If you know anything about Apple, you likely know this — Apple marches to the beat of its own drum. While Android systems are marked by their openness, products from Cupertino have always been safeguarded within an inch of their lives, deathly leery of outsiders creating for their finely-curated digital ecosystems. Which is why anyone who wants to create apps for the iPhone better be up to speed on using SwiftUI....

Silicon Valley company Glydways wants to turn conventional mass public transport on its head, by introducing small, electric automated vehicles or “pod cars” that can carry four people and operate on a network of specially built guideways. They run on-demand (instead of on a timetable) and travel point-to-point with no stops in between. In the future, they might even pick you up at your house. Sounds ambitious and a bit weird....

Well, bye I think everyone’s feeling the pain that comes from seeing life pass us by as 2020 drags on with crappy bandwidth. The good news should be that vaccines are imminent. We should begin to see several viable vaccine candidates emerge from phase three trials for final approval between now and early 2021. And that’s good, but it has to be taken with a bitter grain of salt. Vaccines aren’t off switches for diseases....

Now a free app called Candide is helping me regain their trust, or at least remember who the hell they are. The app’s Plant ID feature uses AR to identify plants at both the genus and species level. Just snap a photo of the mysterious vegetation or upload one from your phone. Next, tap identify. Models trained on a dataset of horticultural imagery then analyze the pic. If the system recognizes the plant, it provides more information on its origins and how to care for it....

The district of Dang, situated in the western state of Gujarat, is home to Saputara hills — a famous tourist attraction. According to a report from the Times of India, the local authorities issued an order last week that categorizes taking selfies as a criminal offense: The district has witnessed several selfie-related accidents in the past. In 2018, a woman slipped while taking a selfie, only to survive by falling into bushes....

But the path getting real value from data science and AI can be a long and difficult journey. To paraphrase Eric Beinhocker from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, there are physical technologies that evolve at the pace of science, and social technologies that evolve at the pace at which humans can change — much slower. Applied to the domain of data science and AI, the most sophisticated deep learning algorithms or the most robust and scalable real-time streaming data pipelines (‘physical technology’) mean little if decisions are not effectively made, organizational processes actively hinder data science and AI, and AI applications are not adopted due to lack of trust (‘social technology’)....

The findings come from a map put together by Check Point Research and genetic malware analysis firm Intezer, making it the first-ever comprehensive analysis of state-backed Russian-attributed threat groups that have been found to engage in disruptive cyber warfare. “The size of the resource investment and the way the Russians are organizing themselves in silos makes them able to carry out a multi-tiered cyberespionage offensive,” Check Point researcher Itay Cohen told TNW....

Google and Netflix. Facebook and Instagram. Spotify and Reddit. Those are just a handful of the tech titans that use the Python coding language as an integral part of their web development process. Python is powerful, yet complex — and because of its abilities, programmers familiar with all the intricacies of Python coding as well as its most useful tools are in high demand with the elite firms of the digital world....

Authorities say Barry Thompson (48), head of two cryptocurrency “businesses” collectively known as Volantis, fraudulently promised to minimize risk when purchasing large amounts of cryptocurrency. This was based on the notion that Volantis would act as a custodian for both sides of the transaction, but Thompson allegedly never intended to offer any escrow services at all. “Thompson allegedly thought no one would ask where their actual money went when they trusted him to invest in Bitcoin,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney....

The subreddit, which recently passed the 50,000 subscriber mark, has been documenting some of the most bizarre captures on Street View for nearly two years. “I was reading through the comments of a post where people were wishing for a subreddit about funny things found with Google Maps, and the name r/googlemapsshenanigans was thrown out by someone,” the community’s founder slash23579 told TNW. “I loved the idea so I decided to create the subreddit....

So, let’s get started! One solution is to use Python’s Selenium package and go to WhatsApp web rather than using Twilio, which is subscription-based after the free tier is over. But as WhatsApp requires QR-code scanning through mobile from time to time, automation isn’t possible. To let your parents know you’re parents thinking of them everyday (kind of), we’ll do this in a three-step process: All of this may be discouraging, but the free tier solution does the job fine....

According to a report from Financial Times, the TikTok-owner is planning to go public on the HK stock exchange later this year or early next year. In July, Wall Street Journal noted that the company had shelved its plans for an IPO for now. ByteDance told Reuters that FT’s reporting was not accurate, but didn’t provide any details. Last year, the firm raised $5 billion from investors like Sequoia Capital and KKR & co at a valuation of $180 billion....

If you haven’t heard, thinking computers and the tenets of machine learning are fundamentally changing almost every industry. That story is no different when it comes to crunching numbers online. Google Analytics has just upped the traffic and sales tracking powers they offer with last month’s latest iteration of their heritage data analysis platform, packed full with new AI-powered bells and whistles. Now, Google Analytics can help users better stay on top of surging product demand or better predict future customer actions as well as how much potential revenue they have to offer....

It’s tough enough keeping your finances on lock when you’re just trying to make sure you don’t overdraw your checkbook. But as you grow up and start factoring in stuff like mortgages, investments, multiple accounts and more, it gets even more complicated keeping your bottom line straight. Toshl Finance is ready to lift all those financial gymnastics right off your plate. You can start taking full advantage of their complete range of personal finance tools at as much as two-thirds off their regular price, with a 3-year plan on sale for only $39....

The department has issued a “temporary general license ” to the company “necessary to maintain and support existing and currently fully operational networks and equipment, including software updates and patches, subject to legally binding contracts and agreements” that expires on August 19. To recap, after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban Huawei last week, US tech companies like Google, Qualcomm, and Intel ceased business with the Chinese company over the last few days....

Trump said at a press conference that he’s only allowing equipment trade in areas where there’s no security risk to the country: For reference, as Android Authority noted, Huawei spent about $11 billion on US-based suppliers in 2018; that included chipsets from the likes of Qualcomm, as well as software from Microsoft. It’s also worth noting that Huawei remains on the is still on the US Department of Commerce’s “Entity List,” which technically bars it from doing business with firms there....

Last December, Twitter said that it’ll start removing tweets with harmful misinformation related to the coronavirus vaccines; the company said today it has deleted 8,400 such posts to date. Starting today, the social network will begin to label tweets with vaccine misinformation. They’ll also point to curated content related to COVID-19 vaccines in the local context. Initially, human moderators will do this work, and the data will be used to train the company’s machine learning algorithms....

According to The Verge, Uber confirmed in a statement that it would be recycling many of Jump’s older ebike and scooter models after transferring many of the newer models to Jump’s new owners, Lime. Instead, that doesn’t exactly seem to be what’s happening. [Read: Here’s how many cyclists it takes to charge a Tesla as fast as a Supercharger] Images of Jump bikes turning up at scrappage yards in the US (Seattle and North Carolina) surfaced on Twitter earlier this week....

[Read: UK speeds up its ban on petrol, diesel, and hybrid cars by 5 years] British drivers can still take advantage of an EV car grant, but it’s been cut by £500. As of March 12, the grant is now £3,000, ($3,700) which car buyers can put towards the cost of a new EV. This is the third time the government has cut the plug-in car grant since it launched in 2011....

Despite the cries of mass adoption that would undoubtedly follow, Samsung decided to quietly add support for Bitcoin to its private key wallet that it calls its Blockchain KeyStore. The use of such keys is vital to many decentralized applications (dapps) as well as for storing keys to cryptocurrency. Support is restricted to Samsung’s S10 and Note10 devices including the Galaxy S10e, S10, S10+, S10 5G, Note10 and the Note10+....