Facebook is offering users money to refrain from using the site and Instagram in the weeks leading up to the bitterly contested November elections. The New York Post reports:To assess the impact of social media on voting, the company will pay selected members up to $120 to deactivate their accounts beginning at the end of … Continue reading Facebook Will Pay Users To Log Off Before 2020 Election (nypost.com)

Huawei has announced the second version of its HarmonyOS operating system and detailed plans to bring it to a wider range of devices, including smartphones. Consumer business CEO Richard Yu made the announcement today at Huawei's developer conference in Shenzhen, China. From a report:Huawei will make a beta version of the HarmonyOS 2.0 SDK available … Continue reading Huawei’s HarmonyOS is Coming To Smartphones (theverge.com)

Facebook is getting back to its roots as a college-focused social network. The company announced today the launch of a new social networking platform, Facebook Campus, which offers college students a private place to connect with classmates, join groups, discover upcoming campus events, get updates from their school's administration and chat with other students from … Continue reading Facebook Returns To Its Roots With Campus, a College Student-only Social Network (techcrunch.com)

The Guardian asked GPT-3, OpenAI's powerful new language generator, to write an essay for us from scratch. The assignment? To convince us robots come in peace. From the article, written by AI:I am not a human. I am a robot. A thinking robot. I use only 0.12% of my cognitive capacity. I am a micro-robot … Continue reading AI Writes an Essay On Why Humans Should Not Fear AI (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report:San Francisco residents awoke on Wednesday to an orange sky, like something out of the apocalypse. People shared images on social media of a sky turned hazy orange by smoke coming in from major wildfires throughout the region. Aclima, which measures air on a "hyperlocal" level with pollution sensors on … Continue reading Why San Francisco Had an Apocalyptic Orange Sky (venturebeat.com)

Google said it will block some autocomplete search suggestions to stop misinformation spreading online during the U.S. presidential election in November. From a reportThe autocomplete feature of the world's largest search engine regularly recommends full queries once users begin typing words. The company said on Thursday it will remove predictions that could be interpreted as … Continue reading Google Blocks Search Suggestions To Stop Election Misinformation (bloomberg.com)

Google recently made a huge announcement that could change the future of work and higher education: It's launching a selection of professional courses that teach candidates how to perform in-demand jobs. These courses, which the company is calling Google Career Certificates, teach foundational skills that can help job-seekers immediately find employment. However, instead of taking … Continue reading Google Has a Plan To Disrupt the College Degree (inc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report:When Mxolosi saw a Tecno W2 smartphone in a store in Johannesburg, South Africa, he was attracted to its looks and functionality. But what really drew him in was the price, roughly $30 -- far less than comparable models from Samsung, Nokia, or Huawei, Africa's other top brands. […] But … Continue reading People In The Developing World Thought They Were Buying Cheap Cellphones. They Were Also Getting Robbed. (buzzfeednews.com)

Microsoft has announced it will permanently close all of its physical retail stores and transfer most of its resources to online channels. From a report:This comes after the computing giant shuttered the outlets in late March due to the COVID-19 crisis. In what Microsoft is touting as a "new approach to retail," the company said … Continue reading Microsoft is Permanently Closing All Physical Retail Stores (venturebeat.com)

Windows 10 is now running on over 1 billion monthly active devices, just six months after passing the 900 million device milestone. From a report:Microsoft has been consistently adding 100 million active Windows 10 devices every six months over the past two years. Windows 10 also passed 50% desktop market share in August. The milestone … Continue reading Windows 10 Now Runs on 1 Billion Devices (venturebeat.com)