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bigyack-com · 4 years

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The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It

Addicted to A.I.

Mr. Ton-That, 31, grew up a long way from Silicon Valley. In his native Australia, he was raised on tales of his royal ancestors in Vietnam. In 2007, he dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco. The iPhone had just arrived, and his goal was to get in early on what he expected would be a vibrant market for social media apps. But his early ventures never gained real traction.In 2009, Mr. Ton-That created a site that let people share links to videos with all the contacts in their instant messengers. Mr. Ton-That shut it down after it was branded a “phishing scam.” In 2015, he spun up Trump Hair, which added Mr. Trump’s distinctive coif to people in a photo, and a photo-sharing program. Both fizzled.Dispirited, Mr. Ton-That moved to New York in 2016. Tall and slender, with long black hair, he considered a modeling career, he said, but after one shoot he returned to trying to figure out the next big thing in tech. He started reading academic papers on artificial intelligence, image recognition and machine learning.Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Ton-That met in 2016 at a book event at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Mr. Schwartz, now 61, had amassed an impressive Rolodex working for Mr. Giuliani in the 1990s and serving as the editorial page editor of The New York Daily News in the early 2000s. The two soon decided to go into the facial recognition business together: Mr. Ton-That would build the app, and Mr. Schwartz would use his contacts to drum up commercial interest.Police departments have had access to facial recognition tools for almost 20 years, but they have historically been limited to searching government-provided images, such as mug shots and driver’s license photos. In recent years, facial recognition algorithms have improved in accuracy, and companies like Amazon offer products that can create a facial recognition program for any database of images.Mr. Ton-That wanted to go way beyond that. He began in 2016 by recruiting a couple of engineers. One helped design a program that can automatically collect images of people’s faces from across the internet, such as employment sites, news sites, educational sites, and social networks including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and even Venmo. Representatives of those companies said their policies prohibit such scraping, and Twitter said it explicitly banned use of its data for facial recognition. Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Betaal Netflix Series Review, Download, Release Date, Cast, Trailer, and More

Netflix and Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies are coming together for their second collaboration after Bard of Blood last year. Releasing this week is Betaal, which is arguably the first zombie horror series out of India. It follows a counter-insurgency force that's attacked by a cursed undead British officer and his officers as they try to excavate a blocked tunnel. Betaal comes from the makers of Ghoul in Patrick Graham, who's the showrunner, co-director, and co-writer, and the studio Blumhouse, known for low-budget horror films such as Get Out and Paranormal Activity. Nikhil Mahajan (Baji) and Suhani Kanwar (Lipstick Under My Burkha) serve as director and writer alongside Graham, who has previously worked with Kanwar on the Netflix dystopian series Leila. For Netflix, Betaal will be the fifth original series from India in 2020, after the Jharkhand-based phishing drama Jamtara in January, the romantic drama Taj Mahal 1989 in February, the Imtiaz Ali-created crime drama She in March, and the Vir Das-led dark comedy Hasmukh in April. With Betaal out this weekend, here's all you need to know about the Netflix series, from review to cast. From Paatal Lok to Snowpiercer, TV Shows to Watch in May

Betaal Netflix release date

Betaal is out — on the day of Eid — Sunday, May 24 at 12:30pm on Netflix in India. As always, you will have the option to download all episodes. Betaal has a total of four episodes, each with a runtime around 50 minutes.

Betaal meaning

Betaal — also written as “Betal” — is the anglicised form of the Marathi word “बेताळ”, which is a folk deity worshipped in the western Konkan region of India. But for the purposes of the show, Betaal is drawn from the Sanskrit word “वेताल” / “Vetala”, which refers to reanimated corpses — that's zombies — who reside in charnel grounds and predict fortunes.

Betaal Netflix trailer

Netflix released the first and only trailer for Betaal in the second week of May, which set up the zombie horror series' premise and introduced its primary characters.

Betaal Netflix cast

Viineet Kumar (Mukkabaaz) leads the Betaal cast as Vikram Sirohi, the second-in-command of the Baaz squad of the CIPD (Counter Insurgency Police Department). In a mailed statement, Kumar said: “We had to undergo physical training, as one cannot carry this uniform without training and knowing how to give and receive commands. There were different knives and guns training as well, how to take position, formations etc. Many times, people would have bruises on their elbows and knees after the training.” Aahana Kumra (Lipstick Under My Burkha) stars alongside on Betaal as DC “Ahu” Ahluwalia (Aahana Kumra). She's the one with that huge scar on the right side of her face. Kumra said: “I was both terrified and excited by the idea of wearing a prosthetic piece since I've never done it before. The scar is so central to Ahlu's character. It speaks volumes about her, it makes you realise that there is a lot more to Ahlu's story than meets the eye. She has had a difficult past and has not yet lost hope.” Also part of the Betaal cast are Suchitra Pillai (Karkash) as Commandant Tyagi, the leader of the CIPD; Jitendra Joshi (Sacred Games) as Ajay Mudhalvan, a political fixer of sorts; Manjiri Pupala (Party) as Puniya, a tribal woman; and Syna Anand (Mere Pyare Prime Minister) as Ajay's daughter, Saanvi Mudhalvan. There are supporting roles for Jatin Goswami (Babumoshai Bandookbaaz) as Assad Akbar, Siddharth Menon (Chhappad Phaad Ke) as Nadir Haq, Yashwant Wasnik (Bajirao Mastani) as Sarpanch, and Savita Bajaj (Uski Roti) as Mausi. Puniya is among those village folk caught between the zombies and the CIPD. On her role, she said: “Shooting for a horror-thriller like Betaal has been a really great experience. I am essaying the role of a tribal woman who is consumed by anger and hatred for the CIPD which eventually leads to an interesting turn of events. It's a very compelling character and without giving away much all I can say is watch out for Betaal and the monster within us.” Mrs. Serial Killer, The Imitation Game, Room, and More on Netflix in May Betaal synopsis “While on a mission to displace the natives of Campa forest in order to build a highway, Sirohi and his squad unwittingly unleash the curse of Betaal mountain. A remote village quickly becomes the arena of a breathless battle when a two-century-old East India Company Colonel, infected with Betaal's curse, and his battalion of blood-thirsty zombie redcoats are released from their tomb, attacking anything with a pulse. The CIPD forces are pitted against the undead army that wreaks havoc on the people and threatens to end civilisation as we know it.”

