With Russian military forces invading Ukraine, Atlas VPN is offering journalists in that war zone heightened online security using its virtual private network (VPN) free of charge.VPNs reroute all your internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel. It defends against online snooping from hackers, governments, or internet service providers (ISPs). They also mask users’ internet protocol (IP) addresses, which can protect them from censorship and other internet restrictions.A VPN offer two benefits in this scenario, offered Garbenis. First, it protects individuals from being attacked by DDoS attacks. This is especially important for independent reporters, who have no backing if they get targeted by threat actors. While it is challenging for large enterprises to protect themselves against DDoS attacks, this is not the case for individuals.According to U.S. and U.K. government agencies, the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate carried out the attacks. With a full-scale invasion now evident, more cyberattacks can be expected, warn cybersecurity experts. Atlas VPN announced its free VPN service offer to journalists in Ukraine on Thursday, Feb. 24, hours after Russia’s armed forces invaded the country.

Google has launched a new Chromebook repair program designed to help students and school systems get their broken laptops up and running again. On the website supporting the program, schools can find which Chromebooks have commonly repaired components, like the keyboard, display and palm rest. In addition, there are online manufacturer guides that show how to repair the devices, find tools to safely fix them, get replacement parts, find training and get system update access if needed.Google and its Chromebook’s partners’ support of do-it-yourself repairs is a bit of a departure from the practices of some makers of consumer electronics.As for anyone contemplating cracking open a PC to make repairs, Enderle offers this advice: “It’s not for the faint of heart, but it depends on what needs to be repaired and how easy the vendor made the process. In the long run, it is generally cheaper to have an expert do it because they’ll be properly grounded, have the right working environment — static electricity-free — and have learned on someone else’s PC.”

Involvement in cryptocurrency has gone from being an activity relegated to tech savants and Silicon Valley intellectuals to an interest of the general public. This growing level of interest has ushered in a call for increased security on cryptocurrency platforms.Cybercriminals, hackers, and scammers know no bounds when attempting to part a person from their money, and criminal interest in digital assets is no different. Research conducted by Barracuda, a cloud-enabled security solutions company, revealed that approximately 7,000 people lost more than US$80 million due to crypto scams between October 2020 and March 2021. According to the Federal Trade Commission, this is a massive increase of 1,100 percent from the previous years. Cryptocurrency operates on blockchain technology, which at its core is used to record financial exchanges without the need for third-party verification. The very essence of blockchain tech works to deter hackers and nefarious actors seeking to gain private information or steal digital assets. Data added to the blockchain and encrypted is permanent and unchangeable. Even if someone were to gain access and change any information stored therein, the other records would remain intact. The compromised record could be identified and repaired. Thus, blockchain technology makes cryptocurrency investment exceedingly secure.Cryptocurrency systems require the creation of keys/seeds, which should be kept confidential and should not be easily guessable for those intending to obtain access to crypto that they have no rights to. Dual verification for crypto wallet access, reference, and background checks, and redundant storage of keys and necessary access information also helps keep an investor’s cryptocurrency secure. As cryptocurrency investing and exchange grows in popularity and utilization, security concerns will likely increase as well.

The automotive market is moving rapidly to make and sell autonomous vehicles, but the studies suggest that two out of three drivers don’t want them.In the autonomous car segment, we have Tesla which seems to be going out of its way to scare us away from this technology, even as it tries to get us to subscribe to it rather than buy it.When it comes to electric cars, we tend to focus on range limitations, the lack of a charging infrastructure and no ‘vroom’ sounds.Autonomous cars will save lives, electric cars will help save the planet, but neither will meet expectations if they aren’t showcased as a benefit rather than a punishment. Driving an electric to help save our environment sounds like a punishment, while buying one because it will be a far better vehicle to drive sounds like a reward. Getting an autonomous vehicle that prevents you from driving sounds like a punishment, while getting one that keeps you, your spouse, and kids safer while allowing you to smile and wave at the gas stations you no longer need is a privilege. Autonomous electric cars won’t be for everyone for a few years yet. But if the industry doesn’t start focusing on the advantages rather than the shortcomings, the related sales won’t meet expectations and we won’t see the benefits to the planet or reduced traffic fatalities that will result from having them at scale very quickly. This isn’t a technology problem. It’s a marketing problem. If the industry doesn’t figure this out, it will become our problem, regardless.

