To build this score, the company formed various lab-controlled and everyday scenario tests to gauge how a smartphone battery performs. It developed its own Faraday room and network simulators to mimic how you would use your phone on a given day. DxOMark said that this score involved testing almost 100 parameters for more than 150 hours per device. There are three key things that the firm takes into account while measuring the battery score:...

However, a key feature of most eco-friendly tech is that it requires more, and more varied, materials than those used in the tech it’s replacing. Wind turbines need iron and zinc for the corrosion-proof steel and motors needed to capture energy from the wind. And electric vehicles need lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese for their batteries, plus neodymium and other rare earth materials for their motors. Building lots of these devices will therefore require huge amounts of specific materials, many of which are difficult to mine....

Despite the browser’s horrible rep for privacy, memory-hogging, battery-draining, and supporting Google’s monopoly, I can’t call it quits. We had too many good times together — and the old bastard is still pretty. Our relationship, however, may soon face a new threat. According to a page on the Microsoft website that was spotted by Neowin, the software giant has developed a built-in VPN for the Edge browser. The service remains a preview feature for now, but it could be available in an upcoming version of Edge....

In this 21st century wave of cutting edge digital projectors, image quality obviously is a big deal. But as we start to reopen the world and put the pandemic behind us, don’t sleep on another hard-charging feature that all the best projectors now flash like a badge of honor: portability. Movie night could be on your couch. But real soon, it could be on somebody else’s. In that case, the WeMax Dice Portable Smart Projector ($599 with code WEMAX100 from TNW Deals) brings a balance of superior video quality and on-the-go versatility to make it a centerpiece tech hub for movie nights anywhere and everywhere....

The company also said that to support this explosion of contracted ownership, the mobile networks will improve their infrastructure, resulting in 90 percent of the world’s population being able to access WCDMA/HSPA upload and download speeds and 65 percent will be able to access LTE connectivity by 2019. Douglas Gilstrap, Senior Vice President and Head of Strategy at Ericsson, noted that while it took more than five years to reach the first billion smartphone subscriptions, it will take less than two to hit the 2 billion mark; China and other emerging markets will drive this demand as increasingly lower-cost smartphones become available....

Hypermiling is a driving practice that prioritizes efficiency and cost savings, encouraging you to drive as economically as possible. Even though electric cars are not gas guzzlers, EV owners can still adopt these techniques to boost their range and save money in the process. How is hypermiling different for EVs compared to fuel-powered vehicles? Hypermiling gained popularity in the early 2000s with petrolheads who hoped to cut down on rising fuel costs by changing their driving habits....

Over the weekend, the app’s founder, Pavel Durov, said that the firm will now allow ads on its platform in a limited capacity. Thankfully, you won’t see any ads in your private chats or channels: This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Durov said last year that to keep up with the platform’s growth, it needs funds, and ads are one of the ways to get there. If you hate ads, don’t worry....

The universe is astonishingly vast. The Milky Way has more than 100 billion stars, and there are over a trillion galaxies in the visible universe, the tiny fraction of the universe we can see. Even if habitable worlds are rare, their sheer number – there are as many planets as stars, maybe more – suggests lots of life is out there. So where is everyone? This is the Fermi paradox....

I’m sure you’ve heard it before: Happy employees mean happy customers. But what happens when customers and employees evolve to a point where executives lose sight of who they are, what they value and what they want? That’s exactly what’s happening in this era of digital Darwinism. Technology and society are evolving. Customer and employee behaviors, norms and values too are evolving. What’s not advancing in parallel are organizational investments, whether they be in operational, product and service innovation to get in front of, or keep up with, modern employee and customer experiences....

Massive meetups aside, one of the key differences between Messenger Rooms and regular Messenger video calls is that you don’t have to download an app — or even have a Facebook account — to join. Just click on the link and you can join on the fly — though Zuckerberg did note that using the Messenger app provides “the best experience.” Naturally, the feature has tight integration with Facebook. You create a room, you have the option of sharing it on your feed, in groups, or on event pages, so people can drop in and out as they please....