Betaal Netflix review

Netflix isn't providing critics early access to Betaal, which means reviews will not be available before release. Betaal Netflix poster Here you go:

The official poster for Betaal Photo Credit: Netflix Can Netflix force Bollywood to reinvent itself? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS. You can also download the episode or just hit the play button below. Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Amazon's Livestreaming Platform Twitch Announces Safety Advisory Council

Amazon's video game live-streaming platform Twitch is forming an advisory council of experienced users, online safety experts and anti-bullying advocates to help improve safety on the site, Twitch said in a blog post on Thursday.The council's eight members will advise on product and policy changes, focusing on areas such as harassment and protection of marginalised groups.Twitch, which was used last October to stream footage from shooting attacks in Germany, said it had doubled the size of its safety operations team this year and added new tools to help its volunteer channel moderators.The company said it also uses a combination of human moderators and automation to handle the moderation reports it receives.Twitch, which says it has 15 million daily users, is primarily a site where video gamers can livestream their games and chat to other users, though it also has channels focused on sports, music, and politics. Last year, US President Donald Trump joined the platform.The council includes Dr. Sameer Hinduja, the co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, sociologist TL Taylor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) whose research focuses on online gaming, Alex Holmes, the deputy CEO at UK-based youth charity The Diana Award, and Emma Llansó, the director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Free Expression Project.Also on the council are experienced Twitch streamers CohhCarnage, Cupahnoodle, Zizaran, and FerociouslySteph."When developing this council, we felt it was essential to include both experts who can provide an external perspective, as well as Twitch streamers who deeply understand creators' unique challenges and viewpoints," Twitch said in the blog post.The move adds Twitch to the list of social platforms that have created councils to advise on site decisions, such as Twitter, which formed its Trust and Safety Council in 2016.In March, Chinese social video app TikTok, which faces U.S. scrutiny over data-sharing and censorship concerns, named members of a U.S.-focused content moderation committee to give "unvarnished views" on its policies.Last week, social media giant Facebook announced the first members of its Oversight Board, a high-profile effort to respond to criticism over content moderation decisions.But unlike the Facebook's oversight board, which can overrule the company's verdicts on certain content, a Twitch spokeswoman told Reuters that its council would not make moderation decisions.The spokeswoman said the council would meet regularly. Asked about transparency on the group's advice, she said that Twitch hopes to share periodic updates into its work.© Thomson Reuters 2020 Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Google Announces Company Holiday to Stem Coronavirus Burnout

Alphabet's Google said on Friday it has asked employees to take a day off on May 22, to address work-from-home-related burnout during the coronavirus pandemic.Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai announced the move in a memo to employees on late Thursday, which was first reported by CNBC.Google said it would begin reopening more offices globally as early as June, but most Google employees would likely work from home until the end of this year.Facebook also said on Friday it would allow workers who are able to work remotely to do so until the end of 2020.The virus, which has infected more than 3.9 million people globally so far, has forced strict lockdowns in most countries and changed the way businesses function, with work from home emerging as the new norm.© Thomson Reuters 2020 Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Apple Watch Continued to Lead Global Smartwatch Shipments in Q1 With 55 Percent Share: Strategy Analytics

