Category: Technology

Despite how powerfully good it can be for those who engage in its entertaining videos and learn new tips, TikTok is increasing a growing threat to our privacy and security.

TikTok has gained a leading position in the social media platform world. All the cool kids use TikTok. And most don’t bat an eye while laughing at, liking, and sharing one video after another.

It’s addictive, informative and fun for millions. TikTok, even more than other social networks, comes at an enormous trade-off to your privacy and security because of how and what it gathers about your life. The threat posed by TikTok is so extreme that some countries have banned it altogether. It’s not uncommon for parents who work at big tech companies to forbid the use of TikTok by their own children.

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That’s not slowing its growth. So, how do tame this beast of all its bad traits?

Sure, the safest thing to do is never download or delete TikTok right away, but that’s not going to fly with most people who are deciding to throw caution to the wind.

Follow me here, because I think we can strike a balance and make everyone in the family happy while getting a lot smarter about what TikTok is doing behind the scenes with our lives. There’s one obvious wake-up call I ask of every parent.

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Ask this one question

Am I okay with the government of communist China having access to my child’s intimate personal details, knowing what gets their attention, and always tracking their whereabouts?

That’s not all TikTok is harvesting of your family’s security and privacy. They are stealthily scraping bits and pieces of your life to serve up videos it’s learned you’ll watch and to turn you into a juicy ad target. That part is the obvious trade-off we expect in a data mining financial model that is standard for every major big tech media company.

The Chinese government can access your data from TikTok

The concerning part unique to TikTok is that it is owned by a parent company ByteDance whose home is in mainland China. And in that country, the government laws require ByteDance to give access to its data for any reason whatsoever and without any sort of court order or warrant. TikTok maintains that it is operated independently of ByteDance but data moving from its U.S. servers to mainland China has already been identified.

So what, right? TikTok collects a massive array of data that it then processes through a machine algorithm to master aspects of your life in extraordinary detail. TikTok is known to record the device you are using, your location, IP address, search history, everything in all your messages, what you watch and for how long, biometric information including your face and voice prints, whom you know and how you interact with them.

TikTok knows more about you than you ever imagined

Sophisticated algorithms driving social media networks like TikTok can identify what topics and emotional tones capture your attention most easily.

All this crafting of your communications and interactions makes for an easy target for TikTok to steer in one direction or another knowing what you will react to like a puppet. It may sound like science fiction, but it is the very reason why many Silicon Valley executives do not allow their own children on TikTok and several other social media platforms.

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How to limit TikTok from prying into your privacy and security

Let’s narrow the exposure we are handing over to TikTok by changing a few basic settings. Follow these steps with everyone in the family who uses TikTok. Then, share these tips with anyone you love who could benefit from getting a bit of leverage over TikTok. 

#1 Disable sharing your contacts with TikTok

How to turn off access to Your Contacts and Facebook Friends

1. Launch TikTok app
2. Go to your profile on the bottom right, then tap the three-line menu in the top right corner
3. Tap Settings and Privacy > Privacy >Sync Contacts and Facebook Friends
4. Turn toggles off to gray to block access to contacts and Facebook Friends

#2 Turn off ad targeting

How to disable personalized Ad Targeting

1. Launch TikTok app
2. Go to your profile on the bottom right, then tap the three-line menu in the top right corner
3. Tap Settings and Privacy
4. Scroll down to Ads and click that row
5. Under Your Ads Settings, toggle Using Off-TikTok activity for ad targeting to gray

#3 Keep your profile anonymous

How to make your account private

1. Launch TikTok app
2. Go to your profile on the bottom right, then tap the three-line menu in the top right corner
3. Tap Settings and Privacy > Privacy > toggle on Private Account to on position so that it is blue
4. Toggle off Activity Status

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#4 Limit how people can find you

How to turn off Suggest Your Account to Others

1. Launch TikTok app
2. Go to your profile on the bottom right, then tap the three-line menu in the top right corner
3. Tap Settings and Privacy > Privacy >  Suggest Your Account to Others > turn off all 4 options

#5 Hide what you ‘like’

How to prevent TikTok from sharing your ‘likes’

1. Launch TikTok app
2. Go to your profile on the bottom right, then tap the three-line menu in the top right corner
3. Tap Settings and Privacy > Privacy > tap Following List in the Interactions list and set to Only Me

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The one thing everyone on TikTok should do for their safety

Download what TikTok knows about you by requesting your data

1. Launch TikTok app
2. Go to your profile on the bottom right, then tap the three-line menu in the top right corner
3. Tap Settings and Privacy > Account > tap Download Your Data

It typically takes a few days to receive the link to your TikTok data to download. Be on the lookout for the TikTok link containing your data report since you only have 4 days before the link expires.

Send me a note if you aren’t as shocked as I was when I saw what TikTok had recorded of my life. That’s one of the reasons I deleted TikTok for good.

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Barely a year after Tanzania capped the commissions that e-hailing firms like Uber and Bolt charge their partners at 15%, the authority in charge has backtracked on the order, taking away drivers’ prospects of increased earnings.

The fee was increased to 25% effective last Sunday after the Land and Transport Regulatory Authority (Latra) issued a notice on December 30, which superseded the initial direction of March last year. Latra sets and approves fares for all operators including those in the ride-hailing sector.

Uber and its main rival in Europe and Africa, Bolt, halted some of their services in April last year claiming that reducing the commission on partners would dent their earnings. However, the reduced fee meant increased incomes for drivers, who have in the past, like their counterparts in Kenya, protested poor earnings from the apps.

