Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Technology Tuesdays.. and other things

Technology News and More...





Cyberpunk 2077 Xbox•
Cyberpunk 2077’s PS5 and Xbox Series X upgrade promised to deliver a 4K dynamic resolution in the game’s ray tracing and performance modes, but it reportedly doesn’t come close to hitting that target. Technical experts Digital Foundry have discovered that Cyberpunk 2077’s next-gen patch is a clear improvement over the back-compat version we had before, but can’t meet the resolution targets promis



PayMongo $31M Series•
500+TechCrunch / 1d
PayMongo founders (from left to right): Jaime Hing III, Chief Technology Officer, Francis Plaza, Chief Executive Officer and Luis Sia, Chief Commercial Officer Philippines-based fintech PayMongo , which enables merchants to accept digital payments, announced today it has raised $31 million in Series B funding with an eye on regional expansion. Investors include Justin Mateen’s JAM Fund, ICCP-SBI



Extreme E Hydrogen•
500+How-To Geek / 1d
Extreme E held its first all-electric off-road motorsport race in 2021, showing that electric vehicles can be quite capable in gnarly race conditions. However, the company has revealed an all-new race series called Extreme H, the world’s first off-road motorsport with vehicles running on Hydrogen. Read This Article on Review Geek ›




Relocating employees can involve up to 20-30 different complex processes, while many of the support packages on the market can be inflexible and expensive. Plus, relocating services are usually only available to company leaders, not staff. But an even bigger issue looms over companies today: the ‘great resignation’ brought on by the pandemic, as employees seek out new opportunities abroad. Can of



Africa MarketForce•
MarketForce , the retail B2B and end-to-end distribution platform founded in Kenya, has raised $40 million in Series A funding for its merchant inventory financing and expansion across Africa. MarketForce, which was launched in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda last year after growing beyond Kenya and Nigeria , plans to introduce buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) options to help merchants access fast-moving-con



London-based early-stage European VC fund Backed is bolstering its position by adding €75M to its Seed fund, while adding another €75M via a new follow-on fund vehicle. The ‘Backed Core 2’ fund will continue to invest in seed-stage startups, while the new ‘Backed Encore 1’ will do follow-on investments in later-stage rounds of existing portfolio companies. Partner Alex Brunicki said in a statemen



Bike Zoomo $20M Series•
Zoomo, an Australian startup that builds utility e-bikes for delivery workers, has raised an additional $20 million in equity to close out its Series B round. In November, the company raised $60 million in equity and debt for its Series B , which it used to fund further software development and more vehicles to expand. The additional funds, which bring Zoomo’s total funding up to $101.5 million,



24Mashable / 4h
Twitter gives cryptocurrency some prime real estate, so you might as well take advantage of it. The social media platform lets users add their Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrency wallet addresses to their profile pages — making it easy for people to send them crypto payments. However, as users can only make the additions on iOS or Android, it's easy to overlook the unassuming feature. A later add



Pop culture depictions of the afterlife are frequently divided into two options: dark and light. So too are mobile themes, allowing us to choose between blinding glare and insidious darkness. Fortunately, selecting the dark theme for your Apple devices is more straightforward than dealing with issues concerning your immortal soul. Here's how to turn on iOS' dark mode. Open Settings. Tap "Display



34Gizmodo / 4h
Truth Social, a new social media app that claims to be “free from political discrimination” from former President Donald Trump, made its public debut on Apple’s App Store on Monday in honor of President’s Day. Like many things in Trumpland, including the Trump himself, the app was messy and full of errors. Read more...



Smaller internet providers are winning a higher share of NBN customers, a report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) shows, with consumers slowly moving away from the major telcos. “We are glad to see continued growth from smaller NBN providers,” says the ACCC’s commissioner Anna Brakey. “Their presence in the market keeps pressure on the big four of Telstra, TPG, Optus a



While Google struggles to resolve all the bugs in its Pixel 6 smartphone, it’s juggling a spate of upcoming smartphone releases, including the Pixel 6a, the Pixel Notepad foldable, and evidently, the Pixel 7. A new leak from 9to5Google provides the first concrete details on the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, plus the devices’ codenames. Read This Article on Review Geek ›



Panasonic Lumix Gh6•
After an agonizingly long wait, the Panasonic Lumix GH6 has finally landed – and it's Panasonic's most powerful mirrorless video camera so far. (Looking for our early impressions? Check out our hands-on Panasonic Lumix GH6 review ). The GH6 succeeds the Panasonic Lumix GH5 and GH5S , which respectively launched in 2017 and 2018, and is a complete redesign of those cameras, bringing a new 25.2MP F



Panasonic Lumix Gh6•
After a bit of a delay , Panasonic has finally revealed the 25.2-megapixel GH6, the highest-resolution Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera to date. One can think of it as a mini version of its S1H "Netflix camera," as it's loaded with pro video features like 5.7K ProRes V-Log video, a tilt-swivel display and CFexpress capture. However, it's still stuck with contrast detect rather than phase detec



The scarcity of high-end GPUs is slowly easing, but getting one is still challenging. We explore ways to get a graphics card at a reasonable price today.