Apple Watch has maintained its lead in the global smartwatch market with a share of 55 percent in the first quarter of 2020, according to a report by research firm Strategy Analytics. The overall smartwatch market is reported to have seen 20 percent growth annually — thanks to nearly 14 million units shipped in the first quarter of this year. After Apple, Samsung has managed to hold the second position, while Garmin, the company that is popular for its fitness-focussed wearables, rose to third. Strategy Analytics reports that Apple shipped 7.6 million units of the Apple Watch worldwide in the first quarter of this year. This shows an year-over-year (YoY) increase of 23 percent from the 6.2 million shipments record reported in the same quarter last year. With the increase in shipments, the Cupertino company managed to expand its share from 54 percent to 55 percent — its highest level for two years. “Apple Watch continues to fend off strong competition from hungry rivals like Garmin and Samsung. Apple Watch owns half the worldwide smartwatch market and remains the clear industry leader,” said Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, in a statement. Followed by Apple, Samsung continued its second position in the global smartwatch market with a shipments record of 1.9 million in the first quarter. This was slightly up from 1.7 million a year ago. However, the overall share of the company in the global smartwatch market has dipped from 15 percent to 14 percent during the past year. Strategy Analytics noticed that the company's growth was impacted by the coronavirus lockdown in South Korea and renewed competition from players such as Garmin. Garmin, on the other hand, has managed to make a comeback to the third position — overtook Fitbit — with a shipments result of 1.1 million units worldwide in the first quarter of this year. This was 38 percent increased annually from 0.8 million in the first quarter last year. Smartwatch vendor Q1 2019 shipments (in millions) Q1 2020 shipments (in millions) YoY change (in percentage) Apple 6.2 7.6 22.6 Samsung 1.7 1.9 11.8 Garmin 0.8 1.1 37.5 Others 2.7 3.1 14.8 Total 11.4 13.7 20.2 Sharp decline expected in Q2 due to COVID-19 Strategy Analytics predicts that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, global smartwatch shipments will drop sharply in the second quarter. “Sales in Europe and the US have inevitably been hit by virus lockdown in recent months. However, the second half of this year and beyond will see a decent rebound, as consumers worldwide steadily regain confidence and more retail stores reopen,” said Woody Oh, Director at Strategy Analytics. Is iPhone SE the ultimate 'affordable' iPhone for India? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below. Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Uber Offers Discounted Trips to 2.5 Million UK Health and Care Workers

Uber is offering discounted journeys to health and care workers in Britain from Wednesday, as it extends the scope of a service set up in Madrid last month to cover more than 4 million frontline workers fighting COVID-19 in over 20 countries.The ride-hailing service said it had worked with governments and healthcare institutions around the world to set up Uber Medics to provide workers with free and discounted rides to and from hospitals, health centres and care homes.Uber said 1.2 million National Health Service (NHS) staff and 1.3 million social care workers in Britain would receive a 25 percent discount on trips, funded by Uber, after linking their NHS email address to an account, or by their care home registering.Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said Uber was proud to play a small part in the incredible efforts of healthcare staff to protect and treat those affected by COVID-19."We stand ready to work with governments and healthcare providers around the world to support their efforts to tackle the pandemic," he said on Monday.Uber Medics was developed last month in Madrid in response to a request made by the Madrid Health Department to support healthcare workers as an essential service, Uber said.It has since been rolled out to more than 20 countries, including France, Italy, Germany, and India.Uber said earlier this month it would provide 10 million rides and food deliveries, free of charge, to healthcare workers, seniors, and people in need globally.In Britain, it is providing 200,000 free rides and 100,000 free meals for NHS staff.Uber drivers will be able to opt into Uber Medic trips, the company said, offering them an opportunity to earn additional money during the lockdown. They will retain all of the fare.Raazma, a London-based Uber driver, said he had already signed up to the NHS Volunteer Responders."It's the least I can do in these challenging times, as we all need to pull together to help one another," he added.© Thomson Reuters 2020 Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Cambridge Analytica: US Court Approves Record $5 Billion Fine of Facebook Over Privacy

US regulators on Friday welcomed a "historic" $5 billion (roughly Rs. 38,159 crores) settlement with Facebook over data privacy as the social network said it was already implementing the provisions of the deal. The deal between the leading social network and the US Federal Trade Commission became official with the approval Thursday of a federal judge. Along with the fine, the settlement announced last July requires Facebook to ramp up privacy protections; provide detailed quarterly reports on compliance with the deal, and have an independent oversight board.Some privacy activists had challenged the deal claiming it let off Facebook too easy after the Cambridge Analytica scandal that allowed the hijacking of personal data of millions of users ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.FTC chairman Joe Simons said in a statement he was "pleased" with the court approval, pointing out it was the largest monetary penalty ever obtained by consumer protection agency."At the same time, the court also highlights that the conduct relief included in this settlement will require Facebook 'to consider privacy at every stage of its operations and provide substantially more transparency and accountability for its executives' privacy-related decisions," Simons said.The agreement goes beyond measures required by US law and should "serve as a roadmap for more comprehensive privacy regulation," Facebook chief privacy officer Michel Protti said in a blog post."We hope this leads to further progress on developing consistent legislation in the US and elsewhere," Protti said."Ultimately, our goal is to honor people's privacy and focus on doing what's right for people."The FTC reopened its investigation of Facebook's data handling following revelations of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and other missteps by the California giant.Facebook has created dozens of team devoted to privacy and has thousands of people working on privacy-related projects, according to Protti."This agreement has been a catalyst for changing the culture of our company," Protti said. Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Germany Approves First Trial of COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate

Germany has authorised its first clinical test of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, the country's regulatory body said Wednesday, green-lighting trials on human volunteers for an RNA vaccine developed by German firm Biontech and US giant Pfizer."The Paul-Ehrlich-Institut... has authorised the first clinical trial of a vaccine against COVID-19 in Germany," the regulatory body PEI said in a statement.The trial, which was only the fourth to have been authorised worldwide, was a "significant step" in making a vaccine "available as soon as possible", the institute added.It said that approval was the "result of a careful assessment of the potential risk/benefit profile of the vaccine candidate."The trials will see "200 healthy volunteers aged between 18 and 55 years" vaccinated with variants of the RNA vaccine, while the second phase could see the inclusion of volunteers who belonged to high-risk groups.Neither PEI nor the developers specified when the trial will begin, though Biontech claimed in a statement that it would be "soon" and "ahead of our expectations".The PEI also claimed that "further clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccine candidates will start in Germany in the next few months". Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Will Coronavirus Freeze the Search for Dark Matter?

