‘Rebble Alliance’ Unveils Grants for New Pebble Smartwatch Projects

AmiMoJo quotes SlashGear:
Remember the Pebble smartwatch? Despite being officially discontinued and several years old at this point, there are still some diehard fans out there keeping the hardware alive, and a team called Rebble Alliance plays an important part in this. Whereas the web services for Pebble watches used to come from Pebble Technology Corp., they now come (unofficially) from Rebble,…

Apple Is Now Worth $2 Trillion, Punctuating Big Tech’s Grip

It took Apple 42 years to reach $1 trillion in value. It took it just a two more years to get to $2 trillion. From a report: Even more stunning: All of Apple’s second $1 trillion came in the past 21 weeks, while the global economy shrank faster than ever before in the coronavirus pandemic. On Wednesday Apple became the first…

Smartwatch Hack Could Trick Patients To ‘Take Pills’ With Spoofed Alerts

Security researchers say a smartwatch, popular with the elderly and dementia patients, could have been tricked into letting an attacker easily take control of the device. From a report: These watches are designed to help patients to easily call their carers and for carers to track the location of their patients. They come with their own cellular connection, so that they…

Google’s Fitbit Takeover Probed by EU Regulators

The EU is questioning whether Google’s proposed takeover of Fitbit will harm competition, or give it access to too much personal data. From a report: Fitbit makes fitness-tracking watches that monitor the wearer’s heart rate and activity levels. A group of 20 consumer groups and privacy advocates have called for Google’s takeover to be blocked. Google said it would not use…

Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm

In what may be the first known case of its kind, a faulty facial recognition match led to a Michigan man’s arrest for a crime he did not commit. From a report: On a Thursday afternoon in January, Robert Julian-Borchak Williams was in his office at an automotive supply company when he got a call from the Detroit Police Department telling…

Vint Cerf Explains Why the Internet is Holding Up

In a video interview over Google Hangouts this week, 76-year-old Vint Cerf explained to the Washington Post why the internet’s 50-year-old architecture is still holding up, “with a mix of triumph and wonder in his voice.” “Resiliency and redundancy are very much a part of the Internet design,” explained Cerf, whose passion for touting the wonders of computer networking prompted Google…

‘Netflix Party’: a New Chrome Extension Adds Chat Panes to Movies

GameSpot calls it “like an AOL chat room” combined with Netflix. The Guardian reports:
You log in, share a viewing link with friends, choose one person to be in charge of picking what you watch and, as your chosen show plays out in the bulk of the screen, a chatroom pops up on the right-hand side. You can discuss the show with…

When AI Can’t Replace a Worker, It Watches Them Instead

Whether software that digitizes manual labor makes workers frowny or smiley will come down to how employers choose to use it. From a report: When Tony Huffman stepped away from the production line at the Denso auto part factory in Battle Creek, Michigan, to talk with WIRED earlier this month, the workers he supervised were still being watched — but not…

African dust bombards the Canary Islands

These hot, dust-laden winds are known as “la calima” and happen most often in winter. They can blow at up to 75 mph (120 kph). The dust kicked up last weekend in Africa drifted over the Canary Island, shutting down airports and stranding travelers. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/satellite-images-dust-feb-23-2020-sahara-to-canary-islands…

When it “Clicked”: A Penn MCIT Online Student Shares How He Went From No Computer Science Background to Coding Video Games in 3 Months

Working full time for the U.S. State Department, Aleks Jarcev has mastered time management while earning his degree online. Aleks Jarcev grew up spending endless hours playing computer games and even attempting to build them. Now, after three months in the MCIT Online program from the University of Pennsylvania, he is coding video games on […]
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