Can’t leave your phone alone? You’re just trying to blend in
Keep checking your smartphone without knowing why? You may be unconsciously copying those around you, according to Italian research into the ‘chameleon effect’
Source: Can’t leave your phone alone? You’re just trying to blend in
Twitter expands Spaces to anyone with 600+ followers, details plans for tickets, reminders and more
Twitter Spaces, the company’s new live audio rooms feature, is opening up more broadly. The company announced today it’s making Twitter Spaces available to any account with 600 followers or more, including both iOS and Android users. It also officially unveiled some of the features it’s preparing to launch, like Ticketed Spaces, scheduling features, reminders, support for co-hosting, accessibility improvements and more.
Cheugy
@webkinzwhore143Expand 👏 your 👏 vocabulary 👏 to 👏 include 👏 made 👏 up 👏 words 👏#greenscreen #cheugy #cheug♬ original sound – Hal
Out of touch? Basic? A new term to describe a certain aesthetic is gaining popularity on TikTok.
How Pixar Uses Hyper-Colors to Hack Your Brain
The animation studio’s artists are masters at tweaking light and color to trigger deep emotional responses. Coming soon: effects you’ll only see inside your head.
A meme gold rush? Classic viral images selling as NFTs for thousands
The image of Zoe Roth, her small face grinning somewhat ominously at the camera while firefighters work to save a burning home behind her, has made the rounds online for years. The image of Roth, taken in 2005 near a planned and controlled burn, became an iconic meme known as “Disaster Girl.” Now, 16 years after the image was snapped, “Disaster Girl” has made Roth, 21, roughly $430,000.
Source: A meme gold rush? Classic viral images selling as NFTs for thousands
The Computers Are Getting Better at Writing
To spend ten minutes with Sudowrite is to recognize that the undergraduate essay, the basic pedagogical mode of all humanities, will soon be under severe pressure. Take an A paper, change a few words in the first paragraph, push buttons three times, and you have an essay that fits the assignment. Whatever field you are in, if it uses language, it is about to be transformed. The changes that are coming are fundamental to every method of speaking and writing that presently exists.
Schools Use Software That Blocks LGBTQ+ Content, But Not White Supremacists
A Motherboard investigation found the algorithmic surveillance tools allow racist groups like the KKK while flagging LGBTQ health sites as ‘porn’.
Source: Schools Use Software That Blocks LGBTQ+ Content, But Not White Supremacists
These Materials Could Make Science Fiction a Reality
Metamaterials, which could improve smartphones and change how we use other technology, allow scientists to control light waves in new ways.
Source: These Materials Could Make Science Fiction a Reality
Will AI Change the Game for Adtech?
The technology aided with artificial intelligence has revolutionized this industry; it has moved the advertising efforts from “brought to you by” on TV to actual relatable content to every cast and creed, making its way to several different platforms. This technology can read and understand the text while sensing the external environment.
Extremists Find a Financial Lifeline on Twitch
QAnon adherents and other far-right influencers are making thousands of dollars broadcasting election and vaccine conspiracy theories on the streaming site.
TikTok and the Vibes Revival
Increasingly, what we’re after on social media is not narrative or personality but moments of audiovisual eloquence.
Source: TikTok and the Vibes Revival
Yahoo, the Destroyer
How the historic company became known as a bumbling villain of internet culture
Source: Yahoo, the Destroyer
Shadow Bans, Dopamine Hits, and Viral Videos, All in the Life of TikTok Creators
A secretive algorithm that’s constantly being tweaked can turn influencers’ accounts, and their prospects, upside down
Source: Shadow Bans, Dopamine Hits, and Viral Videos, All in the Life of TikTok Creators – The Markup
It’s here! The winners and losers of Apple’s seismic privacy change
Apple’s long-awaited crackdown is being enforced. Starting today (April 26), people will start receiving prompts on their Apple devices as to whether they want to be tracked by various apps. Now comes the hard part: while no one can say with any certainty how this will shake it out, it’s clear that mobile advertising won’t be the same once it does.
Source: It’s here! The winners and losers of Apple’s seismic privacy change
How Big Tech got so big: Hundreds of acquisitions
For decades Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google gobbled up their competition to become behemoths of the tech industry, which has drawn attention from Congressional leaders and other critics who claim they’ve stifled innovation in the industry.