Elena Aprile was in a race against time.Her Xenon experiment, one of the world’s largest and most expensive investigations into the nature of dark matter, was coming together beneath Gran Sasso, a mountain in Italy. But Dr. Aprile, a Columbia University physics professor, was stuck in her apartment in Brooklyn as New York entered an indeterminate period of lockdown to contain the spread of the new coronavirus, and she was “living on Cheerios and milk,” she said.In Italy, about a month into its own lockdown, a skeleton crew was trying to finish assembling her experiment’s expensive and delicate detector and safely seal it in place deep below the mountain’s rocks, before the virus brought down the hammer on even this much group activity.What followed was an illustration of how some science is managing to get done during a plague. At stake was perhaps nothing less than the secret of the universe.Astronomers have reluctantly concluded over the last half-century that most of the matter in the universe is invisible. They suspect that this invisible stuff consists of giant cosmic clouds of subatomic particles called “wimps,” for weakly interacting massive particles, left over from the Big Bang.Mostly impervious to normal forces like electromagnetism, these particles drift through the world, and through us, like ghosts through a wall.In the quest to spot them, physicists have built a succession of bigger and bigger detectors. But as they’ve gained greater and greater clarity, they have seen no wimps, which has created a crisis in physics.In the 1970s and 1980s, fashionable but speculative concepts in particle physics were devised to explain some of the deeper mysteries of fundamental physics. One, supersymmetry, suggested that the universe might be littered with undiscovered particles that could act like dark matter. But over the years, the most promising models of what these particles might have been were slowly crossed out. This leaves many of the mysteries of the universe — like why stars are so big and atoms are so small — with no plausible explanation.The wimp experiments keep improving. But eventually they could reach a limit called the “neutrino floor,” becoming so sensitive that they are overwhelmed by neutrinos, ghostly super-elusive particles that flood the universe from the sun, the stars and the Big Bang. Any wimps passing through will be impossible to discern in this sea, and there the wimp search will end.“So we have a few more years where this guy can hide, but it’s not there yet,” she said.Dr. Aprile and her team — a globe-spanning confederation — planned to record the pit-pat of dark matter particles raining into a tank of liquid xenon lined with 500 photomultipliers and other sensors, and placed far underground to shield it from cosmic rays. The hope was that her team’s device would spot the rare collision of a wimp with a xenon nucleus, an event she estimated might happen about once a year per ton of xenon.Dr. Aprile was reluctant to put a price on the project. An earlier version of the experiment with 3.3 tons of xenon cost $30 million. But that didn’t include the people, she said. A big part of the cost is xenon itself, which costs around $2 million per ton, she added. Her new detector will have 8.5 tons.A rival experiment called the LZ Dark Matter Experiment, also using eight tons of xenon, was being assembled in an old gold mine that is now the Sanford Underground Research Facility, in Lead, S.D. And there is a whole alphabet soup of other experiments stashed in old mines and tunnels around the world, with names like PandaX, DarkSide and SuperCDMS.But now coronavirus was infecting even the cosmos. Richard Gaitskell of Brown University, one of the principal scientists of the LZ experiment, said in an email that their project had temporarily been mothballed “out of an abundance of caution and to allow personnel to respect shelter in place.”Dr. Aprile said, “All of us will have delays due to this damn thing. If one of my people gets sick, I will feel so bad.”