A dangerous increase in ransomware attacks last year caused devastating compromises to government organizations, critical infrastructure, and businesses. Much of the increase resulted from cybercriminals becoming increasingly innovative and bold in their approach.A report from Positive Technologies late last month found cybercriminals can penetrate 93 percent of local company networks and trigger 71 percent of events deemed ‘unacceptable’ for their businesses.Ransomware overtook personal data breaches as the threat that dominated cybersecurity news across the world at 2021’s end. Global lockdowns and remote work caused a rush to put more assets online, which led to an increase in vulnerabilities.During the assessment of protection against external attacks, Positive Technologies experts breached the network perimeter in 93 percent of cases. This figure has remained high for many years, confirming that criminals are able to breach almost any corporate infrastructure, according to the company’s researchers.The biggest threat that cyberattacks pose to both businesses and consumers is downtime, noted Frankovitch. Whether your network has been breached or your personal identity has been stolen, the disruption and downtime can be catastrophic

Data breaches in 2021 set a new record with 5.9 billion accounts affected by digital thieves.In June, records of 700 million LinkedIn users were offered for sale on the hacker underground. The leaked data included user email addresses, full names, phone numbers, physical addresses, geolocation records, genders, personal and professional experience, and more. LinkedIn noted that the data wasn’t acquired from an actual breach of its systems, but from “data scraping” of its internet-facing API. In April, information from 533 million users in 106 countries was scraped from Facebook and published on a hacking forum. The leaked information included phone numbers, full names, locations, email addresses, and users’ biographical information. Facebook claims the data leak is a result of an old vulnerability that was patched in 2019.data breaches have been increasing across every level of analysis since 2020, from the likelihood of a breach, to the number of publicly reported breaches, to the number of exposed records.Major reason for this rapid growth is the ever-increasing sophistication of threat actors, a greater number of connected IoT devices, and the protracted shortage of skilled security talent all play a role in increased breach activity.While the number of breaches and stolen records is on the rise, there’s an even more disturbing trend in the data breach landscape the quality of information stolen is much higher.

Qualcomm’s rollout of its new Snapdragon 8 platform promises the beginning of a technology revolution that should rather quickly make everything currently in the market obsolete. In addition, what will result will arguably be so far beyond anything we have seen so far that it won’t be long until someone figures out both these market segments are soon going to slam together and create something new, powerful, and near magical. For instance, if your smartphone can take better pictures than a professional SLR, provide music quality that exceeds a high-end sound system, and AI capabilities that make translators and existing digital assistants obsolete.Amphibious cars were lousy cars, and tended to sink, the flying cars sucked as cars and tended to fall spectacularly out of the air, and flying boats or amphibious planes weren’t competitive with ships or planes except for some unique situations where you had water but no place to put an airport. The exception to this rule was the smartphone which initially eclipsed pure cellular phones and MP3 players doing both things as well or better than the focused devices did.The smartphones that will use this new Snapdragon platform should start announcing before the end of the year and you’ll particularly want to watch for the Motorola version which I’ve heard will be amazing. This next generation promises to be a better music player, better camera, better gaming platform, and a dammed good phone as well.

Bot activity at websites is skewing marketing analytics and costing businesses millions annually, according to a report released Tuesday by a bot detection and mitigation firm.Ad fraud costs businesses US$42 billion annually, or four percent of their revenue, the same percentage lost annually to skewed analytics, noted the report based on a survey of 440 businesses across the travel, entertainment, e-commerce, financial services, and telecom sectors in the U.S. and the U.K. Of the businesses surveyed, 73 percent revealed they were affected by click fraud, which cost them an average of four percent annually, while 68 percent acknowledged they’d been affected by skewed analytics, with an average loss of 4.07 percent in lost revenue. The report explained that bots are used by hackers to buy goods before other customers, hack accounts using stolen passwords, check the validity of stolen card details and steal content or prices by bulk scraping.A high number of companies also believe web application firewalls (WAF) and DDoS prevention systems can protect their data from being poisoned by bots, with 71 percent expressing their faith in DDoS prevention systems and 73 percent in WAFs.That threat of skewed data may be steering marketers away from analytics. “What we think is happening is people aren’t trusting their data because when they make decisions based on data it’s not coming out well for them, probably because their data is rubbish,” maintained Matthew Gracey-McMinn, head of threat research for Netacea.