Uber resumes full operations in Tanzania

Uber, which halted UberX, UberXL and UberSave services in April, kicked off efforts to resume full operations Monday, TechCrunch has learnt, joining Bolt whose services were restored in October. Uber charged a 25% commission while Bolt charged 20%. Their withdrawal left the market to homegrown brands like Little, which charges a 15% commission, and Ping.

“We made the difficult decision to pause our operations in Tanzania because the regulatory changes that were introduced created an environment that was challenging for our business to operate under. We have, since the pause, maintained our engagements with LATRA and other regulatory bodies in Tanzania as a show of our commitment to resume full operations in the market, providing drivers with an avenue to earn and riders, an enhanced mobility option,” said Uber’s East and West Africa head of communications, said Lorraine Onduru.

“We welcome the new pricing order issued by the Land and Transport Regulatory Authority which we believe will significantly contribute to the growth and development of the ride-hailing industry in Tanzania,” said Onduru.

The resumption of the e-hailing services comes after stakeholders, including representatives ofUber and Bolt lobbied for the rates to be reviewed; leading Tanzania to announce last September that a middle ground had been found and the firms would resume operations.

“Our efforts and engagements were aimed at ensuring an enabling regulatory environment for mobility services in Tanzania among drivers, vehicle owners, passengers and ride-hailing operators. The overall objective was to develop the nascent ride-hailing sector in the market,” said a Bolt spokesperson, adding that the company reinstated all its services on October 13, 2022.

Bolt said that following the decision by LATRA, it will soon introduce some changes on passenger fare pricing.

Aside from Tanzania, Kenya also capped commission at 18% last year, after new regulations came into force. Efforts by ride-hailing operators, to have new commission scraped, have been unsuccessful so far.

PeopleFund, a South Korean marketplace that connects borrowers and investors to enable lending, has recently added $20 million to its $63.4 million Series C.

Existing backer Bain Capital led the extension, with participation from previous investors such as Access Ventures, CLSA Capital Partners Lending Ark Asia, D3 Jubilee Partners, 500 Global, Kakao Investment, TBT Partners and IBX Partners.

The additional funding brings PeopleFund’s total raised to around $100 million in equity. Apart from the capital, PeopleFund also secured $240 million in debt financing in 2022 from Goldman Sachs, CLSA Lending Ark Asia and Bain Capital. The company did not disclose its valuation when asked.

In 2021, PeopleFund raised $63.4 million (75.9 billion won) in equity for Series C, also led by Bain Capital, to further develop its credit-scoring system.

PeopleFund plans to use its new capital to continue to advance its AI-powered risk management and credit scoring system for its users, which includes borrowers and lenders. On top of that, the startup aims to launch a B2B service this year to provide AI-enabled customized credit scoring system services to financial institutions.

Another reason for its runway extension is to meet one of the requirements for a P2P lending license, according to industry sources. In South Korea, P2P lending marketplaces must pass yearly requirements to get a license from Financial Services Commission (FSC) to run their business. To operate its business in 2023, PeopleFund, which reports that it is making a profit loss, must own a minimum capital ranging from $400,000 to $2.4 million, depending on its loan balance. (The loan balance is the remaining amount of loans made by PeopleFund that the borrowers have not yet repaid.) PeopleFund’s loan balance was $264.3 million (326.8 billion won) as of December 2022, the company said. That means the outfit’s requirement capital is around $1.5 million to $2.4 million, according to the industry sources and local media.

Joey Kim, founder of PeopleFund, said in a statement that “2022 will be marked as a year of turbulence for fintech, with the global public market adjustment alongside changes in the macro environment. Meanwhile, the Korean consumer lending market has undergone a dramatic transition into the mobile sphere, with big players like KakaoPay and Toss leading the change. This transition, coupled with the instability of the credit market, is opening up opportunities for tech-based digital lenders and its technologies to highlight our competence compared to traditional financial institutions.”

The outfit says its total amount of loans deployed to borrowers to date was estimated at $1.3 billion in December, up from $936 billion in October 2021. The startup says it has seen more than 56.7% growth in the number of borrowers and 9.6% in the number of lenders compared to the previous year. The number of its borrowers and lenders was 20,688 and 2,943,883, respectively, as of December last year.

The Seoul-based P2P lending startup, founded in 2015, successfully closed its extension. Still, the impact of the extremely tough market condition was inevitable, leading to several tech industry layoffs in the last few months. PeopleFund confirmed that it had cut about 10% of its staff in the fourth quarter of 2022 to “operate the business efficiently and effectively” amid the possibility of a worsening economy. PeopleFund had nearly 150 people as of December 2021.

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You may not realize that there is an easy yet powerful setting to keep your information better protected even if your iPhone gets taken by the wrong person, and it’s a super simple process. 

We spend a lot of money on our iPhones from purchasing the device itself to then having to pay for our monthly plans, so we want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to protect our device. 

Sometimes bad things happen that are out of control, and our precious smartphones get lost or stolen so take a moment to make this quick tweak for your own security. 

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How can I protect my iPhone? 

The main form of protection that you can create for your iPhone right now is to disable access to your phone’s Control Center when your iPhone is locked. If you block access to your Control Center from others, then thieves will be unable to turn on Airplane Mode, which would potentially allow them to bypass your lock screen. Every iPhone owner should take out their phones right now and follow these easy steps to avoid this troubling threat. 

What does the Control Center look like? 

To view the Control Center on your iPhone, simply swipe down from the top right-hand corner of your screen. This reveals the Control Center menu which gives the user quick access to features like Airplane Mode, screen brightness control, flashlight, camera and more. 

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How do I disable access to my Control Center? 

• Unlock your iPhone and go to your Settings app.
• Scroll down a bit and select Face ID & Passcode.

• Enter your passcode to reveal the menu.

• Go to the menu section titled ALLOW ACCESS WHEN LOCKED.