Research on the run

Dr. Aprile was born in Milan. To say that she lives a peripatetic life would be an understatement. She teaches at Columbia but commutes regularly to L’Aquila, a town in central Italy near the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, which lies off a tunnel through the mountain of the same name, beneath nearly 4,600 feet of rock.Until March she had been living the typical jet-setting life of particle physicist. In November she attended a physics conference in South Korea. In February, after a brief stop in New York, she was in Italy at Gran Sasso for three days. From there she went to a conference in South Africa, and on to the University of California, San Diego, where she was a visiting professor.Then the universities shut down. Worried about her two daughters, who live in New York, Dr. Aprile returned home. She had planned to return to Gran Sasso in early May after her professorship was done, when they would start testing and running their detector. But the virus had other plans.Stefano Ragazzi, director of the Gran Sasso lab, said that the experiments there are designed to be conducted remotely. As a result, there were only about half a dozen scientists on site in March when the coronavirus hit Italy.It is safer and easier to keep experiments running, rather than shut them off and later switch them back on, he explained, so the lab’s experiments have continued to operate as they would during the winter holidays.Dr. Ragazzi announced that, to ensure the safety of the people and the equipment, work in Gran Sasso would be limited only to what was necessary.“Xenon was amid critical ongoing operations,” Dr. Ragazzi said in an email. “We asked them to come to a safe stopping point and to pause operations.”That stopping point would come once the detector had been sealed in its cryostat — a big thermos bottle that could keep the xenon inside at minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit — and all the air had been pumped out, Dr. Aprile said: “The point is to enclose it in a cryostat, seal it, make it leak-tight.” She spoke over the phone after a long day of teleconferencing with Italy.“We close this detector for the first time inside this big water tank,” she said. “Then we spend a few months, if everything goes well, commissioning it to understand how the hell it works. Hopefully it works as you designed. You start to see if there’s a signal. And that’s when you declare OK, and then you start to work.”All did not go well.An important step occurred on March 5, when a team led by Luca Grandi of the University of Chicago installed the detector underground. It had arrived in pieces at Gran Sasso from all over the world, “like the pieces of a puzzle,” Dr. Aprile said, and had to be assembled in a “clean room” in a part of the Gran Sasso lab that was aboveground.The finished detector, known as a time projection chamber, is about five feet long and five feet wide, and weighs half a ton without the xenon in it. The team had to rent a special truck and get a police escort to move it to the underground part of the lab, which is accessible through a highway tunnel under the mountain.“We didn’t realize it would be so hard to handle,” Dr. Aprile said.There the detector was installed under the dome of the cryostat. But the cryostat was not ready to be closed. “We were almost done, but now we needed special permissions,” Dr. Aprile said.Failure to finish installing the detector would leave the tank open to the air, which would increase the chance of contamination by radon, a radioactive gas found in underground spaces and the main source of contamination in experiments like this one.A minimum of three or four people were needed to handle these final steps. Dr. Aprile had a half-dozen scientists and technicians at the site, so the margin was getting thin. But Dr. Grandi had to leave to teach in Chicago.Dr. Aprile promoted Petr Chaguine, a scientist from Rice University who had been living in Gran Sasso, to direct the team. He reported back to his friends and family in Houston that his Italian colleagues were “kindly translating news and new government regulations” as they appeared, which was often.For a while, the team members approved by Dr. Ragazzi could car-pool from their homes to the lab. Then the rules changed and they had to drive separately.Another rule required a Glimos — Group Leader in Matter of Safety — to visit every day to make sure everything was in order. Roberto Corrieri was doing the job, then announced that he would follow governmental instructions and stay home in Assergi; then he changed his mind and stayed. The only other person who could have done the safety inspection had left to join his family in Naples.“I did not want to push the boundary if he felt he wanted to stay home,” Dr. Aprile said of her conversations with Mr. Corrieri. “Luckily he is a good guy and realized that doing it was important for many people, so he agreed to do it.”She added, “I fear, what happens if the team gets infected or gets hurt. The lab gets the blame."That left enough people in the lab to continue working. “I had to do a lot of encouraging,” Dr. Aprile said. It helped that they knew each other, and that there were no strangers on the team: “So they were comfortable being close enough to work.”On March 20, Dr. Aprile received a photo by email of a pair of her scientists, Masatoshi Kobayashi and Danilo Tatananni. They were garbed much like E.R. doctors, in “bunny suits” and masks, which are standard apparel for the clean rooms where sensitive scientific gadgets are assembled. The men were standing in front of her detector, which they had just closed up.“We did it,” the email said.The physicists will now spend two weeks pumping air from the vat, down to a vacuum, at which point it can be monitored remotely. The task of filling the vat with liquid xenon must wait.“We cannot test drive our new car,” Dr. Aprile said. She was happy and relieved to no longer have to reluctantly urge her colleagues to enter a field of danger.“They feel like heroes,” she said. “Was it worth it? I’m wondering myself.” Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Money Heist Season 4 Is Now Streaming on Netflix in India

Netflix's most popular non-English-language original is back. The fourth season of Money Heist — known as *La casa de papel* in Spanish, which means “the house of paper” — is now streaming on Netflix in India and across the world. Technically, Money Heist season 4 is the second half of the second season, which is why Netflix refers to it officially as Money Heist: Part 4. Hence, it picks up right where the third season left off, with the Professor (Álvaro Morte) falling in the trap he set and kickstarting a war in the process, while the police officer Raquel “Lisbon” Murillo (Itziar Ituño) herself in handcuffs.From Money Heist to Modern Family, TV Shows to Watch in AprilIn addition to Morte and Ituño, returning stars on Money Heist season 4 include Úrsula Corberó as Silene “Tokyo” Oliveira, Pedro Alonso as Andrés “Berlin” de Fonollosa, Alba Flores as Ágata “Nairobi” Jiménez, Miguel Herrán as Aníbal “Rio” Cortés, Jaime Lorente as Ricardo “Denver” Ramos, Esther Acebo as Mónica “Stockholm” Gaztambide, Darko Perić as Yashin “Helsinki” Dasáyev, Hovik Keuchkerian as Bogotá, Enrique Arce as Arturo Román, Rodrigo de la Serna as Martín / Palermo / The Engineer, and Najwa Nimri as Alicia Sierra. There's no word yet on new cast members.Created by Álex Pina (Locked Up), Money Heist came to life on Spanish cable TV in 2017 as a 15-episode limited series. Netflix picked up global streaming rights later that year and re-edited the show into 22 episodes, which were released on its service in two parts in December 2017 and April 2018. Netflix would go on to pick up the show for 16 more episodes split across two parts. An eight-episode season 3 aired in July last year, with the remaining ones part of Money Heist season 4. This is also the shortest gap between the two seasons — or parts — of the show.Money Heist, Extraction, The Departed, and More on Netflix in AprilHere's the official synopsis for Money Heist season 4, via Netflix:“La casa de papel: Part 4 begins in chaos: the Professor (Morte) thinks that Lisbon (Ituño) has been executed, Rio (Cortés) and Tokyo (Oliveira) have blown up an army tank, and Nairobi (Jiménez) is struggling between life and death. The gang is going through one of its toughest moments and the rise of an enemy among its ranks will put the heist in serious danger.”All eight episodes of Money Heist season 4 are available on Netflix. You can also download them for offline viewing. New seasons of Netflix shows are released at 12am PT, which translates to 12:30pm IST from mid-March to early November. Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Money Heist Season 4 Is Now Streaming on Netflix in India

