Category: World

Your Time Management Won’t Work Until You Realize How Little Time You Have | Mashable

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Let us assume, dear reader, that you are young and healthy and lucky enough to live a total of 80 years. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Break it down into days and you get 29,200, which is such a large number that our brains tend to give up trying to process what it means. But divide 80 years into weeks, and you get 4,171. Now we’re getting somewhere that sounds uncomfortably small, even for the longest-lived among us. (The current record holder, age 118, has lived less than 6,200 weeks…

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Apple Says It Will Refuse Gov’t Demands To Expand Photo-scanning Beyond CSAM | Arstechnica

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Apple today said it will refuse any government demands to expand its new photo-scanning technology beyond the current plan of using it only to detect CSAM (child sexual abuse material). Apple has faced days of criticism from security experts, privacy advocates, and privacy-minded users over the plan it announced Thursday, in which iPhones and other Apple devices will scan photos before they are uploaded to iCloud. Many critics pointed out that once the technology is on consumer devices, it won’t be difficult for Apple to expand it beyond the detection…

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Google Is Finally Trying To Kill Passwords — Here’s How | Tom’s Guide

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Google will soon make two-factor authentication (2FA) mandatory for all Google accounts. From May 10, Google will ask people who have enrolled in two-step verification (2SV) (the abbreviation Google uses) to confirm it’s really them with just a tap of a Google prompt on their phone. “Soon we’ll start automatically enrolling users in 2SV if their accounts are appropriately configured,” added Mark Risher, director of Product Management, Identity and User Security at Google. Read full story here: Google Is Finally Trying To Kill Passwords — Here’s How | Tom’s Guide

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Africa and the Americas Pay the Most for the Worst Internet Service | PC Magazine

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Internet connectivity can be expensive, especially when you upgrade your plan to get the best connection possible. Some areas in the United States pay as high as $7 per megabit. But what if you had a bad connection? How much would you still be willing to pay? According to Surfshark, the worst internet in the world is also the least affordable. Using information from the Digital Quality of Life index, Surfshark was able to determine that the regions that pay the most for internet also receive the worst-quality connections. Oceania…

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How Law Enforcement Gets Around Your Smartphone’s Encryption | Ars Technica

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Lawmakers and law enforcement agencies around the world, including in the United States, have increasingly called for backdoors in the encryption schemes that protect your data, arguing that national security is at stake. But new research indicates governments already have methods and tools that, for better or worse, let them access locked smartphones thanks to weaknesses in the security schemes of Android and iOS. Read full story here: How Law Enforcement Gets Around Your Smartphone’s Encryption | Ars Technica

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Google And Apple Are Banning Technology For Sharing Users’ Location Data | The Verge

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You may have never heard of the company X-Mode Social, but its code may be in some of the apps on your phone, tracking and selling your location data. Now, Google and Apple are trying to put a stop to it. According to a Wall Street Journal article, the tech companies have told developers to remove X-Mode’s code from their apps, or risk getting them pulled from their respective app stores. X-Mode works by giving developers code to put into their apps, known as an SDK, which tracks users’ location and then…

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Windows 10 Is Installing Office Web Apps Without Asking Permission | Engadget

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Mandatory Windows 10 updates aren’t new, but the latest example is raising a few hackles. Windows Latest, ZDNet, The Verge and users are reporting that Windows 10 is force-restarting PCs to install links to Office web apps that launch in Edge, including in the Start menu. And despite initial reports, this isn’t limited to Insider members — people using standard Windows 10 releases have seen the change as well. The apps take up no storage or other resources. Until now, though, installing Office web apps was optional. Windows isn’t asking for your permission, let alone informing you of…

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LED Lights Can Help Save The Planet, One Bulb At A Time | CNET

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Upgrading your light bulbs is the easiest and smartest way to help reduce your home’s carbon footprint. Here’s the math. Our lights are usually the first things we turn on when we wake up, and the last things we turn off before we go to sleep. We use them every day and to do almost everything: cook, work, enjoy family meals and relax with a book. But we hardly ever think about how one type of light can be a success story in the fight against climate change. Read full…

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Uncovered: 1,000 Phrases That Incorrectly Trigger Alexa, Siri, And Google Assistant | Ars Technica

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As Alexa, Google Home, Siri, and other voice assistants have become fixtures in millions of homes, privacy advocates have grown concerned that their near-constant listening to nearby conversations could pose more risk than benefit to users. New research suggests the privacy threat may be greater than previously thought. The findings demonstrate how common it is for dialog in TV shows and other sources to produce false triggers that cause the devices to turn on, sometimes sending nearby sounds to Amazon, Apple, Google, or other manufacturers. In all, researchers uncovered more…

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Oil Prices Dip Into Negative Territory As Market Crashes | Roadshow

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The US oil market witnessed history as the price dived under $0 a barrel for the first time as the coronavirus pandemic bites. US oil prices crashed below $0 a barrel on Monday and spiraled into negative territory for the first time ever. In a historic crash, oil futures opened at their lowest level since 1983. With hundreds of millions of people around the world staying at home to stop the spread of COVID-19, travel by car or plane is nearly nonexistent. Factor in a major lag in manufacturing and…

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