Science and Technology

Thursday, 07 November 2019 05:36

Russian startup sells robot clones of real people

A Russian startup is selling autonomous robots, which buyers can choose to make look like any person on Earth. "Everyone will now be able to order a robot with any appearance — for professional or personal use. Thus, we open a huge market in service, education and entertainment. Imagine a replica of Michael Jordan selling basketball uniforms and William Shakespeare reading his own texts in a museum?" said Aleksei Iuzhakov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Promobot, in a statement. The company's Robo-C has a neck and torso that each have three degrees of freedom of movement, but it…

Tuesday, 05 November 2019 05:11

Facebook has a new all-caps logo

Facebook has changed its corporate logo to a minimalist rendering of the Facebook name, a move the company said is meant to separate the wider corporation -- and its subsidiaries like WhatsApp and Instagram -- from the Facebook social network, sometimes known internally as the “big blue app.” The move comes as Facebook faces criticism from lawmakers and advocates for its privacy practices, and concerns that the data collection that’s common on the Facebook platform may bleed over into its other businesses. The company is also facing antitrust scrutiny in part because of its future plans to knit together the…

Tuesday, 05 November 2019 05:09

The passwords you should never use

An annual report, now in its eight year, has analysed the worst passwords of 2018 giving us an insight of what people are using, but more to the point what you shouldn't be using. Account hacking is a real and genuine threat, so making sure you have a safe and secure password for all your accounts is an absolute must. We are constantly told to try and avoid using the same password for everything, but remembering so many different passwords can be a nightmare. Thankfully, there are software programmes and apps out there to handle that task for you and…

Wednesday, 30 October 2019 06:26

WhatsApp sues Israeli firm over phone hacking claims

Facebook-owned WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit against Israel's NSO Group, alleging the firm was behind cyber-attacks that infected devices with malicious software. WhatsApp accuses the company of sending malware to roughly 1,400 mobile phones for the purposes of surveillance. Users affected included journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, and diplomats. NSO Group, which makes software for surveillance, disputed the allegations. In a court filing, WhatsApp said NSO Group "developed their malware in order to access messages and other communications after they were decrypted on target devices". It said NSO Group created various WhatsApp accounts and caused the malicious code to…

Wednesday, 30 October 2019 06:25

Passwords have failed to keep out criminals from stealing your identity, money. This is what’ll replace them

"Sarah", an actor based in London, had her identity stolen in 2017. "I got home one day and found my post box had been broken into," she says. "I had two new credit cards approved which I hadn't applied for, and a letter from one bank, saying we've changed our mind about offering you a credit card." She spent £150 on credit checking services alone trying to track down cards issued in her name. "It's a huge amount of work and money," says Sarah, who asked the BBC not to use her real name. Identity theft is at an all-time…

Sunday, 27 October 2019 05:35

If you have any of these 17 dangerous apps on your phone, delete them right now

Mobile security company Wandera issued a report Thursday afternoon identifying 17 apps in Apple’s App Store infected with clicker Trojan malware, all of which are tied to the same India-based developer. By Friday morning, Apple confirmed they’d been booted from the App Store. Apple told at least one news outlet that 18 apps were removed following the report, but Wandera appears to believe that double-counts one of the apps, with the firm noting in its findings that its “initial list of infected apps included two instances of cricket score app ‘CrickOne’ that were hosted on different regional App Stores and…

Saturday, 26 October 2019 05:37

How a social network could save democracy from deadlock

There is one thing that practically everyone can agree on: politics has become bitterly divided. Whether it is the daily Brexit face-offs, the endless scandals on Capitol Hill or the yellow vests of France, the space for meaningful compromise has dramatically shrunk. Instead, it's a time of digging in, fighting your corner, staying the course. No surrender. It signals a deeper malaise - as electorates become more polarised, democracies become more paralysed. Yet what if it doesn't need to be this way? What if new ways can be found to break deadlocks and bring electorates back together? Thousands of miles…

Thursday, 24 October 2019 05:35

Google develops processor that completes in 3mins calculations the best computer today will take 10,000 years to do