Netflix's most popular non-English-language original is back. The fourth season of Money Heist — known as *La casa de papel* in Spanish, which means “the house of paper” — is now streaming on Netflix in India and across the world. Technically, Money Heist season 4 is the second half of the second season, which is why Netflix refers to it officially as Money Heist: Part 4. Hence, it picks up right where the third season left off, with the Professor (Álvaro Morte) falling in the trap he set and kickstarting a war in the process, while the police officer Raquel “Lisbon” Murillo (Itziar Ituño) herself in handcuffs.From Money Heist to Modern Family, TV Shows to Watch in AprilIn addition to Morte and Ituño, returning stars on Money Heist season 4 include Úrsula Corberó as Silene “Tokyo” Oliveira, Pedro Alonso as Andrés “Berlin” de Fonollosa, Alba Flores as Ágata “Nairobi” Jiménez, Miguel Herrán as Aníbal “Rio” Cortés, Jaime Lorente as Ricardo “Denver” Ramos, Esther Acebo as Mónica “Stockholm” Gaztambide, Darko Perić as Yashin “Helsinki” Dasáyev, Hovik Keuchkerian as Bogotá, Enrique Arce as Arturo Román, Rodrigo de la Serna as Martín / Palermo / The Engineer, and Najwa Nimri as Alicia Sierra. There's no word yet on new cast members.Created by Álex Pina (Locked Up), Money Heist came to life on Spanish cable TV in 2017 as a 15-episode limited series. Netflix picked up global streaming rights later that year and re-edited the show into 22 episodes, which were released on its service in two parts in December 2017 and April 2018. Netflix would go on to pick up the show for 16 more episodes split across two parts. An eight-episode season 3 aired in July last year, with the remaining ones part of Money Heist season 4. This is also the shortest gap between the two seasons — or parts — of the show.Money Heist, Extraction, The Departed, and More on Netflix in AprilHere's the official synopsis for Money Heist season 4, via Netflix:“La casa de papel: Part 4 begins in chaos: the Professor (Morte) thinks that Lisbon (Ituño) has been executed, Rio (Cortés) and Tokyo (Oliveira) have blown up an army tank, and Nairobi (Jiménez) is struggling between life and death. The gang is going through one of its toughest moments and the rise of an enemy among its ranks will put the heist in serious danger.”All eight episodes of Money Heist season 4 are available on Netflix. You can also download them for offline viewing. New seasons of Netflix shows are released at 12am PT, which translates to 12:30pm IST from mid-March to early November. Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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New Scientific Breakthrough Aims to Turn Wi-Fi Signals Into Usable Power

A new scientific breakthrough achieved by physicists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) could allow household appliances to be powered by the direct current produced using terahertz waves one day. Terahertz waves are a type of electromagnetic waves with a frequency somewhere between microwaves and infrared light. As terahertz waves are easily absorbed by gases in earth's atmosphere, they don't last very long, thus wasted. Scientists have now designed a blueprint for a device that can convert terahertz waves into a direct current.This new breakthrough can allow Wi-Fi signals, which are one of the sources for terahertz waves, to be converted into usable power that can serve as an alternative source of energy. Till now, there was no way of harnessing terahertz waves and converting them into a usable form but now, as per a study, this new technology shows quite a lot of potential.As described on the MIT News website, any device that sends Wi-Fi signals also emits terahertz waves or T-rays. These T-rays are emitted by our own bodies and inanimate objects as well but have been wasted energy, till now.What this technology essentially does is, it takes advantage of the atomic behaviour of graphene and makes the incoming terahertz waves “shuttle” graphene's electrons and use them to flow in a single direction as a direct current. This current can then become a usable form of energy. The findings of the study have been published in Science Advances journal.Lead author of the study, Hiroki Isobe, a postdoc in MIT's Materials Research Laboratory says, “We are surrounded by electromagnetic waves in the terahertz range. If we can convert that energy into an energy source we can use for daily life, that would help to address the energy challenges we are facing right now.”In the past, there have been some experimental technologies that were able to convert terahertz waves into DC current but they required “ultracold temperatures setups” that weren't practical.This new study may have found a practical way of using this wasted energy to enable self-powering implants, cell phones, and other portable electronics. Theoretically, this could work with an add-on for smartphones that keeps the phone charged.Given the current scenario of producing energy from fossil fuels and depleting natural resources, this new technology can bring a significant change on a global level. Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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ExpressVPN Records 15 Percent Usage Growth in India as Coronavirus Lockdown Widens

With governments around the world enforcing strict lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak, more users are flocking to online services for watching video content, gaming, and more. While this has led to a surge in user base on various platforms, there has also been a rise in the number of users opting for VPN services globally. As per a report by ExpressVPN, its virtual private network service has recorded a 15 percent growth in India. On a global scale, ExpressVPN says the usage of its service has increased by 21 percent in the month following the last week of February. In a press release, ExpressVPN notes that the usage of its service has gone up by 15 percent in India as per data collected between February 24 and March 22. In Asia Pacific region as a whole, Philippines is where the usage of ExpressVPN rose by the highest margin at 27 percent. It was followed by Malaysia and Indonesia at 23 percent and 18 percent respectively, while India stood at the fourth spot.

