Kiran Upadhyay

Facebook is removing the messaging capability from its mobile web application, according to a notice being served to users: “Your conversations are moving to Messenger,” it reads. Welcome news to the millions like me who switched to the web app in order to avoid Messenger in the first place! At the moment, you can just dismiss the notice and go about your business. But this summer the warning will become an impenetrable wall, and your only option will be to download the official Messenger app. I’m a little worried about this, because surely the mobile site is much used by people who have good reason not to download the app. People whose phones don’t have official clients, for instance, or who can’t upgrade to the latest version of an OS, and must access via the web. And really, it strikes me as quite a hostile move, as it did before when they axed messaging from the main app. If, as everyone in the company is constantly repeating, mantra-like, that they want to connect the

For more than a month, users of the remote login service TeamViewer have taken to Internet forums to report their computers have been ransacked by attackers who somehow gained access to their accounts. In many of the cases, the online burglars reportedly drained PayPal or bank accounts. No one outside of TeamViewer knows precisely how many accounts have been hacked, but there's no denying the breaches are widespread. Over the past three days, both Reddit and Twitter have exploded with such reports, often with the unsupported claim that the intrusions are the result of a hack on TeamViewer's network. Late on Friday afternoon, an IBM security researcher became the latest to report a TeamViewer account takeover. "In the middle of my gaming session, I lose control of my mouse and the TeamViewer window pops up in the bottom right corner of my screen," wrote Nick Bradley, a practice leader inside IBM's Threat Research Group. "As soon as I realize what is hap

And there it is. After years of speculation, the Tesla Model 3 has been unveiled. We’re live in Hawthorne, CA, where the company has just shown the car for the very first time. Here’s what we know so far: Deliveries will begin at the end of next year, and start at $35,000 for the base model. Base model will do 0-60 in under 6 seconds, with versions that go “much, much faster” to be announced later. Base model will get at least 215 miles per charge, and Elon said that “these are minimum numbers, we hope to exceed them”. Base model is rear wheel drive; dual motor versions are planned. All Model 3s will have autopilot hardware built-in — it’s not an additional upgrade. Like the Model S, it will have front and rear trunks. All Model 3s will come with supercharging support standard. The roof area is “one continuous pane of glass”. It has a 15-inch horizontal (widescreen) monitor in the dash, as opposed to the 17-inch portrait (vertical) monitor in the Model S and Model X.

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin

Google today announced a new machine learning platform for developers at its NEXT Google Cloud Platform user conference in San Francisco. As Google chairman Eric Schmidt stressed during today’s keynote, Google believes machine learning is “what’s next.” With this new platform, Google will make it easier for developers to use some of the machine learning smarts Google already uses to power features like Smart Reply in Inbox. The service is now available in limited preview. “Major Google applications use Cloud Machine Learning, including Photos (image search), the Google app (voice search), Translate and Inbox (Smart Reply),” the company says. “Our platform is now available as a cloud service to bring unmatched scale and speed to your business applications.” Google’s Cloud Machine Learning platform basically consists of two parts: one that allows developers to build machine learning models from their own data, and another that offers developers a pre-trained model. To train th

Over 30 million Americans have used an online dating service or mobile dating app, according to Pew Research Center. Yet Black online users face apparent bias: Data collected from 25 million OkCupid accounts demonstrated that when users rated their matches they penalized Black men and women. Bae :: Before Anyone Else, a mobile dating app created by Jordan Kunzika, Brian Gerrard and Justin Gerrard, hopes to make online dating a better experience for Black people. Bae founders cultivated their user base by going directly to the communities they believe need the app. They hosted an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) tour which consisted of parties and mixers where people who matched on Bae could meet in person. All attendees had to have Bae downloaded to participate. Within a few weeks of their April 2015 launch, they reached 17,000 downloads, and have grown over ten times since. Bae’s founders are from the community they are building for–an essential dimension of th

Good news for amateur and professional photograph enthusiasts. Google has just made its Nik Collection photo editing software available completely free of charge. That collection includes seven different desktop services that fell into Google’s lap after it acquired Nik Software back in 2012. That deal was largely about getting control of popular photo app Snapseed, a pretty powerful tool in itself, but Google later pulled the remaining Nik Software services together in an attractive $149 bundle. That’s now become free, and anyone who forked out to buy it this calendar can claim a refund. Read More

At this point, there’s very little difference between the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. But there was one key differentiating point. Xbox gamers could only play with Xbox and PC players as Microsoft was restricting access to the multiplayer component. Microsoft just announced that game developers can now create cross-platform multiplayer modes that work with other consoles and operating systems. So it means that the next Call of Duty or FIFA could feature a multiplayer mode that works with both Xbox and PlayStation gamers. It just depends on developers now. Microsoft has historically restricted cross-platform play as the Xbox Live was the first successful multiplayer network for consoles. The PlayStation Network only appeared with the PlayStation 3. And yet, Microsoft is now lagging behind the PlayStation 4 with its Xbox One. There are more online players on competing platforms, and Microsoft is now the underdog. By opening up cross-platform multiplayer, Microsoft could co

