News Technology

The social media giant, Facebook tightens the rules ahead of the next US presidential election, reports BBC.

The company has introduced new political advertising rules, in a bid to halt exploitation in the US elections.

Now, for the political advertisers, to obtain a “confirmed organisation” label, they have to verify their identity.

This is marked as an attempt, to stop creating misleading or inaccurate ads to influence voters.

These new rules of Facebook will also be applicable to Instagram, which is a property of Facebook.

The political parties are using the ‘paid-for’ Facebook ads, as a tool for their campaigns to target voters.

A recent survey revealed that, over $70m (£57.3m) had been spent on Facebook ads by the 2016 Trump campaign, during the election period.

Political advertisers has been required in the US by the social media giant put a “paid for” disclaimer on their ads since 2018, but the changes have not completely stamped out improper use.

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News Technology

The job search tool of Google is being investigated by the European Union as they got several claims, saying the competitors has been driven out of the market.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner has raised a question whether it was fair the Google had “such control over the success or failure” of its rivals.

At the top of searches, the tech giant places a widget, circumventing the need to click through to job sites.

Brussels has been asked by Twenty-three job-search sites, to take necessary action last month.

Google is not charging any fee for this facility now. The competitors fears that this is a plan to gain market share before monetising its business model.

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News Technology

A school in Sweden, which used facial recognition for tracking student’s attendance has been fined 200,000 Swedish Krona (£16,800, $20,700) by the Swedish Data Protection Authority (DPA).

The fine has been issued on the school for for flouting a privacy law.

The school used a trial session which included 22 high school students being detected when each of them entered the classroom.

It is for the first time that a GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) fine has been issued in Sweden.

The GDPR came into force last year and it has issued some restrictions in using facial images and other bio-metric information.

If the school had carried out a longer period trial, the fine would have been bigger, said the DPA.

To a Swedish state broadcaster, the local authorities said that when calculated the time spent by teachers for taking attendance, they got an average of 17,000 hours a year. The authorities explained that they were just trying find out a way to speed up the attendance reporting.

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Entertainment News Technology

Franky Zapata (40), French inventor and creator of Flyboard and Flyboard Air has succesfully completed his attempt to cross the English Channel on a jet-powered fly-board.

Zapata, who started his flying from Sangatte, near Calais, at 06:17 GMT on Sunday had landed in St Margaret’s Bay in Dover.

A kerosene-filled backpack has been used in the fly-board journey. Zapata crossed a distance of 22-mile (35.4-km) in 22 minutes.

Zapata was a former jet-ski champion. A previous attempt had been made by him on 25th of July this year, which was not successful. Several complications were faced by him regarding the refueling of the flying system.

Filled with emotions, he told the media, “We made a machine three years ago… and now we’ve crossed the Channel, it’s crazy. Whether this is a historic event or not, I’m not the one to decide that, time will tell”.

“The last five, six kilometres were pure pleasure, to see the [British] coast approaching like this”, he said to the French media while talking with his family, after the flying.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE !!!

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News Technology

Facebook’s cryptocurrency – Libra will let you buy things or send money to people with nearly zero fees, has come under further attack at a US hearing.

The politicians said that the company is “delusional” and non-trusted. They said that they do not trust Facebook to operate a global cryptocurrency.

Facebook executive David Marcus has been questioned by the Senate Banking Committee over FB’s intention to launch its Libra digital currency.

Senator Sherrod Brown said that the company had showed “through scandal after scandal that it doesn’t deserve our trust”.

Facebook executive David Marcus at the Senate Banking Committee hearing

Before launching a new business model, the tech giant had been advised to clean up its house. Last moth, the company had announced its plan to launch a digital currency, probably by next year.

But, initially, the company had to get the Washington lawmakers on its side. But, several criticisms came soon after the company had revealed its plan to launch Libra, even from President, Donald Trump.

Trump’s last week tweet said that he is not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.

Facebook said that Libra won’t be an investment vehicle and that the company and its partners have no plans to act like a central bank.

Former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in an interview that, “We don’t actually have a regulatory framework that sufficiently addresses the cash market for digital assets that aren’t securities, like bitcoin. We don’t have a comprehensive way of looking at it”.

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Gadgets News Technology

A powerful surveillance app, which was first designed for Android is now targeting the iPhone users, says techcrunch. This spy app, dubbed ‘Exodus’ was discovered by the research team at mobile security firm Lookout. They said that its developer abused their Apple-issued enterprise certificates to bypass the tech giant’s app store to infect unsuspecting victims.

Once installed, this carrier assistance app will take the owner’s personal information, contacts, audio recordings, photos, videos and other device information. The real-time lactation data can also be hacked by this app. The calls may also be leaked. There was no data regarding who might have been targeted.