ExpressVPN recorded the highest growth in Denmark at 43 percent when it comes to usage On a global scale, Belgium is where the usage of ExpressVPN recorded the highest growth at 43 percent. It was followed by France with 34 percent growth, while Norway took the third sport with an average surge of 27 percent in usage. The rise in usage of Express VPN is not surprising, as more people now work from home and rely on a VPN service to secure their workflow. This change in work-life pattern has also led to services like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Discord recording massive growth in their user base, even experiencing a brief outage due to traffic surge. Similarly, the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube have resorted to lowering bitrate across their platform to ease network congestion and save bandwidth as coronavirus lockdowns keep expanding across the globe. For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on Twitter, Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Nadeem Sarwar Aside from dreaming about technology, Nadeem likes to get bamboozled by history and ponder about his avatars in alternate dimensions. More

Virtual Volunteers Offer Help to Strangers Amid Coronavirus Stress The Best TV Series on Netflix in India

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Samsung Galaxy Note 10, Galaxy S10 Series Tipped to Get One UI 2.1 Next Month

Samsung has lately been comparatively more active at rolling out software updates, especially when it comes to flagships. The company is looking to continue the momentum with its previous generation flagships as well. As per a report, Samsung is set to release the One UI 2.1 update for the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10 series next month. Moreover, Samsung is also planning to roll out the One UI 2.1 update for its 2018 flagship phones as well, which include the Galaxy S9 duo and the Galaxy Note 9.As per a report, a Samsung community moderator has revealed that the Galaxy S10, S10e, Galaxy S10+, and Galaxy Note 10 will get the One UI 2.1 build based on Android 10 in the next three weeks. Currently, the only four phones in Samsung's portfolio that run One UI 2.1 are the Galaxy Z Flip and the Galaxy S20 trio. In terms of standout features, One UI 2.1 is not much different from One UI 2.0, except for the Quick Share file transfer feature.The report also adds that the next major build of Samsung's custom skin - tentatively called One UI 2.5 – will be based on Android 11 and will debut with the Galaxy Note 20. Moreover, the One UI 2.5 build is expected to arrive on the Galaxy S20, S10, and the Galaxy Note 10 series down the road.Separately, another Samsung community manager has reportedly mentioned on the company's official support channel that the One UI 2.1 update will be rolled out for the company's 2018 flagships as well. Although an exact release date has not been revealed, the Galaxy S9, S9+, and the Galaxy Note 9 are set to get the One UI 2.1 OTA in the foreseeable future.Is Redmi Note 9 Pro the new best phone under Rs. 15,000? We discussed how you can pick the best one, on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below. Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Google Building Self-Check Website for Coronavirus

US President Donald Trump announced Friday that internet giant Alphabet is creating a website where people will be able to check whether they have symptoms of the novel coronavirus.Verily Life Sciences, once a project in a Google X lab devoted to "moonshot" projects and now its own health business unit, is testing a "tool to help triage individuals for COVID-19 testing," Google confirmed on Twitter."Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time," the tweet said, referring to San Francisco and surrounding communities.Trump thanked Google while declaring a state of national emergency due to the deadly coronavirus pandemic.Google is helping to develop a website "to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location," Trump said.Google has a large team of engineers devoted to the project, and has made significant progress, according to Trump."Our overriding goal is to stop the spread of the virus and help all Americans impacted by this," Trump said."Again, we don't want everybody taking this test. It is totally unnecessary. And this will pass."A launch date for the website should be known by late Sunday, according to Vice President Mike Pence."You can go to the website, type in your symptoms and be given direction whether or not a test is indicated," Pence said.The website will then direct users to locations where they can obtain drive-through testing, he said.San Francisco has begun setting up temporary, drive-through coronavirus testing locations. Read the full article

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Coronavirus Is Causing Chaos for Travel Influencers

