Sure, Snapchat AR Lenses can be fun, but they can help communicate complex issues as well. While our Facebook news feeds were filled with references to 311 Day, March 11 is also World Kidney Day, the United Kingdom's National Health Service Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) used the occasion to educate its constituents about organ donation.
Every video you like on TikTok, whether it's a stranger performing a series of choreographed movements or a celebrity showing off their new workout, is saved to your profile. If you want to watch your liked videos at any time in the future, you can easily do so from your profile — but so can everyone else.
Russian cyber disinformation campaigns have many missions, but one of particular interest is using technology to monitor, influence, and disrupt online communications surrounding culturally sensitive topics or protests. The ability to watch these events, and even filter positive or negative tweets to amplify, gives rise to the ability to execute a number of disinformation campaigns.
It's easy to have your password stolen. Important people like executives, government workers, journalists, and activists face sophisticated phishing attacks to compromise their online accounts, often targeting Google account credentials. To reduce this risk, Google created the Advanced Protection Program, which uses U2F security keys to control account access and make stolen passwords worthless.
Up until the last 15 years or so, watching the commercials during the Super Bowl was arguably more exciting than the game itself. Super Bowl XXIV featured the San Francisco 49ers blowing out the Broncos, 55-10, in the worst Super Bowl beatdown of all time. The game might not have been that exciting, but the commercials sure were.
Telemarketers can be as terrifying as a villain from a horror film. Your phone rings with an unknown 800 number, and you immediately fill with a sense of dread. There's no way to get them to stop calling; you imagine the number appearing on your phone at all hours of the day and night, haunting you.
If you live in the US, it's your civic duty to understand our governing bodies and the political system that puts them in place. It doesn't matter what your age is, knowing who to vote for is as important as voting at all. That starts with policing your own representatives to help decide whether or not we should re-elect them.
The biggest problem with Netflix (which is hardly a real problem) is the overwhelming amount of content available for streaming. Browsing through profile-specific categories might help narrow down your search on something to watch, but some of those categories come and go without warning, and it's impossible to find them again—but not anymore.
In recent years, unwanted calls have become a top priority for the FCC. In 2016, analysts estimated that US customers received over 2.4 billion robocalls per month. As a result, the FCC has provided carriers new tools to combat this problem.
If you don't want to dress up as a vampire, witch, werewolf, or zombie again this Halloween, step things up a notch and go viral. There have been a ton of funny memes and absurd news since last October, so the only hard part is settling on the right one for inspiration for your costume.
"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself." That's the line just before Morpheus gives Thomas Anderson (aka Neo) the red pill, finally opening his eyes to the tapestry of code that has veiled his eyes for his entire life.
The world of politics can sometimes get a little toxic, but with the new administration, there's already a bit of whimsy creeping back into the online meme space.
Quietly, while the rest of the world was engaged in pandemic and political concerns, a few weeks ago Facebook casually upgraded its Spark AR platform with what it calls Unified Effect Publishing.
Deep fakes, the art of leveraging artificial intelligence to insert the likeness and/or voice of people into videos they don't otherwise appear in, typically focus on celebrity parodies or political subterfuge.
Every summer for the last 26 years, hoards of hackers have descended on the Las Vegas Strip for DEFCON, the biggest hacker conference in the US. There's a wealth of talks every season (DEFCON 27 has at least 95 scheduled), and there have been some essential topics to learn from in past discussions. We've dug through the last ten years and found the 15 most popular talks you should watch.
In our first part on software-defined radio and signals intelligence, we learned how to set up a radio listening station to find and decode hidden radio signals — just like the hackers who triggered the emergency siren system in Dallas, Texas, probably did. Now that we can hear in the radio spectrum, it's time to explore the possibilities of broadcasting in a radio-connected world.
A new technological movement without the technology itself is just an idea sitting and waiting. Once the technology is present in the equation, movement forward can begin. This is how many of us see the head-mounted displays (HMDs) and smartglasses that have recently entered the augmented and mixed reality market — or are coming out in the next few months. This is a movement that will sweep over the world, changing everything in its path, and these are some of the people behind it.
In the aftermath of the unindicted police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, we've been told that the system worked as intended. When our legal system's outcome is at conflict with what a majority of Americans believe is just, it's clear that some changes are needed. But what specifically needs to change? And what can an average citizen with a moral and just cause do to prevent these kinds of tragedies from repeating themselves again and again?