• Under this menu, toggle off the Control Center option.

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Should I disable access to other features while my phone is locked? 

There are two other features that you may want to consider disabling while your iPhone is locked. The first feature is access to Accessories. This would prevent thieves from connecting your iPhone to a USB device, which would give them a chance to unlock your phone. To make sure this feature is switched off, follow the same steps we listed above for turning off the Control Center and toggling off Accessories. 

The other feature that you may want to consider disabling is access to your Apple Wallet. This will prevent any purchases from being made by those who do not have access to your passcode to unlock your phone. To disable access to your Apple Wallet while your phone is locked, follow the steps listed above for turning off the Control Center and toggling off Wallet. 

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Are there any other steps I should take to protect my iPhone? 

Three important steps you can take to further protect your iPhone are making sure the Find My feature is always turned on so that you can locate your phone when it goes missing. This allows you to locate your device on a map, play a sound to help locate it, display a message on the lock screen, or remotely erase all data on the device.  

Also, make sure that you have a passcode and Face ID set up to unlock your screen so that thieves cannot automatically gain access to your information. Additionally, you can enable two-factor authentication for your iCloud account to add an extra layer of security.  

How to turn on Find My 

• Open the Settings app.
• Tap your name at the top of the screen.

• Make sure all settings are toggled On.

How to set up a passcode:

• Open the Settings app.
• Tap Face ID & Passcode.
• Select Turn Passcode On.
• Enter a 6-digit passcode.
• How to set up Face ID.
• Open the Settings app.
• Tap Face ID & Passcode. 
• Enter your 6-digit passcode.
• Tap Set Up Face ID.
• Follow the prompts given to allow your iPhone to get a full first scan of your face.
• Tap Continue when you’re done with the first scan.
• Follow the prompts given to allow your iPhone to get a full-second scan of your face.
• Tap Done.

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Were these steps helpful to you? We’d love to hear your feedback. 

For more Apple tips, head over to CyberGuy.com and search “Apple” by clicking the magnifying glass at the top of my website. And be sure to subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by clicking the “Free newsletter” link at the top of my website.

Copyright 2023 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved. CyberGuy.com articles and content may contain affiliate links that earn a commission when purchases are made.

Meta’s Oversight Board, which independently evaluates difficult content moderation decisions, has overturned the company’s takedown of two posts that depicted a non-binary and transgender person’s bare chests. The case represents a failure of a convoluted and impractical nudity policy, the Board said, and recommended that Meta take a serious look at revising it.

The decision concerned two people who, as part of a fundraising campaign for one of the couple who was hoping to undergo top surgery (generally speaking the reduction of breast tissue). They posted two images to Instagram, in 2021 and 2022, both with bare chests but nipples covered, and included a link to their fundraising site.

These posts were repeatedly flagged (by AI and users) and Meta ultimately removed them, as violations of the “Sexual Solicitation Community Standard,” basically because they combined nudity with asking for money. Although the policy is plainly intended to prevent solicitation by sex workers (another issue entirely), it was repurposed here to remove perfectly innocuous content.

When the couple appealed the decision and brought it to the Oversight Board, Meta reversed it as an “error.” But the Board took it up anyway because “removing these posts is not in line with Meta’s Community Standards, values or human rights responsibilities. These cases also highlight fundamental issues with Meta’s policies.”

They wanted to take the opportunity to point out how impractical the policy is as it exists, and to recommend to Meta that it take a serious look at whether its approach here actually reflects its stated values and priorities.

The restrictions and exceptions to the rules on female nipples are extensive and confusing, particularly as they apply to transgender and non-binary people. Exceptions to the policy range from protests, to scenes of childbirth, and medical and health contexts, including top surgery and breast cancer awareness. These exceptions are often convoluted and poorly defined. In some contexts, for example, moderators must assess the extent and nature of visible scarring to determine whether certain exceptions apply. The lack of clarity inherent in this policy creates uncertainty for users and reviewers, and makes it unworkable in practice.

Essentially: even if this policy did represent a humane and appropriate approach to moderating nudity, it’s not scalable. For one reason or another, Meta should modify it. The summary of the Board’s decision is here and includes a link to a more complete discussion of the issues.

The obvious threat Meta’s platforms face, however, should they relax their nudity rules, is porn. Founder Mark Zuckerberg has said in the past that making his platforms appropriate for everyone necessitates taking a clear stance on sexualized nudity. You’re welcome to post sexy stuff and link to your OnlyFans, but no hardcore porn in Reels, please.

But the Oversight Board says this “public morals” stance is likewise in need of revision (this excerpt from the full report lightly edited for clarity):

Meta’s rationale of protecting “community sensitivity” merits further examination. This rationale has the potential to align with the legitimate aim of “public morals.” That said, the Board notes that the aim of protecting “public morals” has sometimes been improperly invoked by governmental speech regulators to violate human rights, particularly those of members of minority and vulnerable groups.

…Moreover, the Board is concerned about the known and recurring disproportionate burden on expression that have been experienced by women, transgender, and non-binary people due to Meta’s policies…

The Board received public comments from many users that expressed concern about the presumptive sexualization of women’s, trans and non-binary bodies, when no comparable assumption of sexualization of images is applied to cisgender men.

The Board has taken the bull by the horns here. There’s no sense dancing around it: the policy of recognizing some bodies as inherently sexually suggestive, but not others, is simply untenable in the context of Meta’s purportedly progressive stance on such matters. Meta wants to have its cake and eat it too: give lip service to people like the trans and NB people like those who brought this to its attention, but also respect the more restrictive morals of conservative groups and pearl-clutchers worldwide.