Tesla and Apple have a similar approach to their respective markets, and both enjoy similar advantages.. Tesla doesn’t do much marketing and has a history of poor quality control. While Apple has reduced its marketing substantially, it still essentially leads its market in this regard, and Apple tends to set the bar in terms of product quality. There is a very high correlation between iPhone users and Tesla buyers. So, if Apple brings out a car that is highly integrated into the Apple ecosystem, it can take a substantial share from Tesla.The rumored phone is expected to have Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon 8 Series solution, colors that match Tesla car colors, operate better as a car key for Tesla autos than any other phone, and (this is the iffy part) connect to Starlink.For instance, it could have dedicated buttons to lock, unlock, locate the vehicle, and scream for help using the car’s external speakers to get attention. The phone would also help the car locate you if you had the autonomous feature and wanted it to pick you up, which would be particularly handy for those of us who forget where we park.esla could be better than Apple at integrating the car and phone. Although neither Tesla nor Apple has proven to be great partners, Qualcomm can partner well with anyone and was successful at helping Apple get started when it was far less than it is now.

Nvidia is building a focused supercomputer tasked with creating Earth 2, a full-on global 3D metaverse simulation of the Earth to predict climate change more accurately. We need a better model of the planet because existing models are incomplete and result in inaccurate predictions. To fight something as nebulous as climate change, you need to understand it deeply, and Earth 2 has the potential to be the most powerful weapon in the fight to slow climate change. This enhanced model will provide a far more accurate ranking of the causes. It can then help devise solutions and model the remedies to determine the most significant positive impact for the least amount of money of all the alternatives.None of the existing climate change models are very accurate. They are extrapolations of some limited set of environmental figures which are never comprehensive and thus cannot generate anything close to the detail needed to predict our future and potentially correct the problem.

It's actually the size of a grain of sand. The tiny camera measures in at a whopping 0.65 x 0.65 x 1.158mm.Although it outputs a 40,000-pixel image, the resolution of the camera isn’t anything to write home about. But, for medical professionals who require a closer look at the human body, these cameras are a godsend. These cameras can be used in a variety of medical use cases such as helping with delicate surgery and even delivering a more precise diagnosis since doctors are able to get a better look at the problem. It even comes with a 120-degree FOV and an aperture of f/2.8. The camera also produces significantly less heat than its larger counterparts and can be implanted in the human body for a longer period of time. Specialised fields such as brain surgery, Haemotology, neurology etc will definitely benefit from the imagery that this camera produces. The OVM6948 wafer-level camera module offers a compact, high-quality solution for disposable guidewires, catheters and endoscopes, which are experiencing growing demand because of their ability to reduce cross-contamination risks, downtime inefficiencies and costs associated with the repairs, preprocedural testing and sterilization of reusable endoscopes. In addition, these compact disposable medical devices can improve patient comfort and shorten recovery time.

Land and other investment assets are sold in the form of Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and fall under the umbrella of crypto assets, making them a worthwhile investment particularly now that Meta has plans to speed up the creation of the Metaverse. MANA, which is the digital currency used in Decentraland, however, is rather volatile when compared to other cryptocurrency coins, and may suit investors with a high risk appetite.As of now, people are buying land in this virtual world as a speculative investment. The parcel of land that sold for USD 2.4 million was purchased by the Metaverse Group, a subsidiary of Tokens.com. It has been purchased in an area called Fashion Street, where one can attend digital fashion events and buy clothes for one’s avatars. This isn’t the first time virtual real estate has been sold in Decentraland - in June, a buyer purchased a plot of land with the intention to build a shopping mall. This was priced at around USD $913,228 (roughly Rs. 6.7 crore).

WhatsApp has banned over 2 million accounts from the platform during the month of October.WhatsApp banned close to 2.2 million users in September. These users were banned for violating the chatting app’s security rules. With WhatsApp broadening its offerings into the payments industry, the brand has to weed out sketchy users to ensure the safety of everyone else using the platform. That means that the platform has banned over 4 million accounts in two months. Maybe that’s not how the metrics are measured but in terms of numbers, it does seem like the service has banned a gigantic number of users. In the latest transparency report from the company, we can see that WhatsApp has taken strict action against a number of users on the platform. WhatsApp has its own system to weed out abusive and harmful content. WhatsApp has also asked users to send complaints and grievances to grievance_officer_wa@support.whatsapp.com. Whatsapp has recently been in the news for releasing many updates designed to enhance user privacy and overall convenience. It makes perfect sense for the platform to remove so many users (and to continue doing so) for the sake of growing its business globally.

A technology executive raised eyebrows last week when he predicted the shortage in semiconductor chips could last into 2023. “Right now, every single end market for semiconductors is up simultaneously,” Marvell CEO Matt Murphy said at a CNBC Technology Executive Council event Thursday.erapies for people with brain or spinal injuries.One sector seriously hit by the chip shortage was the automotive industry. “Demand actually seems to be fantastic, but a global semiconductor shortage — brought on by an increase in consumer electronics demand as well as automakers not anticipating demand recovering so soon, in our view — is wreaking havoc on 2021’s auto recovery,” Morningstar analyst David Whiston wrote in an article published on the company’s website.“The demand for autos is there, but not the supply,” he added. He expects the second quarter of 2021 to have been the worst of the chip shortage, but noted that recovery will take time, probably into at least 2022. “There’s also been some good news upstream in the semiconductor supply chain,” he continued. “Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s CEO, C.C. Wei, said in April that he expects the semiconductor shortage for the company’s automotive customers, which are chipmakers such as NXP and Texas Instruments, to be greatly reduced by the third quarter.”

