Goodbye to airplane mode
29/11/2022The European Union has announced that not far away it will be not longer be mandatory to activate airplane mode on mobile phones when we travel by plane. The reason is the installation of a new special device on the aircrafts that will enhance 5G coverage on board, making it totally safe to be connected to the internet on board an aircraft. When these new devices are installed, we will be able to transmit all kinds of streaming content in mid-flight and send and receive calls, messages, emails, play online... "The sky is no longer the limit when it comes to high-speed, high-capacity connections. The 5G connection offers innovative services for people and growth opportunities for European businesses," said Thierry Breton, Internal Market Commissioner for Europe. Confirmed, then, the arrival of 5G to airplanes, now the question is to know if the airlines will charge for the service.
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Google announces the closure of Street View
03/11/2022The independent Google Street View application will stop working next March, as Google has reported. They also has confirmed that the service will remain active within Google Maps. At this moment, Street View works in parallel as an independent App in the Google and Apple stores and also as an integrated functionality of Google Maps, a duplication that is no longer considered necessary and for these reason it will disappear as an application next year, on march 21th. Street View allows users to explore, through real images, towns and cities of more than 65 countries, providing them panoramic views at ground level, and the possibility to choose which segments of the road they want to explore. The images that Google uses for this service are taken by vehicles, cars and tricycles, equipped with up to nine cameras. This vehicles just move around the world, taking the photos and generating three-dimensional data that are used on top of the images, in this case from Satellite, of each place.
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The new version of the Internet satellite service Starlink V2 will eliminate coverage dead zones around the world
12/09/2022SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that next year, the second version of the internet satellite service, Starlink V2, will be up and running. The main novelty respect to the first version will be that Starlink V2 are going to be capable to transmit the internet directly to smartphones. This service, has explained SpaceX, will thus eliminate dead coverage zones, so will be able to guarantee internet connection in any corner of the world, although in its launch it will only be possible to make calls and send text messages, without being able to rival, for the moment, with broadband speed. In order to use Starlink services, an special antenna kit will continue to be necessary.
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Google will retire Hangouts in November
04/07/2022From today, all Hangouts users when they open the messaging app, will see a message inviting them to switch to Chat. The reason is that continuing with its plans to migrate all its users to this tool, Google has confirmed that Hangouts will not be longer operational this coming November. As they has explained on its official blog, users who still use Hangouts in Gmail will automatically switch to Chat, The change includes the transfer of conversations, history and contacts. Those who access Hangouts through the web or the mobile application must carry out this transfer with the help of Takeout, Google's data download tool.
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Google Maps will use AI to update store hours
14/04/2022Google Maps will update the hours of more than 20 million businesses around the world in the next six months. To do this, they will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a self-developed machine learning model, which identifies shop hours that are not updated. Through this system, the AI will update the hours according to itsel predictions based on parameters such the last update of the shop's profile, the hours of nearby stores and the busiest hours in that location. In addition, the algorithm will take datas from Google Business, information from the store's website, if it has one, and images from Street View. In some countries, Google will also use Google Duplex conversational AI technology to make calls with the quality of a human voice to the stores and confirm their opening hours. In this list of countries, France will be the only European country where the telephone verification will be carried out. The rest of the countries are Argentina, Australia, Chile, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and the United States.
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WhatsApp improves security in its desktop version
14/03/2022In accordance with the growing use of WhatsApp in the desktop version and with the aim of guaranteeing users maximum security, Meta has announced that has implemented in this app, a new security layer called Code Verify that acts as an open source browser extension verifying automatically the authenticity of the web code of this application. According to Meta, which has offered this utility to other services to use it, Code Verify allows web browsers to verify that the resources they obtain have not been tampered with. "When someone uses Code Verify, the extension automatically compares the code that is executed in WhatsApp Web with the version of the code verified by WhatsApp and published in CloudFlare", has said the company, who also explains that if any violation or inconsistency is detected , the user will receives a notification, immediately. This new WhatsApp code verification, which Meta has confirmed does not record metadata or user data or share information with the application, will be available in the official browser extension stores for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox.
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Fear of China spying on athletes' smartphones during the Beijing Olympics
21/01/2022A few weeks before the start of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, February 4 to 20, the media in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have confirmed that the Olympic committees of their countries have asked their athletes not to take their Smartphones and computers with them. The reason, they said, is the fear of Chinese espionage. For these reason, both sports organizations will equip all their athletes and other support personnel with new devices so that they can be connected during their stay in China, without exposing their personal data at risk. The decision by the Netherlands Committee was known in an interview in the Volkskrant newspaper, which appeared earlier this week. Geert Slot, the spokesman for the Netherlands Olympic Committee, explained that "Cybersecurity has become a much bigger topic in recent years, and China is a very special case." In addition to the Netherlands and England, Australia is known to have made a similar recommendation to its athletes, and also the United States.
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Makeup causes failures in facial recognition systems
22/09/2021A research from the Ben-Gurion University of Israel has concluded that makeup reduces the effectiveness of facial recognition mechanisms. During the tests, the researchers used the ArcFace facial detection system, and they determined an effectiveness of 47,6% in people who did not use make up and 33,7% in those who did. They also confirm that applying makeup in specific face areas that algorithms analyze, the effectiveness of the facial recognition system is significantly altered and only 1.22% persons were recognized. In addition, the researchers from the Israeli university also did the test digitally, making up some photographs of the volunteers and the result was that the system was not able to recognize any of the faces. According to all these results, the researchers believe that the current level of development of facial detection systems is still below the realistic threshold.
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Windows 11 ready and with 10 days to roll back to the previous version if you do not like it
14/07/2021Everything is ready so users can begin to install Windows 11 before the end of the year with the great added novelty that if once the update is installed but it does not convince you, you can roll back to the previous version. Microsoft said that Windows 10 users who upgrade to Windows 11 will have 10 days to easily roll back that update. After that 10-day grace period you will need to back up your data and do a 'clean install' to move back to Windows 10. The possibility of upgrading to Windows 11 will depend on the compatibility of the computer with the new version, although in a document of questions and answers for the commercial ones, Microsoft indicates that most of the Windows 10 computers that at the moment are commercialized fulfill the minimum requirements to do it. In the same document, Microsoft explains that Windows 11 maintains the performance and security of Windows 10 "with a redesigned and refreshed look and feel," and new tools, sounds and applications. It is also confirmed that Windows 10 support will be maintained until October 14, 2025.
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