Google plans to punish websites publishing fake news

Google has said it is working on a new policy to restrict lucrative adverts from being placed on fake news websites.

Technology companies have been under increased scrutiny in the wake of the US election, amid allegations some Silicon Valley giants have failed to protect their users from inaccurate content.

A Google spokeswoman said: “Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content or the primary purpose of the web property.”

Only on Monday, a fake story which claimed Donald Trump received 700,000 votes more than Hillary Clinton was given a prominent slot in Google rankings for the phrase “final election results”.

The article was from the pro-Trump “70 News” website, and still appears high up in Google’s search results even though the tech company has acknowledged the error. 

Although Mr Trump won the presidency after receiving the most Electoral College votes, the Republican is actually trailing Mrs Clinton in the popular vote.

Image Caption: Mark Zuckerberg has dismissed the influence of bogus stories on Facebook

Google’s new policy, which could be enforced imminently, may give sites a bigger incentive to offer accurate information to readers – or face losing a hefty chunk of their revenue.

Facebook is another tech company which has faced allegations of potentially swaying the election’s outcome by promoting fake news stories on its social network – amid research which suggests about 60% of Americans get at least some, or all, of their news from social media.

On Saturday, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said “more than 99% of what people see” on Facebook is authentic.

He wrote in a post: “Identifying the ‘truth’ is complicated. While some hoaxes can be completely debunked, a greater amount of content, including from mainstream sources, often gets the basic idea right but some details wrong or omitted.”

source:skynews

Apple iPhone sales fall, but beat estimates

Apple has reported its third quarter in a row of falling iPhone sales and revenue, but sales beat analyst expectations.
The tech giant sold 45.51 million iPhones in the three months to 24 September, beating an average estimate of 44.8 million.
The company also forecast higher-than-expected holiday season revenue of between $76bn and $78bn.

But revenue in the fourth quarter fell 9% to $46.85bn.
That meant annual revenue fell for the first time since 2001, highlighting a slowdown in the smartphone market as well as intensifying competition, particularly from Chinese rivals.
Analysis: Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology correspondent
It was no surprise that Apple saw its first fall in annual revenues for 15 years. It became apparent earlier in the year that sales of the iPhone - surely the most profitable product in history - had plateaued and they continued to disappoint this quarter. It was hard to spot any product or market delivering outstanding results - the fact that Apple still hasn't released any figures for its Watch tells its own story - and the 30% fall in China sales looked particularly worrying.

But somehow Apple's Chief Executive Tim Cook still managed to paint a rosy picture. He pointed to the 24% rise in income from services like Apple Music and Apple Pay. He told us that he was thrilled with the response of customers to the iPhone 7 - and that round the world, including in China, demand was outstripping supply.

And crucially he looked forward to a return to growth in the next quarter, with Apple forecasting a record-breaking holiday season. Investors have been looking for reasons to buy back into Apple and that prediction may help continue the recent upward path of the shares.

But the technology crowd is still waiting for some radical new innovation, to prove the company founded by Steve Jobs hasn't lost its creative spark. Tim Cook wouldn't be drawn when quizzed about moves into TV or building a car or a connected speaker like the Amazon Echo. He did say "we have the strongest product pipeline we've ever had". But that is a line we have been hearing for some time.
Apple executives said demand for the new iPhone 7 was strong, despite fiscal fourth-quarter revenue falls in China and the Americas, its two most important markets.
Revenue from Greater China, once seen as Apple's next growth hope, fell 30% in the quarter, after dropping 33% in the previous quarter.

In the same period last year, revenue from Greater China doubled.

Apple's shares were down 3% at about $114.80 in after-hours trading.
"Apple didn't have a great [fourth quarter] as iPhones, Macs, China, the US and what appears to be Watch were down," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.
Net income fell to $9.01bn in the fourth quarter, down from $11bn in the same quarter last year.
For the year, net income fell to $45.7bn from $53.4bn.
Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said it was "impossible to know" if there was any effect yet from rival Samsung halting production of Galaxy Note 7 phones earlier this month.