The air we breathe has a carbon problem. But in Hellisheidi, Iceland, a geothermally active plateau just outside of Reykjavik, a new technology is taking a small but mighty step toward fixing it. A plant called Orca, built by Climeworks, is the first-ever facility where CO2 is being filtered directly from the air and stored permanently underground. Orca’s carbon-capturing devices resemble giant transistor radios. They fit right into an already larger-than-life Icelandic landscape, where the wind blows fierce even on a rare day when sunlight gleams off the icy mountaintops. Though the plant has only been operational since September, its air-straining technology, known as direct air capture, has been a point of contention among environmentalists for much longer. Vacuuming up carbon dioxide was once considered a last resort, but it’s looking like we’re headed toward a future where last resorts are a must-have. To meet that goal, the United Nations has estimated that 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide will need to be removed from the atmosphere annually by 2050. That number is a best-case scenario, assuming that aggressive cuts in emissions are achieved through other means. Without enough cuts, the need for carbon removal could be even higher.Direct air capture technology is one among many options for removing excess CO2. There are natural methods, like planting trees, and there are technologies that capture CO2 directly from smokestacks and other emission sources. Compared to capturing CO2 at the source, it’s more challenging and costly to pull CO2 literally out of thin air, but a benefit of direct air capture is that it doesn’t require finding and stopping every single polluter. It’s a solution that works across the globe.

YouTube has taken a backseat to TikTok for months when it comes to average engagement with Android users, according to a report from a mobile market watcher.The mobile market data and analytics company noted that during the 11-month period between August 2020 and June 2021, TikTok’s Android app has surpassed YouTube in the United States in the average monthly time per user department nine times. TikTok showed even stronger performance in the U.K., where it has outperformed YouTube in 14 consecutive months, from May 2020 to June 2021. During the most recent month covered in the report, the average monthly time per U.S. user for TikTok was 24 hours and 38 minutes, compared to 22 hours and 40 minutes for YouTube. In the U.K., it was 25 hours and 52 minutes for TikTok and 15 hours and 53 minutes for YouTube. However, when it comes to overall time spent on a social and entertainment Android app, YouTube leads the world, followed by Facebook, WhatsApp Messenger, Instagram and TikTok.User engagement is an important part of the social media scene because the longer someone is using a platform, the more time they can be enticed to spend money, and the more people trying to sell something on a platform can be charged for the opportunity to do so. That’s why TikTok’s high average monthly time per user performance is significant.The TikTok app has built on the scrolling feed that made Instagram a compelling vehicle for photos as it gained popularity, which is ironic, since Instagram has tried cut into TikTok’s engagement time with a clone offering called Reels.

Esports has grown exponentially in recent years, expanding into a major industry that shows no signs of slowing momentum. Indeed, the esports ecosystem is on pace this year to surpass $1 billion in revenue for the first time. Yet, even as esports is coming into its own, not everyone understands exactly what it is and why it matters. TechNewsWorld spoke with several esports aficionados to hear what they had to say about the evolution of esports, what’s driving its popularity, and what to expect from this burgeoning industry going forward. Though esports began as a cottage industry of people connected by a passion for video games, it’s quickly grown to become a multimillion-dollar market. “Initially, esports was a grassroots pursuit, driven by passion, with events mostly taking place online, or sometimes in school halls, in hotel ballrooms, or at LAN centers, rather than the sold-out stadiums that we see today.”. Ultimately, esports will continue to take the lead in an ever-evolving digital ecosystem that it’s helped to create. “Esports is growing rapidly year over year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future,” Seth Mason, founder and CMO of The Esport Company, in Johnstown, Pa. told TechNewsWorld. “Professional athletes in the major sports play and market esports, [and] musicians, artists, and more showcase that it’s not just for the person in mom’s basement anymore,” he maintained. “Esports is beginning to shake off the negative stigma that surrounded it during the early 2010s,” Mason contended. “The future for esports is around education and developing the career fields around esports to create a pipeline of opportunities to work in the industry.”