Because sometimes it's better to wait. Twitter is known for blazing hot takes, lightning fast updates, and memes upon memes dissecting the internet's obsession du jour. The social media company's slogan, "it's what's happening," emphasizes the platform's focus on nowness — it's signup page, which loudly declares " happening now ," makes that message unmistakable. SEE ALSO: How to make your Gmail



Sydney Upflowy Raises•
59TechCrunch / 7h
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected consumers’ behaviors and purchasing patterns; data-driven decision-making is even more crucial to ensure that companies’ products or services genuinely benefit users in times of uncertainty. The demand for SaaS products that enables online transactions has dramatically increased during Covid-19, according to CEO of Upflowy Guillaume Ang . Upflowy thinks it has t



Ivermectin 2020 Republican•
100+Ars Technica / 8h
Enlarge / Tablets of ivermectin. (credit: Getty | Nurphoto ) The antiparasitic drug ivermectin failed to treat COVID-19 in yet another randomized clinical trial , but the drug remains popular amid the pandemic thanks to Republican politics . That's the takeaways from two separate studies published Friday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Together, the studies raise yet more concerns for the use of iverm



Roku Google Android•
Enlarge / A Roku streaming box. (credit: Ars Technica) TV-streaming platform Roku is looking to expand beyond dongles and software deals to make its own TV hardware, according to a report in Insider . The story appears to be based on two sources with different levels of familiarity with Roku's plans. The first is someone who participated in a Roku focus group. "They showed different models, featu



87Gizmodo / 8h
The Power Rangers have been around for 29 years now, giving generations of superhero fans nearly three decades of giant robot fighting, evil moon witch cackling, and the inherent joy of color-coded superhero transformation sequences. But they’d be in a very different place without, of course, the series that helped… Read more...



Cigarette Store Credit•
Element Vape, a popular online retailer selling e-cigarettes and accompanying accessories, has had its website compromised and loaded with the popular credit card skimmer, MageCart. The news was revealed by BleepingComputer , whose analysts investigated the website’s code, and found the skimmer on the checkout page. The skimmer was stealing information such as email addresses, credit card numbers



Editor’s note : This post has been updated with the latest information. It’s that time of year — Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, the dreary dead of winter and … Disney ticket price increases. Unofficially, February has become known as the month of Disney ticket price increases. And, likely surprising very few, Disney ticket prices have been on an upward pricing trend since basically forever. Disn



IRS ID.me Taxpayers Facial•
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Spencer Whalen/EyeEm ) The Internal Revenue Service today said that selfies collected from taxpayers will be deleted and that it has deployed a new verification option as an alternative to its controversial facial recognition system. The IRS's use of the ID.me facial recognition service has been criticized by privacy and civil rights advocates as well as lawmakers




An ecological model has been applied to estimate the number of lost medieval manuscripts in Europe. Those who study human culture must grapple with what amounts to an incomplete data set, since researchers are limited to poring over the books, manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, and other artifacts that have survived to learn about a given period. We call this predicament "survivorship bias," and



Amazon Luna Twitch•
Amazon is finally acting on a 2020 promise to let Twitch viewers quickly play games on Luna. As The Nerf Report 's Bryant Chappel and 9to5Google report, Twitch has added a "Play on Luna" button that lets you hop into games on Amazon's cloud game service. If you're a Luna subscriber in the service's early access program and have linked to your Twitch account, you'll see the option to start playing



American Express has partnered with Escape lounges to offer 'Centurion Studio' lounges which are smaller spaces with quality food and beverage offerings. Currently they are 12 Centurion Studios in 10 airports and a new one is coming to the Fort Lauderdale airport in terminal 3. Terminal 3 (the 'Purple Terminal') is home to American Airlines and JetBlue along with Avelo, Azul, and Air Transat and



BlackBerry Annual•
, a new report from BlackBerry argues, claiming that they’re optimizing their infrastructure, sharing resources, and creatively taking advantage of the transition to cloud, to steal identities and wreak ultimate havoc among small and medium-sized businesses. “Criminals are working out how to target us better. The infrastructure of the cyber underground has evolved so they can deliver more timely



Starting next month, American Airlines will totally change the way to qualify for elite status . With elite qualifying dollars, elite qualifying segments and elite qualifying miles on their way out, Loyalty Points will soon be the only way to qualify for elite status with American. Although there are numerous ways to earn Loyalty Points , including ordering flowers and getting dental retainers, f



Gizmodo / 10h
Yes, yes, we might all still be waiting for The Winds of Winter to get finished sometime this decade, but that doesn’t mean more George R.R. Martin content isn’t on the way. There’s of course HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones TV spin-off House of the Dragon , but now the author’s other novelized passion project is jumping… Read more...



