Manuel Villar, whose net worth is estimated to be $6.7 billion, said in a statement that he had “never made any such endorsement nor have I engaged in the said Bitcoin program.” “This is obviously a scam and I ask the public to protect themselves from such unscrupulous act,” he added. According to the Manila Standard, a broadsheet newspaper in the Philippines, several posts on social media platforms quoted Villar endorsing Bitcoin Revolution....

Case in point — VPN protection. While this might not be the normal time you consider your internet security for the coming year, some of the current discounts prove it wouldn’t be a bad time either. Take a look at five of the current best deals happening on VPN services — and you can knock an extra 40 percent off these prices by entering the promo code BFSAVE40 (some exclusions apply) during checkout....

For those who are curious: about 35 “F” words stood between a PG-13 rating and an R rating. Mann’s dilemma, then, became trying to figure out how to preserve the integrity of his movie without reshooting or dubbing. This is, of course, harder than it sounds. On a traditional movie, you’d just bite the bullet and do reshoots. It’s costly, but it’s better than having your audience lose immersion because they’ve just heard a line delivered differently than what they clearly saw the actor say on screen....

So when French audio giant Focal invited me to see how its speakers were made last year, I knew to expect the fancy machinery, anechoic chambers, and assembly lines. What I didn’t expect was how much of a human touch is part of the process. At nearly every step there was some degree of craftsmanship involved, from cabinets hand-made in France’s southern countryside, to high-end woofers that are pressed into shape with sinew rather than steel....

While the radio or the music of your favorite band might seem like a solution to help screen out the noise, you might be surprised how broadcasts and even off-kilter composition can still throw you off your game. [email protected] is created with a simple purpose: to block out interferences and keep you honed in on your assignment. You can check out [email protected] and see its effectiveness for yourself right now at a big discount, just $69....

In a statement issued on January 7, Travelex said the intrusion was discovered on December 31. The company says it took all its systems offline as a precautionary measure. “To date, the company can confirm that whilst there has been some data encryption, there is no evidence that structured personal customer data has been encrypted. Whist Travelex does not yet have a complete picture of all the data that has been encrypted, there is still no evidence to date that any data has been exfiltrated,” the company statement reads....

People are constantly seeing things in the sky they don’t understand. The vast majority are aeroplanes, satellites, weather balloons, clouds, rocket launches, auroras, optical reflections and so on. But for some sightings, there’s no known explanation. The problem is that people jump to the conclusion “unknown = aliens”. And when you think about it, this is fairly odd. Why not angels? Anyway, I like to do maths instead. The Bayes formula (below), a mainstay of statistics, gives the probability (Pr) of something, given some evidence....

“Apple and its two wholesalers agreed to not compete against each other and prevent resellers from promoting competition between each other, thus sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products,” said Isabelle de Silva, the head of France’s competition authority in a statement on Monday (via Bloomberg.) [Read: Apple takes WWDC 2020 online over coronavirus fears] The two wholesalers in question, Ingram Micro and Tech Data, were also fined 62.9 million euros ($70....

From the days of LPs and cassettes, to CDs and MP3s, the way we listen to music just keeps on evolving. Today, nobody actually owns the music they listen to anymore. All your favorites are streamed and crafted into finely-curated playlists. In fact, it isn’t too large a stretch to argue that for many diehard music fans, those playlists full of favorite artists, lists that served as life event soundtracks, are almost as strikingly individualistic as DNA....

At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss growth hacking as really just another term for more traditional marketing efforts. It’s all about reaching audiences and driving up sales, so in that respect, growth hacking is marketing. But once you scratch the surface, it doesn’t take much examination to see that growth hacking is a little more than buying ads and posting to Facebook. It’s a targeted and highly focused approach to testing and analyzing growth strategies to produce big returns almost immediately....

The post struck a nerve with other users on r/MachineLearning, which is the largest Reddit community for machine learning. “Easier to compile a list of reproducible ones…,” one user responded. “Probably 50%-75% of all papers are unreproducible. It’s sad, but it’s true,” another user wrote. “Think about it, most papers are ‘optimized’ to get into a conference. More often than not the authors know that a paper they’re trying to get into a conference isn’t very good!...

No matter your interest or industry, learning should never stop. There’s always a new approach, a new technique, a new tool or a new tech that’s ready to change how you engage with a subject. And when those advancements are tied to your profession, the implications are clear. Learn the new stuff and thrive…or don’t and be passed by. Alison became one of one of the world’s largest learning platforms by embracing that thirst for knowledge....

Certification. It’s a word that any job seeker knows carries a lot of weight, especially for those pursuing a career in a tech field. It’s almost an unwritten understanding between the job hunter and a hiring manager explaining that this isn’t the average guy off the street just trying to score a job. The certification says this is someone you need to take seriously, because they’ve truly put in the time and effort to know their stuff....

If you’re salivating at the thought of the biggest and best games coming to your PlayStation in the coming year, the 2022 calendar is already filling up with some amazing top-shelf possibilities. From God of War Ragnarok to Batman spinoff RPG Gotham Knights, from Horizon Forbidden West to a pair of new Final Fantasy games, 2022 is already shaping up to be a bumper year. Of course, fans will be missing out on most of what the hottest new games can actually do without a subscription to PlayStation Plus....

Last year, GitHub acquired semantic code-scanning and security company Semmel. Now, the code-hosting company is integrating the latter’s features to provide in-built code-scanning. The company says that code-scanning is a native experience, and it scans every ‘Git Push’ for potential exploits. It uses CodeQL, a tool to query the codebase for potential bugs, to find vulnerabilities in your project. This feature is free for any open-source project. [Read: GitHub Codespaces lets you code in your browser without any setup] Along with this, GitHub also introduces secrets scanning for private repositories....

In a blog post, Google says its aim is to deepen the integration between, it’s three major pillars of communication: email, chat, and video. Because email is central to so many of our jobs, the company decided to more deeply integrate its other services into Gmail. The company already brought Google Chat to the desktop and made it easy to join meetings straight from your phone. Soon you’ll be able to maintain Google Chat conversations right from the Gmail app on your Android or iOS device as well....

This three-wheeled “pick-up” cargo bike has been developed to offer “increased agility, convenience, and year-round suitability.” As per BMW, that’s exactly what’s missing from ordinary cargo bikes. They’re usually wider, longer, and heavier than normal bikes, which reduces their driving agility and handling. I agree completely. Last time I drove such a bike, I found it difficult to maneuver and control it. I’d definitely not consider riding it on a rainy day....

The similarities between the two are obvious: for starters, they have the exact same price, $4.99. Google also offers a free subscription for Play Pass, albeit it’s only 10 days compared with Arcade’s month-long trial. It also promises to be “all free of ads, in-app purchases and upfront payments.” So far, so familiar. When something like this happens, my logic battles with my cynicism. On the one hand, I would hope Google is not quite so reactionary as to consciously imitate Apple Arcade in order to grab some of its positive publicity....

This comes just a day after Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, said that the firm will invest $10 billion in the Indian market over the next five to seven years. If the Jio investment goes ahead, it will cover 40% of the said investment capital. [Read: Google promises to invest $10B in India over the next ‘5 to 7 years’] Jio Platforms have already raised more than $15.8 billion this year in exchange for a 25....

To address this problem, Google’s AI team has developed an open-source solution, Autoflip, that reframes the video that suits the target device or dimension (landscape, square, portrait, etc.). Autoflip works in three stages: Shot (scene) detection, video content analysis, and reframing. The first part is scene detection, in which the machine learning model needs to detect the point before a cut or a jump from one scene to another. So it compares one frame with the previous one before to detect the change of colors and elements....