The Board Members who support a sex and gender-neutral adult nudity policy recognize that under international human rights standards as applied to states, distinctions on the grounds of protected characteristics may be made based on reasonable and objective criteria and when they serve a legitimate purpose. They do not believe that the distinctions within Meta’s nudity policy meet that standard. They further note that, as a business, Meta has made human rights commitments that are inconsistent with an approach that restricts online expression based on the company’s perception of sex and gender.

Citing several reports and internationally-negotiated definitions and trends, the Board’s decision suggests that a new policy be forged that abandons the current structure of categorizing and removing images, substituting something more reflective of modern definitions of gender and sexuality. This may, of course, they warn, leave the door open to things like nonconsensual sexual imagery being posted (much of this is automatically flagged and taken down, something that might change under a new system), or an influx of adult content. The latter, however, can be handled by other means that total prohibition.

When reached for comment, Meta noted that it had already reversed the removal and that it welcomes the Board’s decision. It added: “We know more can be done to support the LGBTQ+ community, and that means working with experts and LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations on a range of issues and product improvements.” I’ve asked for specific examples of organizations, issues, or improvements and will update this post if I hear back.

Typing with your voice – dictating text – has become an extremely common way to communicate. Better yet, you don’t even need a stenographer. (Now I’m dating myself)

I recently watched a friend quietly mumbling into his iPhone while replying to email. He explained that it’s become incredibly accurate and far easier to speak his replies rather than reach for his glasses and fumble with the virtual keyboard.

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Thanks to recent features on both phones and websites, you’re able to dictate your messages or documents. Whether you don’t have an extra free hand to type something, are on the run and need to quickly respond to a text, or find dictating helpful for a personal reason, check out the helpful ways to use the talk-to-text features on different devices below.

Plus, we do have one major warning if you use the dictating features on any tech now.

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Dictating and Talk-to-text on devices

You can use this feature in most apps that allow you to type – including Messages, Email, Safari, Docs, Pages, Notes, and even dating apps and more. Before you get to dictating on any of your devices, be sure to follow this helpful tip to type the most accurate message.

How to use specific commands to include punctuation and formatting.

In the recent iOS 16 update, iPhone now supports automatic punctuation if you’ve got a more current model the A12 bionic chip onboard. Even though I’ve got the most current model, I find myself dictating the old-fashioned way since the new auto-punctuation option doesn’t seem to work all the time.

Here’s the tried-and-true proven method to add punctuation on iPhone.

If you want to end your sentence with a period, exclamation point or question mark, you’ll want to include that in your dictation. For example, if you wanted to type this in a message:

I am well. How are you?

You would dictate:

“I am well period how are you question mark”

You can also sometimes add formatting, including saying “new line” or “new paragraph.” I’ll give some additional command examples later on depending on the device at hand.

How to dictate on your iPhone

Setting aside the not-so-thrilling auto-punctation feature on newer iPhone, here’s what works really well. If you have an Apple iPhone or iPad, your on-screen keyboard will give you the option to dictate or “talk to text” with a simple tap. For iPhone 6s or later or iPad, you can even use this feature without the internet.

Here’s how to use your voice to type on iPhone or iPad:

Whenever you open an app and go type something, this keyboard will appear:

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To dictate a message – skip the button with sound waves next to the text box. That will allow you to record your actual voice in a message.

Instead, tap the microphone button on the bottom right of your keyboard

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As soon as you tap the microphone button, you can begin dictating your message. You’ll see text appear momentarily as you speak, and it often corrects itself as you continue to speak.

To change the language you’re dictating in, hold down the microphone button and click another language if you have it set up in your keyboards. To add a new language keyboard, after holding down the microphone tap Dictation Settings, tap Keyboards, and click Add New Keyboard…

Extra iPhone commands for talking to text:

• “Quote” and “end quote” for when you want your text to appear between quotation marks
• “New paragraph”
• “New line”
• “Cap” to capitalize the next word
• “Caps on” and “Caps off” to capitalize the first letter of each word
• “Smiley” will insert a smiley face
• “Frowny” will insert a frowny face
• “Winky” will insert a winky face
• As with other dictations, always include punctuation like period, exclamation point, comma, question mark, etc.

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How to dictate on your Android

Just like iPhone, your Android phone or tablet keyboard will provide the option to dictate instead of type in most apps where you’re able to type. If your phone doesn’t have this, another option is to download and install the Gboard app from the Google Play Store and you’ll have loads more typing capabilities (including the swipe text feature which is one of my five favorite Android tricks). You can learn more about other Android tips by typing in the web address CyberGuy.com and searching the word “Android.”

Here’s how to use your voice to type on an Android phone or tablet:

Whenever you open an app and go type something, a keyboard will appear typically on the top right of your keyboard:

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When the words “Speak now” appear, start dictating what you’d like to type. Your words will convert to text and appear as you continue your message.

Extra Android commands for talking to text:

• “Full stop” for period
• “Enter” for a line space

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How to dictate on your computer or any device

If you want to create a document and dictate into that document onto any device, including Macs, PCs, iPhones and Androids, we suggest you try Google Docs.

Google Docs is free to use with a Gmail or Google account. If you don’t use Gmail, you can use any email address to create a Google Account (which gives you access to not only Google Docs, but also other Google programs and Youtube).

Follow these steps to dictate using Google Docs.

How to use Google Docs to dictate text with Google Chrome

1. Before you use Google Docs on the Chrome browser, make sure your device’s microphone is turned on.

On a Mac, you’ll want to visit System Preferences and on a PC you’ll visit the Control Panel. When you first use this feature, you may need to make sure your computer has given Google Chrome access to your Microphone. Follow the pop-ups on your screen to allow your microphone to be used in the app.

