Jun 27
Post a lot of photos to Twitter but feel like they’re lacking something? Twitter’s changing that with today’s announcement of #Stickers, which will let you spice up your pictures with props, emoji and more.
Jun 27
If the world is your oyster, and you happen to change passports all too often simply because you have run out of pages for the immigration to chop, then chances are you are also on the lookout for a mobile deal that does not require you to burn a huge hole in your pocket at the end of the trip. While roaming has become a whole lot more affordable than before, it is still not at prices where everyone is able to afford, even more so when it comes to longer stays. Having said that, Hong Kong-based NUU Mobile might have a solution in the form of the NUU Konnect device, which will allow seamless local SIM switching for international travelers to more than 100 destination countries. In other words, the NUU Mobile vision is no less than a world without telecomm borders.
With the NUU Konnect from NUU Mobile, one will be able to enjoy seamless local-SIM switching for travelers, where it lets the user connect up to five devices by Wi-Fi (versions 802.11b/g/n), and all of these devices are able to access multiple phone networks from various locations, which will be enabled by NUU Mobile’s unique hybrid solution, as it switches automatically between a SIM bank as well as a multiple network-identity e-SIM, and supported by multi-IMSI technology.
As a result, one gets to enjoy low-cost roaming when it comes to voice as well as data, with minimal set-up requirements thanks to simple Wi-Fi pairing. Not only that, there is also support for multiple devices and form factors, as NUU Mobile services include a comprehensive management tool and report, and it will be maintained with full service consistency, developed and supported by NUU Mobile’s in-house R&D team. This is far more than a portable Wi-Fi hotspot, as the NUU Konnect i1 happens to be a 4G LTE device that also supports both normal voice calling, thanks to the PSTN, and SMS.
Press Release
[ NUU Konnect makes global roaming a snap copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Jun 27
It wasn’t long ago that a hacker group briefly took control of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Pinterest accounts. The dust had barely settled on that incident when we found out earlier today that Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s Quora account was hacked which enabled the hackers to also post on his Twitter. It’s a bit embarrassing when people tasked with running services billions of people use get hacked like any normal user would.
The hacker group tweeted “We are just testing your security,” by creating a post on Quora which automatically posted it to the Google CEO’s Twitter account. Hackers only had control of the account for a brief period of time as it has since been restored.
OurMine appears to be the group behind this hack, it’s believed to be the same group that took control of Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts, Zuckerberg’s login credentials were reportedly found in the recent LinkedIn password leak.
The Next Web had a word with the group and they say this hack wasn’t made possible by Pichai’s leaked credentials. They actually exploited a vulnerability in Quora’s platform which they say the Q&A community hasn’t fixed yet.
If you are extra paranoid about online security perhaps you can take this incident as an excuse to update your Quora password. Also keep in mind that it’s healthy online behavior to use multiple passwords for different services instead of using one password for all services.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s Quora Account Hacked , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Jun 27
Uber Drivers Get Ad-Free Pandora
Posted in: Today's ChiliUber today announced a new perk for drivers. Acknowledging that music goes a long way in setting the mood for the drive, the company said that feedback from its drivers showed that high quality music makes a difference which is why it’s offering them an incentive. A new feature has been designed with Pandora in the Uber Partner app which will enable drivers to enjoy ad-free personalized music throughout the day.
This incentive is being offered to drivers in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. They will be able to play music, while they drive for Uber, from their favorite Pandora stations for free and without having to put up with advertisements.
Uber will be rolling out this feature gradually over the coming days and drivers will see a message in the Uber Partner app when the feature is available for them. To get started they will need to connect their phone to the car’s Bluetooth or Aux, tap the Play Music button in the Uber Partner app, log into or create a free Pandora account, and enjoy free streaming music.
Pandora is directly integrated into the Uber Partner app meaning that drivers can easily play and discover music, save songs, and access streaming radio stations for free from within the app itself.