Apple’s $64 billion-a-year App Store isn’t catching the most egregious scams
Recently, I reached out to the most profitable company in the world to ask a series of basic questions. I wanted to understand: how is a single man making the entire Apple App Store review team look silly? Particularly now that Apple’s in the fight of its life, both in the courts and in Congress, to prove its App Store is a well-run system that keeps users safe instead of a monopoly that needs to be broken up.
Source: Apple’s $64 billion-a-year App Store isn’t catching the most egregious scams
Fake Famous on HBO
Fake Famous explores the meaning of fame and influence in the digital age through an innovative social experiment. Following three Los Angeles-based people with relatively small followings, the film explores the attempts made to turn them into famous influencers by purchasing fake followers and bots to “engage” with their social media accounts.
Source: Fake Famous
See also: What HBO’s Fake Famous Doesn’t Understand About Young People and Influencer Culture
Coinbase Makes Its Debut—and Bitcoin Arrives on Wall Street
Physicists are constantly rethinking how bubbles burst. It’s one of those nagging problems in physics, deceptively simple, like working out the forces that keep a bike upright . The problem is that while bubbles pop around us all the time, those pops occur in a fraction of a second, making the basic principles hard to glimpse.
Source: Coinbase Makes Its Debut—and Bitcoin Arrives on Wall Street
Google Earth’s 3D Timelapse Is Its Most Important New Feature in Years
Google Earth is already a powerful tool for observing our planet, but today it’s getting a major upgrade with the introduction of a new 3D time-lapse feature. Described by Google Earth director Rebecca Moore as the biggest update to Google Earth since 2017, Timelapse in Google Earth combines more than 24 million satellite photos, two petabytes of data, and 2 million hours of CPU processing time to create a 4.4-terapixel interactive view showing how the Earth has changed from 1984 to 2020.
Source: Google Earth’s 3D Timelapse Is Its Most Important New Feature in Years
Facebook’s proposed Instagram for kids worries child safety groups
An international coalition of public health and child safety advocates urged Facebook executives Thursday to abandon plans to launch a version of Instagram for children under age 13 because its members feared it would put young users at “great risk.”
Source: Facebook’s proposed Instagram for kids worries child safety groups
100 Million More IoT Devices Are Exposed—and They Won’t Be the Last
Over the last few years, researchers have found a shocking number of vulnerabilities in seemingly basic code that underpins how devices communicate with the internet. Now a new set of nine such vulnerabilities are exposing an estimated 100 million devices worldwide, including an array of internet-of-things products and IT management servers.
Source: 100 Million More IoT Devices Are Exposed—and They Won’t Be the Last
For Creators, Everything Is for Sale
A rash of new start-ups are making it easier for digital creators to monetize every aspect of their life — down to what they eat, who they hang out with and who they respond to on TikTok. Tens of millions of people around the globe consider themselves creators, and the creator economy represents the “fastest-growing type of small business,” according to a 2020 report by the venture capital firm SignalFire. But as the market gets more and more competitive — and the platforms and their algorithms remain unreliable — creators are devising new, hyper-specific revenue streams.
Netflix Will Become the Post-Theatrical Streaming Home for Sony Pictures
Sony Pictures finally made its play in the streaming wars: It’s punting to Netflix .The deal gives Netflix much of what it was missing in the form of franchises and library titles, and signals there will be no “Sony+” anytime soon.
Source: Netflix Will Become the Post-Theatrical Streaming Home for Sony Pictures
How Blockchain Can Simplify Partnerships
Collaborations that require information sharing and mutual trust between companies, suppliers, and clients can be tough, particularly in the remote era. But blockchain’s distributed ledger — and its use of smart contracts — can simplify the process, creating a common, reliable record of transactions and avoiding costly disputes. In doing so, blockchain changes how deals are made: Partner selection is made simpler, as establishing trust is less important; agreement formation is more important, because protocols are hard to alter once put in place; and execution is made easier, because outcomes can be automated. Blockchain isn’t a magic bullet — it works much better in some situations than others — but it can fundamentally change how collaborations work
An artificial intelligence algorithm has created “new” Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana songs
We’ve heard AI-generated songs mimic the work of AC/DC, Metallica and more. Now artificial intelligence software has generated “new” Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana tracks, along with other artists and bands with members who died at the age of 27, to help raise awareness for the importance of mental health support amongst musicians and members of the music industry.
Source: An artificial intelligence algorithm has created “new” Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana songs
Is there a future for bitcoin? An investor and a skeptic make their cases
Professor Steve Hanke and investor Nic Carter on the two sides of the bitcoin debate
Source: Is there a future for bitcoin? An investor and a skeptic make their cases
Google wins decade-long battle against Oracle over Java on Android
The battle between Google and Android affects more than just Android. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Google in its long-time battle against Oracle. Oracle sued Google for using its Java code in earlier versions of Android.
