Facebook has added a new feature for its Live Video streaming. It has launched filters which add Halloween masks during a Live video streaming session. Similar filters already exist for various apps like Snapchat.

In a move that manages to capitalize on an idea first promoted by Snapchat and Facebook’s acquisition of MSQRD, the company has launched a new augmented reality selfie filters called Masks, just in time for Halloween. Some of the many types of Halloween masks include skeleton, witch, and even pumpkin. Users can try out the new filters as soon as they start their Live video session.

The new feature has already started to roll out today to iOS users in select regions such as the UK, US, and New Zealand. The feature will see a gradual global release for all platforms in the coming months.

Capitalizing on the growing trend of celebrating the American holiday of Halloween, Facebook has also added new variants of the reactions buttons. For example, instead of the Haha button, users will see a laughing witch reaction. Unfortunately, the new Halloween reactions are available for a limited time only.

The new Live video features revitalize Facebook as it has grown stale over the years as no design and interesting tools were added in recent memory. However, Snapchat and other messaging app tools have always innovated with creative features meant to keep users interested and amused.

To start using the new Halloween Masks and more, users will have to start a Live video broadcast from the button found on their News Feed, Timeline, or Page. Afterward, tap the magic wand found in the upper left corner of the window to reveal the entire variety of special effects offered by Facebook. After selecting the masks icon, scroll through the options and select whichever mask you want to show up on your face. The masks will be instantly applied as you film without any complicated process being required.

In the app industry, it’s a common practice for companies to copy a certain idea from a competitor and apply it to their own app using their own code. Although augmented reality filters aren’t anything new, Facebook manages to pull them off quite well as they look relatively realistic.

Image source: Facebook

A team of scientists discovered a strange formation of hexagonal clouds at one of the tips of the triangle and immediately attributed the Bermuda Triangle mystery to air bombs created by the strange clouds. The scientific community does not agree with the scientists and believes that there is much more to the disappearances than strong winds. Officially, the Bermuda Triangle is still puzzling researchers, no complete explanation for the phenomenon being provided.

A recent documentary that was aired on the Science Channel attributed the eerie nature of the Bermuda Triangle to hexagonal cloud formations. The peculiar clouds were spotted by meteorological satellites over the Bahamas area.

The strange shape of the clouds attracted the attention of both scientists and meteorologists. Normally, the edges of a cloud are irregular, as they are formed out of gaseous matter that easily gets dispersed in thinner areas. However, the hexagonal cloud formations presented straight edges, a very bizarre trait.

The clouds in question measured up to fifty miles in diameter and had also been spotted through time across Europe and the North Sea. Scientists believe that the formations can create air bombs, a sort of air microbursts that originate from the bottom of the clouds and travel towards the ground at impressive speeds. When the clouds are located over a water mass, the air bombs can generate colossal waves and increase the speed of winds at up to 170 miles per hour.

The Science Channel documentary claimed to have solved the Bermuda Triangle mystery with the discovery of the hexagonal clouds. However, most members of the scientific community do not agree with the theory.

Meteorologists declared that the hexagonal clouds occur on a global scale and they were never linked to aircraft or boat disappearings.

Others stated that the way in which the air bomb phenomenon was explained made it look like it was a major scientific breakthrough when, in fact, they were not new occurrences for meteorologists.

Kevin Corriveau, a meteorologist at NBC, stated that the hexagonal clouds that were photographed on top of the Bahamas were not capable of producing air bombs. According to him, the air bombs only occur during a sizeable thunderstorm. Moreover, the clouds should not present an opening in the middle.

Unfortunately, the Bermuda Triangle mystery remains unsolved.

Image source: Wikipedia 

A new report from ProPublica shines some light on a quiet revision made by Google to its privacy policy in June 2016. The revision allows Google users to share their browser activity across devices.

Back in 2007, Google bought an online ads company called DoubleClick. At that time, the search giant assured its users that they prioritize privacy in the development of their ads network. Overall the company has kept its promise by dividing their database of user browser activity from the personal information gathered from Gmail and other apps.

