Campaign groups and university researchers raise concerns about the ads found in Android apps.
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Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Police ground drones after reports they fall out of the sky
Some incidents in which DJI drones "suffered a complete loss of power" have concerned UK authorities.
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Birthright citizenship: Trump claims only the US grants it, he's wrong - CNN
CNN |
Birthright citizenship: Trump claims only the US grants it, he's wrong
CNN (CNN) US President Donald Trump vowed Tuesday to end birthright citizenship -- the process by which babies born in the country automatically become citizens -- by executive order, while claiming the US was the only nation around the world to grant such ... In Campaign's Homestretch, Trump Tosses Out Ideas to See What Sticks Trump plans executive order to end birthright citizenship Trump's proposal to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional |
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Former prosecutor hopes James 'Whitey' Bulger's death is 'the end of a very sad chapter in Boston's history' - CNN
CNN |
Former prosecutor hopes James 'Whitey' Bulger's death is 'the end of a very sad chapter in Boston's history'
CNN (CNN) In a 3-foot grave near a river not far from Boston, Paul McGonagle's body lay decaying, undisturbed until his remains were found nearly 20 years ago. Parts of a pelvic bone. A fractured skull with decomposed brain matter. A traditional Irish ring ... 'Whitey' Bulger dead: Inmate with Mafia ties investigated in killing James 'Whitey' Bulger, Boston Mob Kingpin, Killed In Federal Prison: Reports Whitey Bulger was a fixture on the FBI's 'Most Wanted' list — and for good reason |
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The Bizarre And Failed Attempt To Smear Robert Mueller - HuffPost
HuffPost |
The Bizarre And Failed Attempt To Smear Robert Mueller
HuffPost It's hoaxes all the way down in what appears to be an effort to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller with fabricated claims of sexual misconduct. Several media outlets, including HuffPost, received emails earlier this month from a woman claiming ... Plot to Smear Mueller Unravels as FBI Is Asked to Investigate An Apparent Scheme To Discredit Mueller May Have Backfired. He Referred It To The FBI Mueller asks FBI to investigate claims women were offered money to say he behaved inappropriately |
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Apple's newest iPad Pros hands-on: The iPad X we expected - CNET
CNET |
Apple's newest iPad Pros hands-on: The iPad X we expected
CNET I couldn't tell if I was looking at the 12.9-inch iPad Pro or the 11-inch one. That's a testament to how Apple has shrunken down the Pro lineup, and seems to have delivered on a more portable high-octane iPad this year. But can it get any closer to ... I got to try out the new iPad Pro, and it's clear that it's Apple's biggest update to the iPad lineup in years 2018 iPad Pro hands-on: Improving on the world's best tablet First look: MacBook Air and iPad Pro -- Are you ready to spend big for Apple's latest? |
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India deploys huge security for inauguration of world's biggest statue - Yahoo News
Yahoo News |
India deploys huge security for inauguration of world's biggest statue
Yahoo News Sardar Sarovar Dam (India) (AFP) - Thousands of police officers guarded the world's biggest statue ahead of its inauguration by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, anticipating protests by angry locals displaced by the enormous figure. World's tallest statue opens amid surge in Indian mega-monuments India unveils the world's tallest statue Statue of Unity Inauguration LIVE: We Would Need Visa to See Charminar Were it Not for Sardar Patel, Says PM |
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Early Voting Breaks Record In Suburban Cook County: Clerk - Patch.com
Patch.com |
Early Voting Breaks Record In Suburban Cook County: Clerk
Patch.com CHICAGO — More voters in suburban Cook County have cast their ballots early than in the last midterm election in 2014, according to Clerk David Orr. There are six more days of early voting before Election Day Tuesday. As of 3:50 p.m. on Tuesday, 131 ... Midterm elections: early voter turnout surging in several key states What kind of America do you want? 14 writers respond Closed voting sites hit minority counties harder for busy midterm elections |
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Standing 'Against White Supremacy,' GOP Campaign Chief Rebukes Steve King - New York Times
New York Times |
Standing 'Against White Supremacy,' GOP Campaign Chief Rebukes Steve King
New York Times WASHINGTON — As Pittsburgh began burying the victims of Saturday's synagogue massacre, the head of the House Republican campaign arm all but jettisoned Representative Steve King of Iowa from the House Republican Conference, declaring, “We must ... Land O'Lakes, Purina Pull Support for Iowa Congressman Steve King Over Racial Remarks Land O'Lakes withdraws support for GOP Rep. Steve King after boycott calls |
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Asia Bibi: Pakistan acquits Christian woman on death row - BBC News
BBC News |
Asia Bibi: Pakistan acquits Christian woman on death row
BBC News A Pakistani court has overturned the death sentence of a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy, a case that has polarised the nation. Asia Bibi was convicted in 2010 after being accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a row with her neighbours. Pakistan acquits Christian woman facing death for blasphemy Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi has death penalty conviction overturned A Pakistan Court Has Acquitted a Christian Woman Facing Death for Blasphemy |
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Brex has partnered with WeWork, AWS and more for its new rewards program
Brex, the corporate card built for startups, unveiled its new rewards program today.
