Microsoft billionaire, Bill Gates, just bought a gigantic plot of land in Arizona for $80 million for a future „smart city” project. The acquisition was done via one of Gate’s real estate investment firms, Belmont Partners. The area currently holds lots of undeveloped land and a few residents, but the real estate firm is adamant in their new endeavor.

Belmont Partners bought 25.000 acres of land in Tonopah, Arizona which is around 50 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona. Gates aims to create a new community named Belmont, where the tech industry would flourish. Belmont Partners released a statement detailing their plans,

„Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology.”

The proposed city will have data centers, autonomous vehicles, and logistics hubs complemented by high-speed digital networks.

Executive emeritus at the Arizona Technology Councils, Ronald Schott, claims the plot of land to be in a very good spot thanks to the newly opened I-11 freeway which would connect Belmont to Las Vegas.

The firm wants to use close to four thousand acres of office, commercial, and retail spaces. Public schools will benefit from 470 acres along with 80 thousand housing units. Belmont Partners want to convert a barren piece of property into a „purpose-built edge city built around a flexible infrastructure model.” The firm claims the projected population and size of the community will be similar to that of Tempe, Arizona.

The concept of a smart city is nothing new even though the idea itself is novel. A joint partnership between the U.S Department of Transportation and the other Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen will see the construction of another smart city in Columbus, Ohio, currently called „The Crossroads of Ohio”.

Neither Belmont Partners nor Bill Gates has confirmed when the construction of Belmont will start.

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Facebook is looking into possible solutions for wiping off revenge porn from its platform.  The experiment is taking place in Australia and was greenlit by a joint partnership between the social media platform and the Australian government. The solution, however, is quite unorthodox.

Both Facebook and the Australian government’s e-Safety Commissioner are acting against the unwanted publication of nonconsensual media by way of nude photos. While this may seem a bit unusual, the two organizations believe it to be effective.

How it works

If a person suspects to be a victim of revenge porn they can contact e-Safety and send them a nude photo of themselves through Messenger. Facebook will then use its matching algorithms and essentially track the file on their platform.  This technology can already be found in Facebook’s photo and face matching technology. It has a slight tweak that „hashes” or tracks the media in question. By tracking your intimate photo or video, they will, in turn, be able to prevent it from unwanted attention. The media won’t be saved on their servers but it will continue catching duplicates.  In an interview with ABC, e-Safety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, reassured the public of their strategy:

„They’re not storing the image, they’re storing the link and using artificial intelligence and other photo-matching technologies”

There’s a catch

The only catch is you need to be in possession of the original file to make it work. However, the Verge stated that if you do tag your media in time, this could prevent it from being further altered by third parties.

Australia isn’t the only place where Facebook will stand its ground against revenge porn.  The platform implemented another preventive mechanism in April by photo-matching images that have been reported or taken down.

This new step towards eliminating nonconsensual file sharing appears to be Facebook’s way of giving power to the individual. But there are issues with the strategy as some have already noticed. People might not trust the website, regardless of its authority, mainly because they’d feel like they’re uploading revenge porn themselves. Australia is one of the four other countries currently testing the strategy.

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Several Google Docs users reported getting locked out of their documents and receiving a message telling them they had violated the company’s terms and conditions. None of the users appeared to have produced offensive or copyrighted content, so Google had to apologize and explain what had actually happened with their files.

An error in the code caused the Google Docs files to be locked out

When these users tried to access their files, Google prevented them from doing it, and said the files were locked out due to violating content. Soon after that, the company fixed the Google Docs error, and explained how some code mistook these documents for abusive files.

This mechanism used on Google Docs and Google Drive is meant to protect the users. By blocking certain content which seems unsuitable, the company reduces the chances of viruses and malware infiltrating the users’ computers. However, this time, an error in the code read many harmless documents as abusive.

The tech giant felt the need to explain the situation better. Google Docs is protected by an automated security system which looks for vulnerabilities and threats. Whenever it identifies a potential danger, the files in question are blocked. However, the code which controls this security system contained an error, and triggered a false alarm.

Users now find the content-processing service too unreliable

Google acted quickly and removed the faulty piece of code from the system. Therefore, the blocked files have been retrieved, and Google Docs works just like before. However, users are now skeptical about relying so much on this service.

They didn’t realize how dependent they were on Google Docs, and how much the integrity of their work depended on the well-functioning of the system. The service was comfortable for people, as it works with Cloud technology, and saved any changes automatically. Now, all these users fear it might get unstable again, and their work might get forever compromised.
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If you thought Google Docs was a safe place to keep your documents, think again. A number of users have recently reported being locked out of their online files, and informed they had been violating the company’s Terms and Conditions. The real reason seems to be the content of these documents, which Google found inappropriate. Such an issue poses some real security concerns, meaning that your files are not as safe as you thought they were.

Google Docs randomly flags content as abusive

Google has some strict policies when it comes to the content one can share or add into Google Docs. This means the company is seriously against any kind of content protected by copyright, or which might contain pornography, child abuse, hate speech, threats, overly graphic or confidential information.

