In line with its efforts to curb abuse and harassment of users on its platform, Twitter has now selected two research projects that aim to develop metrics to measure the “health” of public conversation. “An update! We’ve selected 2 partners from 230 idea submissions. Our first goal is working to measure the ‘health’ of public conversation, and that measurement be open and defined by third parties (not by us),” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in a tweet on Monday. Earlier this year, the microblogging site said it would work to increase the collective health, openness, and civility of the dialogue on its service. As…
Author: Loknath Das
Sony Corp. on Tuesday reported a record first-quarter operating profit on the back of strong sales of game software, giving support to the new management’s strategy of focusing on stable sources of revenue. The electronics firm posted profit of ¥195.0 billion for April-June, up 23.7 percent from ¥157.6 billion a year prior. With the previous year’s one-time gain of ¥36.8 billion excluded, Sony logged even sharper first-quarter growth of 61 percent. That gain came from the sale of Sony’s camera module unit and the receipt of insurance payouts for earthquake damage. When earnings in the year that ended March 31…
The fifth edition of Vampire: The Masquerade, the classic tabletop role-playing game first released in 1992, is set to launch later this week. In light of several public controversies surrounding the game’s development, publisher White Wolf has elected to create a revised version of the core rulebook. Vampire will now feature a new foreward that doubles as an explicit content warning, as well as a detailed appendix full of strategies for players dealing with mature themes at the table. The change comes just days before the physical product is due to go on sale at the nation’s largest tabletop gaming convention, Gen Con…
One of my all-time favorite games is Mother 3. Its combat represents the pinnacle of the franchise; the characters are wonderful; its story is engaging, emotional and tragic. But I don’t think I’ll actually ever go back to finishing that story, because I can’t for the life of me remember what’s going on. A crashed computer and a mountain of schoolwork meant I lost my Mother 3 save file, and the fear of starting over made me spend months avoiding the game entirely. Eventually, a friend convinced me to return to it … at which point I couldn’t remember where I was in the…
Industrial products maker Fortive Corp said on Tuesday that it would buy software maker Accruent from private equity firm Genstar Capital for about US$2 billion in cash. Accruent’s software is used by more than 10,000 customers to manage real estate, facilities and assets and the company is expected to generate revenue of about US$270 million in 2018, Fortive said in a statement. The Accruent deal will help complement strengths in its Fluke Digital Systems unit and its recent acquisition of construction software company Gordian to create a technology portfolio consisting of connected devices, software enabled workflow and data analytics, Fortive…
India is known for its rich cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity but this often plays a role in hampering communications throughout the country — a problem that can be easily resolved using the cutting-edge technology that we see around us today. Taking this idea forward, the Indian government has launched e-Aksharayan — a desktop software for converting any scanned or printed Indian language documents into fully editable text. Screenshots Of What Appears To Be e-Aksharayan Software At Work (source-Wikipedia) The application, which is available in seven Indian languages, was launched yesterday by Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). At the…
Facing an intense public scrutiny over data leaks amid privacy concerns, Facebook has now called for the entire tech industry to come and protect people’s data. According to David Baser, Director of Product Management at Facebook, nearly every day, news comes out from a different company about personal data that got into the wrong hands. “Even if we’re all taking steps to shore up our privacy protections, we won’t find the answers in a silo. Companies are connected and our technology ecosystem can’t be reversed. “So we need to work together on standards and best practices to make data portability a reality…
All critical personal data on people in India should be processed within the country, a government panel said on Friday. The recommendation comes at a time when data breaches are becoming common globally and there is heightened scrutiny by governments on how companies handle user data. The panel, headed by former Supreme Court judge B.N. Srikrishna, also presented a draft bill – Draft of Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 – that will go before parliament designed to enhance data protection. The legislation could affect how global companies store data in India. The panel said “personal data determined to be critical”…
The apex court will impose a fine of Rs. 5,00,000 per day on social networks to prevent offensive content A bench of Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta granted one month to the social media sites to ensure a foolproof mechanism to prevent uploading of objectionable materials. The Supreme Court on Friday raised concern over irresponsible behaviour of search engines and social networking sites like Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Yahoo in promoting objectionable material leading to lynching of people, and warned imposing Rs. 5,00,000 per day on them if they fail to develop a foolproof mechanism to prevent uploading of such material. A bench…
You know that girl from TV – the one whose Instagram always looks perfect even with #nofilter? Or what about that amazing singer on musical.ly whom you can’t believe is only 14? And then there’s that kid whose Snapchat stories of Coachella got 500 views. Your kids may be following people like this right now. Obsessing. Over. Every. Detail. And starting to feel kind of crappy about it. Keeping tabs on the rich, famous, and just-plain-cool is nothing new, of course. But social media can take that fixation to a pretty dark place. The feeling is common enough that some…