Zack Whittaker, the security editor at TechCrunch said “Security researchers have discovered a powerful surveillance app first designed for Android devices can now target victims with iPhones”.

“Although the Android version was downloadable directly from Google’s app store, the iOS version was not widely distributed. Instead, Connexxa signed the app with an enterprise certificate issued to the developer by Apple, said Bauer, allowing the surveillance app maker to bypass Apple’s strict app store checks”, said Whittaker.

Many victims were trapped by the Android app, dubbed Exodus, either by installing it or having it installed. According to ‘Security Without Borders’, this spy app has a larger feature set and expanded spying capabilities by downloading an additional exploit designed to gain root access to the device, giving the app near complete access to a device’s data, including emails, cellular data, Wi-Fi passwords and more. Exodus is reportedly made an in Italian company called eSurv.

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News Technology

The Facebook’s master Mark Zuckerberg said that secure, private messaging services will be having more chances to become popular than open platforms.

Zuckerberg, on Wednesday announced that Facebook plans to rebuild its services around several privacy-focused principles: “private interactions,” “encryption,” “reducing permanence,” “safety,” “interoperability” and “secure data storage.” He outlined his vision to transform Facebook into a “privacy-focused platform.” in his blog.

“I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever. This is the future I hope we will help bring about.”


“We plan to build this the way we’ve developed WhatsApp: focus on the most fundamental and private use case — messaging — make it as secure as possible, and then build more ways for people to interact on top of that, including calls, video chats, groups, stories, businesses, payments, commerce, and ultimately a platform for many other kinds of private services.” said Zuckerberg.

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Gadgets News Technology

Apple Inc has united up with Ant Financial Services Group and several local banks to offer interest-free financing. Apple hopes to revitalize sales in China, by the collaboration with Ant Financial which is the world’s largest financial-technology company.

It is its first such move in the country as it looks to boost waning smartphone sales. With this China website, apple comes with a new scheme in which the customers can pay 271 yuan ($40.31) monthly, for buying an iPhone XR and 362 yuan monthly for purchasing iPhone XS. The customers trading in old models can avail cheaper installments.

Interest-free financing schemes are offered for the customers who buys an Apple product worth a minimum of 4,000 yuan. They can pay the money with three, six, nine, 12 or 24 months, as the website says.

Ant Financial Services Group, formerly known as Alipay, is an affiliate company of the Chinese Alibaba Group. Ant Financial is the highest valued fintech company in the world, and the world’s most valuable unicorn (start-up) company, with a valuation of US$150 billion.

Sunaya Paison
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Entertainment Technology Trending

“Do you really exist?” This question may seem funny or unfair to you. But its time to rethink about the strange facts in such a question. The technology has grown into far distances. Using vast technological areas of the AI (Artificial Intelligence), software engineer Phillip Wang created the website named ‘This Person Does Not Exist’.

The website provides us the images of humans who never existed! This website is created using Generative adversarial network (GANs), which is a class of machine learning algorithms used in unsupervised learning, implemented by a system of two neural networks contesting with each other in a zero-sum game framework.

Each time when you refresh this website, you can see the image of different ‘non-existed’ persons. The website tells us how an artificial image and an identity can easily be created in this hi-tech world. Most of the identity proofs uses our images. Also, the modern gadgets are secured with the owner’s images using AI technology. The technology is linking the real world with the AI generated images.

The GANs technology was first introduced in 2014. But, when the NVIDIA took up the technology in 2017, more realistic images were obtained. This technology can be used in the advertising, modelling, photo shoot and many other fields where computer-generated models will be growing exponentially. And when these images can be moved and transferred into 3D or 5D, movies will be filled with ‘AI- actors’ in future!

Sunaya Paison
Photo Courtesy: Google/ images are subject to copyright

News Technology

Tech giant Huawei is all set to create the world’s first 5G train station this year. It is said that the network will be installed in Shanghai Hongqiao railway station by September. This allows the passengers to to download a 2GB HD film in less than 20 seconds. It is reported that the passengers can also enjoy other 5G-backed services from seamless virtual reality gaming experiences to ordering a can of soda from a robot.

Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station is one of Asia’s busiest traffic hubs, and according to China Daily, it deals with about 60 million passengers a year. It is clear that this ‘super speed’ network, which will be fitted to the existing railway Station will be of great use to the passengers. This development is also seen as a key milestone in 5G commercial deployment across the city, setting an example for 5G deployment nationwide, industry representatives said.

Lets see the advantages of 5G:

  • High resolution and bi-directional large bandwidth shaping.
  • Helps to gather all networks on one platform.
  • Highly effective and efficient.
  • Technology to facilitate subscriber supervision tools for the quick action.
  • Easily manageable with the previous generations.
  • Technological sound to support heterogeneous services (including private network).
  • Possible to provide uniform, uninterrupted, and consistent connectivity across the world.

Sunaya Paison
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