It took some time, but he got there. Michael Hodge, QC, senior counsel assisting the banking royal commission, had finally had enough of the witness. “Mr Hagger,” the Brisbane-based silk said angrily. “It wasn’t out of your control. You could have told them the number in writing. And you didn’t do so. And that was because you were not being candid with Asic.” “No, that’s not true,” argued the witness Andrew Hagger, a senior executive with National Australia Bank. “That’s not true, Mr Hodge.” The tense exchange happened last month, during a lengthy cross-examination at the royal commission. And this week,…
Author: Loknath Das
Ghostbusters World is the latest game to try to get you hooked on its gameplay anywhere in the world. It’s an augmented reality game, like Pokémon Go and Jurassic Park: Alive, where you can use your smartphone to see animated ghosts in the real world. The free-to-play game from Sony Pictures Consumer Products, Ghost Corps, 4:33, and Next Age is the latest to take advantage of Google’s mapping technology, the Google Maps applications programming interface (API). It is coming out later this year, but I got a good look at it on an Android-based Google Pixel 2 smartphone. It has more…
If you’re reading this site, you’ve probably heard of HQ Trivia, the live mobile gameshow where you answer questions to win real money. The HQ team is now looking to branch out with its latest project: HQ Words. As first reported by Digiday, it’s basically an HQ-ified Wheel of Fortune. That means you get a blank grid of potential letters, along with a clue as to what lies hidden beneath. You’ll see a selection of letters to choose from and earn points for each correct guess. Three strikes and you’re out. If you’re wondering how HQ can survive giving out so…
MIDDLETON, WISCONSIN – The lone suspect in a southeast Wisconsin workplace shooting Wednesday morning has died after being shot by responding officers, according to police. Middleton Police Chief Chuck Foulkes said officers were alerted to an active shooter situation at software company WTS Paradigm around 10:25 a.m. Foulkes said the suspect was fatally shot by officers. Foulke didn’t release details about the suspect or how the attack unfolded. He said officers were still interviewing witnesses, many of whom fled the office building or hid inside after gunshots rang out. Foulke said three people were injured in the shooting, though the City…
An abnormally severe bug was discovered in bitcoin’s software, prompting developers to put together and release a fix on Tuesday. Fixed and revealed to the wider public by way of Bitcoin Core software version 0.16.3, the vulnerability is a denial-of-service bug. If exploited, it can be used to take out nodes and at worst, temporarily crash a significant segment of the network. However, not everyone has the power to take advantage of the bug. Only miners – those that run hardware and spend energy ordering transactions on the network – can exploit the vulnerability by double spending a transaction and…
Seven or so years ago, a famous VC penned a manifesto of sorts. Writing at a time the world was still skeptical of the dominance to which his industry has now ascended (to think, such a time existed, and so few years ago!), Marc Andreessen had a message for the doubters, the naysayers, and the Wall St. analysts who were (credibly!) claiming that his investments amounted to not much more than a bubble: Software, he claimed, was eating the world. Seven years later, no one can dispute Andreessen’s prescience. The man was right: If you had purchased a basket of his favorite stocks…
Facebook is suing BlackBerry for patent infringement, escalating the legal battle between the two companies over protected technology. In a 118-page complaint filed Tuesday in San Francisco federal court, Facebook accused BlackBerry of stealing its voice messaging technology, among other patented processes. Facebook is seeking unspecified damages for infringement of six patents. BlackBerry didn’t immediately respond to messages sent outside regular business hours seeking comment on the suit. In addition to the voice-messaging patent, Facebook cites infringement of patented technology that improves how a mobile device delivers graphics, video and audio and another that centralises tracking and analysis of GPS data. In March,…
The European Commission will propose new laws on Wednesday giving Google, Facebook, Twitter and other Internet companies one hour to remove extremist content or face fines. The Commission told such companies in March that they had three months to show they were removing extremist content more rapidly or face legislation forcing them to do so. The Commission wants content inciting or advocating extremist offences, promoting extremist groups, or showing how to commit such acts to be removed from the web within an hour of receiving a corresponding order from national authorities. In a proposal that will need backing from EU countries and the European…
In a bid to curtail offensive memes that promote hate speech, Facebook is building a novel artificial intelligence (AI) system that uses machine learning to identify text in images and videos as well as transcribe it. While tools to transcribe text are nothing new, the company faces different challenges because of the size, sheer volume of photos shared each day on Facebook and Instagram, and the number of languages supported on its global platform. With the novel AI system called Rosetta, Facebook can process more than a billion public images and Instagram images and video frames (in a wide variety of languages)…
Not all social media platforms are created equal. Contrary to popular belief, having a company page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+ and YouTube, among others, will not necessarily drive value for your customers. In effect, your current marketing strategy might have you spending resources on a social account that garners little to no consumer engagement, resulting in wasted resources that could have been allocated more efficiently. In this day and age, however, some might even argue that it’s an automatic loss not to take advantage of all of the owned media available for brand awareness. There is no…