2. Open Google Docs in your Chrome browser, and either open a document you’re working on or create a new Blank one.

3. Click Tools along the options on top, and tap Voice Typing.

4. A pop-up with a microphone button will appear over your document. Click it to use your voice to dictate.

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5. When the microphone turns red, you can speak anything you want converted to text.

6. If you make a mistake, you can use your cursor to fix it without disabling the microphone. Then move the cursor back to where you’d like to continue to talk-to-text.

Extra commands for talking to text on Google Docs on Chrome:

Google Docs by far has the longest list of commands you can use to edit text as you speak. These commands are only available if you’re using English.

• “Select paragraph” to select an entire paragraph
• “Select _____” you can select a word, multiple words, phrase, list, line and more
• “Italics” or “Italicize” to add italics to selected text
• “Bold” to add bold to selected text
• “Strikethrough,” “underline,” “subscript” and “superscript” are some of the other formatting options
• “Titlecase” or “lowercase” to change your text case options
• “Text color” “Highlight” “Highlight [color],” “Remove highlight” are some of your color options
• “Increase font size” or “decrease font size” or even say what number font size you’d like between 6-400
• Format your paragraph with commands like “Increase indent” for an indented paragraph, “Line spacing double” or “center align” “align left” “align right”
• Create lists with “create bulleted list” or “create numbered list” and then update your list with “insert bullet” or “insert number”

How to dictate on Google Docs on other devices

If you’re using Google Docs on an internet browser that isn’t Google Chrome on a computer, you’ll need to turn your computer’s dictation function on.

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On Mac

1. Open System Preferences

2. Click Keyboard

3. Tap the Dictation tab

4. Next to Dictation: press On

5. Use the default shortcut setting or choose your own

6. Now when you’re typing elsewhere, you can use this shortcut

On PC

If you have Windows 10 or above, you can use this.

Windows 10

1. When you go to type, press the Windows logo key + H to open the dictation toolbar

2. This will start your dictating function automatically, so speak as you would normally

3. Say “Stop dictation” to disable the function

Windows 11 

1. Press Windows logo key + H on a hardware keyboard. Press the microphone key next to the Spacebar on the touch keyboard

2. Either click the microphone button to stop, or say “stop listening” or “stop dictation” to turn off dictation. You can also pause dictation by saying “pause voice typing” or “pause dictation.”

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On iPhone or Android

You can dictate in Google Docs just like any other app following the same steps as you would for both iPhone and Android. While in the Google Docs app, use the built-in microphone on your keyboard to dictate as you wish.

One major warning for dictating talk-to-text

The number one warning we can offer you if you use these features is to look over your text before sending any messages. Whether you’re dictating a text message, email or even a list – glance over your text before sending it off or using it anywhere! There are plenty of texts we’ve all received where the message isn’t quite right.

The most common mistake with dictate features has to do with autocorrect. While talk-to-text tech is pretty accurate, mistakes happen. Autocorrect has been known to mishear words and replace them with humorous or sometimes inappropriate words. Checking your dictated text is always the safest way to ensure a correct message. 

Have you ever used talk-to-text features on any of your devices and had it turn into a misunderstood train wreck? Keep it clean and comment below. : )

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With inflation at a 40 year high, we’re all spending more than we want to on heating and air conditioning.  But what if those costs could be brought down through simple logistics? 

HVAC – or heating, ventilation, and air conditioning – is a $100 billion industry, but it hasn’t seen many logistical upgrades in the past few decades; the supply chain technology is outdated, equipment isn’t standardized, and there was no centralized database linking technicians, suppliers, and manufacturers – until now. 

The tech company Bluon was originally conceived to create a new type of environmentally-friendly refrigerant, and they succeeded.  But when they tried to bring the product to market, they were met with resistance from an industry still stuck in the past in many ways.  They found that technicians couldn’t adapt their product to existing systems because of a lack of technical support, so they created the Bluon app, which has now become their main product, and a must-have for thousands of independent technicians across the country.  Now it’s bringing fresh ideas and creating an inadvertent but much-needed disruption to the industry. 

The Bluon app helps technicians and consumers by cataloging for the first time the thousands of different HVAC systems and repair parts in one easily-searchable location.  It’s a game-changer for techs who often have to deal with dozens of competing systems in a single day.  Chairman and CEO Peter Capuciati says the app “has become, sort of, loved by the industry at large because everybody wins, right? It’s making everything quicker, more productive, more, more efficient.”

The app also connects techs with local distributors when replacement parts are needed, meaning it’s no longer necessary for technicians to call around to various nationwide distributors to find parts, often at an inflated price.  And it connects those technicians to a specialized “help” line staffed with experts.  It all means that a heating or air conditioning problem that once took hours to diagnose and fix now only takes minutes. “To take a unit from a 30% efficiency loss to a 10% is a really not complicated,” says Capuciati. “You are benefiting the consumer by hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands of dollars per year.”

And it’s not just benefitting the bottom line.  Those types of efficiency upgrades are having a huge environmental impact as well, reducing carbon emissions by an average of 500 metric tons per tech, per year.  And with more than 150,00 techs now using Bluon – about half of all HVAC techs in the U.S. – those numbers are adding up.  Capuciati credits the increased support provided by the app, saying “The power of improving, supporting technicians to reducing C02 and greenhouse gas emissions is insanely powerful. We are doing about five times more benefit than all electric vehicles sold this year.”

There’s no big Apple event today, but the company’s got quite a bit of news to share this morning. In addition to the new Mac Mini, a pair of new MacBook Pro just dropped, sporting souped up versions of the M2 chips.

