Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, is currently being heared by the American Senate board. Chief of Google is answering multiple questions, ranging from information gathering and Chinese browsers to… why is it that Donald Trump comes up so often when you browse the word ”idiot”. The last question was asked by a representative of the Democrats, to which Pichai has assured her that no, Google does not influence browsing results, which are only the results of millions of users’ activities. I doubt that Trump supporters will believe this and besides, who knows? Perhaps Google ...
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Printed head versus facial recognition. Most of the phones have lost, except for…
One Blackface company from Birmingham, U.K, has managed to deceive the facial recognition security measures of five different smartphones: Samsung S9, iPhone X, LG G7 Linq, Samsung Note 8 and OnePlus 6. The company has achieved this by printing out a perfect copy of the phone’s owner’s face with the 3D printer. Such a dummy has turned out to be enough to fool all the phones’ facial seacurity measures except for, check this out, iPhone X. Creators of other, fooled devices, when they heard about it, naturally started to defend themselves by saying things such as ...
Latest Messenger Lite update brings in new options
For something that is supposed to be a light version of a communicator, Messenger Lite has quite a few functions as of now. It is so largely thanks to its latest update, which brought two new features to the app: GIF support and chat colour change. Sounds silly? Yeah, it kind of does. On the other hand, for something with Lite in its name, Messenger allows to do more and more with its features. Until now, every gif sent via M Lite was static; now they are animated, just as god intended them to be. As for chat colours, you can change your chat clouds’ flush into any of the colours ...
NVidia has created a faithful 3D render copy of a real-life video
You wanted better graphics? You got them. NVidia has just used the most advanced AI available (unless we count the one made by the jointed US-Reptilian operations in Area 51) to create a faithful render of a recorded video. As you can see on the picture above, the render looks pretty good: perhaps not as good as the latest, best-looking 4k video games, but still good for such a new tech. Do remember that this is not a graphic created from A to Z by graphics engine, but a picture of reality turned into a three dimensional render.NVidia’s work is a large step towards the real, immersive ...
Tony Hawk Skate Jam, or virtual skateboard strikes on mobile this time
Maple Media, studio that deals solely in mobile games, has undertook a dangerously ambitious project – ressurecting the forgotten star that the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series was. Their game will be a free app available for both Android and iOS. It will be released on December 13th; it’s weight will be 1.4 gigabyte.Maple Media has already done a number of sports games, Skateboard Party being one of them. That is good, but everything else that we know seems to prognoze a rather crappy game. The graphics are simply ugly – something like this would fly maybe four years ...
”Universally-recognized digital identity”,. An useful function or citizen spying tool a-la China?
Mastercard and Microsoft have just announced that they are will be working on the so-called universally-recognized digital identity. It is supposed to be a service that will basically put all the electronic data of its user into one place, allowing them to perform a variety of tasks with a single e-document, from taxes and registration to getting married (lets hope that no person will have to use the last one multiple times). Such a feature would probably make its users’ life simple – as well as give Mastercard and Microsoft access to lots and lots of personal data of said ...
A new Carmageddon game may be in development
THQ Nordic has been shopping hard lately – after buying the Kingdoms of Amalur and Alone in the Dark brands (both good but now forgotten), it is time for them to obtain true king of 90’s gaming, Carmageddon. Mix of car race and, for the lack of a better term, gorefest has been one of the best games of 1997, offering players a high quality racing game with an (un)healthy dose of blood mixed in. Sequels, unfortunately, have been gradually losing interest; the latest one, Carmageddon: Reincarnation from 2015 has passed with hardly anyone noticing. Here is to hope that THQ Nordic, a ...
Data of 100 million Quora accounts have been stolen
There is no end to grand data thefts in sight – Facebook was the biggest, but not the only victim (culprit?) of such crimes. E-thieves’ newest victim is Quora. In case you do not know Quora, it is basically the greatest Q&A forum in the world, with a large number of dedicated and, presumably at least, skilled members that provide high quality posts in response to people’s inquiries. Sadly, this peaceful corner of the web has been targeted by hackers. Cybernetic evildoers have taken data such as names, e-mail and IP addresses and Quora browsing history. Passwords have ...
Elon Musk’s Boring Company will not construct the west LA tunnel after all
The Boring Company’s plans to construct a tunnel under the West LA have came to naught after the firm was faced with a class action. Citizens of LA have accused their city’s government of not conducting a proper environmental impact assessment before the investment. The new plan is to create a tunnel leading from the underground metro station to the Dodgers’ baseball stadium. Tweet Vote on HN ...
Coffee versus smut, or the war between Starbucks and YouPorn
News of the day: the war between the popular coffee store line and pornography website has begun. Long story short, the whole ruckus started when Starbucks got fed up with people using its free wifi to watch porn. Wanting to put an end to this rigamarole, the store put out a ban on porn in its restaurants. Well, not a complete ban – while it is now impossible to watch hardcore porn in Starbucks, you can still watch ”adult movies” there – I will let the fans of both figure out the difference. YouPorn did not take kindly to it; its riposte was to ban its employees from ...