The billion-dollar company, which announced its $125 million Series C three weeks ago, has partnered with Amazon Web Services, WeWork, Instacart, Google Ads, SendGrid, Salesforce Essentials, Twilio, Zendesk, Caviar, HubSpot, Orrick, Snap, Clerky and DoorDash to give entrepreneurs the ability to accrue and spend points on services and products they use regularly.
Brex is lead by a pair of 22-year-old serial entrepreneurs who are well aware of the costs associated with building a startup. They’ve been carefully crafting Brex’s list of partners over the last year and say their cardholders will earn roughly 20 percent more rewards on Brex than from any competitor program.
“We didn’t want it to be something that everyone else was doing so we thought, what’s different about startups compared to traditional small businesses?” Brex co-founder and chief executive officer Henrique Dubugras told TechCrunch. “The biggest difference is where they spend money. Most credit card reward systems are designed for personal spend but startups spend a lot more on business.”
Companies that use Brex exclusively will receive 7x points on rideshare, 3x on restaurants, 3x on travel, 2x on recurring software and 1x on all other expenses with no cap on points earned. Brex carriers still using other corporate cards will receive just 1x points on all expenses.
Most corporate cards offer similar benefits for travel and restaurant expenses, but Brex is in a league of its own with the rideshare benefits its offering and especially with the recurring software (SalesForce, HubSpot, etc.) benefits.
San Francisco-based Brex has raised about $200 million to date from investors including Greenoaks Capital, DST Global and IVP. At the time of its fundraise, the company told TechCrunch it planned to use its latest capital infusion to build out its rewards program, hire engineers and figure out how to grow the business’s client base beyond only tech startups.
“This is going to allow us to compete even more with Amex, Chase and the big banks,” Dubugras said.
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The Tissot Seastar 1000 is a low-cost and high-quality Swiss diver
In the pantheon of watches there are a few that stand out. Looking for your first automatic watch? Pick up a Seiko Orange Monster. Looking for a piece with a little history? The Omega Speedmaster is your man. Looking for an entry-level Swiss diver that won’t break the bank? Tissot’s Seastar has always had you covered.
The latest version of the Seastar is an interesting catch. A few years ago – circa 2010 – the pieces were all black with bold hands and a more staid case style. Now Tissot, a Swatch Group brand, has turned the Seastar into a chunkier diver with massive bar hands and case that looks like a steel sandwich.
The $695 Seastar 1000 contains a Powermatic 80/ETA C07.111 movement with an eighty hour power reserve which means the watch contains a massive mainspring that keeps things going for most of three days without winding. The Seastar is also water resistant to 1000 feet thanks to a huge screw down crown and thick casing. The new model has an exhibition back where you can see the rotor spinning over and balance wheel. The watch also has a ceramic bezel, a fairly top-of-the-line feature in an entry level watch.
Tissot has a long and interesting history. Best known for their high-tech T-Touch watches which had touchable crystals, allowing you to activate a compass, barometer, or altimeter with a single tap, the mechanical pieces have always seemed like an afterthought. The company also produces the classic Tissot Le Locle as well as a chronograph that I absolutely loved, the T-Navigator, but that has been discontinued. The Seastar, then, is one of the few mechanical pieces they sell and at sub-$1,000 prices you’re basically getting a Swiss watch with solid power reserve and great looks.