The 14- and 16-inch versions of the company’s high-end laptops now ship with a choice of the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. The new Mini sports an M2 Pro option (in addition to the default M2), but the new Pros are the first — and thus far only — system to get the M2 Max chip. The company says the top line system is ” up to 6x faster” than the last generation of Intel systems (if you’re able to remember back that far).

“MacBook Pro with Apple silicon has been a game changer, empowering pros to push the limits of their workflows while on the go and do things they never thought possible on a laptop,” Greg Joswiak says in a release. “Today the MacBook Pro gets even better. With faster performance, enhanced connectivity, and the longest battery life ever in a Mac, along with the best display in a laptop, there’s simply nothing else like it.”

Both models are available for pre-order today and are set to start shipping in exactly a week, on January 24.

Cumul.io, the company behind a low-code business intelligence (BI) analytics platform for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, has raised €10 million ($10.8 million) in a Series A round of funding.

Founded out of Belgium in 2015, Cumul.io works in a similar space to well-established BI incumbents such as Tableau and Looker, but sets itself apart with a focus on bringing embedded analytics to SaaS applications specifically.

Embedded analytics, for the uninitiated, is where companies offer data reporting and visualizations directly inside their software, rather than having to use a separate, standalone BI application — this brings convenience and simplicity to growing companies that would rather focus their resources on their core competencies.

“More and more users of SaaS products or software platforms expect insights and data to be made available directly inside their core apps, as a native component,” Cumul.io CEO and cofounder Karel Callens explained to TechCrunch. “SaaS companies are looking for solutions that can be rolled out and marketed quickly, are easy to use, and can be scaled and adapted with minimal effort to keep costs low.”

With Cumul.io, its customers — which include venture-backed SaaS scale-ups such as Dixa — can integrate white-labeled analytics and dashboards into their software by connecting just about any data source, drag-and-drop specific features to customize their dashboards, and then copy-paste a snippet of code into their application to serve thousands of end-users.

Misconceptions

While Cumul.io is certainly comparable to the likes of Looker and Tableau in terms of the sphere in which it operates, Callens reckons its most direct competitor is actually engineering teams who might have a general aversion to third-party embedded analytics providers, choosing to stitch their own solution together instead.

“Many product and engineering teams still have the misconception that using an embedded analytics vendor will limit their flexibility, compared to building it out on their own,” Callens added. “There’s still a lot of education involved on how powerful and flexible low-code tools nowadays can be.”

Prior to now, Cumul.io had raised around €3.1 million ($3.4 million) in funding, and with its fresh cash injection the company said that it plans to bolster its headcount across its offices in Leuven and Genk in Belgium, as well as its New York hub. Indeed, the company said that more than a third of its revenue already emanates from the North American market.

Cumul.io’s Series A round was led by France-based early stage VC firm Hi Inov-Dentressangle, with participation from Axeleo Capital, LRM, and SmartFin.

Tel Aviv
CNN
 — 

The red-headed man wearing what looks like the ultimate Christmas sweater walks up to the camera. A yellow quadrant surrounds him. Facial recognition software immediately identifies the man as … a giraffe?

This case of mistaken identity is no accident — it’s literally by design. The sweater is part of the debut Manifesto collection by Italian startup Cap_able. As well as tops, it includes hoodies, pants, t-shirts and dresses. Each one sports a pattern, known as an “adversarial patch,” designed by artificial intelligence algorithms to confuse facial recognition software: either the cameras fail to identify the wearer, or they think they’re a giraffe, a zebra, a dog, or one of the other animals embedded into the pattern.

“When I’m in front of a camera, I don’t have a choice of whether I give it my data or not,” says co-founder and CEO, Rachele Didero. “So we’re creating garments that can give you the possibility of making this choice. We’re not trying to be subversive.”

Didero, 29, who’s studying for a PhD in “Textile and Machine Learning for Privacy” at Milan’s Politecnico — with a stint at MIT’s Media Lab — says the idea for Cap_able came to her when she was on a Masters exchange at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. While there, she read about how tenants in Brooklyn had fought back against their landlord’s plans to install a facial recognition entry system for their building.

“This was the first time I heard about facial recognition,” she says. “One of my friends was a computer science engineer, so together we said, ‘This is a problem and maybe we can merge fashion design and computer science to create something you can wear every day to protect your data.’”

Coming up with the idea was the easy part. To turn it into reality they first had to find — and later design — the right “adversarial algorithms” to help them create images that would fool facial recognition software. Either they would create the image — of our giraffe, say — and then use the algorithm to adjust it. Or they set the colors, size, and form they wanted the image or pattern to take, and then had the algorithm create it.

“You need a mindset in between engineering and fashion,” explains Didero.

Whichever route they took, they had to test the images on a well-known object detection system called YOLO, one of the most commonly-used algorithms in facial recognition software.

In a now-patented process, they would then create a physical version of the pattern, using a Computerized Knitwear Machine, which looks like a cross between a loom and a giant barbecue. A few tweaks here and there to attain the desired look, size and position of the images on the garment, and they could then create their range, all made in Italy, from Egyptian cotton.

Didero says the current clothing items work 60% to 90% of the time when tested with YOLO. Cap_able’s adversarial algorithms will improve, but the software it’s trying to fool could also get better, perhaps even faster.

“It’s an arms race,” says Brent Mittelstadt, director of research and associate professor at the Oxford Internet Institute. He likens it to the battle between software that produces deep fakes, and the software designed to detect them. Except clothing can’t download updates.

“It may be that you purchase it, and then it’s only good for a year, or two years or five years, or however long it’s going to take to actually improve the system to such a degree where it would ignore the approach being used to fool them in the first place,” he said.

And with prices starting at $300, he notes, these clothes may end up being merely a niche product.

Yet their impact may go beyond preserving the privacy of whoever buys and wears them.