The prototype battery consists of printed silver flake electrodes that generate electricity in the presence of sweat. Measuring 2 cm by 2 cm and as flat as a small paper bandage, the battery is affixed to a flexible and sweat absorbent textile that is stretchable and attachable to wearable devices, like watches, wrist bands or arm straps. The battery does not contain heavy metals or toxic chemicals unlike conventional batteries, which are often built using unsustainable materials that are harmful to the environment. In a trail. an individual wearing the battery around their wrist and cycling on a stationary bicycle for 30 minutes was able to generate a voltage of 4.2 V and output power of 3.9 mW that was sufficient to power a commercial temperature sensor device.

Whenever a new device comes up in the market, people generally stop using the old one and start using new. In this way the old ones have to dumped in the hazardous waste, by this most of the materials doesn’t get recycled and hence gets wasted. To simplify small electronics recycling, researchers have developed a two-metal nanocomposite for circuits that disintegrates when submerged in water. Planned obsolescence and the fast pace of technology innovations leads to new devices that are continuously replacing old versions, which generates millions of tons of electronic waste per year. Recycling can reduce the volume of e-waste and is mandatory in many places. The researchers modified the zinc-based nanocomposite by adding silver nanowires, making it highly conductive. Then, they screen-printed the metallic solution onto pieces of poly(vinyl alcohol) a polymer that degrades in water and solidified the circuits by applying small droplets of water that facilitate chemical reactions and then evaporate. The watch took 40 hrs to get dissolved in water. Only the screen, capacitors, microcontrollers were left undissolved.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are emerging assistive devices that may one day help people with brain or spinal injuries to move or communicate. BCI systems depend on implantable sensors that record electrical signals in the brain and use those signals to drive external devices like computers or robotic prosthetics. Most current BCI systems use one or two sensors to sample up to a few hundred neurons, but neuroscientists are interested in systems that are able to gather data from much larger groups of brain cells.By this, he researchers say, are a step toward a system that could one day enable the recording of brain signals in unprecedented detail, leading to new insights into how the brain works and new therapies for people with brain or spinal injuries.

The prototype battery consists of printed silver flake electrodes that generate electricity in the presence of sweat. Measuring 2 cm by 2 cm and as flat as a small paper bandage, the battery is affixed to a flexible and sweat absorbent textile that is stretchable and attachable to wearable devices, like watches, wrist bands or arm straps. The battery does not contain heavy metals or toxic chemicals unlike conventional batteries, which are often built using unsustainable materials that are harmful to the environment. In a trail. an individual wearing the battery around their wrist and cycling on a stationary bicycle for 30 minutes was able to generate a voltage of 4.2 V and output power of 3.9 mW that was sufficient to power a commercial temperature sensor device.

Dark mode is unlikely to make a big difference to battery life with the way that most people use their phones on a daily basis. Many people use their phone's default auto-brightness setting, which tends to keep brightness levels around 30%-40% most of the time when indoors. At 30%-50% brightness, researchers found that switching from light mode to dark mode saves only 3%-9% power on average for several different OLED smartphones. This percentage is so small that most users wouldn't notice the slightly longer battery life. But the higher the brightness when switching from light mode to dark mode, the higher the energy savings. Using the Google News app in light mode at 20% brightness on the Pixel 5, for example, draws the same amount of power as when the phone is at 50% brightness in dark mode. Dark mode helps in saving battery not to a great extent, but it does make the apps/websites look cool and reduce stress on our eyes.

Scientists have designed a machine learning algorithm to predict the size of an individual cell as it grows and divides. By using an artificial neural network that does not impose the assumptions commonly employed in biology, the computer was able to make more complex and accurate forecasts than previously possible. This work may help advance the field of quantitative biology as well as improve the industrial production of medications or fermented products. As in all of the natural sciences, biology has developed mathematical models to help fit data and make predictions about the future. However, because of the inherent complexities of living systems, many of these equations rely on simplifying assumptions that do not always reflect the actual underlying biological processes.Researchers have implemented a machine learning algorithm that can use the measured size of single cells over time to predict their future size. Because the computer automatically recognizes patterns in the data, it is not constrained like conventional methods.

Predicting what someone is about to do next based on their body language comes naturally to humans but not so for computers. When we meet another person, they might greet us with a hello, handshake, or even a fist bump. We may not know which gesture will be used, but we can read the situation and respond appropriately. The algorithm is a step toward machines being able to make better predictions about human behaviour, and thus better coordinate their actions with ours. It's the most accurate method to date for predicting video action events up to several minutes in the future, the researchers say. After analysing thousands of hours of movies, sports games, and shows like "The Office," the system learns to predict hundreds of activities, from handshaking to fist bumping. When it can't predict the specific action, it finds the higher-level concept that links them, in this case, the word "greeting." The technique could move computers closer to being able to size up a situation and make a nuanced decision, instead of a pre-programmed action. It's a critical step in building trust between humans and computers.