Watch folks I’ve talked to over the past few months see a distinct upturn in the Swiss watch market. Their belief that the Apple Watch is driving sales of mechanical watches seems to be coming true, even if it means cheaper fashion watches are being decimated. Tissot sits in that sweet spot between luxury and fashion, a spot that also contains Tag Heuer and Longines. Ultimately this is an entry level watch for the beginning collector but it’s a beautiful and beefy piece and worth a look.
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As stock rises on a slim earnings beat, eBay tells analysts to focus on payments and ads
Despite increasing competition from traditional retailers like Walmart and Target, which have invested heavily in e-commerce, and the whupping it’s routinely taking from Amazon among pure e-commerce companies, eBay the 20-year-old lumbering Pez dispenser of an e-tailer, keeps plugging along.
Now, as it manages to eke out another earnings win by matching analysts’ expectations, the company is telling the bankers that watch it to look to advertising and payments for its future growth.
The company met analysts’ estimates of revenue totaling $2.65 billion, up from $2.41 billion in the year-ago period. That amounts to adjusted earnings of 56 cents per share, up from 48 cents per share in the year-ago period and beating analyst estimates of 54 cents per share. Profits for the company hit $720 million for the quarter.
The news sent shares up over 4 percent in trading after the market closed on Tuesday.
But more interesting than the the tepid results was its outlook for the future. Right now, eBay is at a crossroads as it tries to get a new group of users to forget about its past as a marketplace for used goods and resellers — and as a more pure e-commerce company.
“This quarter we continued to make foundational investments to improve the long-term competitiveness of our marketplace while setting the stage for significant growth opportunities,” said CEO Devin Wenig in a statement. “We will continue to innovate the customer experience while executing our growth initiatives in Payments and Advertising to position eBay for future success.”
The fact is, eBay is growing. It saw the number of active buyers across the platform increase by 4 percent, and has 177 million global active buyers. While that number is dwarfed by Amazon’s over 300 million global buyers (as of 2017), it’s one of the largest retailers in the U.S. The company’s StubHub business saw revenues of $291 million, up 7 percent from the year-ago period and sales of $1.2 billion. Its classified payments also grew.
As eBay looks ahead, payments and advertising are going to receive a bulk of the company’s internal investment dollars as it tries to complete the rollout of a new payment experience in the wake of its divorce from PayPal and its embrace of Adyen, Apple Pay, and the technology-based financial services company, Square.
The company has already processed $38 million in payments and through the partnership with Apple Pay has grown that payment method to 12 percent on the platform. Advertising on eBay has seen 400,000 sellers promote over 160 million listings.
“We continue to grow the inventory on the marketplace,” Schenkel. “Just recently we rolled out a direct from brand and direct from authorized resellers… Brands want choice and they want to sell on a marketplace with 177 million users that doesn’t compete with them.”
The company will also continue to have an aggressive investment and mergers and acquisitions strategy, the executives said. Especially since the company found its earnings buoyed by the $1 billion it brought in from the sale of its stake in Flipkart, href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/09/walmart-confirms-16b-flipkart-investment-giving-it-77-in-indias-e-commerce-leader/"> when it was bought by Walmart for $16 billion.
What’s somewhat interesting is that there are new companies in the retail space that are making a mint doing things that eBay once dominated. Vinted and DePop are both used-clothing e-tailers that have enviable cache and significant revenues, while LetGo and OfferUp are also raiding used goods to turn trash into treasure.
A quick trip to eBay’s homepage shows that the company has all but consigned its collectible past to the trash heap. Given the death and dissolution of so many of its peers from the first generation of internet giants, it’s worth keeping an eye on eBay if only to see how the 20-something company approaches middle age as an independent entity.
“We have a unique situation. [The] eBay brand is very well recognized and not as well understood. We’re seeing this; that new buyers are responding really well to the changes that we made in the last few years and we need more of them and part of that is messaging our brand,” said Wenig on the earnings call with investment analysts.