However, those users who got their files locked away were still puzzled, since their documents didn’t contain any of the violating content presented above. For instance, one of the victims was Rachael Bale, a reported for National Geographic, who had just lost a Google Docs file about wildlife crime.

This raises some real questions about the security of one’s work

An official from Google quickly intervened, and said the incident must have merely been an error. This happened as they were working on a new code, and a series of harmless documents were faultily flagged as inappropriate. However, the fix should come soon, and these users will be able to recover their files.

This incident raises many questions regarding the security of Google Docs files. The fact that users risk losing important work before they have time to edit the content and remove any policy-infringing references, such as copyrighted material, is a huge glitch. This might risk Google a lot of users, as many journalists are now skeptical, and don’t want to see their work put in danger.

Has anyone had @googledocs lock you out of a doc before? My draft of a story about wildlife crime was just frozen for violating their TOS.

— Rachael Bale (@Rachael_Bale) October 31, 2017

https://twitter.com/ismh/status/925367292346683392
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

The new cheeseburger emoji proved so controversial that even the Google CEO got involved in the spiced debate. People were outraged by the placement of the cheese in the Google version of the emoji, and this attracted the attention of the company’s CEO. After seeing how disappointed the people were, he decided to assess the problem, and come with a solution as soon as possible.

Google sports an outrageous cheeseburger emoji

One single tweet was enough to start an intense debate regarding the cheeseburger emoji. The Baekdal Media founder, Thomas Baekdal, spotted a significant difference between the Apple and the Google versions of the emoji. The Google version had a different order of the ingredients, with the cheese lying right where it shouldn’t be – at the bottom.

I think we need to have a discussion about how Google's burger emoji is placing the cheese underneath the burger, while Apple puts it on top pic.twitter.com/PgXmCkY3Yc

— Thomas Baekdal (@baekdal) October 28, 2017

This led to a lot of outrage from cheeseburger fans worldwide, who started debating the perfect arrangement of the ingredients in the popular snack. The original tweet registered a number of 14,000 retweets, and gathered several thousands of people who expressed their opinion on the perfect cheeseburger. Even Gordon Ramsay got involved, and released a tutorial video on how to arrange the ingredients of the snack.

Google’s CEO wants to fix the problem right away

However, everybody knew the cheeseburger emoji issue got to a whole new level when even Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, entered the debate. He couldn’t let the faulty arrangement prevail, so he calmed everybody down through a tweet where he said Google would drop everything and fix the emoji problem.

He said the cheeseburger emoji would receive a fix when users will all agree upon the ideal placement of the ingredients. However, this is unlikely to happen too soon, as there are thousands of tweets on the matter, and users are still arguing. This means that the outrageous cheeseburger emoji with the cheese at the bottom might not disappear so easily.

 

Will drop everything else we are doing and address on Monday:) if folks can agree on the correct way to do this! https://t.co/dXRuZnX1Ag

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) October 29, 2017

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The long-awaited WhatsApp feature meant to fix your last night’s mistake is here. Delete for everyone will allow any user to unsend messages, solving problems like subsequent regret, and avoiding unpleasant situations in case you sent a text to the wrong person. The feature is already rolling out for both iOS and Android users.

Delete for everyone will soon get to all WhatsApp users

WaBetaInfo is a Twitter account which shares all kinds of news regarding WhatsApp, and informs users about all the changes as soon as the company decides to take them. Therefore, the Delete for everyone feature is now officially rolling out. If you don’t have it yet, there’s no need to worry, as it will soon get to everyone.

In case the feature still doesn’t show up, make sure your WhatsApp is updated to the latest version. However, be careful before getting rid of an already sent message. The recipient must also have the newest version installed so that the feature might work perfectly. Also, be quick about it, as you only have seven minutes after sending to get rid of it. Delete for everyone works perfectly well in group chats, too.

There are a few limitations to this feature

However, text messages are not the only ones which can disappear. You can delete everything, ranging from images, sent contacts and locations, voice messages, videos, or statuses. Once you perform the operation until the end, the chat will display a notification informing the recipient or the other people in the group that the specific message has been deleted.

There are certain messages which still remain immune to the Delete for everyone feature. Apart from the timeframe when the deleting is possible, those messages added in quotes cannot be removed. Also, whatever is sent within a Broadcast List remains there, so be careful every time when you send a message.
Image Source: Pixabay

Apple fashioned its latest iPhones with the exquisite wireless charging technology, but it seems the tech giant is not planning to stop here. The company might be looking to overcome the remote charging market, since it has just purchased PowerbyProxi, the New Zealand producer of wireless chargers and adapters.

Apple wants to make wireless charging more accessible

PowerbyProxi is the creator of the Proxi-Module, a platform of wireless data and power which can be used to make regular devices work as wireless systems. By using it, mostly any kind of smartphone might be able to perform wireless charging.

