The company had introduced the app last year as a pilot in the US and Canada. However, it never moved out of that phase. The app was meant to be a hub for crowdsourced stories allowing anyone to submit text, photos, or video clips. The search giant’s letter doesn’t state any reason for ending the project. However, it’ll allow you to download your stories in a zip file. Here’s the full letter: Credit: Android Police While Bulletin wasn’t one of the most popular products Google shut down this year, it surely shows the company will continue its trial and error method with apps and services....

The extension will help you to stay away from sites that might steal your data or financial information. Google’s developed it to warn you of deceptive sites, and crowdsource a list of malicious websites through user reporting, in order to keep your information safe. The Suspicious Site Reporter extension will notify you when you’re browsing a possibly harmful website, with reasons it thinks it might not be safe. You can click on the extension to send a report to Google that’ll include the URL, a screenshot of the site, its IP address, and HTML content....

The mention of Stadia was cleverly slipped in at the beginning of the event, and then quickly eclipsed by bigger news (which you can read about it all here, if you like). All Rick Osterloh, Google’s head of hardware, said on the topic was that “Stadia” would launch on that day. He left out that this only applies to a very limited number of potential users. — Google (@Google) October 15, 2019 Google’s charm offensive ahead of Stadia’s launch has hyped the fact that it’s essentially a console-less gaming service....

A new art project aims to revive interest in the emergency by giving a voice to the environment. Letters from Nature uses AI to write epistles to world leaders warning of the dangers, on behalf of the world’s glaciers, coral reefs, ice caps, and disappearing islands. To generate the letters, artist Jeroen van der Most and AI researcher Peter van der Putten fed a short prompt to GPT-3, OpenAI’s unnervingly powerful text generator....

CD Projekt Red today announced The Witcher 3 would be given a free next-generation upgrade to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, making it the latest game from the current-gen consoles that’ll be making that leap. Which means now’s as good a time as any to see which games will be playable all over again after the new consoles hit store shelves. A visually and technically enhanced version of the game will be available for purchase for PC and next-gen consoles & as a free update for owners of the game on PC, @Xbox One and @PlayStation 4....

Keep in mind this isn’t an exhaustive review of every new thing in iOS 13 — just a rundown of some of our favorite new things (and one thing that’s not quite so welcome). Dark mode Probably the most aesthetically appealing feature is Dark Mode. Whether you’re a charcoal purist or not (we’ve certainly got our Dark Mode haters here in the office at TNW), it’s nice to finally have the option....

In case you missed #HardForkSummit, here’s a recap of all the exciting things that happened. Two days of content At Hard Fork Summit, we welcomed over 50 inspiring speakers to share their knowledge through keynotes and panel discussions, including Kavita Gupta, visiting scholar and lecturer at Stanford University, Hyperledger’s Brian Behlendorf, Ripple’s Dan Morgan, and many more. On our last day, which focused on the topic of business, Larry Sanger took to the stage and announced his new project....

Apple wants to fix that. The company announced this week that it bought Primephonic, a streaming service that sought to address many of the common grievances classical music lovers have when they’re just trying to get down with some Mahler. Apple said it would start by curating classical music experiences with Primephonic playlists and exclusive audio content and that it would deliver “a dedicated experience with the best features of Primephonic, including better browsing and search capabilities by composer and by repertoire, detailed displays of classical music metadata, plus new features and benefits....

However, what isn’t inevitable is the rise in IT failures and periods of downtime that digitization and automation entail. Businesses are losing billions of dollars per year from IT downtime. Fortunately, the increasing use of AI-based predictive analytics can root out problems before they even arise. [Read: 5 cognitive biases in data science — and how to avoid them] First, let’s just get a firm handle on the scale of the problem, and just how much of the economy is being digitized and automated....