“One of the key advantages is it helps create a stigma around surveillance, which is really important to encourage lawmakers to create meaningful rules, so the public can more intuitively resist really corrosive and dangerous kinds of surveillance,” said Woodrow Hartzog, a professor at Boston University School of Law.

Cap_able isn’t the first initiative to meld privacy protection and design. At the recent World Cup in Qatar, creative agency Virtue Worldwide came up with flag-themed face paint for fans seeking to fool the emirate’s legion of facial recognition cameras.

Adam Harvey, a Berlin-based artist focused on data, privacy, surveillance, and computer vision, has designed makeup, clothing and apps aimed at enhancing privacy. In 2016, he created Hyperface, a textile incorporating “false-face computer vision camouflage patterns,” and what might qualify as an artistic forerunner to what Cap_able is now trying to do commercially.

“It’s a fight, and the most important aspect is that this fight is not over,” says Shira Rivnai Bahir, a lecturer at the Data, Government and Democracy program at Israel’s Reichman University. “When we go to protests on the street, even if it doesn’t fully protect us, it gives us more confidence, or a way of thinking that we are not fully giving ourselves to the cameras.”

Rivnai Bahir, who’s about to submit her PhD thesis exploring the role of anonymity and secrecy practices in digital activism, cites the Hong Kong protesters’ use of umbrellas, masks and lasers as some of the more analog ways people have fought back against the rise of the machines. But these are easily spotted — and confiscated — by the authorities. Doing the same on the basis of someone’s sweater pattern may prove trickier.

Cap_able launched a Kickstarter campaign late last year. It raised €5,000. The company now plans to join the Politecnico’s accelerator program, to refine its business model, before pitching investors later in the year.

When Didero’s worn the garments, she says people comment on her “cool” clothes, before admitting: “Maybe that’s because I live in Milan or New York, where it’s not the craziest thing!”

Fortunately, more demure ranges are in the offing, with patterns that are less visible to the human eye, but which can still befuddle the cameras. Flying under the radar may also help Cap_able-clothed people avoid sanction from the authorities in places like China, where facial recognition was a key part of efforts to identify Uyghurs in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, or Iran, which is reportedly planning to use it to identify hijab-less women on the metro.

Big Brother’s eyes may become ever-more omnipresent, but perhaps in the future he’ll see giraffes and zebras instead of you.

Late last week, in a rare sit-down before a small audience, this editor spent an hour with Sam Altman, the former president of Y Combinator and, since 2019, the CEO of OpenAI, the company he famously co-founded with Elon Musk and numerous others in 2015 to develop artificial intelligence for the “benefit of humanity.”

The crowd wanted to learn more about his plans for OpenAI, which has taken the world by storm in the last six weeks owing to the public release of its ChatGPT language model, a chatbot that has educators and others both dazzled and alarmed. (OpenAI’s DALL-E technology, which enables users to create digital images by simply describing what they envision, generated only slightly less buzz when it was released to the public earlier last year.)

But because Altman is also an active investor — one whose biggest return to date comes from the payments startup Stripe, he said at the event — we spent the first half of our time together focused on some of his most ambitious investments.

To learn about these, including a supersonic jet company and a startup that aims to help create babies from human skin cells, you might tune in for the 20-minute-long video below. You’ll also hear Altman’s thoughts about Twitter under the stewardship of Elon Musk, and why he is “not super interested” in crypto or web3. (“I love the spirit of the web3 people,” Altman said with a shrug. “But I don’t intuitively feel why we need it.)

We’ll feature more from our fuller conversation soon. In the meantime, below is an excerpt from our discussion about one of Altman’s biggest bets: a nuclear fusion company called Helion Energy that, like OpenAI, is aiming to turn a long-elusive promise — this one of abundant energy — into reality. The excerpt has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

What makes a Sam Altman deal?

I try to just do things that I’m interested in at this point. One of the things I have realized is, all of the companies I think I have added a lot of value to are the ones that I sort of like to think about in my free time on a hike or whatever, and then text the founders and say, ‘Hey, I have this idea for you.’ Every founder deserves an investor who is going to think about them while they’re hiking. And so I’ve tried to hold myself to the stuff that I really love, which tends to be the hard tech, [involving] years of R&D, [is] capital intensive or is sort of risky research. But if it works, it really works.

One investment that’s particularly interesting is Helion Energy. You have been funding this company since 2015, but when it announced a $500 million round last year, including a $375 million check from you, I think that surprised people. There aren’t many people who can write a $375 million check.

Or, like, many people who would [invest it] in one risky fusion company.

Which have been your most successful investments to date?

I mean, probably on a multiples basis, definitely on a multiples basis: Stripe. Also I think that was, like, my second investment ever, so it seemed a lot easier. This was also a time when valuations were different; it was great. But, you know, I’ve been doing this for, like, 17 years, so there’ve been a lot of really good ones, and I’m super grateful to have been in Silicon Valley at what was such a magical time.

Helion is more than an investment to me. It’s the other thing beside OpenAI that I spend a lot of time on. I’m just super excited about what’s going to happen there.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had a nuclear fusion breakthrough last month. (Using an approach involving giant lasers, its scientists announced the first fusion reaction in a laboratory setting that produced more energy than was used to start the reaction.) I wonder what you think of its approach, which is very different froms that of Helion (which is building a fusion machine that’s reportedly long and narrow and will use aluminum magnates to compress fuel, then expand it to get electricity out of it).

I’m super happy for them. I think it’s a very cool scientific result. As they themselves said, I don’t think it’ll be commercially relevant. And that’s what I’m excited about — not getting fusion to work in a lab, although that is cool, too, but building a system that will work at a super-low cost.