It’s finally here. After teaming up with Michael J. Fox to tease us with self-lacing Nike Mags on Back To The Future day in October, Nike has finally announced a mass production shoe that will feature real-life power laces. Meet the HyperAdapt 1.0. Announced today at the Nike Innovation Summit, the HyperAdapt 1.0 will be the first shoe to take advantage of Nike’s adaptive lacing (self-tying) technology, which the company is touting as an entire new platform for sneakers. This means that one day your Jordan’s, Air Max’s, and FlyKnit shoes could all be built on top of Nike’s adaptive lacing platform. But before we get ahead of ourselves, lets take a closer look at how the shoe will actually work. In the launch announcement, Nike touted the self-tying shoes as a way to reduce a typical athlete concern, distraction. So, to save wearers time, the shoes will automatically tighten as soon as you step into the shoe. “Your heel will hit a sensor and the system will automatically

Gmail supports encryption in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS), and will automatically encrypt your incoming and outgoing emails if it can. Some other email services don't support TLS, and therefore messages exchanged with these services will not be TLS encrypted. In Gmail on your computer, you can check that a message you’ve received was sent over TLS by clicking the small down arrow at the top-left of the email and reading the message details. If you see a red open padlock icon  on a message you’ve received, or on one you're about to send, it means that the message may not be encrypted. If you see the red padlock while composing a message Don’t send confidential material, like tax forms or contracts, to that email address. If you see the red padlock when viewing a received message This message was sent unencrypted. In most cases, there’s nothing you can do. If it contained particularly sensitive content, you should let the sender know and they can cont

Air conditioning is one of the biggest costs in running data centers. Traditional data centers use as much electricity for cooling as they do for running the actual IT equipment. Accordingly, much of the innovation seen in the high-density cloud server space has been to develop data centers that are cheaper to cool and hence cheaper to run. With its much higher heat capacity than air, water has become the coolant of choice, pumped around and between the computers to transport their heat outside. Microsoft has demonstrated an experimental prototype of a new approach: instead of pumping water around the data center, put the data center in the water. Project Natick is a research project to build and run a data center that's submerged in the ocean. The company built an experimental vessel, named the Leona Philpot, and deployed it on the seafloor about 1 kilometer off the Pacific coast. It ran successfully from August to November last year. Read More

LIVINGSTON, La.—The rain began to fall as Joe Giaime and I scrambled down a lonely rise, back toward the observatory’s main building. It wasn’t so much rain as a hard mist, characteristic of the muggy weather southern Louisiana often sees in January when moisture rolls inland from the Gulf of Mexico. As gray clouds fell like a shroud over the loblolly pines all around us, Giaime mused, “Well, I guess you’ve already gathered that we’re in the middle of nowhere." Middle of nowhere happens to be ground zero in the search for gravitational waves, which were first posited by Albert Einstein a century ago and may soon become one of the hottest fields in science. Livingston is remote in terms of geography, but as humans scan the heavens for gravitational waves this forest is practically the center of the physics universe. Because of general relativity, we understand that large masses curve spacetime, kind of like standing in the middle of a trampoline distorts the fabric. When mas

Today was a huge day for Alphabet — the first day it finally broke out its “other bets” in its earnings report — and boy did the company not disappoint. The company smashed expectations on both ends, bringing in $21.3 billion in revenue and earnings of $8.67 per share. Analysts were expecting earnings of $8.09 on $20.8 billion in revenue. And with that, Alphabet became the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world — coming in at a market cap $558 billion after jumping about 8% after the company reported its fourth-quarter earnings, and passing Apple, which sits at a market cap of $535 billion. There weren’t any huge surprises on the earnings call that caused the stock to dip, but its ranking still depends on whether or not the company gives up those gains in extended trading. Either way this is a significant moment for the company and the technology market in general. Alphabet had a huge opportunity to finally pass Apple as the most valuable company in the world. T

Shodan, a search engine for the Internet of Things (IoT), recently launched a new section that lets users easily browse vulnerable webcams. The feed includes images of marijuana plantations, back rooms of banks, children, kitchens, living rooms, garages, front gardens, back gardens, ski slopes, swimming pools, colleges and schools, laboratories, and cash register cameras in retail stores, according to Dan Tentler, a security researcher who has spent several years investigating webcam security. "It's all over the place," he told Ars Technica UK. "Practically everything you can think of." We did a quick search and turned up some alarming results: The cameras are vulnerable because they use the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP, port 554) to share video but have no password authentication in place. The image feed is available to paid Shodan members at images.shodan.io. Free Shodan accounts can also search using the filter port:554 has_screenshot:true.

