that includes emergency services. Even […]
Read More
Ugh, the Gregorian calendar is so boring. That’s why we’re disrupting monthly series with a lunar cycle-based series about the best patents of the last synodic month, picked by the PatentYogi team. Get ready when that moon gets gibbous, y’all. This May-ish roundup lands on the beautiful Flower Moon! Since my last post, the US patent […]
Read More
ByteDance, the world’s most valuable startup and the company behind popular apps like TikTok, has released a new app: Feiliao (飞聊). Or, if you translate it into English, Flipchat. The new app has a clever spin on instant messaging. It encourages users to create interest-based chat groups based on common hobbies, likes and preferences. A (rough) […]
Read More
In just 24 hours, Huawei smartphones have gone from thriving to endangered. Last night, Google announced that it’s ceasing business with the company. This means it won’t be allowed to use Google Play services, or proprietary apps like Gmail and Google maps for its upcoming phones. And it’s getting worse for the Chinese tech company. Only this […]
Read More
Researchers have developed a new technique that can pinpoint, in real-time, the moment at which milk spoils inside a carton. In their new study, published in the journal Food Control, they suggest that if their invention is integrated into the caps of milk containers, it could one day replace less-accurate sell-by-dates – and save a huge […]
Read More
A team of scientists from the University of Maryland recently came up with a take on the hyperdimensional computing theory that could give robots memories and reflexes. This could break the stalemate we seem to be at with autonomous vehicles and other real-world robots, and lead to more human-like AI models. The solution The Maryland […]
Read More
In the Chinese science fiction film The Wandering Earth, recently released on Netflix, humanity attempts to change the Earth’s orbit using enormous thrusters in order to escape the expanding sun – and prevent a collision with Jupiter. The scenario may one day come true. In five billion years, the sun will run out of fuel […]
Read More
Facebook’s biggest money-spinner is its News Feed, and the company has announced yet another key change to the algorithm. In a fresh announcement, the social network said that it’s leveraging new signals such as user surveys to prioritize posts from close friends and content you might find worthwhile. The shift marks Facebook’s continued evolution from a public […]
Read More
Mobile technology will arguably go down in history as the most successful innovation of our lifetime. Mobile devices, especially phones, are ubiquitous in large parts of the world. On the African continent, the rates of mobile phone ownership and access are rising exponentially. Many organisations have recognized the opportunities this presents. Political parties are no […]
Read More
Google predictably strirred up a hornet’s nest when it announced at its annual developers conference that it would be shutting down the Works with Nest (WWN) program on August 31, 2019. This would have led to all existing Nest integrations not working beyond that date, in addition to forcing existing Nest customers to migrate their […]
Read More
Escherichia coli, nobody’s favorite dinner guest, just had the distinction of becoming the first living organism to have its entire DNA code successfully replaced with a synthetic genome. We’ve played with nature’s creations before, but this is the first time we’ve completely reprogrammed them. The experiment was conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge […]
Read More
For several years, executives of tech and automobile companies have been promising that fully autonomous vehicles will soon become a common sights in streets and roads. But we’re well into 2019, and self-driving cars are still making stupid mistakes. In many ways, the short history of self-driving cars is reminiscent of the early decades of artificial […]
Read More
It’s not been a great week for security, and after Twitter, WhatsApp and Intel, Google has now joined the list. The internet giant has issued an advisory, stating it is recalling Bluetooth versions of its Titan Security Key after it found a vulnerability that allows attackers in close proximity to take control of the device. […]
Read More
When whisky is made in Scotland it’s called scotch. When it’s made in Kentucky it’s called whiskey – the Irish also add the “E”. But when it’s made in Sweden, based on a recipe created by Microsoft‘s AI, we just call it amazing. Swedish distillery Mackmyra Whisky, technology company Fourkind, and Microsoft recently teamed up […]
Read More
Twitter announced Friday that it would be the latest social media platform to intervene in searches for information related to vaccines. Now if you search for keywords associated with vaccines, a prompt appears that directs you to vaccines.gov—a resource from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Twitter said it also won’t auto-suggest search […]
Read More
Google is betting big on ecommerce with the latest update to its search engine. The company is unveiling a redesigned personalized Google Shopping experience, along with introducing the idea of a universal shopping cart across its platform of services, including Search, Shopping, Images and even YouTube. You can now discover and compare products from various parts […]
Read More
While Skype is now a Microsoft-owned behemoth, its early days were very different. Skype‘s heritage goes back to KaZaa, a P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing application that was one of the pillars of the early internet. And while the spirit of those times petered in Skype itself, the country of its origin, Estonia, has fulfilled the promise of P2P. […]
Read More
China‘s Great Firewall just got higher as Wikipedia has been added to Beijing’s no-no list. The government hasn’t explained why it’s blocking the free online encyclopedia, but frankly it’s not surprising. Shutting down a platform that has endless information makes sense if the mere presence of Winnie the Pooh was too much for President Xi […]
Read More