Technology

Parler, the social network popular with Trump supporters, is trickling back to life.The social network went offline last week after Amazon booted it from its computer servers for not consistently removing violent posts, an accusation that Parler denied. But after a week in which Parler executives sued Amazon and predicted that their site might never return, they are forecasting it will be back up and running by the month’s end.That turnabout is thanks, in part, to a Russian company.Parler has entered into business with DDoS-Guard, a Russian firm that routes internet traffic and protects websites from cyberattacks. With its help, visitors to Parler.com now find a basic webpage with a promise from Parler’s chief executive, John Matze, that “our return is inevitable.”But the use of a Russi...

Join the all-digital event that’s giving game publishers an edge in an uncertain ecosystem.  From January 26-28, GamesBeat is bringing together today’s industry leaders for three days of content and networking focused on game growth and the Metaverse. Of course the industry keeps growing, boosted by the pandemic and next-gen console releases, and reaching $139.9 billion in 2020. But from major ad ecosystem changes to brand new privacy laws, there are still challenges to face when it comes to finding the right way to monetize. That’s why the first day of programming, made possible by a partnership between Facebook and GamesBeat, is offering expert-led panels covering the opportunities for growth available for developers now, how to monetize successfully, and more.  We’re bringing ...

A cricket bat designed for virtual reality gaming and a bluetooth-connected baseball are among the sport innovations to be unveiled at the CES tech show.The BBC's Cody Godwin went hands-on with the gadgets to see whether they knocked it out of the park, or were a swing and a miss.See more at Click's website and @BBCClick Source link

Pioneering scientists like Rothermel dealt with this intractable problem by ignoring it. Instead, they searched for factors, such as wind speed and slope, that could help them predict a fire’s next move in real time. Looking back, Finney says, it’s a miracle that Rothermel’s equations work for wildfires at all. There’s the sheer difference in scale—Rothermel derived his equations from tiny, controlled fires set in 18-inch fuel beds. But there are also more fundamental errors. Most glaring was Rothermel’s assumption that fire spreads only by radiation, instead of through the convection currents that you see when a campfire flickers. This assumption isn’t true, and yet for some fires, even huge ones like 2017’s Northwest Oklahoma Complex, which burned more than 780,000 acres, Rothermel’s ...

Getty Images DNS over HTTPS is a new protocol that protects domain-lookup traffic from eavesdropping and manipulation by malicious parties. Rather than an end-user device communicating with a DNS server over a plaintext channel—as DNS has done for more than three decades—DoH, as DNS over HTTPS is known, encrypts requests and responses using the same encryption websites rely on to send and receive HTTPS traffic. Using DoH or a similar protocol known as DoT—short for DNS over TLS—is a no brainer in 2021, since DNS traffic can be every bit as sensitive as any other data sent over the Internet. On Thursday, however, the National Security Agency said in some cases Fortune 500 companies, large government agencies, and other enterprise users are...

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.If you’re having problems registering for a coronavirus vaccine appointment, you are not alone.There have been horror stories in places including Florida, Texas and New York of overwhelmed government hotlines or bungled online scheduling systems for vaccinations. Some health officials resorted to Eventbrite, a website typically used for organizing low-stakes events like bar crawls, to schedule residents’ shots.It’s enraging that after the scientific marvel of inventing Covid-19 vaccines, now there are bureaucratic and technical bottlenecks that have slowed the vaccine rollout. (Feel free to scream out loud with me.) But don’t be angry about botched government technology or direct your fury only a...

Selling prerecorded exercise videos for at-home workouts has been a viable business model for decades, and the pandemic has only increased the need for home solutions spanning every conceivable fitness category. But these videos couldn’t replace a key element of in-person training — the individual attention from a personal or group trainer. Now India’s best-funded health startup is making a move to bridge that gap, using a California company’s AI system to replace human fitness coaches in users’ homes. Currently available as an iOS and Android app, with support for Apple TV and Chromecast display devices, the Cure.fit platform offers both exercise videos and online group classes, falling back to a basic “energy meter” as a simple metric of a user’s activity while working out. Cur...

The killing of George Floyd was a catalyst moment for social justice movements across the world. But after the coronavirus pandemic worsened some of those movements were pushed aside.One which hasn’t is an online reckoning orchestrated by students, known as 'Truth Pages'. In the summer following George Floyd’s death, racism exposé pages became more popular across both sides of the Atlantic, primarily on Instagram, allowing Black, Asian and minority ethnic students to share their experiences online.The result was a wave of call to actions, some more successful than others, enlisting the cooperation of institutions in tackling racism and racial inequality.The BBC’s Lorna Acquah investigates the racism experienced by students in the UK and the US and how the movement snowballed.Filmed and ...

Every financial institution is looking to digital transformation to meet rising customer expectations for speed and convenience, lower its operating cost, and fend off competition, including from tech companies moving into financial services. Some are spending over 10% of yearly revenue on technology investments, according to Bloomberg. “This is a huge investment and most financial institutions cannot support this for the long term,” says Michael Fei, SME banking CEO at OneConnect Financial Technology, an associate of Ping An Insurance. The covid-19 pandemic has revealed how even financial institutions that considered themselves digitally advanced are, in reality, still wedded to analog processes along the chain of processing. “For many financial institutions, this has been a wake-up ...

Enlarge / Uberwachung, Symbolbild, Datensicherheit, DatenhoheitWestend61 | Getty Images Lawmakers and law enforcement agencies around the world, including in the United States, have increasingly called for backdoors in the encryption schemes that protect your data, arguing that national security is at stake. But new research indicates governments already have methods and tools that, for better or worse, let them access locked smartphones thanks to weaknesses in the security schemes of Android and iOS. Cryptographers at Johns Hopkins University used publicly available documentation from Apple and Google as well as their own analysis to assess the robustness of Android and iOS encryption. They also studied more than a decade's worth of repo...