However, in June 2016, Google decided to adopt a subtle change in their privacy policy. It started asking account holders if they are willing to share more data with Google. The request was slightly vague but consisted in a request for permission to couple the browser activity of users with their personal information in order develop better targeting ads.

If you received the request so opt-in for the service and didn’t know what it implied, but accepted nonetheless, rest assured that your privacy hasn’t been affected very much if you don’t mind ads. The new feature will only allow Google to know who you are when you sign up on different devices. This allows your specific ads to follow you as well instead of seeing only general, mostly useless advertisements.

More specifically, the newly redefined privacy policy allows Doubleclick ads to follow users from to site to site and even create an ads profile based on the information they entered in Gmail or other apps. Google can then build a profile, linking names and email info to a user’s browsing habits and search attempts in order to provide fully personalized ads.

When given the chance to comment, Google has stated the new policy is only an attempt to adjust to the smartphone era. However, all new accounts will automatically have this level of data-sharing already enabled. Fortunately, both new and old accounts have the ability to opt-out of the service if they don’t like it.

In times where other companies like WhatsApp and Facebook do not let users have a say in what they can do with their personal information, Google still offers people a choice, even if the company wasn’t completely transparent when the feature was implemented.

October 20^th is the official International Sloths Day, so experts had the opportunity to educate many people about this interesting and unusual mammal.

More importantly, scientists found out that this animal has the slowest metabolism on the planet. The study was seven-year long and involved a team of researchers from the Wisconsin-Madison University.

During the research, the team collected data from two-toed and three-toed sloths to monitor their metabolism. According to Jonathan Pauli, an ecologist and co-author, he and his colleague expected these animals to have a significantly low metabolic rate, but they were surprised when they discovered this animal needs just a little amount of energy.

Then, researchers have compared the sloths with other leaf-consuming mammals and have come to the conclusion that the three-toed sloth is so slow it can grow moss on its back. Also, they found out that this species had the slowest metabolism, expanding just 162 kilojoules/ day/ kilogram of energy.

On the other, the two-toed sloth was a bit more active with 234 kilojoules. Surprisingly, the panda represents the toughest opponent for the three-toed sloth because it has a daily consumption of 185 kilojoules.

These mammals can survive with this slow metabolism because they live in small areas and take long naps. In addition, this unusual mammal can regulate its body temperature which prevents it from losing extra energy during their sleep.

According to the statistics from the World Wildlife Federation, there are many amazing facts about sloths as these animals spend between 15 and 20 hours a day sleeping. Also, besides their low metabolic rates, they move just around 40 yards per day.

Although sloths live in the forests of South and Central America, they are also excellent swimmers thanks to their long arms. Sloths are also very dirty animals because many insects live in their fur.

Scientists were puzzled when they first analyzed a sloth’s fur because they didn’t expect it to host so many parasites. There are six species of sloths, and the most critically endangered are the pygmy and the maned sloth.

Unfortunately, not even this mammal managed to escape from the human abuse. It is worth mentioning that some sloths don’t die because poachers kill them, but because they lose their habitat due to massive deforestation.

Image Source: CDN

Facebook Messenger is one of the popular apps in the world. It recently hit 1 billion users, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved with new features and functions. Facebook is doing exactly that by currently testing both a data saver and conversation starter features.

Data Saver

One major problem for mobile internet users is the limited data cap. With the amount of easily available, high-quality content on the web, users can run out of data quite fast. So in order to let users preserve their data as much as possible so they can chat with their friends on Facebook Messenger, the company has introduced a data saver feature.

The feature is only currently available on Facebook Messenger Beta for Android. The data saver option can be enabled in the settings menu. Once it’s turned on, it will begin to filter messages and hide content that consumes a lot of data such as images and video. The content can be viewed by tapping each one individually or disabling the feature.

Facebook has also added a data counter that displays how much actual data they feature has saved them. The counter can be reset when the users want to. Transferring from a data connection to Wi-Fi will automatically disable the feature.

Conversation Topics

Another new upcoming feature for Facebook Messenger is a way to have users engage their friends in conversations. The suggested conversation topics rely on the activity registered by the social network. Below each user’s name, a recent activity or future plan will be displayed as a suggestion on which to base your conversation with that respective user.