As flights, events, and media trips are canceled and hospitality marketers tighten their budgets over coronavirus fears, travel influencers are scrambling.Danah Freeman, a travel influencer in Vermont, was supposed to board a cruise ship from San Diego on Thursday, only to have the trip canceled over the weekend. Merissa Principe, 29, a travel influencer from New York, said her trip to Washington, D.C., was just canceled. Sheri Griffiths, 45, a cruise influencer, said all of her travel through April has been canceled over the past week.Influencers, who alongside many in the gig economy, make money through freelance assignments, including promoting hotels, destinations, airlines and other travel brands, now face canceled sponsored trips. Many are struggling to cope with how to move forward as the hospitality industry craters.“It’s absolutely affecting our business,” Ms. Griffiths said.“In the past 48 hours I have lost five campaigns,” said Scott Eddy, a travel influencer and marketing consultant. “I do think they’ll come back to the table, but no one can predict when this will end. It’s all been put on indefinite hold.” His losses as of Wednesday accounted for more than $25,000 in income, he said.Those influencers currently on trips are faced with worries about how to get home, in some cases cutting their excursions short. On Wednesday night, President Trump announced new travel restrictions from Europe.Sarah Gallo, 27, another travel influencer, is in northern Norway on a sponsored trip but has been forced to rework her itinerary multiple times over the last few days. She was originally supposed to venture to Ethiopia after her time in the arctic, but as of Wednesday had reconsidered.“I need to be careful about the places I’m visiting,” Ms. Gallo said. I have to think, Is this where I want to be quarantined for a week or two months?”On Thursday, she found out that because she had recently traveled outside of the Nordic region, she and the photographer she was traveling with had to abide by government-mandated 14-day self quarantine. The Norwegian tourism board canceled the remainder of her trip and she is now holed up in a cabin on a remote island.”It’s kind of the perfect place to be quarantined,” Ms. Gallo said. “We have the most spectacular views, and we’re not around anybody. But at the end of the day, we’re still quarantined. We don’t know how we’re going to get home. We’re waiting day by day, hour by hour to find out what we can do.”Ms. Gallo, like many travel influencers, spends the majority of her year in the air and on the road, and lost travel means lost income. “I travel 10 months per year, and they’re all income producing activities,” she said.In addition to canceled trips, she and other travel influencers are losing money as the public’s interest in travel nose-dives.“Vlog numbers are down, social media numbers are down on travel, affiliate income is down because hotels aren’t being booked, people aren’t buying travel gear,” Ms. Gallo said. “There’s a chance some conferences I’m scheduled to speak at might be canceled. I’m losing speaking gig payment, tourism board payments, hotel payments. We don’t know when things will bounce back.”Many influencers are turning to private Facebook groups to seek advice from colleagues about how to move forward. Posts in one group question whether the media is blowing things out of proportion, while another post faults people for not taking the virus seriously enough.Many influencers report feeling in a state of purgatory. They’ve reached out to brands, but it’s nearly impossible to get any answers. “It’s all changing so quickly,” said Selena Taylor, 29, a travel influencer in New York, as she packed for a flight to Amsterdam on Wednesday night.“Currently we are scheduled to go on nine cruises in the next couple months, they’re not canceled yet,” said Alyssa Griffin, 30, a cruise influencer. “But we work with the tour operators, my husband and I, and we’ve been having issues essentially with commitment. They don’t know what’s going to happen. Some are all gung ho, some say there’s nothing they can do right now.”With so much up in the air, Ms. Griffin and other influencers have struggled with what to tell their audiences. Some have continued posting as if nothing is happening, only to receive backlash for appearing tone deaf.Others have opted to pause posting until they can figure out how to appropriately address the pandemic. “It’s a serious topic, and we don’t want to give any of the wrong advice,” said Sion Walton-Guest, 31, one half of the travel influencer couple @theglobetrotterguys. He added that they’ll likely advise their audience to follow the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization.“As a travel influencer, one has to be really mindful of your role and what you play in the travel space,” said Sarah Dandashy, who runs @AskAConcierge. Ms. Freeman, who has her own blog, published an article on her blog listing statements and policy updates from all the major cruise lines.She thought it was a way to empower her audience to make the choice about travel for themselves. “I wouldn’t want someone to feel like I’m pressuring them to keep traveling,” Ms. Dandashy, 37, said.Some influencers continue to travel. Ms. Taylor posted updates on Wednesday evening from the airport and her seat on the plane to Instagram Stories. “In the next few days I’ll definitely be talking about how my experience has been,” she said. “I stocked up on wipes, and I plan on disinfecting my seats. I honestly plan on just being extra-cautious and hopefully taking lots of breaks to wash my hands.”When Ms. Gallo boarded her plane to Scandinavia earlier this week, she too took extra steps to remain safe. “I wore a N-99 mask on the flight from New York to London and London to Stockholm,” she said. “My mask did not leave my face for those flights.”Edana Mg, 29, an influencer from New York, said that while she has canceled all of her international travel, she still hopes to travel domestically, including upcoming flights to San Diego and Oregon. “I’m not worried at the moment about domestic trips,” she said.Posting the right content, no matter where you are, is key. Ms. Gallo plans to rework her content calendar for Instagram. “I’d linked up some post from Italy I was going to publish, but now is not the time,” she said. “I had my content planned for months out, and now I have to rework the entire strategy.”Other influencers have stopped posting about cruises and travel to Asia, instead reposting old content or offering staycation guides.Jade Broadus, the vice president of Travel Mindset, an influencer marketing agency that specializes in the travel industry, said that while overall travel is down, remote locations may see an uptick. “People are looking to self-isolate and get out of bigger cities,” she said. “Places that have those outdoor recreational activities may see an incline in tourism whereas cities might have a decline.”For the past several days, however, Harry Hill, 25, an influencer in New York, has been posting updates from his own staycation in the Williamsburg Hotel in Brooklyn, where he is working on a project for Hotels.com.On Thursday, he posted a photo of himself in bed at the hotel to his Instagram Stories. “Go comment where you’re quarantined!” he wrote. 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