Uber Drivers Get Ad-Free Pandora , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Jun 27
You might have heard that the United Kingdom held a referendum last week to decide whether or not it wants to stay in the European Union. This exercise was commonly known as “Brexit,” and the referendum was won by those want to leave the EU. The decision has sent shockwaves throughout the global financial system and while there are many aspects of the exit that still need to be negotiated, online petitions have been started to force a second referendum. The most popular second Brexit referendum petition has gained millions of signatures but not all of them are from humans.
The British Parliament considers all petitions that have amassed over 100,000 signatures for debate and this second Brexit referendum petition has gained over 3.7 million signatures to date.
Not all of these signatures are from humans. Automated bots have been created by 4chan message board users who are rapidly adding signatures to the petition even from IP addresses located in North Korea and Antarctica.
A statement has been issued by the Parliament’s House of Commons Petitions Committee. Committee Chair Helen Jones MP has said that they’re looking into the fraudulent signatures and that they will be removed from the petition so that the honest count can be visible.
The committee is going to consider the petition this week to decide whether or not it should be debated on in the Parliament.
Second Brexit Referendum Petition Gets Hijacked By Bots , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Jun 27
Some of the web’s biggest destinations for watching videos have quietly started using automation to remove extremist content from their sites, according to two people familiar with the process.
The move is a major step forward for internet companies that are eager to eradicate violent propaganda from their sites and are under pressure to do so from governments around the world as attacks by extremists proliferate, from Syria to Belgium and the United States.
YouTube and Facebook are among the sites deploying systems to block or rapidly take down Islamic State videos and other similar material, the sources said.
The technology was originally developed to identify and remove copyright-protected content on video sites. It looks for “hashes,” a type of unique digital fingerprint that internet companies automatically assign to specific videos, allowing all content with matching fingerprints to be removed rapidly.
Such a system would catch attempts to repost content already identified as unacceptable, but would not automatically block videos that have not been seen before.
The companies would not confirm that they are using the method or talk about how it might be employed, but numerous people familiar with the technology said that posted videos could be checked against a database of banned content to identify new postings of, say, a beheading or a lecture inciting violence.
The two sources would not discuss how much human work goes into reviewing videos identified as matches or near-matches by the technology. They also would not say how videos in the databases were initially identified as extremist.
Use of the new technology is likely to be refined over time as internet companies continue to discuss the issue internally and with competitors and other interested parties.
It’s a little bit different than copyright or child pornography, where things are very clearly illegal.
Seamus Hughes, George Washington University
In late April, amid pressure from U.S. President Barack Obama and other U.S. and European leaders concerned about online radicalization, internet companies including Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc and CloudFlare held a call to discuss options, including a content-blocking system put forward by the private Counter Extremism Project, according to one person on the call and three who were briefed on what was discussed.
The discussions underscored the central but difficult role some of the world’s most influential companies now play in addressing issues such as terrorism, free speech and the lines between government and corporate authority.
None of the companies at this point has embraced the anti-extremist group’s system, and they have typically been wary of outside intervention in how their sites should be policed.
“It’s a little bit different than copyright or child pornography, where things are very clearly illegal,” said Seamus Hughes, deputy director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.
Extremist content exists on a spectrum, Hughes said, and different web companies draw the line in different places.
Most have relied until now mainly on users to flag content that violates their terms of service, and many still do. Flagged material is then individually reviewed by human editors who delete postings found to be in violation.
The companies now using automation are not publicly discussing it, two sources said, in part out of concern that terrorists might learn how to manipulate their systems or that repressive regimes might insist the technology be used to censor opponents.
“There’s no upside in these companies talking about it,” said Matthew Prince, chief executive of content distribution company CloudFlare. “Why would they brag about censorship?”
The two people familiar with the still-evolving industry practice confirmed it to Reuters after the Counter Extremism Project publicly described its content-blocking system for the first time last week and urged the big internet companies to adopt it.