Instagram Daily Limit•
Engadget / 10h
For the last couple years, Instagram and Facebook have offered ways to see how long you spend using the apps each day as well as an option to set a daily usage time limit. Now, it seems Instagram has increased the minimum daily time limit setting to 30 minutes, up from 10 or 15 minutes. An Instagram user told TechCrunch that the app asked them to "set a new value" for their daily time limit, thou



Israel Tourists March 1•
100+The Points Guy / 10h
Unvaccinated travelers are set to be allowed into Israel from March onward. Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz revealed yesterday current travel restrictions – allowing only passengers who have been vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19 entry to the country – will soon be eased. Sign up for our daily newsletter for more TPG news delivered each morning



Aer Lingus and British Airways have a close relationship. They’re both owned by the same parent company (International Airlines Group) and both use Avios as their frequent flyer mileage currencies. What’s more, you can transfer Avios between your British Airways Executive Club account and your Aer Lingus Aer Club account. Oddly though, it historically hasn’t been possible to book Aer Lingus award



78Mashable / 11h
The latest internet villain just reared its head and it isn't a corporate mega-billionaire, wayward politician, or Twitter troll, but rather an unassuming Spotify bot named Ashley. Multiple users have complained that their public, collaborative playlists — designed to allow Spotify users and their friends to curate songs in real time together — have been commandeered by bots masquerading as norma



Enlarge (credit: Slimak et al. 2022) According to a recent study, a child’s tooth unearthed from an old layer of a cave floor in Southern France belonged to a member of our species. If so, the tooth is now the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens living in Europe, and its presence means that our species shared Europe (or parts of it) with Neanderthals for at least 10,000 years. But other fossils from



Samsung Galaxy S22•
Mashable / 11h
When I first laid eyes (and hands) upon Samsung's new Galaxy S22 Ultra, I assure you it was not love at first sight. The 6.8-inch phone, which launches Feb. 25 and sits atop the S22 line as the company's most premium Android offering, is effectively a cold, smooth slab of sometimes rounded metal punctuated by multiple circular cameras. It's imposing, austere…anonymous, even, and expensive, with a



Beulah Four Melbourne•
Four Seasons almost always delivers a truly elevated experience for guests at its hotels and resorts around the world. But now the Canadian brand is really reaching for the sky with the announcement of a new hotel in Melbourne, Australia , that will be situated in a skyscraper complex redefining the city’s skyline. Located in STH BNK By Beulah, an upcoming dual-tower complex costing upwards of $1



23Gizmodo / 11h
Did the Peacemaker cast have fun together making the show? Did they flub their lines? Did they do silly little dances on camera? Did John Cena laugh so much a member of the set crew had to come over and dab away Cena’s tears from his face because it was during the scene where Judomaster had Peacemaker tied up? As this… Read more...



Have you come across an interesting Facebook page that you think your friends would like? If so, invite your friends to like that page so they all see the page’s content in their news feed. Here’s how to do that on Facebook on desktop and mobile. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



We are currently seeing a ton of business class award availability to Australia . Some dates even feature four or more business class award seats. But, you’ll want to get on this booking now, as award availability is disappearing quickly. Now that Australia is reopening to tourists and entry to Canada is getting even easier , this deal is coming at a perfect time. Here’s a look at dates we are se



Apple Dutch App Store•
21TechCrunch / 12h
The Netherlands’ competition authority has once again increased a fine levied against Apple for failing to comply with an antitrust order related to payment tech and dating apps . The fifth penalty payment of €5 million issued today means the tech giant is now on the hook for €25M (out of a possible total of €50M) — and stands accused of continuing to throw up barriers rather than offer solutions



Intel Bonanza Bitcoin BM•
Intel has offered a closer look at its new range of specialized Bitcoin mining processors. First unveiled earlier this month, Intel's first-generation Bonanza Mine (BM) chip, BMZ1, was the subject of an in-depth presentation at semiconductor conference ISSCC 2022. At the show, Intel revealed that each BMZ1 die measures 4.14 x 3.42mm and houses 258 mining engines operating at an “ultra-low” 355mV



Although most travelers, including tourists, will remain restricted from entering for now, a limited number of students and business travelers may return to Japan starting March 1, Japanese officials announced. It’s another positive step toward an eventual reopening of what has been one of the countries most notoriously difficult to go to during COVID-19. For more TPG news delivered each morning



A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips. Continue reading ...




Gurman Apple M2 Mac•
Fresh rumors have predicted that we're going to get as many as seven new Apple Mac models this year, but it isn't the number of releases that's surprised me – it's that the Mac Pro has been included in that list. Rumors about upcoming Apple product releases are hardly unexpected, given the success and popularity of its ecosystem. But with Bloomberg's Mark Gurman anticipating that the mighty Mac P



US Copyright AI Art•
Engadget / 12h
The US Copyright Office has once again denied an effort to copyright a work of art that was created by an artificial intelligence system . Dr. Stephen Thaler attempted to copyright a piece of art titled A Recent Entrance to Paradise, claiming in a second request for reconsideration of a 2019 ruling that the USCO's “human authorship” requirement was unconstitutional. In its latest ruling, which wa



If you’ve been following the cryptocurrency trading scene online, you might see people talking about crypto tokens hitting their “ATH.” But what does ATH mean? We’ll explain its roots in the financial world. Read This Article on How-To Geek ›


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