Category: PEOPLE

Vatican organizes new first ever hackathon in history dubbed VHacks

Staff Writer

The Vatican alias the holy city is organizing its first ever hackathon in history dubbed VHacks.”I did not have to pitch the idea to the Pope,” laughs Jakub Florkiewicz, the co-initiator of the event. “But the participants of the event hopefully will,” he adds. So how did this unlikely event come to be? “It’s a story about a student arriving in Rome with an idea, and finding people who got excited about that idea,” Florkiewicz explains. “Passionate myself about hackathons, I had the luck of meeting people – Vatican insiders –…

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WhatsApp Users can now Call Without Internet.

Staff Writer

It is easier for a WhatsApp user in diaspora to audio or video call or chat with his or her counterpart in Africa who has the same application than traditional telephone calls and text messages. The situation is the same for people who use Skype, Facebook Messenger, Viber and WeChat, to mention a few. But at the moment, the number of smartphone holders is very small in many developing countries especially in Africa. For instance, the number of smartphone holders in Rwanda is below 1.2 million. This challenges service providers…

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New Snapchat redesign faces backlash

Staff Writer

The redesign of the app was to make it easier to use but as the update rolls out to more users, Snapchat is getting criticism that the new interface is difficult to navigate. “I might start using Instagram Stories now,”  said Ashley Vasquez, a 21-year-old Snapchat user who is a senior at the University of Maryland in College Park. A Change.org petition asking the company to remove the new update has amassed more than 590,000 signatures by Monday afternoon. Other users began sharing a workaround for reversing the update by…

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Facebook Gaining New Popularity among Old People as the Young Leave

Staff Writer

A report shows that Facebook is for old people as teens and young adults are ditching the social network while the over 55s are joining. In 2018, 2.2 million 12- to 17-year-olds and 4.5 million 18- to 24-year-olds will regularly use Facebook in the UK, 700,000 fewer than in 2017, as younger users defect to services such as Snapchat, according to eMarketer. A surge in older users means over-55s will become the second-biggest demographic of Facebook users this year. The report says that while Facebook has so far been successful…

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New Research Reveals Cellphone Radiation to Humans

Staff Writer

Male rats showed a small increase in a kind of heart tumor after exposure to massive amounts of cellphone radiation, a new government study reports. But don’t read too much into that, experts say — because those rats bathed in more radiation than even the heaviest cellphone users would experience. There are ongoing worries about whether cellphones can give you cancer — especially brain cancer, since our phones spend so much time near our faces. It’s true that cell phones do emit radiation but it’s radiofrequency radiation, which is much…

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Former Employees New Confirmation that Lyft Staffers Spied on Passengers

Staff Writer

Just like Uber’s  scandal, Lyft staffers have been abusing customer insight software to view the personal contact info and ride history of the startup’s passengers. One source that formerly worked with Lyft says that widespread access to the company’s back end let staffers “see pretty much everything including feedback, and yes, pick up and drop off coordinates.” When asked if staffers, ranging from core team members to customer service reps, abused this privilege, the source said “Hell yes. I definitely looked at my friends’ rider history and looked at what…

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Only one in four trust social media, new survey says

Staff Writer

Only one in four Britons trusts social media and users would like to see tighter regulation, according to the annual Edelman Trust Barometer. Its survey found two-thirds of Britons believe platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are not doing enough to prevent illegal and unethical behaviour, including cyber-bullying and extremism. But faith in traditional journalism rose sharply in the last year. Edelman said it was time social media companies sat up and listened. “The public want action on key issues related to online protection, and to see their concerns addressed…

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New Gaming addiction classified as disorder by WHO

Staff Writer

Gaming addiction is to be listed as a mental health condition for the first time by the World Health Organisation. Its 11th International Classification of Diseases (ICD) will include the condition “gaming disorder”. The draft document describes it as a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour so severe that it takes precedence over other life interests. Some countries had already identified it as a major public health issue. Many, including the UK, have private addiction clinics to “treat” the condition. The last version of the ICD was completed in…

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The technology industry needs to think more seriously about device addictions

Staff Writer
Parents

Mobile technology programmers have the ability to build software that provides deep layers of penetration to the end user through sophisticated targeted notifications. Consumers with their chosen apps, have hundreds of notifications turned on and thus are brought back to their phones at an alarming frequency. A recent study shows that many people consult their phone as much as 150 times a day. Everyone is screaming to the consumer and doing whatever they can to get their attention while not considering the long term ramifications of such excessive stimuli. With…

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New: Gym-As-You-Go wants to let you pay per exercise

Wish you didn’t have to pay as much if you rarely went to the gym? Gym-As-You-Go wants to offer pricing based on usage rather than monthly subscriptions. The project uses NFC to let you check in at work-out machines. You’re then charged a fee for how long you use the machine, and Gym-As-You-Go keeps a percentage. Pay-as-you-go pricing could give lazy people who rarely work out a way to waste less money, and gyms a way to attract a different type of customer. Especially popular machines could be surge priced…

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