Google works on ‘removing headsets’ in mixed reality

Google is working on ways to reveal a person’s facial expressions when they are wearing a virtual reality headset.

Using a combination of machine learning, 3D computer vision, and advanced rendering techniques, Google claims it can now “remove” headsets to show a person’s identity, focus and full face in mixed reality.

Mixed reality is a way to convey what’s happening inside and outside a virtual place in a two dimensional format. With this new technology, we’re able to make a more complete picture of the person in VR,” said Google Research software engineer, Avneesh Sud, in a company blog post.

“Using a calibrated VR setup including a headset (like the HTC Vive), a green screen, and a video camera, combined with accurate tracking and segmentation, you can see the ‘real world’ and the interactive virtual elements together.”

By mimicking where a person is looking, even though it’s hidden under a headset Google has been able to create what it described as a “translucent ‘scuba mask’ look”.

Google can then calibrate the Vive tracking system and the external camera to create a vision of the person in the virtual world.

“The end result is a complete view of both the virtual world and the person in it, including their entire face and where they’re looking,” said Sud.

Google’s work on mixed reality is a joint effort between Google Research, Daydream Labs, and the YouTube team.

Climate change deal agreed by 150 countries to cut gases used in fridges

A deal to reduce greenhouse gases far more powerful than carbon dioxide has been signed by about 150 countries.

The agreement divides countries into three groups with different deadlines to reduce factory-made hydrofluorocarbon gases, which are used in fridges, air-conditioning, some inhalers and insulating foam.

The developed nations, including most of Europe and the US, will reduce their use of the gas by 10% before 2019, reaching 85% by 2036.

More than 100 developing countries, including China, the world’s worst polluter, will freeze their use of the gas by 2024.

A small group of countries, including India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and some Gulf states negotiated a later start in 2029.

That date is two years earlier than India, the world’s third-worst polluter, had initially suggested.

These countries will then reduce their use gradually.

Environmental groups say they hope the deal, which was agreed at a meeting in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, can cut global warming by a half-degree celsius by the end of this century.

Durwood Zaelke, president of Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, said the agreement gets about 90% of the way there, with a statement from his group describing it as the “largest temperature reduction ever achieved by a single agreement”.

Clare Perry, UK climate campaign leader with the Environmental Investigation Agency, said: “Compromises had to be made, but 85% of developing countries have committed to the early schedule starting 2024, which is a very significant achievement.”

David Doniger, climate and clean air program director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the deal is “equal to stopping the entire world’s fossil-fuel CO2 emissions for more than two years.”

Small island states, such as those in the Pacific, had called for quicker action, saying that they face the biggest danger from climate change.Mattlan Zackhras, representing the Marshall Islands, said: “(The deal) may not be entirely what the islands wanted but it is a good deal.

“We all know we must go further and we will go further.”

HFCs were introduced in the 1980s to replace ozone-depleting gases.

But they can be 100,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as greenhouse gases and the threat grew as sales of fridges and air conditioning increased in developing economies such as China and India.

Source:Sky News

U.S. iPhone factories: Designed in California, made by machines

Apple is apparently speaking with its Chinese manufacturing partners to assess if it is possible to bring iPhone manufacturing back into the USA.

Skilled staff

In the past the company has said one of the reasons it does not manufacture products here is because the U.S. lacks people with the right high-tech manufacturing skills. Speaking in 2012, Apple CEO, Tim Cook, also said he “hoped” assembly could take place in the U.S. again – perhaps it can, with the addition of a little artificial intelligence.

A 2012 New York Times report also revealed:

“Apple's executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that "Made in the U.S.A." is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.”

Not just Apple

Almost every consumer electronics company thinks the same way. The only way to change this without making products so expensive that no one will buy them is to impose the same pay and conditions on U.S. manufacturing workers as their peers in China endure.

Or replace them with machines.

That’s got to be the most likely outcome.