Samsung showed an interest in the company as well, and even invested $4 million several years ago. However, it seems their affairs didn’t quite work out, and Apple now stepped up and made PowerbyProxi its own company.

Dan Riccio, Apple’s Engineering Vice President, confirmed the acquisition of PowerbyProxi. He said this was an attempt to make wireless charging more accessible, and to give more customers the chance to charge their devices more easily. This means that not only the owners of the newest iPhone generation should benefit from the perks of this technology.

Apple will definitely use the landmark technology in future devices

Although Riccio didn’t reveal how much money they did strike the deal for, the sum might be somewhere over $50,000. The chief of PowerbyProxi also admitted the company now belongs to the Apple family. However, it will not move its headquarters, and the employees will continue working from their home country of New Zealand.

This purchase might mean more Apple devices benefitting from the wireless charging feature. However, the company didn’t reveal any of the plans it has for the next generations of iPhones. Their intentions will definitely be made clear with the release of new hardware.
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PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) comes with new updates, making the game tougher for those who do not follow the rules. Players are required to stay in the play area and, whenever they pass this boundary and start wandering in the zone called the blue area, they start accumulating damage. Now, the creators of the game decided to make this damage a lot tougher.

The blue zone gets tougher than ever

PUBG developers want to keep players inside the play zone, so they needed to find a way to make them focus more on it. Those who wander away and enter the blue zone usually suffer some penalties over time, but the effective way to make them focus on it more was to make the outskirts more difficult to deal with.

Therefore, developers will start rolling out the feature some time during upcoming weeks. Bluehole revealed they did this for the players, as their gameplay can significantly improve if they have to deal with only one set of enemies, namely those inside this play zone. In fact, there’s nothing bad about it, as players are taught not to waste time by running away in a safe area when facing the harshness of the blue zone.

More updates are in the making for the PUBG 1.0 release

However, these are not the only changes promoted by PUBG developers. In November, the test servers will bring some more updates. Some brand new mechanics will be available in a beta version at the beginning of the month, and players are invited to take a look at them and offer their feedback.

However, Bluehole revealed they won’t be included in the full game before its release. Version 1.0 of PUBG should arrive sometime before the end of the year, so all these updates, together with whatever bug fixes they might need, are to be attached to the final game only before the release.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

If you are willing to send money to your friends in an easy and secure way, Facebook Messenger is here to help you. The company has just announced it has started a collaboration with PayPal which will allow people to use the service and send money to their friends directly from the messaging app. The feature is already available on iOS, and will arrive on Android shortly. However, this applies only to US users at the moment.

Payments are more accessible now on Facebook Messenger

Facebook knew how money businesses are sometimes urgent, and decided to give users the chance to deal with them via social media. Therefore, it facilitated payments on Facebook Messenger for the first time in 2015. Now, it decided to improve the service, and to allow them to send money within groups. Therefore, a PayPal collaboration will let you deal with this kind of business right away.

This payment feature was actually a part of M, an AI assistant integrated in Facebook Messenger. This assistant analyzes the conversations you have, and makes suggestions on actions you might be willing to perform. Therefore, if you are talking about money with someone, M will direct you towards a quick payment method.

Facebook is now collaborating with PayPal for easier transactions

If you want to use PayPal to make a transaction, you can tap a blue plus icon in Facebook Messenger. Then, you can select the Payments tab, which will display a series of options of payment. Also, you can set Messenger to remember your preferred method, and make a second transaction quicker.

By choosing to pay with a credit card, Messenger will automatically connect you to a PayPal account, and then you can easily send the money wherever you need to.
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Sony has just released new gaming gear, namely the long-awaited Mini Wired Gamepad compatible with PS4. For the creation of this tool, Sony collaborated with Hori, the well-known producer of gaming equipment. As the name said, the controller comes in a small size, and is likely made especially for children.

What’s so special about the Mini Wired Gamepad?

If you compare the Mini Wired Gamepad with the original controller, it is about half the size of the latter, and 40 percent of the DualShock 4. It comes in the color blue, so typical of PlayStation consoles. However, this is the only color available. Some other specifications include a wire which connect the controller to the console.

These are the features which make it stand out. Then, most of the other elements make it really similar to DualShock 4. All the buttons present on the Mini Wired Gamepad can also be found on DualShock 4. They allow you to play any PS4 game you like, while using the same controls you are already used to.

The smaller size made Sony give up some features

However, your experience might suffer a bit, as some of the exclusive features present on other controllers are now gone. As the Mini Wired Gamepad is smaller than you have been used to, Sony had to give up some of vibration, the speaker, the touch pad, the jack for the headset, or the motion sensor.

However, even if the touch pad is gone, it doesn’t mean your controls will suddenly be cut in half. By manipulating the sticks present on the mini controller, you should be able to simulate the movements offered by the touchpad.

Sony found the perfect way to make gaming more comfortable for children, as spending too much time using the massive controllers could have turned painful by the end of the day. It might work just as fine for humans, as the Mini Wired Gamepad is easier to manipulate and to hold.
Image Source: Pixabay