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Facebook bans the Proud Boys, cutting the group off from its main recruitment platform
Facebook is moving to ban the Proud Boys, a far-right men’s organization with ties to white supremacist groups. Business Insider first reported the decision. Facebook confirmed the decision to ban the Proud Boys from Facebook and Instagram to TechCrunch, indicating that the group (and presumably its leader Gavin McInnes) now meet the company’s definition of a hate organization or figure.
Facebook provided the following statement:
“Our team continues to study trends in organized hate and hate speech and works with partners to better understand hate organizations as they evolve. We ban these organizations and individuals from our platforms and also remove all praise and support when we become aware of it. We will continue to review content, Pages, and people that violate our policies, take action against hate speech and hate organizations to help keep our community safe.”
Even compared to other groups on the far right with online origins, the Proud Boys maximize their impact through social networking. The organization, founded by provocateur and Vice founder McInnes, relies on Facebook as its primary recruitment tool. As we reported in August, the Proud Boys operate a surprisingly sophisticated network for getting new members into the fold via many local and regional Facebook groups. All of it relies on Facebook — the Proud Boys homepage even links out to the web of Facebook groups to guide potential recruits toward next steps.
At the time of writing, Facebook’s ban appeared to affect some Proud Boys groups and not others. The profile of Proud Boys founder McInnes appears to still be functional. Facebook’s decision to act against the organization is likely tied to the recent arrest of five Proud Boys members in New York City on charges including assault, criminal possession of a weapon and gang assault.
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Siri Shortcuts app gets updated with weather, alarms, timers and more
Alongside today’s announcements of new iPads and Mac, Apple also rolled out an updated version of its Siri Shortcuts app. The app, first introduced at WWDC, arrived with iOS 12 as a way to unlock Siri’s potential by allowing users to create their own custom voice commands and workflows. Now, it can do a few new things, too – including setting alarms and timers, getting the latest weather, and more.
The weather actions should be especially useful for those who have created custom morning routines with Siri Shortcuts, as you’ll now be able to use the latest weather in your shortcuts with the new “Get Current Weather” and “Get Weather Forecast” actions. Being able to ask for this sort of information is already among the top use cases for voice assistants, like Alexa and Google Assistant, so it makes sense to offer these sorts of commands to Siri Shortcuts users, as well.
With these options, you can now ask for current conditions, forecasts (hourly, daily or 10 days out), or for any specific condition – like the humidity, chance of rain, air quality, and more.
Also helpful are the new “Create Alarm,” “Toggle Alarm,” and “Start Timer” actions, which addressed another notable hole in the Shortcuts app at launch. Many people were confused about how to use alarms within the app because these actions weren’t available, and the request often came up on Apple’s own support site, too. The new release, Siri Shortcuts 2.1, addresses this problem.
Other new actions include the ability to convert between a variety of units from the “Measurement” and “Convert Measurement” actions; the ability to get the most recent set of imported photos from the Photos app using the “Get Last Import” action; and the ability to star recording video immediately in the “Take Video” action.
Interestingly, Apple didn’t call that last one out in the App Store update text – maybe because all the news attention a user-created shortcut called “Police” recently received. “Police” lets you speak a verbal command that performs a series of actions, including messaging a friend, turning down the phone’s brightness, and pausing the sounds on your phone. It then gives you a button to press to start to recording. Now, it seems you can tweak the “Police” shortcut to just begin recording right away.
The updated app also fixes a problem with using Siri Shortcuts with HomePod. It will now automatically play back media from the HomePod over AirPlay, when you run the shortcut from HomePod via Siri – which just makes more sense.
Siri Shortcuts version 2.1 is the first major update following the app’s release with iOS 12. However, the app today still largely appeals to iOS power users – those who were already comfortable using its predecessor, Workflow, and who understand how to build routines.
More mainstream users are likely being exposed to Siri’s expanded powers through their favorite apps. With iOS 12, a number of top developers updated their apps with “Add to Siri” buttons that point out special tasks their apps can perform by way of voice. Early adopters on this front included Pandora, The Weather Channel, Sky Guide, Citymapper, Google News, TripIt, Trello, Monster, and others.
The updated version of Siri Shortcuts is available for download from the App Store.
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