WARY OF OUTSIDE SOLUTION
The April call was led by Facebook’s head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, sources with knowledge of the call said. On it, Facebook presented options for discussion, according to one participant, including the one proposed by the non-profit Counter Extremism Project.
The anti-extremism group was founded by, among others, Frances Townsend, who advised former president George W. Bush on homeland security, and Mark Wallace, who was deputy campaign manager for the Bush 2004 re-election campaign.
Three sources with knowledge of the April call said that companies expressed wariness of letting an outside group decide what defined unacceptable content.
Other alternatives raised on the call included establishing a new industry-controlled nonprofit or expanding an existing industry-controlled nonprofit. All the options discussed involved hashing technology.
The model for an industry-funded organization might be the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which identifies known child pornography images using a system known as PhotoDNA. The system is licensed for free by Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft announced in May it was providing funding and technical support to Dartmouth College computer scientist Hany Farid, who works with the Counter Extremism Project and helped develop PhotoDNA, “to develop a technology to help stakeholders identify copies of patently terrorist content.”
Facebook’s Bickert agreed with some of the concerns voiced during the call about the Counter Extremism Project’s proposal, two people familiar with the events said. She declined to comment publicly on the call or on Facebook’s efforts, except to note in a statement that Facebook is “exploring with others in industry ways we can collaboratively work to remove content that violates our policies against terrorism.”
In recent weeks, one source said, Facebook has sent out a survey to other companies soliciting their opinions on different options for industry collaboration on the issue.
William Fitzgerald, a spokesman for Alphabet’s Google unit, which owns YouTube, also declined to comment on the call or about the company’s automated efforts to police content.
A Twitter spokesman said the company was still evaluating the Counter Extremism Project’s proposal and had “not yet taken a position.”
A former Google employee said people there had long debated what else besides thwarting copyright violations or sharing revenue with creators the company should do with its Content ID system. Google’s system for content-matching is older and far more sophisticated than Facebook’s, according to people familiar with both.
Lisa Monaco, senior adviser to the U.S. president on counterterrorism, said in a statement that the White House welcomed initiatives that seek to help companies “better respond to the threat posed by terrorists’ activities online.
(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Dustin Volz in Washington; Additional reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Jim Finkle; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Bill Rigby)
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Jun 27
(Reuters) – West Virginia‘s three most devastated counties and possibly others will receive federal assistance after the state’s worst flooding in more than a century killed at least 24 people, officials said on Saturday.
President Barack Obama declared a major disaster for West Virginia and ordered federal aid to affected individuals in Kanawha, Greenbrier and Nicholas counties that could include grants for temporary housing, repairs and other programs.
Obama spoke with West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin on Saturday afternoon to give his condolences and make sure the governor has the federal resources he needs, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.
West Virginia‘s death toll from flooding is the highest for any U.S. state this year, with 16 deaths reported in Greenbrier County in southeast West Virginia, where the heaviest rain fell, and six in Kanahwa County, officials said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and state officials were assessing damage in at least six other counties and the state may ask for additional assistance, Tomblin said. Ohio and Jackson counties also reported one death each.
The death toll in West Virginia is the highest in any state from flooding this year. At least 16 people, including nine U.S. soldiers, were killed in flooding in Texas earlier in June.
Up to 10 inches (25.4 cm) of rain fell on Thursday in the mountainous state, sending torrents of water from rivers and streams through homes and causing widespread devastation.
Tomblin has declared a state of emergency in 44 of 55 counties and expects 400 members of theWest Virginia National Guard to help rescue efforts on Saturday. About 32,000 homes and businesses remained without power on Saturday.
Hundreds of people have been rescued and search and rescue teams were looking for more people on Saturday, said Tim Rock, spokesman for the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Some towns were completely surrounded by water and hundreds of houses and buildings have been lost, Rock said.