First, a little bit of technical dreariness. Hang tight, dear reader, as this bit’s important. DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. Although it’s unlikely to be familiar to non-technical readers, it’s worth knowing about, as it’s fundamental to how computer networks work. In a nutshell, DHCP automatically assigns networking information (like IP addresses) to hosts on a network, thereby saving a poor sysadmin from having to do it manually....

A new report by Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman in the Wall Street Journal suggests that Facebook knew that its algorithm was dividing people, but did very little to address the problem. It noted that one of the company’s internal presentations from 2018 illustrated how Facebook’s algorithm aggravated polarizing behavior in some cases. A slide from that presentation said if these algorithms are left unchecked they would feed users more divisive content: According to WSJ, Zuckerberg & Co....

PMT has the alarming power to derail democracy, and should not be left in the hands of private companies. In fact, in practice in the EU, there is only one company running the show: Facebook. According to self-assessment reports, political advertisers spent €31 million (excluding the UK) on Facebook, and only €5 million on Google between March and September 2019. But it is not just the spend and dominance of Facebook as a social network that is concerning....

The governing body had partnered with Facebook earlier this year for the 2019 cricket world cup hosted in England. ICC claims people watched 1.2 billion minutes of videos related to the tournament on the platform. While Facebook won’t be able to stream the matches live, it might gain a lot of traction from video snippets, highlights, and score updates. In 2017, the company had made a bid of $610 million to stream the Indian Premier League (IPL) live for five years....

Nine schools in Scotland have started taking lunch payments from schoolchildren by scanning their faces, the Financial Times reports. The system reportedly speeds up the lengthy payment process and is more Covid-secure than using cards and fingerprint scanners. Of course, these issues could have been resolved by making school lunches free. But why invest in healthy meals for children when you can splurge on technosolutionism instead? In fact, facial recognition could solve practically every social problem....

The Cupertino-based company launched a lossless music tier for Apple Music last May. But there were only a few ways to enjoy it: if you’ve got an iPhone, you had to get an external DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) to listen to lossless files; if you’ve got a Mac or a MacBook, you could technically use a high-end pair of wired headphones to enjoy high-fidelity music. However, the surprising bit was that none of the AirPods models — including the $550 AirPods Max — support lossless audio streaming out of the box....

Immersive learning works. It makes sense if you think about it. Plunge a student headlong into a new area of study and the sheer volume, extra practice opportunities and increased contextual learning will help make that student proficient in their new skill faster. Anyone who’s used immersion techniques in learning a new language can speak to its benefits. One study found Portland fifth-graders assigned to immersion programs did 13 percent better than their peers on state reading tests....

Isaac Edward Austin, who retired in 2004, reportedly posed as a trustee for his own Bitcoin trading company and managed to get the Ghanaian firm to hand over $11,000 per BTC, GhanaWeb reports. A total of $825,000 was transferred to Austin’s accounts, but he is yet to make any purchases of Bitcoin on behalf of his client. The former basketball player claimed to be running two Bitcoin trading firms, IEA and Tudor Trust....

It’s no revelation to most that the professional world is spinning right now. With unemployment rampant and millions out of work, many companies aren’t rehiring the old full-time workers they shed back in March and April. They’re contracting out to freelancers instead. With the number of job hours lost over that period equalling more than 400 million full-time jobs, freelance job postings were up 41 percent last quarter compared to 2019, according to Freelancer’s Fast 50 report....

It used to be that automation was limited to factory floors and robot product lines. Now, automating business tasks is sweeping across every market — and fast! In 2020, just about everyone has used — or at least heard of — apps like Zapier, IFTTT, and Integromat, or at least used built-in automation tools and workflow builders inside apps like Slack. For many businesses, automation is a non-optional investment. If they want to compete in their industry, then automation is a must....