There’s a great scene in The Big Short, the movie of Michael Lewis’ book about the mortgage crisis, where two shiny-suited brokers brag about how many loans they’ve been producing — for big commissions — to unsuitable borrowers. “We call those loans ‘Dorothys’ ‘cause they’re magic,” grins the one in black. “No credit, no income, no problem: just tap your shoes together three times and say ‘There’s […]
Short takes and quick hits for the week of November 11-17, 2016. ‘Yahoo is not safe to use,’ former company engineer says Posted December 16, 2016 14:10 PST An absolutely brutal article in The Parallax by Seth Rosenblatt. After a second data breach involving as many as a billion users, what should users do? Let’s just say there aren’t many advocates for the company right now. Here’s […]
Etihad Airways and Lufthansa have signed a codeshare agreement that could herald further partnership growth between the two national carriers. In what is seen as the potential start of a growing relationship between the two airlines, Etihad and Lufthansa have agreed to codeshare on the UAE carrier’s twice-daily flights between its home base of Abu Dhabi and Frankfurt, and its twice daily services between Abu Dhabi and […]
In 2009, my TV cable bill went over $100 a month, and I decided enough was enough. I cut my cable. It wasn’t easy then. The internet streaming devices were primitive, and my choices were few. Today, Netflix is more popular than conventional TV, more teenagers watch YouTube than the networks, and rival streaming services Amazon Video, Hulu, and Sling TV are growing by leaps and bounds. […]
Lately, there has been discussion of a “blurring” of Agile methodologies with design thinking. These are two philosophies with different terminologies, practiced by different groups of people, that have the same goal — to provide elegant and continuously improving technology solutions that serve users and customers. This blurring may be necessary with software release cycles now going into the hours, or even minutes for some businesses. Photo: […]
By Scott Malone | BOSTON BOSTON Searches for selfies led to many bad decisions, an outbreak of creepy clown sightings chilled even horror maestro Stephen King, and a hard-fought campaign ended with the election of former reality TV star Donald Trump as president of the United States. Along with moments of triumph and tragedy, 2016 brought stories that ranged from weird to wonderful, funny to flummoxing. New […]
Facebook announced today that it is taking several steps to reduce the reach of fake news. One of the initiatives announced by the social network, third-party fact-checking, will allow verified fact-checkers in the United States to review stories to determine if they are true or false. If enough fact checkers mark a story as fake, the post will be marked as such in users’ News Feeds. The […]
An obscure clash involving a 28-year-old tattoo artist, the Osaka police and an ambiguous century-old medical law has spiralled into a landmark constitutional battle to save an entire industry from oblivion. The showdown in Japan follows the decision of the Osaka police to hit the local tattooing industry with the physicians’ law — a legal framework laid down in the 19th century that technically means only a […]
KOTA KINABALU: A cosmetic sales assistant was caught with 2.02 kilogrammes of syabu worth RM260,000 near a shopping complex here on Wednesday. The drug seizure is the biggest haul for the Kota Kinabalu district police this year. District police chief Assistant Commissioner M. Chandra said the 34-year-old woman from Kinarut, Papar, was apprehended by a team of narcotic police in an area behind Wisma Merdeka shopping complex […]
(Image: file photo) Evernote is walking back proposed changes to its privacy policy, which would have allowed its employees to read users’ private notes. The company said in a blog post late Thursday that it will not implement the changes, calling the proposed new policy a “misstep.” “We messed up,” said Greg Chiemingo, who runs communications at Evernote. Instead, the company “will be revising our existing privacy […]
Users will soon deem switching to Periscope unnecessary for livestreaming purposes, with the recent introduction of a new in-app feature that will let Twitter users stream live video directly from the Twitter app. Make no mistake; it’s still Periscope’s handiwork, only now more streamlined. Go Live On Twitter Starting Wednesday, Dec. 14, any Twitter user can now start their own broadcast by tapping the “Live” button housed inside […]
By Leonardo Goy | SALGUEIRO, Brazil SALGUEIRO, Brazil The rusting tracks of Brazil’s Transnordestina railway peter out and give way to a dirt trail in a remote corner of the country’s arid northeast, far from the ports or farms it was meant to serve. No trains run on these tracks and the cleared path for one of Brazil’s most ambitious infrastructure projects is used only by local […]