Google announced Wednesday it has achieved a breakthrough in quantum computing, saying it has developed an experimental processor that took just minutes to complete a calculation that would take the world’s best supercomputer thousands of years. The feat could open the door someday to machines so blazingly fast that they could revolutionize such tasks as finding new medicines, developing vastly smarter artificial intelligence systems and, most ominously, cracking the encryption that protects some of the world’s most closely guarded secrets. Such practical uses are still probably decades away, scientists said. But the latest findings, published in the scientific journal Nature,…

Thursday, 24 October 2019 05:33

Facebook 'big' project on journalism set for this week

Facebook is set to make a "big announcement" this week aimed at supporting news and journalism, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday. Zuckerberg, appearing at a congressional hearing on its digital coin Libra, said during questioning that the leading social network is moving forward on a project "supporting high-quality journalism." The comments appeared to refer to Facebook's planned "News Tab" which will be a separate section that includes articles from professional news organizations. "Later in this week we have a big announcement coming up on news and journalism," he told lawmakers, describing this as "a new product that is supporting…

Tuesday, 22 October 2019 05:53

Two women joined GM more than a decade ago. Their futures couldn't be more different

Tentative labor deal aside, the transition to electric and autonomous vehicles is leaving a generation of workers behind. Amanda Kalhous and Rebecca Keetch joined General Motors Canada within a year of each other. Over the past 15 years, they’ve survived layoffs, a government bailout, and the company’s bankruptcy. Today, they’re living through something more fundamental: the biggest shift the auto industry has seen since the invention of the assembly line. This time, only one of them has a future in it. In any other generation, the thousands of employees being laid off by GM in Oshawa, Ontario, could easily be…

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Saturday, 19 October 2019 05:52

Neighbourhoods where poor people live have bigger mosquitoes that transmit more diseases - Report

As if life wasn't already challenging enough for residents in low-income urban neighborhoods, new research suggests such communities are more at risk from particularly harmful, aggressive mosquitoes. Not only are there more mosquitos in such areas, but they may also be larger-bodied and more efficient at transmitting diseases, according to a study published by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Scientists at Cary Institute have been researching how environmental and social conditions affected mosquito numbers as part of a study on the ecosystem of Baltimore. Disease ecologist Shannon LaDeau led the study investigating how socioeconomics influences mosquito-borne disease risk. The…

Thursday, 17 October 2019 06:28

Twitter outlines new rules for world leaders using platform

The post from Twitter doesn't discuss the actions of any specific world leader, but the company said it wanted to better explain why it makes moderation decisions when reviewing controversial posts from political figures. "The actions we take and policies we develop will set precedent around online speech and we owe it to the people we serve to be deliberate and considered in what we do," Twitter said. Twitter has revealed its moderation policies for world leaders in a new blog post. The post from Twitter doesn't discuss the actions of any specific world leader, but the company said it…

Thursday, 17 October 2019 06:23

A new apple that can stay fresh for one year has been created. How far will it go?

When you hear that a new variety of apple is being launched with a multi-million dollar marketing campaign, you might wonder if you weren't listening properly, and that the product is actually an Apple iPhone. But now starting to hit grocery shelves in the US, and then overseas early in 2020, is a new American-born apple that its backers are convinced will be become the new global bestseller - the Cosmic Crisp. "The stars are aligning for this apple," says Kathryn Grandy, marketing director of US fruit firm Proprietary Variety Management (PVM), the company handling the $10m (£7.9m) launch of…

Wednesday, 16 October 2019 05:45

And 'Lo!' - How the internet was born

In the 1960s, Bob Taylor worked at the heart of the Pentagon in Washington DC. He was on the third floor, near the US defence secretary and the boss of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa). Arpa had been founded early in 1958 but was quickly eclipsed by Nasa, leading Aviation Week magazine to dismiss it as "a dead cat hanging in the fruit closet". Nevertheless, Arpa muddled on - and in 1966, Taylor and Arpa were about to plant the seed of something big. Next to his office was the terminal room, a pokey little space where three remote-access…

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