Techflier

Facebook announced today that it is adding a feature called “Why am I seeing this post?” to News Feeds. Similar to “Why am I seeing this ad?,” which has appeared next to advertisements since 2014, the new tool has a dropdown menu that gives users information about why that post appeared in their News Feed, along with links to personalization controls. Meant to give users more transparency into how Facebook’s News Feed algorithm works, the update comes as the company copes with several major events that have highlighted the platform’s shortcomings, including potentially harmful ones. These include its role in enabling the dissemination of a video taken during the shooting attacks on New Zealand mosques two weeks ago, which were originally broadcast using Facebook Live; a l awsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that accuses Facebook’s ad-targeting tool of violating the Fair Housing Act and its role in spreading misinformation and propaganda (after year...

I’ve been doing a lot of interviews lately, and I’ve been watching the rise of Lambda School — which I think is fantastic, incidentally — and the combination has me wondering two things: how educated do software engineers need to be? And how well does that map to what they actually learn from formal education? Let’s step back and define some terms before we try to answer those. First, by “formal” education I generally mean a four-year accredited university, whereas people with eg Lambda School or boot camps behind them are “informally” educated, and in turn distinguished from autodidacts. This is not universal. Early Google didn’t seem to consider anyone with less than a masters “formally” educated. Second, of course there’s no absolute need . Since the dawn of the first vacuum tube, and very much including hardcore grotty stuff like compilers and cryptography, software has been a field in which people with no formal training whatsoever have thrived and succeeded wildly. Obvious...

Microsoft is quietly refreshing its Surface Book 2 base model today. The software giant is introducing Intel’s latest 8th Gen quad-core i5 processor for the 13-inch Surface Book 2 model , and keeping the existing dual-core 7th Gen model at a discounted price of $1,299. The refreshed quad-core model will be priced at $1,499, and includes an i5-8350U which bumps the processor’s maximum boost clock speed up to 3.6GHz. The new mid-range Surface Book 2 will also include 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. The processor is the only significant change, but it should make a big difference for performance. We saw impressive jumps in performance from quad-core Surface Pro 6 models compared to the dual-core chips used in previous models. Microsoft has... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2UkJrTH via IFTTT

How’s your weekend going? Good, good. Now, here, have a billionaire’s super autotuned rap track about a famous deceased gorilla: Tesla/Space X/Boring Company guy, Elon Musk has apparently uploaded a SoundCloud track titled “RIP Harambe,” about the 17-year-old Western lowland gorilla who was shot to death at a Cincinnati zoo in 2016 after a three-year-old boy climb into his enclosure. No word yet on precisely what role Musk played in the creation of the track, beyond releasing it on his “failed […] record label.” This might be my finest work — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 30, 2019 “This might be my finest work,” the billionaire tweeted about the track, uploaded to his Emo G (emoji) Records SoundCloud account. The song, which includes lines like “RIP Harambe / Smoking on some strong hay” appears to be more meme-centric that serious musical pursuit. But as James Dolan can happily attest , you should never let a little thing like being an ultra-wealthy executive get in the way o...

On March 8th, The Wall Street Journal published a damning report about caregiver platform Care.com, which found that it put the burden on users to evaluate its caregivers, that it didn’t conduct full background checks or vet the daycare centers that were listed on the site, and that in some instances, providers were unlicensed and even were responsible for deaths of the children in their care. In a followup report published today, the WSJ says that the company removed “tens of thousands of unverified day-care center listings” prior to the publication of that initial report. The original report found that there were “about 9 instances” in the last six years where a provider was listed on the site had a criminal record, and then committed... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2OFQmBK via IFTTT

Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg ended his months-long, facetious war with Bollywood powerhouse T-Series today by issuing a music video with a series of personal confessions and accusations against his rival. The video, “Congratulations,” accuses T-Series executives, including chairman Bhushan Kumar, of multiple misdoings. Kjellberg references a Times of India article , which reported that Kumar is currently being investigated for “alleged evasion of huge tax and siphoning off hundreds of crores to foreign countries to purchase properties in the names of his employees.” The Verge has reached out to T-Series for comment. Kjellberg also reveals that T-Series reportedly sent him a cease and desist letter following the release of his original... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2YD9gOa via IFTTT

The parent company of restaurants such as Planet Hollywood, Buca di Beppo, and Mixology has confirmed that it experienced a security breach after security researchers found more than 2 million stolen credit card numbers being sold online. KrebsOnSecurity says that it contacted the company in February after it discovered “strong evidence” that customer credit card and debit card numbers were being sold online. Hackers used “malware installed on its point-of-sale systems” to steal 2.15 million credit and debit card numbers, expiration dates, and some cardholder names from restaurant locations in 40 states. Earl Enterprises says that the breach took place between May 23rd, 2018 and March 18th, 2019, and that “the incident has now been... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2CHsad9 via IFTTT