The world of work is changing, and new technologies are transforming how companies hire, train, and manage their employees. Due to the pandemic companies are now hirirng thriugh online platforms which has its own pros and cons. Few prefer to have HR rounds online in the future too , few do not. In addition to changes in the recruiting and hiring process, technology is changing how businesses manage their employees.Technological changes are altering many different aspects of human resources, since the practices of hiring, training, and managing employees intersect on multiple levels. "People are looking for faster, more accurate, more human ways to drive business outcomes

More than 25 million work-from-home jobs could be created in non-technology industries in the coming years, according to the operator of a global marketplace for freelance workers.Professional services are involved in essentially every part of the economy, which means that there is widespread potential for remote freelancing, even in companies where most people need to be in person every day, the report continued.It noted that among its top 100 non-technical clients, spending on freelancers in the year before the pandemic, 2019, increased 44.2 percent. That growth, it added, was widespread across industries, not concentrated in a few. During the pandemic year, spending continued to rise, with 80 percent of the top 100 companies increasing their outlays over a variety of service categories

Reports of a data breach of TurboTax have been overblown, according to Intuit which owns the tax preparation platform. Several news outlets recently reported that an unspecified number of TurboTax accounts were compromised in a wave of credential stuffing attacks. Those kinds of attacks exploit credentials stolen from other websites and reused at the TurboTax site.In recent times, consumers have begun receiving alerts when one of their passwords appears in a cache of stolen data. "Users who have embraced storing and generating their passwords through a secure password manager may get notification of known breachesOne of the primary values of a password manager is that it will let you know which of your online accounts have been breachedConsumers concerned about their passwords having been compromised can also be more proactive by running a check of their passwords at the HaveIBeenPwned website, which tracks email addresses and phone numbers that have been in data breaches over the past fifteen years

We are creating an ecosystem where cars and robots are autonomous and connected so they will be able to connect to other devices, sensors, and data repositories available to them.Autonomous cars and the related robots and drones coming out of applied AI promise to transform the world into something pretty amazing. Companies like Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm are working furiously to create an extraordinary level of technology that will keep us safer and massively reduce the significant number of people killed or crippled in car accidents. Each has elements of security surrounding their efforts.

According to the data collected from 1,507 international respondents, 83 percent of customers will spend more money with brands that deliver great online customer service. Nearly a third of customers (28 percent) say their customer service expectations are not being met, however.Phone and email, droped by 11%, people prefer to deal with grienvences directly through the chatbots. People have mixed feelings over chatbots, they find it easy to resove smaller issues but tough with major issues. The consumer of todays marlet demands smart and speedy consumer service which has less hurdles and has a positive outcome.

A Russian-language dark web marketplace called Hydra that is known to facilitate the illegal sale of narcotics. Cryptocurrencies are mostly prefered for illegal transaction as they are not regulaterd by any Central Authority to govern it. This has lead to rise in the drugs/ weapons market around the world.

Microsoft teams and Cisco WebEx as platform served as a lifeline in pandemic. This extended pandemic had one colossal silver lining: it forced us to honestly look at our conferencing technology and begin to evolve it to make physical travel obsolete. But to do that, we don't just need to advance the mixed reality capability to emulate better real life; we also have to instrument the people using the solution so that we can help them become better employees and assure that this shift to digital interaction helps and doesn't hurt them long term.

Microsoft purchased Nuance Communications, a natural language to computer processing company, in a deal valued at $19.7 billion."Nuance provides the AI layer at the healthcare point of delivery and is a pioneer in the real-world application of enterprise AI.AI is technology's most important priority, and healthcare is its most urgent applicationThe acquisition will help Microsoft catch up with its cloud rivals.

Some 400 million patients worldwide are affected by more than 7,000 rare diseases; yet treatments for rare genetic diseases remain an underserved area. More than 95 percent of rare diseases do not have an approved treatment, and new treatments are estimated to cost more than $1 billion.The OpenTreatments Foundation enables treatments for rare genetic diseases regardless of rarity and geography. The RareCamp Project provides the source code and open governance for the OpenTreatments software platform to enable patients to create gene therapies for rare genetic diseases.The project uses the open-source Javascript framework NextJS for frontend, and the Amazon Web Services serverless stack -- including AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB -- to power the backend. The project also uses the open-source toolchain Serverless Framework to develop and deploy the software. The project is licensed under Apache 2.0 and available for anyone to use.