Unless you’re Jaqueline Voorheese from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, chances are you’re not letting Uber drivers shuttle around your kids to and from school, practice, classes, etc. But that doesn’t mean there’s no need for a little transportation-based help with the little ones. HopSkipDrive, a startup that just received $3.9 million in seed funding, is looking to hook up cautious yet busy parents. The startup lets parents set up pre-scheduled pick-up times for their kids with trusted, thoroughly vetted drivers to help get kids around town when time simply doesn’t allow parents to do it themselves. Here’s how it works: Parents schedule a ride with a ‘CareDriver’ and are sent a short bio for that driver, a picture, and are required to enter in a code word for the ride. The parent then relays that information to the child, and then to the school or daycare organization from which the kid is getting picked up. That way, little Tommy or Patty knows how to identify their ‘CareD

Tesla’s Model S P85D is well known for its wonderfully named “Insane” mode, which tunes the car to go from 0 to 60 in 3.1 seconds. Not insane enough for you? Now the Model S is getting a “Ludicrous” mode. Seriously. The aptly named Ludicrous mode will do 0-60 in 2.8 seconds. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, that acceleration pins you to the seat at a 1.1 Gs. “It’s faster than falling,” he adds. “It’s like having your own private roller coaster.” One catch: unlike most Tesla Model S tuning enhancements, this one isn’t a software update — and it’s not free. Why? Because Tesla had to make new, physical hardware to make this possible. Specifically, they had to make a fuse that didn’t melt when you pulled ridiculously high amperages over it. The fuse upgrade will be a $10k option for new buyers, and cost $5k (before installation) for existing P85D owners. Musk also announced two other bits of news surrounding the Model S: They’re introducing the Model S 70, a new single mot

A spot of consolidation in the online dating space today, with Match Group, the subsidiary of Tinder and OkCupid owner IAC, announcing it has agreed to acquire PlentyOfFish (POF) for $575 million in cash. Match Group said it expects the transaction to close early in the fourth quarter, pending Canadian regulatory approvals. The acquisition looks squarely focused on snagging a fresh pool of digitally active singles to feed into its portfolio of digital services. With dating apps’ free-at-the-point-of-use model superseding desktop era subscription-for-access online dating there’s greater need for businesses in the space to ramp up their volume of users to boost conversions to paid services. Tinder, for instance, flicked the monetization switch this spring, launching Tinder Plus: a monthly subscription that gives access to features such as a Rewind option for those who swipe too quickly and regret consigning a potential match to the virtual dustbin. Such business models flourish w

The first car Tesla ever built, the Roadster, hasn’t gotten a whole lot of love lately. They stopped building them back in 2012, after all. It looks like the Roadster is set for a revival, though. Buried deep in today’s other Tesla news was word of a brand new Roadster model. After announcing a holy-crap-that’s-fast, 0-to-60-in-2.8-seconds mode for the Model S P85D that the company rightly calls “Ludicrous mode”, Tesla CEO Elon Musk dropped this little detail: There is of course one speed faster than ludicrous, but that is reserved for the next generation Roadster in 4 years: maximum plaid. (Both “Ludicrous mode” and “maximum plaid”, of course, being Spaceball references) So it’ll be a few years, but Tesla isn’t done with the Roadster just yet. And that’s good news — particularly for those who want the breakneck speeds of the Model S P85D in a body that’s a bit more exciting. Musk confirmed on a press call that, Spaceball references aside, this would be a new model.

After a year of previews and one release candidate, Microsoft today officially launched the latest version of its Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) together with an update to its .NET framework. Visual Studio 2015 (VS 2015) is now available for download (and purchase), but Team Foundation Server 2015 — part of Microsoft’s online services for development teams — will remain in its release candidate phase until next month. As part of today’s announcement, Microsoft also released a couple of new download numbers for various tools in the Visual Studio ecosystem. Visual Studio Community, for example, the much-improved free version of the software for non-enterprise users, has now been downloaded 5 million times since its launch seven months ago. More than 3.2 million developers have now registered for the Visual Studio Online services. Visual Studio Code, the standalone code editor for Windows, Mac and Linux, has seen half a million downloads since its launch thr

A who’s-who of early stage investors are putting a $2 million bet that two young Northwestern grads can teach millennials a better way to eat with their new startup Spoon University. Founded by Mackenzie Barth (not a foodie) and Sarah Adler (total foodie), New York-based Spoon University is a crowd-sourced, would-be Food Network for millennials, according to Barth, who serves as the company’s chief executive. “We’re building it from within the community,” Barth says. “We have 3,000 college students around the country who are building up content. They all volunteer. What motivates them is this whole food movement.” Like every other demographic, twenty and early-thirty somethings want to embrace healthy eating and living, and Spoon University wants to be their source for tips, tricks, food reviews, and content. Popular stories on the site include “18 Facts Every Tofu Newbie Should Know” and “11 #SpoonFeed Ice Cream Concoctions That Are Dope AF” (not necessarily your typical Food