The recent announcement that Facebook will begin inserting advertisements into its VR experience on its Oculus Quest headset has set the VR and augmented reality industry into a frenzy.
In the realm of social media, all roads lead to one destination: cracking the code of continuous partial attention dopamine hits. We learned this back in the days of Vine, before Twitter foolishly killed it. And I pointed my lens at the emerging trend back in 2016 when I highlighted Musical.ly for Mashable, just before it was snapped up by China's Bytedance for $1 billion and merged into what is now TikTok.
Apple is making it easier to keep track of your most important conversations in Messages. Thanks to iOS 14, you can now pin threads to the top of the app, making text messages and iMessages easier to access than ever before. Even if there aren't any recent messages, you can place the focus on the conversations you want.
It is almost indisputable that smartglasses and head-worn displays are the future of augmented reality. However, at this precise moment, they are still a very niche market.
Welcome back Hackers\Newbies!
When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. At Magic Leap, the lemons are the COVID-19 pandemic, and the lemonade is a new solution for virtual meetings born out of social distancing.
First off, don't be frustrated. YOU CAN DO IT! Contrary to the message in the image above, it's NOT over. It's just beginning. And when it comes to solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, the old cliche does apply: practice makes perfect.
Apple's Siri is well-versed in the spells of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but it's not like Android users are Muggles. Google Assistant, Android's virtual concierge, can cast a few spells out of the box, and it can learn the spells it doesn't know quicker than a year of studying at Hogwarts.
Your days as an ordinary Muggle are over — as long as you have an iPhone. With just a word or two, you can use your iPhone and newfound Muggle-born powers to cast spells or utilize charms just like Harry Potter and team. Only your "wand" is from Apple, not Ollivanders in Diagon Alley.
The year 2020 was a pivotal span of time during which the word "virtual" took on a brand new meaning. Instead of referring to VR or augmented reality, the term was hijacked to describe meeting across long distances through a variety of software tools, most often through video.
If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?"
Deadshot is one of my all-time favorite Batman villains. So when I saw that he was in Batman: Arkham City, I jumped on this sidequest faster than I jump on a fresh batch of cornbread. Don't judge me, I'm from Indiana.
The BBC has sensationally censored a news story and a video showing Syrian rebels forcing a prisoner to become a suicide bomber, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, presumably because it reflected badly on establishment media efforts to portray the FSA as glorious freedom fighters. » BBC Censors Video Showing Syrian Rebels Tricking Prisoner to Become Suicide Bomber Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!.
A simple representation of Iran's "political" system.
Fantastic reissue of this all female punk group from Switzerland. Formed in the early 80's, this was their first single released on their own label Farmer Records. Now Portland's Mississippi Records has finally released this obscure classic. Their sound is a cross between punk and twee pop. Catchy melodies with sing along choruses, upbeat tempos, thumping bass lines and noisy post punk guitars. Very much in the same vein as bands like the Shop Assistants (whom they toured with), Kleenex/Lilip...
Election day is less than two weeks away and the political rhetoric is at an all time high. From the constant political commercials to the endless cable news coverage, it's hard to escape the noise. And nothing is worse than your social media sanctuaries being invaded by some clown's personal political insights.
Whoever said crime doesn't pay? Norway's luxury Halden prison may very well be nicer than your home.
A former decorated undercover FBI agent, Mike German, explains how the national security state, in league with local law enforcement, is secretly targeting Americans for political views and activities perceived as a threat to the political establishment. » Former FBI Agent: Surveillance State Trashing Constitutional Protections Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!.
From The LATimes: "Brown, the Democratic nominee, touted talking points — living within California's means, no new taxes without voter approval, returning control to the local level — that could come from a Republican playbook. Whitman, his GOP rival, unveiled her seventh attack ad against Brown, this time enlisting the words of former President Clinton during their contentious 1992 Democratic presidential primary battle. Tellingly, both candidates avoided mention of their political party.
From The Huffington Post: California Democrat Maxine Waters faces a House trial this fall on three charges of ethical wrongdoing.
Congress is asking top U.S. defense contractors to disclose their corporate plans if the military is forced to cut $500 billion from its budget early next year, putting the companies in the middle of a political fight between Republicans and the White House. U.S. defense firms drawn into Congress budget politics - CNN.com.