Fact-checkers had a big year in 2016; will 2017 prove as eventful? Below are seven predictions of what the year ahead holds in store for fact-checking. As with the 2016 predictions, I promise to return to these when the year is over and evaluate how they fared. (You can check out last year’s annotated predictions here). 1. Fact-checkers will seek lessons from cognitive science Late last year, […]
CNET/CBS Interactive Apple’s iPhone 8 and Samsung’s Galaxy S8, which are rumored to launch later this year, will have the highest level of water and dust resistance, according to Korea Herald. Sources speaking to the newspaper said the iPhone 8 will gain IP68-rated water resistance, up from the iPhone 7’s IP67 rating. The iPhone 8 will be Apple’s tenth iPhone, and it’s said to be stacked with […]
The Transport Minister says Singapore has been charging Malaysian-registered vehicles the Vehicle Entry Permit (VEP) since 1973. JOHOR BARU: Putrajaya has denied that the RM20 road charge (RC) imposed on foreign-registered vehicles was discriminatory against Singapore pointing out that the republic had been charging Malaysian cars for the past 44 years, The Star reported. Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said Singapore had been charging Malaysian-registered vehicles the […]
A cosmic “spitball” game is acting out in the black hole of the Milky Way, says a new research. This is part of the star-shredding activity by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The new study is significant in showing that mere gasification of a shredding star is not ending the story at the black hole. It asserts that splintering of gas spools […]
Barts Health NHS Trust incorporates five hospitals in London – including St Bartholowmew’s. Image: Barts Health NHS Trust The largest hospital group in the UK has taken some of its systems offline following a cyberattack. Barts Health NHS Trust incorporates five hospitals across East London – Mile End Hospital, Newham University Hospital, The Royal London Hospital, St Bartholowmew’s Hospital and Whipps Cross University Hospital, with its workforce […]
A report says that WhatsApp messages could be read without its billion-plus users knowing due to a security backdoor The Facebook-owned mobile messaging service WhatsApp is vulnerable to interception, the Guardian newspaper reported on Friday, sparking concern over an app advertised as putting an emphasis on privacy. The report said that WhatsApp messages could be read without its billion-plus users knowing due to a security backdoor in […]
Cybercriminals are exploiting charity for their own nefarious means. Image: iStock Cybercriminals are attempting to infect people with bank data stealing Ramnit malware by using phishing emails pretending to come from a charity. Migrant Help is a real British charity which offers support to distressed migrants arriving in the UK, but hackers are using its name in an effort to infect victims with the Ramnit banking Trojan, […]
Panasonic has outed a new Android-powered tablet in its Toughbook family, which will look to entice consumers despite its hefty price tag. The company launched its Toughpad FZ-A2 in the U.S. on Jan.12, 2017. The Android-powered Toughpad is the latest addition to the company’s Toughbook family. “The FZ-A2 is the ultimate tablet for mobile field work that will continue to evolve with our customers’ needs and work requirements,” […]
Fragile market conditions, poorly controlled algorithms and inexperienced staff all contributed to last October’s flash crash in sterling, global policymakers have concluded, with the Bank for International Settlements urging banks and other market participants to learn from their mistakes. The BIS — the central bank for central banks — said on Friday that no single event was responsible for the extraordinary 9 per cent plunge in the […]
Security researcher Niall Merrigan estimates that more than 600 Elasticsearch instances have now been hit. Image: Niall Merrigan/Twitter Hundreds of Elasticsearch instances have been wiped in the past few hours, in near-identical ransom attacks to those that have hit more than 34,000 unsecured MongoDB databases over the past week. Developers running Elasticsearch servers are being warned to conceal them from the web to avoid being targeted by […]
Today’s Leadership Models Fail To Address Responsive And Responsible Leadership The World Economic Forum kicks off January 17th to 20th in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. As the global theme for the annual meeting, responsive and responsible leadership begins a lofty conversation about the qualities required to bring generations together, create inclusiveness in growth opportunities, and to bridge cultural and economic divides. With the global system challenged by a confluence […]
PUTRAJAYA: When stall supervisor Eda Umar first met the late Tan Sri Adenan Satem at the Rasa Alamanda Foodcourt here in 2014, she did not know he was the Chief Minister of Sarawak. What she did come to know was that he loved her sizzling yee mee. “His favourite was the black sauce chicken yee mee with mushrooms,” recollected Eda, a qualified chef who personally attended to […]