New York governor Andrew Cuomo and the legislative leaders have announced that they have reached an agreement on the state’s 2020 budget, a provision of which includes a ban on single-use plastic bags, making it the third state to adopt such legislation. Lawmakers will vote on the budget deal later today. The provision will effectively ban the single-use plastic bags that are found in grocery stores, which often make their way into waterways and oceans. The New York Times says that the ban goes into effect in March 2020, and will prohibit stores from providing the bags to customers, although there are some exceptions, like bags for newspapers, wrapping produce or meat, and take-out. The provision also allows cities and counties to opt-in... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2HYp9sF via IFTTT

Vonnegut’s classic is the weirdest book to become required high school reading. Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2V3eVL8 via IFTTT

In today’s digital age, it can sometimes feel like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives devices. Button of the Month is a column that looks at some of these buttons and switches on devices both old and new to appreciate how we interact with our devices on a physical, tactile level. Shopping on Amazon is a vastly digital experience. Until the last few years , there hasn’t been a physical way to go and buy things from Amazon. For the overwhelming majority of Amazon purchases, there’s still no checkout lane, no aisles to browse, no physical interactions at all — famously, the company’s “One Click” software removes nearly all barriers between wanting something and buying it. Amazon’s now-defunct Dash buttons — small,... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2OAc6yM via IFTTT

Following the revelation that the The National Enquirer had obtained intimate texts and images between Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanches, Bezos ordered an investigation into who was behind the data breach. In a post on The Daily Beast , Bezos’ security consultant Gavin De Becker says that his team of investigators have “concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone,” although he says that they haven’t been able to to link that access with the data that the Enquirer claimed to have. In February, Bezos released a remarkable post on Medium , saying that Enquirer and its parent company, AMI, had attempted to extort and blackmail him with images that he had texted to a woman with which he was having an... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2TQO040 via IFTTT

It may be a cliché, but drone photography really does offer a new perspective on the world. Winners of the 2018 Aerial Photo and Video Contest from SkyPixel (an online photo-sharing community owned by Chinese drone maker DJI) show how. The pictures and videos put architecture, nature, and humanity on display from unexpected heights and angles. The resulting imagery is stunning, and might make you rethink your place in the world. Just consider it for a second. Where are you standing or sitting right now? What would it look like if you could see yourself from a distance? What surrounds you? This year’s winning photo in SkyPixel’s contest was taken by Deryk Baumgärtner using a Mavic Pro (above). It’s typically beautiful, showing the... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2HPUOx5 via IFTTT

Fast, affordable food delivery service has been life-changing for many working Chinese , but some still prefer to whip up their own meals. These people may not have the time to pick up fresh ingredients from brick-and-mortar stores, so China’s startups and large companies are trying to make home-cooked meals more effortless for busy workers by sending vegetables and meats to apartment doors. The fresh grocery sector in China recorded 4.93 trillion yuan ($730 billion) in total sales last year, growing steadily from 3.37 trillion yuan in 2012 according to data collected by Euromonitor and Hua Chuang Securities. Most of these transactions still happen inside wet markets and supermarkets, leaving online retail, which accounted for only 3 percent of total grocery sales in 2016, much room for growth. Ecommerce leaders Alibaba and JD.com have already added grocery to their comprehensive online shopping malls, nestling in the market with more focused players like Tencent-backed MissFresh (每...

It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our biweekly column Short Play we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend. Before I started playing Vignettes, I was expecting it to be a lot like Gnog , a puzzle game that turned puzzle boxes into toy-like dioramas. Maybe it was because the two games share the same brightly colored aesthetic, centered on an object floating in space. But where Gnog adds a lot to the enjoyment of its puzzles by turning them into toys you can fiddle with, Vignettes goes in the opposite direction: it starts as a toy before turning into a puzzle. Most of Vignettes is predicated on a visual trick. You are presented with... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2UneJJF via IFTTT

Warmer weather is finally peeking through for parts of the US — and for some reason, that’s bringing more opportunities to watch horror films. Jordan Peele’s newest horror film, Us , is still in theaters, while Netflix will start showing rebooted classics like Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D. It’s also made its own zombie apocalypse series, Black Summer, about survivors finding each other at the beginning of an outbreak. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is returning for season 2, with tensions brewing at an all-time high, as Sabrina bounces between her human friends and her magical enemies. That said, even if horror is your least favorite genre, Netflix still has new content for all kinds of moods. Fans of Aggretsuko , a... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2OICQ0h via IFTTT