The Greenbrier resort was closed indefinitely and PGA Tour officials said on Saturday the Greenbrier Classic golf tournament due to begin on July 7 had been canceled because of extensive flood damage.
West Virginia received one-quarter of its annual rainfall in a single day and multiple rivers surged to dangerous levels, including the Elk River, which broke a record at one stage that had stood since 1888.
(Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by David Gregorio and Tom Brown)
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Jun 27
Slow Down To Feel Alive
Posted in: Today's Chili
How can we connect heart-to-heart if we are so hectic that there’s no pause to cross the street from me to you? Fast pace locks us in the cubicle-like environment where everything is a heavy shade of grey. I don’t have patience to listen, I don’t have time to look, I don’t have energy to speak. To hear relaxing raindrops, to see the playfulness of sunrays? How?
Break free of the busy prison. Not with force, apply a gentle touch of… slowness instead.
Yes, it takes more time to meet with a friend face-to-face over a leisure lunch. Yes, it takes more effort to dedicate a full evening to spend with your romantic partner. No rush, no demands, just to be together, enjoy each other. The rewards are well worth it and far reaching. Oh, the soothing pleasure of being present in a genuine conversation, in a sincere embrace. No tension, just heartfelt exchange, a communion of loving Souls. I look at you, and see you. You listen to me, and hear me. Compassion. I forgive you and you forgive me. We let go of the past to start afresh in the brilliant warmth of the high Summer’s Sun.
Mhm, wait, I forgot something, I jumped ahead… Let’s start again… Schedule some non-hurried time for yourself. Tend to your own garden first so that you are comfortable to invite people over and offer them wonderful blossoms of your Soul.
Do you have the patience and perseverance to be diligently clearing away the weeds in your Soul’s garden day after day? Yeap, that’s what it takes. It’s a never-ending process. “After enlightenment, do the dishes. After ecstasy, do the laundry.” I’m sure you’ve come across these sayings in one form or another. Disappointments can quickly overgrow our buds of joy if we are not paying attention, if we don’t keep up with the work. Outside noise and inner chatter can easily drown the voice of Truth within us.
Growing from immature, egoistic “i” into a wise, mature “I” is a life-long pilgrimage, not a quick fix short run. Finding the unique essence of your Soul requires ongoing nourishment with soothing slowness to apply self-compassion and healthy curiosity.
Remember to tend the garden of your Soul with tender love each day.
Nourish the Spirit flowers with vibrant waters of life.
Allow your joys to merge with the Spirit’s sparkling Light.
Sonnets to Orpheus I, 22
Rainer Maria Rilke
We are the achievers.
But this march of time,
consider it as nothing
among what endures.
All that hurries
will soon be done,
but that which lingers
is what consecrates us.
O, youth, don’t waste
your courage on speed,
or squander it in flight.
Everything is at rest:
darkness and bright,
blossom and book.
Translated by Mark S. Burrows, 2009
Over to you, dear Soulful Reader:
How will you slow down this week to hear your own true voice within?
This article first appeared on the Soulful Sparks of Inspiration website.
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Jun 27
Know My Name; Know Me
Posted in: Today's Chili
By Shawnta Barnes
My father, James; my mother, Lisa; my sisters Alice and Sherry and me, I was named Shawnta.
“Shawn-ta. Sha-want-ta. Shawn-na. Shawn-ni-ta.”
“No, it’s Shawn-tay.”
My name became a barrier that prevented me from feeling accepted at school.
One day in middle school, my seventh grade social studies teacher asked me to stay after class. I was a shy student and this made me nervous.
“Shawnta, I wanted to let you know that your parents spelled your name incorrectly. You need another letter after the ‘a’ to make it have the long a sound. I am going to fix your name on my roster to make it easier for me to remember.”
I nodded, took the late pass, and quickly hurried to my next class. I was used to my name being pronounced incorrectly, but I had never been told my parents misspelled my name. Why couldn’t she accept the way my parents spelled my name?
