The Big G is offering discounts on the first million dollars a developer earns. That’s unlike Apple, which canceled the discount if your app earns more than $1 million in a year. That means you could earn $2 million, $5 million, or more, but Google will always apply a 15% commission on the first million. The company said that once a developer verifies some basic information about their app and revenue, the search giant will apply the discount on the apps and renew it automatically: The firm said that these rules will come in effect from July 2021....

For most of its life, Android Auto only offered full support for Google Maps or Waze for navigation. Other mapping apps would work, but they were restricted to the phone interface. However, with news that offline mapping app Sygic has launched a beta build on Android Auto this week, users now have another option. I’m sure this matters to someone out there, although I’ve never had issues with using Google Maps for navigation whilst driving....

If this were the case, it would make it much harder to access personal data Google holds on you or to work out how, why and for what purposes the data was being used. It would also make it more difficult to make Google correct or delete that data and Google would be able to process your data free from the conditions currently imposed by the GDPR. But this representation of the situation is misleading....

I had a vision for the company, how it would work, and how it would grow. But, to be honest, if you had asked me about the level of success we’ve achieved over the last three years, I would have said it was probably a pipedream. As we sit today, we’ve built a service business that generates about $1.5 million in ARR. From beginning as my own personal freelancing work, we’re now a 22-person content marketing agency working with more than a dozen clients....

In an interview with KrebsOnSecurity, Wisconsin-based IT company Virtual Care Provider Inc. (VCPI) confirmed that hackers have used the dreaded Ryuk ransomware to encrypt all of the data it hosts for clients. The firm estimated it maintains roughly 80,000 computers and servers powering care facilities across 45 US states. Ryuk is a particularly nasty malware strain that’s been sweeping government organizations and other high-value targets all year. Machines are typically infected with a special Trojan named Trickbot via widespread email phishing campaigns....

This got us thinking: if Hemingway could write an entire story in six words, we should be able to review a product in the same number. So, enter the Hemingway review. This time round we’re looking at the UE Wonderboom 2, a portable Bluetooth speaker. Here’s a picture of the author lovingly cradling the device: Let’s Hemingway this gadget! Outdoorsy, indoorsy, anywhere! It’s cute, loudly. You can buy the UE Wonderboom 2 here, or check out a more in-depth breakdown here....

The logical consequence of that is shit on the web gets real weird, real fast. I’m not judging — it is, in fact, my second favorite thing about the internet. The hub of a lot of the internet’s weirdness is, obviously, Reddit. Its sprawling ecosystem of subreddits is a beautiful reflection of the human condition. And of the fact that we really love memes about the Star Wars prequels. Since I spend a disturbing amount of time on the platform, I have seen things....

In a blog post, Facebook said the ranking system isn’t comprised of a single algorithm. Instead, it uses multiple layers of machine learning models to predict what a user wants to see. Facebook explained how this would work for a fictional user called Juan: Machine learning models then predict the probability that Juan will engage will all this content. [Read: How this company leveraged AI to become the Netflix of Finland] The ranking system first collects candidate posts for each user, including those shared by their friends, Groups, or Pages since their last login....

Roughly fashioned after the structure of the brain, neural networks have come closer to seeing the world as we humans do. But they still have a long way to go and make mistakes in situations that humans would never err. These situations, generally known as adversarial examples, change the behavior of an AI model in befuddling ways. Adversarial machine learning is one of the greatest challenges of current artificial intelligence systems....

Steam recently rolled out a new option on its store to help sort recommendations. Up to now, the only way to stop seeing a game pop up in your recommendations was to choose the “Ignore” option, which also meant Steam would just assume you weren’t interested in that type of game. Obviously this isn’t ideal — just because I don’t want to see Monster Hunter World keep popping up in my Steam queue doesn’t mean I don’t like the game....

We know a black hole would win in a fight against Godzilla, Earth’s yellow sun, and even the entire Milky Way. But a wormhole? That’s a tall order. Sure, wormholes are only hypothetical so they’re at a disadvantage against black holes – which we’ve actually observed. However that might be the black hole’s only advantage. Where a black hole is like a kitchen sink with a drain to nowhere, a wormhole is a theoretical bridge between two universes or two distant places within the same universe....

That’s about to change. Not only are languages like Java or Python adopting more and more concepts from functional programming. Newer languages like Haskell are going completely functional. In simple terms, functional programming is all about building functions for immutable variables. In contrast, object-oriented programming is about having a relatively fixed set of functions, and you’re primarily modifying or adding new variables. Because of its nature, functional programming is great for in-demand tasks such as data analysis and machine learning....

Our lives are affected by short-term atmospheric variations of weather on Earth, and we fear that longer-term climate change will also have a large impact. The recently coined term “space weather” refers to effects that arise in space but affect Earth and regions around it. More subtle than meteorological weather, space weather usually acts on technological systems, and has potential impacts that range from communication disruption to power grid failures....

When it comes to EVs, the first stat I look for is the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) estimated range figure. In a world of electric vehicle Top Trumps, this is the number that beats all else. Forget naught to 60 times, it’s all about how far an EV can go on a single charge. Except, it’s painfully clear that EPA figures can’t really be trusted. Just like emissions tests in combustion engine cars, what we get in the real-world is proving to be quite different from what dyno-based tests suggest....

Fortunately, there’s a solution to our collective predicament: make memes to mask the pain, using a piping hot batch of ‘Hide the Pain Harold’ stock photos. András Arató, AKA Hide the Pain Harold, just dropped pics from an autumn photoshoot he did with Karola Tariszekely — and they’re gorgeous. For those of you who don’t know ‘Harold,’ he’s a Hungarian stock photo model who accidentally found internet fame as his forced smile perfectly captured the suppressed pain of modern existence....

Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) found that the social network doesn’t consider whether a tweet has been deleted when determining which keywords should trend. As a result, attackers can artificially push topics up the list of Twitter trends and then remove evidence of the manipulation. The researchers call this new form of attack “ephemeral astroturfing:” On Twitter, trending topics are determined by an algorithm that identifies subjects that are popular at a given moment....

That summer job also gave me insight into how important this data is. Cities make decisions, in part, based on traffic data – decisions on zoning and where to build what. Traffic teams also use traffic data to optimize the timing of traffic signals, which can have a significant impact on traffic congestion and safety. Ultimately, traffic data helps shape how cities evolve and function. And, while so many other sectors of the economy are being reshaped by data, a lot of traffic data is still collected the same way it was a generation ago....

An overview of impacts of the pandemic by mode Many cities are rapidly introducing interventions to make their streets networks less car centric, and friendlier to cyclists and pedestrians. Specifically, in cities ranging from Milan, Berlin, New York, Barcelona, Paris, and Oakland, CA, an “open streets” movement is taking root. However, the challenge at hand is how cities that ensure short term interventions such as these which enphasize active transportation can be integrated within the framework of urban planning and public infrastructure operations and investment....

More than 200 underworld figures in Australia have been charged in what Australian Federal Police (AFP) say is their biggest-ever organised crime bust. The operation, led by the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), spanned Australia and 17 other countries. In Australia alone, more than 4,000 police officers were involved. At the heart of the sting, dubbed Operation Ironside, was a type of “trojan horse” malware called AN0M, which was secretly incorporated into a messaging app....

As a scholar who researches and designs learning and workspaces, I’m aware how the modern-day workplace was shaped over several centuries. But few people may know that the origins of the office can be found in the monasteries of medieval Europe. Early origin in monasteries Beginning around the fifth century, monks that lived and worked in monasteries preserved ancient culture by copying and translating religious books, including the Bible, which was translated from Hebrew and Greek to Latin....