The conversation topics include a wide range of suggestions. It can display their most recent check-in location, the events they plan to attend, what they are playing, what music they are listening to and so on. The conversation topics are just suggestions but they can prove a great way to break the ice with a new friend or one you haven’t talked to in a while.

The feature was discovered by a user on iOS. Not many others have reported seeing the feature as Facebook may only be conducting a small test for random users. There haven’t been any details on the planned release date of both features for Facebook Messenger.

Image source: Flickr

HP heads for the top positions on the market with the latest improved Spectre x360 and the excellent Envy, two models that stand out thanks to their high-quality, price, efficiency, and features.

The Spectre x360 is one of the HP’s top notch convertible laptops, which comes with a 13.3-inch touch display, better than the previous version. Also, this model has the same aluminum curves and finish, but it is slimmer (13.8 mm) and weighs 1.29 kg (2.85 lb).

If we compare it with the previous version, the new Spectre x360 is 11 percent lighter and 13 percent slimmer. Although this new model weighs less, it is surprising that it comes with a larger 57.8 battery.

HP officials added that thanks to the Kaby Lake processors from Intel, this model gains a 15-hour additional battery life. What is entirely new about the latest x360 is the infrared camera designed to grant user access through the Windows 10 Hello facial login.

While the previous version had two speakers, the new Spectre has four speakers, whereas dual-array mics were updated to support the voice-control features of Cortana. Additional specifications include a USB-Type A 3.0 port, two USB-Type C ports backed by Thunderbolt 3 support, and a backlit keyboard.

This convertible laptop runs on i5 and i7 processors, while it also has 16 GB of RAM and a maximum internal storage of 1TB. The Spectre x360 has been launched today, October 12, from a starting price of $1,050.

The other HP hit is the ENVY laptop, a 13.3-inch device equipped with a metal finish but $200 more affordable than the Spectre. This model is 14mm thick, while Spectre was a bit slimmer. It is heavier as well because it weighs 3.15 lbs, but it provides a 14-hour additional battery life.

The ENVY has dual speakers, one USB Type-C port, two USB 3.0 ports, and a backlit keyboard. In addition, this laptop will come with i5 and i7 processors, 16GB of RAM, and an internal storage up to 1TB. The launch date is October 26^th, and the price will start from $850.

Regarding quality, both laptops are excellent but even if the Spectre x360 is a bit more expensive, it also comes with better features.

Image Source: Blog None

Amazon has announced the release of a new on-demand music service called Music Unlimited. The service is meant to be a direct competitor to other music streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify. However, Amazon is trying to differentiate their service through certain features.

First of all, the main aspect that makes Unlimited Music appealing is its price. The service will cost Amazon Prime members only $7.99 per month, while for the rest will be $9.99. This cheaper than any of its main competitors. In addition, if you have an Amazon Echo, you can enjoy Music Unlimited for only $4 a month. However, at this price, the service is only available for only one device.

Second of all, in regards to its library of music, Amazon’s service is similar to its competitors. It includes a catalog of millions of songs from both established artists and indies. It offers recommendations for new music depending on your preferences, creates playlists and more. The service can be accessed on a variety of platforms such as Android, iOS, Windows, Sonos, and more.

Third of all, Music Unlimited is the new version of Amazon Prime Music. The app has been redesigned and focuses on album art and artist imagery, it includes a new navigation system as well as a fresh typography. Amazon has included several useful options like automatically downloading music in the background for offline listening and lyrics integration.

Besides its lower price, another feature of Music Unlimited that Amazon hopes to differentiate its service from its competitors is the integration with Echo devices and the voice assistant called Alexa. Users have a variety of voice commands at their disposal, from requesting a specific song, album or artist to play music on a certain mood or time. Alexa can even find songs even if you only remember a few lyrics.

According to Amazon, Alexa will get smarter as more people will use the service. It will be able to improve its responses and suggested music based on your listening history. Additionally, Music Unlimited include a feature called Side-by-Side. It allows users to see an artist’s commentary on a few select songs from their library. More tracks with commentary from more artists will gradually be released.

What music-streaming service do you use?