Industry 4.0 began at the beginning of this century with the boom of AI.It brings with it the promise of advancements in blending humans and machines with mechanical organ and limb replacements, considerable advancements in machine intelligence, flying cars, the rise of autonomous machines, massive instrumentation of the civilian population, and a world war. Its important to sustain the environmental issues and the present jobs through the 4.0.

Huawei created its own OS which is Harmony OS after US Sanctions over it.Huawei is moving seamlessly from a PC to a smartphone to make require less effort. Pulling IoT devices together into solutions becomes almost instantaneous, and applications only need to be written once to work on all platforms. One of the problems people are experiencing during the pandemic, especially if they were hired in the past year, is the inability to form relationships with their co-workers. Social media, which was supposed to address this need, has fallen woefully short. The related spaces are often filled with hostility, misbehaving users, and fake news -- all of which are counter-productive to creating and fostrering new relationships. Microsoft viva made it easy.

Many people have heard of Bitcoin but very few understand it. In short, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, or digital currency, that allows transactions independent of the banking system. Its the most valuable cryptocurrency which once crossed the mark of $55000Although Bitcoin was originally developed to function as an alternative to fiat currencies (those that governments have given legal tender status), there has been a noticeable rise in demand from many people purchasing the virtual currency purely as a financial investment, hoping that it will appreciate rather than using it for a transaction.

Cyberattacks are increasing in frequency, ramping up the data privacy threats they pose to government agencies and businesses alike. Governments both domestic and foreign need to step up efforts to pass legislation that bolsters technological defenses this year, warn privacy groups. Stiffer privacy laws are gradually being reviewed and signed into the U.S. market. But that process is mostly taking place at the state level.

As they become more prominent, consumers will enjoy shopping experiences that no longer rely on payments from a piece of plastic with a four-digit pin. Instead, consumers will use unique motion sensors in smartphone devices to passively authenticate people using their walking behavior and other contextual biometric signals. Some of these contactless procedures are already being deployed

This emerging building method is far less wasteful, far faster, and far cheaper to build much sturdier homes. The only real downside is that the skills and technology to build these houses aren't widely available yet. Still, a shift to 3D printed building could create many new jobs, and the training required isn't considered exceedingly difficult. Let's talk about 3D printed homes, and we'll close with the product of the week, the ARM-based HP Elite Folio.

While the pandemic has been painful, it has caused things to accelerate in several areas impressively rapidly. Two of those areas are robotics and artificial intelligence, which we'll see adapted broadly this decade with a considerable bump in 2021. Let's talk about all of that this week, and we'll close with the first product of the week in 2021, the Somnofy AI Sleep Monitor.

For the majority of consumers, cutting the cable TV cord is a mixed bag for a variety of reasons. The big misconception is that you will drastically lower your cable bill. That is not the case unless you can also pickup free TV reception from an antenna. Otherwise, you will need to use a video streaming service to help lower your costs.

Maintaining and increasing research and development spending in the COVID-19 era is critical for high technology vendors to deliver new solutions and services, continue to innovate, and position their businesses to rebound from the negative effects of the global pandemic. Analysts, financial advisors, and investors concur that, wherever possible, vendors should continue to aggressively invest in R&D.

Sometime in the 2030s PCs and phones will merge, if they hadn't already. In the 2040s people and personal technology will merge as humans and robotics evolve into hybrids of each other. Since we're approaching the end of 2020, let's talk about what's on the way over the next three decades, and build up to what's in store for personal communications technology in 2050.

This piece is a demonstration of one means of setting up file-level encryption which is widely available for Linux desktop users. To offer a similar encryption scheme to as many users as possible, we'll walk through how to use fscrypt to create an encrypted filesystem. While simple, fscrypt offers multiple configuration modes.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is making good on a resolution to strengthen its enforcement of security deficiencies occurring in e-commerce transactions. The agency's recent action involving allegations of improper activities by teleconferencing provider Zoom Video Communications is a notable example.

High-performing businesses reach peak commercial performance by reducing friction in customer interactions in the face of a market with increasing complexity. If you look at who's winning, it's the companies that not only embraced digital transformation early, but also made it a core building block of their foundation moving forward.

A 23-year-old biomedical engineering student is one of two first-place winners in the 2020 James Dyson Award. Her invention aims to help women around the world afford the cost of early testing for breast cancer. Judit Giró Benet captured the $35,000 cash prize for developing The Blue Box, an at-home reusable breast cancer screening device. Her mother's diagnosis of breast cancer inspired Benet to find an affordable and effective screening mechanism.