Last week, the Library of Congress (LOC), the nation’s largest library, announced a partnership with the Digital Public Library of America, the nation’s largest digital library. The first fruits of that collaboration—5,000 maps from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and panoramic map collections—are available immediately, with many more to come. However, you don’t have to be an historian or cartographer to appreciate why this partnership is a […]
The AWS cloud now has 42 Availability Zones in 16 regions but the two empty circles in France and China represent the location of two more regions coming online next year. Image: AWS Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform is now available from UK-based datacenters. The launch of the AWS Europe (London) Region means that AWS’s suite of cloud services is now available out of 16 regions […]
13 December 2016 Riyadh – Over 1,400 digital leaders gathered at the ArabNet Riyadh conference to discuss the latest in digital innovation and entrepreneurship, following the launch of Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program (NTP). The event was held under the patronage of the General Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEA), and hosted by King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology (KACST) and the Badir […]
(Image: PBO) The equity put into the company responsible for deploying the National Broadband Network across Australia will result in an annual AU$2.1 billion drag on the federal government’s underlying cash balance by 2026-27, the Parliament Budget Office (PBO) has said. PBO said the cost was entirely due to interest payments on the securities issued by the government as part of its debt issuing practices. For 2015-16, […]
Microsoft launched officially its latest chat bot, Zo.ai, along with a new external AI web site with information on its various AI-related projects. Credit: Microsoft Microsoft officials talked up the company’s momentum across its various AI projects and initiatives at its AI day in San Francisco on December 13. A week ago, word leaked that Microsoft was providing early access to users on Kik to Zo. Zo […]
Qualcomm said it will work with Google to combine Android Things, an Internet of things operating system, and its Snapdragon processor. The move could give Google a much larger ingredient brand play in the smart home, Internet of things and smart city deployments. If the collaboration is successful, Android will be embedded with the processors in the IoT food chain. Keep in mind that Qualcomm recently acquired […]
Intuit’s TurboTax Online software is the bedrock of the company’s consumer tax product portfolio. During the 2016 tax season, Intuit sold 33.9 million TurboTax units, a growth of 12 percent from the previous year. But with Intuit’s latest move, the company is aiming to make TurboTax a year-round financial services product and ultimately a more steady source of corporate revenues. Specifically, the personal and small business financial […]
Almost 3,500 individuals and companies in the Panama Papers are probable matches for suspected criminals including terrorists, cybercriminals and cigarette smugglers, according to a document seen by the Guardian. The analysis, which was carried out by Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, sheds more light on the breadth of criminal behaviour facilitated by tax havens around the world. “The main point here is that we can link […]
DUBAI // Experts are trying to determine the cause of a fire that swept through a Palm Jumeirah apartment block, leaving residents stranded and waiting to get back into their homes. Pictures of the blaze in the Adriatic building, which is part of the upscale Oceana complex, flooded social media on Monday night, and Dubai Media Office said the building was safely evacuated and no major injuries […]
Salesforce on Tuesday outlined LiveMessage, a conversational service available for Service Cloud that aims to connect consumers and enterprise via text messaging and apps. The gist of LiveMessage is that companies should be able to connect to customers and service them as a friend-to-friend interaction would occur via an app like Facebook Messenger. Salesforce acquired HeyWire in September for the underlying technology behind LiveMessage. Salesforce said LiveMessage […]
Boeing Chinese hackers are targeting aviation systems in the quest for information and intellectual property which will boost the country’s competitiveness, security researchers say. Cyberattacks against the aviation industry are nothing new, but with the inclusion of Internet-capable devices at the basic level of embedded devices to in-flight Wi-Fi and connected aviation systems, there are more avenues than ever that threat actors can exploit. Successful attacks which […]
Cronologics Google has acquired the team behind Cronologics, a company focused on the development of operating systems suitable for wearable devices. Started in 2014 by former Google business employees, the company hoped to one day create the go-to platform for smartwatches. With the introduction of Android Wear and Apple watchOS, this dream did not come to fruition, but there is still a future for the startup’s team. […]