If you look at the previous energy transitions, if you can get the costs of a new form of energy down, it can take over everything else in a couple of decades. And then also a system where we can create enough energy and enough reliable energy, both in terms of the machines not breaking, and also not having the intermittency or the need for storage of solar or wind or something like that. If we can create enough for Earth in, like, 10 years — and I think that’s actually the hardest challenge that Helion faces as we sketch out what it takes operationally to do that, to replace all the current generative capacity on Earth with fusion and to do it really fast and to think about what it really means to build a factory that’s capable of putting out two of these machines a day for a decade —  that’s really hard, but also a super fun problem.

So I’m very happy there’s a fusion race, I think that’s great. I’m also very happy solar and batteries are getting so cheap. But I think what will matter is who can deliver energy the cheapest and enough of it.

Why is Helion’s approach superior to what dozens of nations are working on in Southern France?

Yeah, well, that thing, Iter, I think probably will work, but to what I was just saying earlier, I think it will be commercially irrelevant. They also [themselves] think it’ll be commercially irrelevant.

The thing that is so exciting to me about Helion is that it’s a simple machine at an affordable cost and a reasonable size. There’s a bunch of different elements of it other than the giant [experimental machine being developed by these nations], but one that is very cool is that what comes out of the reaction is charged particles, not heat. Almost all other [alternatives], like a coal plant or natural gas plant or whatever, makes heat that drives a steam turbine. Helion makes charged particles that push back on the magnet and drive an electrical current down a wire. There’s no heat cycle at all. And so it can be a much simpler, much more efficient system.

I think is missed out of the whole discussion on fusion but [is] really great. It also means we don’t have to deal with much nuclear material. We don’t ever have dangerous waste or even a dangerous system. You could touch it pretty shortly after it turns off.

It’s building a big facility right now. Has it proven its thesis yet?

We’ll have more to share there shortly . . .

My general approach is, if there’s an area that I think is really important, like energy, for example, I tried to find the best fusion and the best fission company I can. They’re competitive in the sense that they’re both trying to make cheap energy, but we desperately need more cheap energy. It’s a huge market; I think they can both work.

The popular instant messaging app known as WhatsApp is no longer supported on certain older smartphone devices as of Dec. 31, 2022.

There are a total of 49 models that will not support that app anymore, including two iPhones, plus multiple Samsung, LG, and Huawei models.

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What is WhatsApp?

WhatsApp is an instant messaging app that is used to send messages, pictures, videos and audio files. It’s been super popular over the years because of its features like group chatting, voice messages, and location sharing, and it is commonly used among those who wish to message friends who live in other countries.

It works like any other messaging app that you might find on a smartphone (i.e. the iMessage app for iPhones). However, the key difference is that WhatsApp uses the internet to send these messages and does not cost money. 

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This means that you will need an internet connection to use WhatsApp. The app can be downloaded for free from the App Store or Google Play Store, and again, it is free to use.

However, if you use WhatsApp to make international calls, you may be charged based on your mobile plan or internet service provider. Additionally, if you use WhatsApp to send messages while abroad, you may be charged for data usage, depending on your mobile plan.

Why is WhatsApp ending support for these smartphones?

The experts at WhatsApp, just like many other apps, regularly update the app with new features so that users can have a better and more enhanced experience. 

These updates are also meant to support newer models of iPhone, Android and other devices that come out so often. As technology moves so quickly, it’s out with the old and in with the new, and every company must keep up with each other. 

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So, when WhatsApp makes new updates for newer operating systems, they also get rid of support for the older and outdated devices as they no longer serve the needs of the company or the consumer.

What models will no longer support WhatsApp?

The following smartphone models will no longer support WhatsApp:

• Archos 53 Platinum
• Grand S Flex ZTE
• Grand X Quad V987 ZTE
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 5c
• HTC Desire 500
• Huawei Ascend D
• Huawei Ascend D1
• Huawei Ascend D2
• Huawei Ascend G740
• Huawei Ascend Mate
• Huawei Ascend P1
• Quad XL
• Lenovo A820
• LG Enact
• LG Lucid 2
• LG Optimus 4X HD
• LG Optimus F3
• LG Optimus F3Q
• LG Optimus F5
• LG Optimus F6
• LG Optimus F7
• LG Optimus L2 II
• LG Optimus L3 II
• LG Optimus L3 II Dual
• LG Optimus L4 II
• LG Optimus L4 II Dual
• LG Optimus L5
• LG Optimus L5 Dual
• LG Optimus L5 II
• LG Optimus L7
• LG Optimus L7 I
• LG Optimus L7 II Dual
• LG Optimus Nitro HD
• Memo ZTE V956
• Samsung Galaxy Ace 2
• Samsung Galaxy Core
• Samsung Galaxy S2
• Samsung Galaxy S3 mini
• Samsung Galaxy Trend II
• Samsung Galaxy Trend Lite
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
• Sony Xperia Arc S
• Sony Xperia miro
• Sony Xperia Neo L
• Wiko Cink Five
• Wiko Darknight ZT

Which smartphones still support WhatsApp?

WhatsApp will still support all Android phones running on OS version 4.1 or newer, as well as iPhones running on iOS12 or above. It will also support smartphones running on KaiOS2.5, including the JioPhone and JioPhone 2.

How do I update my smartphone so that I can keep WhatsApp?

To make sure your iPhone has the latest update:

• Go to Settings
• Select General
• Click Software Update
• If you have an update available, press Install Now

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To make sure your Android has the latest update:

• Open your phone’s Settings app
• Near the bottom, tap System
• Click System Update, and you’ll see your update status. Follow any steps on the screen

How do you feel about this big change in WhatsApp? Let us know your thoughts.

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