Facebook might have more users and Instagram may be more fun, but if you’re looking for social media to really make a direct impact on your life, don’t overlook LinkedIn. Two professionals join the business networking hub every two seconds. And it’s where you’ll find literally half of Americans with a college degree. So it makes sense that LinkedIn would be fertile ground for building your business opportunities and capitalizing on that upscale, educated demographic....

According to the US Department of Homeland Security, this is when a perpetrator deliberately aims a motor vehicle at a target with the intent to inflict fatal injuries or cause significant property damage by striking with concussive force. And it’s a problem for cities, law enforcement, and carmakers. This week, it was front and center in many people’s minds when a man driving a speeding car crashed into a Christmas parade in Milwaukee, killing five people and injuring 48 others....

For its latest trick, the company has introduced a 44-megapixel camera in the front with optical image stabilization (OIS). This selfie camera in the V21 phone is able is to capture 4K videos with support for AI-based low-light enhancement. The V21 improves on last year’s V20 camera with these added goodies. The phone has front flashes built into the edges of the display that can combine with the screen flash for a unique effect in photos and videos....

This is a seriously luxe affair, made of leather and built to lovingly hold your gadgets while you jet around the world. It’s exceptionally well made, so you can expect it to last for years to come. It also costs upwards of $380, depending on which size you choose. Still, I’m happy to recommend it to anyone who’s looking to drop some coin on a handsome gear bag. Here’s why....

I’m no better than them. I got the game last Friday and I’ve barely stopped playing since — just like I couldn’t stop playing Animal Crossing: Wild World for the Nintendo DS back when I was 17. So what is Animal Crossing, you ask? Well… it’s incredibly complicated and simple at the same time. I don’t have a good shorthand to describe it, and there’s no other game like it....

The Discord servers and subreddits are a frenzy of graphs, memes, and speculation about the next bull market. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said he believes bitcoin can bring about “world peace.” And the pro-Trump “magacoin” was launched for more than 1,000 early adopters whose personal information was quickly exposed online due to poor website security. (The organizers did not respond to a request for comment.) All in all, it’s been a normal couple of weeks in the world of cryptocurrency....

The Green New Deal has received a lot of attention since it was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in early 2019. But how many people have actually read it and know what’s in it? The bill isn’t long, as bills go, but it’s dense. I’ve tried to pull out the main points below. You can read the complete text of the bill here. President-elect Joe Biden has a lengthy description of his ambitious climate plan on his website....

While The Red Hot Chilli Peppers are no Rage Against the Machine, they do contain multitudes. If they can sing about America’s inequality only to later request a woman to suck a kiss — I think we can too. The wildly different songs align perfectly with the possibility that we don’t have to live in an either-or situation. We can choose to consider the ethical implications of our labor within a corporate system whose goals focus on increasing shareholder value....

Traditionally, astronauts have been subject to rigorous training and medical scrutiny before going to space, and the risk of death from natural causes was considered remote. But in this new era of space tourism, it appears medical screening may not be carried out, and only minimal pre-flight training provided. With a wide variety of people now going to space, and the prospect in the coming years of humans establishing bases on the Moon and beyond, it raises an important question: what happens if someone dies in space?...

At the beginning of this year, WhatsApp debuted a new privacy policy that raised many eyebrows. The updated policy aimed to make the app work better with its other Facebook-owned cousins and facilitate business chat in a smoother manner. But this displeased many users, and the mass exodus to platforms such as Telegram and Signal began. However, for a lot of folks, it was not entirely possible to shift to other apps as many of their contacts still used WhatsApp....

However, the discovery of a massive rotating disk galaxy, much like our own Milky Way, when the Universe was just 1.5 billion years old calls these models into question. The discovery that the galaxy DLA0817g — nicknamed the Wolfe Disk after the late astronomer Arthur M. Wolfe — existed at such an early stage in the Universe’s development was made by a team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)....

The flaw — identified as CVE-2019-11931 — made it possible for attackers to send a specially crafted MP4 file to remotely execute malicious code on the victim’s device without any intervention. In an advisory posted on its site, Facebook said: However, the presence of the flaw alone doesn’t mean it could be used for nefarious purposes. As is often the case, it can be an entry point for an exploit chain that links together a group of security vulnerabilities, thereby allowing a hacker to penetrate digital protections....

The reason for its sudden vanishing remains unclear, but its sibling, WhatsApp for Business, remains on Google’s software distribution platform, as spotted by WhatsApp serial leaker WABetaInfo. TNW has since then confirmed the app is no longer available on the Play Store, in both the Netherlands and the UK. Curiously, while it won’t show up in search, WhatsApp is still available through its dedicated Play Store page. Despite the disappearance, WhatsApp seems to function just fine for now....

But that’s changing with a new feature company’s testing: business directory. The firm is testing this ‘Yellow pages’ like feature beginning in Sao Paulo, Brazil. WhatsApp’s head, Will Cathcart, announced this feature and said “we’ve built this in a private way.” He claims that the company won’t log your location or the businesses you’re searching for. If you live in Sao Paulo, you’ll be able to search for local shops using WhatsApp Business through the ‘Businesses Nearby’ menu in the new chat option....

The flaws would make it possible to “intercept and manipulate messages sent in both private and group conversations, giving attackers the power to create and spread misinformation from what appear to be trusted sources,” the researchers noted. Details of the vulnerabilities were disclosed by Israeli cybersecurity firm Checkpoint Research at Black Hat 2019 security conference in Las Vegas on August 7. Checkpoint, in particular, notes three kinds of social engineering tactics:...

But there’s one place polls don’t exist: WhatsApp. Well, this won’t be for much longer. According to a report by WABetaInfo, the company is working on a polls feature for groups. As per the screenshot in the report (and below), the function is still in its early stages, and we don’t have many details about what it’ll look like. At first, you may think this is pointless. Who the hell needs a poll in a group chat?...

We often imagine that human consciousness is as simple as input and output of electrical signals within a network of processing units – therefore comparable to a computer. Reality, however, is much more complicated. For starters, we don’t actually know how much information the human brain can hold. Two years ago, a team at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, mapped the 3D structure of all the neurons (brain cells) comprised in one cubic millimeter of the brain of a mouse – a milestone considered extraordinary....

It’s possible the experts are just guessing. The problem with identifying “sentience” and “consciousness” is there’s no precedent when it comes to machine intelligence. You can’t just check a robot’s pulse or ask it to define “love” to see if it’s alive. The closest we have to a test for sentience is the Turing Test and, arguably, Alexa and Siri passed that years ago. At some point, if and when AI does become sentient, we’ll need an empirical method for determining the difference between clever programming and machines that are actually self-aware....

Hundreds of thousands of children in China currently use online tutoring services to learn English, from platforms like QKids, Magic Ears, DaDa, Gogokid, and VIPKid (which has raised more than $800 million in funding since it was founded in 2014). Tate noted that of the two dozen educators she spoke with, two-thirds of them had witnessed disturbing punishments meted out to their students by parents. The piece raises important questions about how these education platforms currently handle such incidents (spoiler: there’s not a lot they can do, besides end video lessons when abuse is reported by teachers), and whether it’s anyone’s business but that of the parents to decide how to raise their children....

A new study published in Nature Communications has shone further light on these shortcomings. The researchers analyzed photos of actors to examine whether facial movements reliably express emotional states. They found that people use different facial movements to communicate similar emotions. One individual may frown when they’re angry, for example, but another would widen their eyes or even laugh. The research also showed that people use similar gestures to convey different emotions, such as scowling to express both concentration and anger....