Amazon is getting into the online pharmacy prescription business in a big way. The e-commerce giant is setting up a new drugstore on its platform, Amazon Pharmacy, that will allow customers to complete a pharmacy transaction on their desktop or through the company's mobile app. Amazon said that filling prescriptions at its pharmacy would be as easy as shopping anywhere else on the platform.

Apple has refreshed its iPhone product line with four new models, as well as a downsized version of its HomePod smart speaker. All of the new iPhones are built around Apple's blazing fast A14 Bionic chip, support all flavors of 5G wireless connectivity, and are protected by a Ceramic Shield that protects the phone from damage after a fall four times better than in previous models.

Amazon has cleared a key government hurdle in its flight path to deliver packages by airborne drones. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has granted the online retail giant a Part 135 certificate, which allows Amazon Prime Air to operate as an air carrier.

South Korea is set to become only the second country after the US to make the 6GHz band available for unlicensed use, said a media report. The country's Ministry of Science and ICT on Thursday announced the approval of 1.2GHz of spectrum in the 6GHz band -- the 5,925MHz to 7,125MHz.

Google has taken a step toward controlling spam voice calls on Android devices with a new addition to its phone app. The "Verified Calls" feature will display a caller's name, logo, reason for calling and a verification symbol indicating a business has been verified by Google. The service will initially roll out in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and India, with more countries to follow.

After crashing in 2019, Dark Web markets for stolen credentials rebounded during the first half of 2020, largely due to major shifts in consumer behavior caused by the global pandemic. Hacked accounts for delivery services and physical fitness brands are some of the highest priced items on the market, according to a recent report.

According to gaming experts, 2021 is shaping up to be a big year for cloud gaming. When markets grow, it can be at the expense of others in the market. That won't be the case for cloud gaming, at least for the next five years. A proliferation of cloud gaming services will be launched next year, which is projected to brighten the sector's revenue picture.

Apple's "Walled Garden" was built to protect consumers from malicious applications, but it can also protect the company from competition, as Microsoft and Facebook discovered recently. Late last week, Apple refused to allow Microsoft to offer its xCloud streaming gaming app for iOS and iPadOS at the Apple App Store. At the same time, it approved a scaled-down version of Facebook's gaming app, sans streaming gaming, into the store.

Apple's "Walled Garden" was built to protect consumers from malicious applications, but it can also protect the company from competition, as Microsoft and Facebook discovered recently. Late last week, Apple refused to allow Microsoft to offer its xCloud streaming gaming app for iOS and iPadOS at the Apple App Store. At the same time, it approved a scaled-down version of Facebook's gaming app, sans streaming gaming, into the store.

Earthquake alerts are being incorporated into Android, Google's mobile operating system. The feature will be included in a refresh of Google Mobile Services, so a full operating system upgrade won't be necessary. That means the new addition will be available to most Android users -- except those in China, which doesn't use GMS.

Although many people haven't wrapped their minds around 5G mobile technology yet, Samsung has already started talking about 6G. In a report released Tuesday, the company reveals its 6G vision of the future, including technical and societal megatrends, new services, requirements, candidate technologies, and an expected timeline of standardization.

As traditional gyms, fitness centers, and health and wellness studios shutter during COVID-19, technology has kicked in to provide a replacement or an alternative for growing numbers of online shoppers. Digital at-home exercise sessions and sales of home exercise and health equipment purchased online are fueling new consumer trends that could permanently supplant old shopping routines.

Service Providers say “our infrastructure wasn't set up to suddenly shift massive amounts of traffic from companies to homes. Exacerbating this are cable networks with shared capacity because they were built with the idea that most folks wouldn't be using them at the same time. 5G might be the only realistic way to deal with these issues on a sustained basis”.

Nintendo seems to be uncomfortable with the dominant business model in the mobile-gaming market, which allows players to download and start playing a game for free, then entices them to spend money on the software through in-app purchases. Those tactics have come under the increased scrutiny of regulators, which also concerns Nintendo, a brand with a family-friendly image.

Qualcomm has announced its Robotics RB5 platform, with 5G and 4G connectivity, on-device AI and machine learning. The platform's Qualcomm QRB5165 processor, which is customized for robotics applications, offers a heterogeneous computing architecture coupled with the 5th-generation Qualcomm AI Engine that delivers 15 Tera Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS) of AI performance.

Qualcomm has announced its Robotics RB5 platform, with 5G and 4G connectivity, on-device AI and machine learning. The platform's Qualcomm QRB5165 processor, which is customized for robotics applications, offers a heterogeneous computing architecture coupled with the 5th-generation Qualcomm AI Engine that delivers 15 Tera Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS) of AI performance.