Source: Google wins decade-long battle against Oracle over Java on Android
How Snapchat AR Ignited Christian Dior’s B27 Launch
Luxury brands are flocking to augmented reality — among them, Christian Dior, whose B27 launch on Snapchat soared, thanks to the tech.
Source: EXCLUSIVE: How Snapchat AR Ignited Christian Dior’s B27 Launch
Check Out These Cool New Features In Google Maps Brought To Reality By Artificial Intelligence
Google announces a series of updates in Google Maps using artificial intelligence ( AI ) that have been or are about to be released in the coming year.
Source: Check Out These Cool New Features In Google Maps Brought To Reality By Artificial Intelligence
NFTs Weren’t Supposed to End Like This
When we invented non-fungible tokens, we were trying to protect artists. But tech-world opportunism has struck again.
Trust in tech cratered all over the world last year
Trust in tech — including companies specializing in AI, VR, 5G and the internet of things — fell all around the world last year, the Edelman Trust Barometer found in a massive survey of 31,000 people in 27 countries.
Source: Exclusive: Trust in tech cratered all over the world last year
Clubhouse, the Shift to Spoken Social Media, and the Voices That Will Be Silenced
Real-time voice chatroom platforms must make people with speech impairments feel welcome. If inclusivity remains an unsolved problem, then millions of people will be silenced.
Source: Clubhouse, the Shift to Spoken Social Media, and the Voices That Will Be Silenced
Apple adds two brand new Siri voices and will no longer default to a female or male voice in iOS
Apple adds two brand new Siri voices and will no longer default to a female or male voice in iOS Apple is adding two new voices to Siri’s English offerings, and eliminating the default “female voice” selection in the latest beta version of iOS.
5 Years After the Oculus Rift, Where Do VR and AR Go Next?
A lot’s happened since Facebook’s first headset brought virtual reality to the masses. Facebook might have been a first mover, but it also wants to be the last one.
Source: 5 Years After the Oculus Rift, Where Do VR and AR Go Next?
Android sends 20x more data to Google than iOS sends to Apple, study says
Whether you have an iPhone or an Android device, it’s continuously sending data including your location, phone number, and local network details to Apple or Google. Now, a researcher has provided a side-by-side comparison that suggests that, while both iOS and Android collect handset data around the clock—even when devices are idle, just out of the box, or after users have opted out—the Google mobile OS collects about 20 times as much data as its Apple competitor.
Source: Android sends 20x more data to Google than iOS sends to Apple, study says
The agency that controls U.S. nukes had its Twitter account accessed by a child
An unintelligible tweet made by U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) on Sunday was produced by a small child, the Daily Dot has learned. USSTRATCOM, which is responsible for the U.S. nuclear arsenal, stirred confusion after releasing a tweet that appeared to be gibberish: “;l;;gmlxzssaw.” The tweet was deleted shortly after.
Source: The agency that controls U.S. nukes had its Twitter account accessed by a child
OpenAI’s text-generating system GPT-3 is now spewing out 4.5 billion words a day
One of the biggest trends in machine learning right now is text generation. AI systems learn by absorbing billions of words scraped from the internet and generate text in response to a variety of prompts. It sounds simple, but these machines can be put to a wide array of tasks — from creating fiction, to writing bad code, to letting you chat with historical figures.
Source: OpenAI’s text-generating system GPT-3 is now spewing out 4.5 billion words a day
How Audio Pros ‘Upmix’ Vintage Tracks and Give Them New Life
Experts are using AI to pick apart classic recordings from the 50s and 60s, isolate the instruments, and stitch them back together in crisp, bold ways.
Source: How Audio Pros ‘Upmix’ Vintage Tracks and Give Them New Life
Robinhood app makes Wall Street feel like a game to win – instead of a place where you can lose your life savings in a New York minute
Wall Street has long been likened to a casino . Robinhood, an investment app that just filed plans for an initial public offering , makes the comparison more apt than ever . That’s because the power of the casino is the way it makes people feel like gambling their money away is a game.
Frictionless ‘stores of the future’ will land and expand
A new paradigm of physical retail, created and accelerated by the pandemic’s disruptive forces, is ready to emerge. In 2021, the “retail apocalypse” will reach a crescendo as many teetering legacy retailers close hundreds of locations.
Source: Frictionless ‘stores of the future’ will land and expand