From that point on, any work I turned in would be returned with a mark made above the second ‘a’ in my name. My name would appear, “Shawntá,” and not “Shawnta.” Every time my teacher forced her view of how she believed my name should be spelled, she severed any opportunity I had to feel welcomed in her class. Every slash above that ‘a’ was a slash to my value, to my worth.
My experience has influenced my work as an educator; I know that making students feel welcomed begins with learning their name. On the first day of school, during my second year in the classroom, I saw the name Mone’y on my roster. I did not have a clue how to pronounce it, so I spelled it aloud. A girl at the back of the class raised her hand and said, “I know my name is ghetto.” I was bothered by her negative view of her name. I replied, “How do you pronounce your name?” She said, “Mo-nay.” At that moment, I could have moved on the next name on my roster, but I did not. I told her, “Your name is beautiful,” and her face lit up with a smile.
My personal experience also made me an advocate for students to my colleagues. An English language learner I worked with always had her name shortened by other teachers. When I began working with her, instead of calling her, “Nora,” I called her, “Norita.” A couple weeks later, she ran up to me in the hallway, wrapped her arms around my waist and said, “Thank you for calling me Norita. That’s my real name.” Later that day, another teacher asked why Norita hugged me.
“She is so reserved. I’ve never seen her hug anyone.”
“She was happy that I call her Norita. She doesn’t like it when people shorten her name. We should not impose another name on her.”
Learning a child’s name should not be a burden to a teacher. When teachers told me my name was wrong, or changed the spelling, or smirked about it, it made me believe something was wrong with me and I needed to change – that I was not acceptable as part of the school community. It is not my place to question or comment about a student’s name because it does not fit into my box of acceptable names. My role is to help all children find their place in society and discover who they want to become. This starts with knowing their name.
Shawnta S. Barnes is a literacy coach at Wendell Phillips Elementary in Indianapolis Public Schools and an adjunct instructor at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis School of Education. She is a 2016 Teach Plus Teaching Policy Fellow.
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Jun 27
Go Home, 2016, You're Drunk.
Posted in: Today's Chili2016, we’re staging this intervention because we love you. We are worried about your recent behavior, and we want to express concern about your health and your future. We are taking away your car keys and your booze and sitting you down for some real talk.
For a few months now, we’ve been worried about your nihilistic thoughts and depressive mood swings. You seem to really want to hurt yourself, and we love you and we don’t want that for you.
But your behavior isn’t just hurting you. It’s hurting all of us, and we need it to stop. You killed Alan Rickman, David Bowie and Prince. You gave Trump the microphone, and you’ve unleashed similar xenophobia in the U.K. to the point where it’s endangering global markets. We want to have you in our lives, but your erratic and destructive behavior has caused a lot of us to feel like we need to give you some pretty firm boundaries, 2016. If you don’t change course, you won’t be able to cause scenes at our parties, because you won’t be invited anymore.
But that’s not what we want. We want the old you, the one from January 1st — full of hope and potential. We think you’ve forgotten all the things that make you inherently wonderful. We have organized into a pit crew for you with a shared Google Doc. It’s on all of our phones. Look, it’s all here in the calendar: I’ll take you for walks in the afternoons; Jessica will take you to meetings; Lauren will make you some casserole; and Mollie will watch Golden Girls with you while you cry into pints mint chocolate chip ice cream. Luke will even enforce a “short, corrective house arrest” if it comes to that. (Tough love is called for sometimes, 2016, especially if you act out as much as you have in the last six months.) All your pit crew wants is to see you healthy again, to support you and help nurse you back to health.
But the thing is, 2016, you have to decide to change. You have to decide that you don’t want to kill everything in sight and snuff out your own promise prematurely. None of us can take that step for you.
It’s time to remember who you truly are, 2016. Your future is still bright! You’re only half over. The glass is half full!
Now hand over your keys.
Inspired by the “Go Home, 2016, you’re drunk” meme on twitter
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