Self-driving cars are trained to be overly cautious, but there may be situations where they need to make high-speed maneuvers to avoid a collision. Can these vehicles, festooned with tens of thousands of dollars worth of high-tech sensors and programmed to drive at grandma-speeds, handle these split-second decisions like a human? Engineers at Stanford University may have the answer . They created a neural network that can enable driverless cars to perform high-speed, low-friction maneuvers just as well as race car drivers. When they eventually arrive, driverless cars will need capabilities beyond those of humans, as 94 percent of crashes are attributable to human error. Researchers say this is an important step in improving autonomous... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2UjdICp via IFTTT

This is a preview of a research report from   Business Insider Intelligence , Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence,  click here . Current subscribers can read the report   here . Business Insider Intelligence Outside of the US Postal Service (USPS), FedEx and UPS have dominated the domestic logistics industry — and in particular, the last-mile of the delivery — for decades. On a quarterly earnings call in 2016, FedEx estimated that itself, UPS, and USPS executed a whopping 95% of all e-commerce orders. See the rest of the story at Business Insider See Also: Uber's Careem buy shows a pivot in international strategy THE AI IN TRANSPORTATION REPORT: How automakers can use artificial intelligence to cut costs, open new revenue streams, and adapt to the digital age Why China's ride-hailing market has space for new entrants SEE ALSO:  Amazon and Walmart are building out delivery capabilities from...

A 26-year-old Instagram model was granted probation after facing trial for a in September 2017 incident where she was seen beating her dog. Keevonna Wilson was caught on her apartment building's security system repeatedly kicking the Shih-Tzu Yorkie mix in an elevator. Wilson originally faced felony charges, but a Florida court ruled this week that she would receive a four-year probation term and pay $600. A 26-year-old Instagram model was reportedly granted probation by a Florida court for a September 2017 incident where she was seen beating her dog. After Keevonna Wilson was seen on her apartment's security system repeatedly kicking Chastity, her Shih Tzu-Yorkie crossbreed in an elevator, she was reportedly charged with felony animal cruelty and initially pleaded not guilty, the Miami Herald reported . See the rest of the story at Business Insider NOW WATCH: Elon Musk sent a $100K Tesla Roadster to space a year ago. It has now traveled farther than any other car in ...

Associated Press/Francois Mori Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg urged in a Washington Post op-ed for more regulation over the internet. He said Facebook has run into problems in four main areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy, and data portability. He said privacy rules such as those in Europe should be adopted around the world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is calling for more outside regulation in several areas in which the social media site has run into problems over the past few years: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability. In an opinion piece Saturday in The Washington Post, Zuckerberg says governments and regulators rather than private companies like Facebook should be more active in policing the Internet. He says privacy rules such as the General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect in Europe last year, should be adopted elsewhere in the world. See the rest of the story at Business Insider NOW WATCH: Watch Google's St...

IBT Many companies use the term artificial intelligence, or AI, as a way to generate excitement for their products and to present themselves as on the cutting edge of tech development. But what exactly is artificial intelligence? What does it involve? And how will it help the development of future generations? See the rest of the story at Business Insider See Also: Volkswagen and Amazon Web Services are partnering on an industrial IoT cloud — and it highlights how automakers could become more efficient Ericsson is ramping up its 5G efforts in South Korea T-Mobile's broadband strategy will focus on providing service to rural and underserved areas first from Feedburner https://ift.tt/2EIPXfd via IFTTT

Evan Vucci/AP The US State Department is cutting funding to three South American countries — El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala — reports CNN . The move comes two months after President Trump threatened to cut funding to the three countries.  "Honduras is doing nothing for us. Guatemala is doing nothing for us. El Salvador is doing nothing for us. And we pay them hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but we're going to be stopping pretty soon," Trump said in January . The State Department, in a statement to CNN, said it is ending aid to the three countries on behalf of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "carrying out the President's direction." According to a report from CNN quoting a State Department representative, The United States will no longer provide aid to three South American countries: El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The move comes less than a day after President Trump proposed to cut funding on Twitter. See the rest of the story at...

Win McNamee/Getty Images Former Vice President Joe Biden has come under fire after Lucy Flores wrote an op-ed about a time he allegedly kissed her head and made her feel uncomfortable. Democratic presidential candidates have begun to weigh in on the controversy as Biden mulls jumping into the 2020 race. More Democrats are weighing in on allegations that former Vice President Joe Biden inappropriately kissed the back of a former Nevada state assemblywoman's head and made her feel uncomfortable in 2014. While Democrats are calling on Biden to directly address the allegations, they have so far withheld from saying he should not run for president in 2020, an endeavor he is currently considering and mulling over with advisers. See the rest of the story at Business Insider NOW WATCH: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is being praised for her line of questioning at Michael Cohen's hearing — watch it here See Also: Elizabeth Warren says Joe Biden 'needs to answer' for inappr...