Apple’s existing suppliers are already using robots in iPhone manufacturing. Robots replaced 60,000 employees at just one Foxconn factory this year.

"We will continue to harness automation and manpower in our manufacturing operations, and we expect to maintain our significant workforce in China,” the company said. Do those robots need to be in the country?

Smart machines

Today’s robots are much smarter than the production line machines we’ve seen in use in the last thirty years. They are capable of learning new skills. They use sophisticated deep learning and pattern matching technologies. They aren’t single-purpose machines that need replacing when the process changes. They are also more flexible and more willing to work a 12-hour day than the humans they replace.

It makes no economic sense. What good will it do the U.S. economy to put its biggest technology firms out of business?

In order to insource manufacturing to the U.S., big tech firms will inevitably seek out technological solutions to the problem they face, and this means that rather than hiring and training tens of thousands of U.S. workers, they are far more likely to purchase a bunch of robots to do the job, with a much smaller number of highly trained engineers to oversee the process.

The human interface sell by date

(Though even there, Gartner believes that by 2018, more than three million workers globally will be supervised by a robo-boss.)

As former McDonald's chief executive Ed Rensi famously said: "It's cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who is inefficient, making $15 an hour bagging French fries."

The Mac Pro is already made in a highly mechanized production plant in the U.S. Apple’s Liam robot already takes iPhones apart for recycling and is based in the U.S. There will be many more machines working diligently across production lines worldwide.

When you think about Apple bringing iPhone production back to the U.S., don’t expect the jobs to come back. Instead, consumer electronics companies like Apple will need to raise prices slightly to help pay for new automated manufacturing processes. They will need to invest in robotsand the technologies that enable them.

Source:Apple

Apple to swap ‘faulty’ iPhone 6S batteries

Apple is offering to replace the batteries of a “small number” of iPhone 6S phones with a fault that makes them unexpectedly shut down.

The phones with this fault were manufactured between September and October 2015, it said in a statement. Affected devices will suddenly stop working even though the handset’s battery has plenty of charge. Anyone with an eligible phone who takes up the offer will get a free replacement battery for their handset.

No response In its announcement, Apple urged customers who believe they have a faulty phone to contact an Apple store, an authorised repair shop or the firm’s support line to start the process of getting a new battery. A “limited serial number range” was affected, it said.

Phone owners should back up data and then wipe it all off the handset before surrendering it for the replacement, it added. 

Phones with cracked screens might have to be repaired before Apple would go ahead with swapping the battery, it said.

Apple added that mobile operators would not be taking part in the replacement effort. The AppleInsider website suggested that the fault with the iPhone 6S could be traced to people charging their handset with generic chargers rather than Apple’s own-brand ones.

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 Using one of these third-party chargers damaged circuitry which meant the amount of charge in the battery was not being reported correctly to the phone’s operating system.

 Apple has not confirmed if this is the cause. 

The battery swap programme comes only a few days after Apple announced a separate offer intended to fix a fault on the iPhone 6 Plus.

That problem meant that the touchscreens on some handsets steadily became less and less responsive if they had been accidentally dropped on to a hard surface a few times. 

Gadget sites traced the cause to chips used to drive the touchscreen that came loose after an impact.

Source: BBC

How To Deactivate Airtel Game Club

I accidentally tapped on Airtel Game Club not knowing they have deducted GHC1 from my record.
Quickly GHC1 was deducted , with no opportunity to truly know and subscribe to the item in the event that I am intrigued.

On the next day I revived my account GHC 30 to purchase data pack .After I energized ,I got a message from Airtel Ghana says "Thanks for using Game Club subscription service from Airtel. You have been charge GHC1.00". So I attempted to call their Customer Service however they were not able associate me .

So I do an examination and come up with this technique in which I will get a kick out of the chance to impart to the individuals who are confronting the same issue. In any case, Airtel ought to please stop this questionable method for compelling and taking monies from our credits.

To Deactivate GAMES CLUB

Text/Send STOP to 799.
NOTE: Capital Letters For STOP to 799