Consumer Reports on Thursday says it now recommends Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptops to consumers, after Apple issued a software fix that resolved the laptops’ battery issues. After evaluating three models back in December, Consumer Reports refused to recommend them. While the laptops were impressive in areas such as display quality and performance, there were wild variations in battery life. Consumer Reports’ tests showed the battery life […]
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in February. (Image: file photo) Despite pleas from privacy groups to rein in the US government’s surveillance powers before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the Obama administration has done the opposite. The outgoing government will now allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to share raw globally intercepted personal data with the government’s other intelligence agencies. […]
Dubai, UAE, 12 January 2017 10x Genomics, Inc., a company focused on expanding genomics applications including single-cell research, has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Alliance Global FZ LLC to bring the Chromium™ System and solutions for genome, exome and single cell analysis to the Middle East and African (MEA) markets. 10x Genomics recently launched the Chromium Single Cell Controller which is a massively scalable tool for […]
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani leaves Trump Tower in November. (Image: CBSNews.com) Rudy Giuliani has been tapped to “lend expertise” and to advise the Trump administration on cybersecurity. The former New York mayor “will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning private sector cybersecurity problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector,” said a brief statement from the incoming Trump administration. […]
Wikimedia Commons IBM has announced a new partnership with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a study designed to determine whether blockchain technology can be used to keep medical data transfers safe from theft or exploit. The tech giant announced the collaboration between IBM Watson Health and the FDA on January 11. The research initiative is a two-year agreement between the FDA and IBM which […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Donald Trump is nothing if not transparent, especially when it comes to views of the press and outright evasions about his business holdings. That was self-evident at his Wednesday spectacle (labeled “press conference”) in which he bashed media and also […]
Google’s RAISR technology uses machine learning to produce high-quality versions of low-resolution images, which allows it avoid hogging bandwidth and enable faster downloads. Image: Google Google has started applying a new technology called RAISR to images on Google+, so that they can be displayed in high resolution without using loads of bandwidth. The hi-res images are rolling out to Google’s Google+ social network on some Android devices […]
Image: HTC HTC continues to struggle financially and after the recent release of the Google Pixel and Pixel XL, made by HTC, I thought we might see them go back to being a silent ODM once again. With today’s news of the HTC U Ultra and U Play, HTC is showing that it will continue to fight for market share in today’s competitive smartphone environment. The HTC […]
Jan 12, 2017 11:45 am IST Amazon.com Inc. pulled doormats emblazoned with the Indian flag from its Canadian website after the South Asian nation’s foreign minister threatened to oust the Seattle company’s employees. “This is unacceptable,” Sushma Swaraj, India’s foreign minister, wrote on Twitter Wednesday in response to a posting from a user showing an image of the doormats for sale. Ms. Swaraj, who has 7 million […]
Cloudflare received a national security letter (NSL) from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) back in February 2013, its transparency report for 2016 has shown, with the company only now able to report the event after being placed under a gag order. The FBI had been seeking the names, addresses, length of service, electronic communications transactional records, transaction and activity logs, and all email header […]
The year-long mobile share tug-of-war between Apple and Android is far spicier now than it was this time last year, according to the latest data from Kantar. For the three months ending November 30, iOS saw a 3 percentage point increase to 43.5 percent in the United States compared to October’s numbers, and a large jump on the 37 percent reported a year ago. A similar pattern […]
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat with Minister Without Portfolio Konrad Mizzi. Minister Without Portfolio Konrad Mizzi was chosen by the Prime Minister to chair the EU’s Energy Council during Malta’s six-month rotating presidency, the Times of Malta is informed. Dr Mizzi lost his energy and health portfolios last May after his name surfaced in the Panama Papers leak. In stripping Dr Mizzi of his energy and health portfolios […]