“Excuse me?” I said. “It prints ‘Hello World’,” he replied. “What’s public? What’s class? What’s static? What’s — “ “Ignore that for now. It’s just boilerplate.” But I was pretty freaked out by all that so-called boilerplate I didn’t understand, and so I set out to learn what each one of those keywords meant. That turned out to be complicated and boring, and pretty much put the kibosh on my young coder aspirations....

Whether you agree with the overwhelming majority of scientists (excluding those whose studies were commissioned directly or indirectly by the fossil fuel industry) or you believe the politicians and businesspersons who disagree with them, it stands to reason that a social media company claiming to be impartial to politics should abstain from choosing a side. — jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019 When Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that he’d directed his company to ban all political ads – specifically those for specific candidates and those related to specific issues – most of us assumed that “all political ads” meant all political ads....

Professional broadcast or recording cameras are quite costly. A lot of clubs might not be able to afford it, and for bigger clubs, it’s not worth using those cameras and a crew for recording training sessions. That’s where Veo steps in. The company has developed an AI-powered 4K camera that needs no manual intervention to record a match. You don’t need a complicated setup for it — just put it on the tripod it ships with and you’re good to go....

Funny enough, I’ve been on parental leave since September with my second child, and in that time, WeWork pulled out of their IPO plans, changed leadership, announced job cuts, were bailed out, and at the time of writing this, they have reported a net loss of $1.25 billion in the third quarter of 2019. As pioneer in coworking, I get asked every week about whether our team saw it coming, whether we’re enjoying the decline of the sector’s most established player and whether this is the beginning of the end....

Once we’re up there, my team and I expect to conduct research on Earth’s atmosphere. It’s an opportunity I consider out of this world. But it has taken a lot of effort for this dream to be realized. My path to PoSSUM As a female STEM and legal professional, my past jobs included working as a research scientist in mining and metals for BHP-Billiton, Rio Tinto, and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) — but I always loved space....

Don’t get me wrong, the metaverse is a strong second. Especially Facebook’s Meta’s agonizingly dysfunctional approach to building it. But time’s even stranger than changing the name of the world’s most widely-known technology company to something that literally means “self-referential.” Time is the opposite of self-referential. If it exists in a tangible, physical form, then we might be living in a simulated universe — our own bespoke layer in the metaverse....

As a researcher studying how humans understand and reason about the world, I think it’s important to emphasize the way AI systems “think” and learn is fundamentally different to how humans do – and we have a long way to go before AI can truly think like us. A widespread misconception Developments in AI have produced systems that can perform very human-like behaviors. The language model GPT-3 can produce text that’s often indistinguishable from human speech....

By traditional measures of a successful economy – jobs and wages – this is a welcome development. But there is a growing body of evidence which suggests that the growth of the tech sector in cities is associated with increased economic segregation. And while it’s true that, in general, large, successful, high-growth cities tend to have high rates of economic segregation, areas with tech hubs seem to experience this effect more markedly....

If you’re about to search for some scandalous terms, the incognito mode in Chrome (or any other browser) is your best friend. Just keep in mind that switching on incognito mode doesn’t mean all your data is private. But if you forgot to turn on the incognito mode, Google logs your history, and the sites will even show up in suggestions. Thankfully, the company has announced a new quick delete option to save you from embarrassment....

While there aren’t any major changes to the operating system, there is a redesigned Home screen, multi-user support, and personalized recommendations for each user who’s logged into the Apple TV. You also have a new Control Center to swap between profiles. tvOS 13 comes with Apple Arcade, the company’s new game subscription service that’s expected to be available across all of its platforms later this year. Then there’s the support for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 controllers, and a new picture-in-picture mode that will let you watch movies and TV shows in a small thumbnail window while you switch to different apps....

It’s true that digital devices have provided new means of work, education, connection, and entertainment during lockdown. But the perceived pressure to be online, the tendency to procrastinate to avoid undertaking tasks, and the use of digital platforms as a way to escape distress all have the potential to turn healthy behaviors into habits. This repetitive use can develop into addictive patterns, which can in turn affect a user’s wellbeing....