Sounds familiar? Personally, I have yet to meet a programmer who hasn’t been through at least one episode of burnout. It sounds paradox: The same person who fell in love with code in their teens or twenties, who have taken part in at least five hackathons over the past three years, and who contributes to open-source projects on weekends — how can this person possibly complain about burnout? Yes, they can....

While LG made some solid phones over the years, its mounting losses forced the company to throw in the towel. We might not see any LG-branded phones in the future, so let’s take a trip down memory lane and take a look at the company’s wacky and wonderful phones. LG GW620 The LG GW620, aka the LG Eve, was the company’s first Android phone, released in 2009. It had a resistive touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard that you could use in landscape mode....

— Moneed (@Moneed9) August 14, 2020 China-based lending company Moneed’s unprotected database has exposed the names and phone numbers of millions of Indians, putting them at risk of identity theft. Security researcher Anurag Sen found this database on an open elastic server that had more than 389 million phonebook records. Moneed has offices in Hangzhou, New Delhi, and Hong Kong. Sen told TNW that the data is stored on a server provided by Hangzhou Alibaba advertising co....

— Craig Mazin (@clmazin) March 5, 2020 We don’t yet know much about the series, other than the game’s writer, Neil Druckmann, will be involved. I hope it focuses on someone other than game protagonists Joel and Ellie. Both were portrayed to perfection in the game — making a TV show out of the same subject matter feels like it would be redundant. Then again, writer Craig Mazin assured fans on Twitter that he would continue to portray Ellie’s sexuality as it is in the game, so presumably he’s including the character in some capacity....

According to figures from the OFV, Norway’sroad traffic information council, nearly half of all new car sales in the country this year were EVs. Over the border in Sweden, figures from the country’s traffic licensing body, the BIL, showed that EVs make up around 10% of all new car sales. The average across the whole of Europe, however, is somewhere around 4%. Norway and Sweden have just released their new car registrations for August 2020, so let’s take a look at what cars those countries are actually buying in their shift to clean transport....

The world of cryptocurrency can be confusing at the best of times, but if you throw in the terms “whale,” “bear,” and “bull,” you’re probably left wondering what these animals have to do with digital currencies such as Bitcoin. Luckily for you, Hard Fork has produced a quick overview to define each term and explain why they’re important for the cryptocurrency space. The whales By definition, a cryptocurrency whale is a term used to refer to individuals, or entities, that hold large amounts of digital currencies....

— Rohit Kansal (@kansalrohit69) February 5, 2021 In August 2019, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah moved to abolish Article 370 in the parliament to strip the state of its autonomy. The government blocked internet and communication services for millions in the region saying that it wants to control the unrest and misinformation. The state is now reconstituted as two union territories: Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. Citizens in the region had to wait till October 2019 to get their internet connection back....

For one, new crypto applications like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) gained ground, with sales of these digital assets setting new records at major auction houses. Secondly, Bitcoin made strides towards mainstream acceptance with major websites like Expedia and Microsoft accepting the coin as a means of exchange. Third, in September, El Salvador became the first country in the world to accept bitcoin as legal tender. There are many more examples of how the market for cryptocurrencies has expanded just in the last year....

Billions of dollars worth of R&D and marketing research go into building better peripherals every year. But, realistically, little’s changed since the advent of the mouse and keyboard. Touchscreens and virtual keyboards are a fair proxy for mobile users, but there’s no replacement for a full sized QWERTY keyboard you can use all ten fingers on. Various solutions have come along, including voice-control and swipe-to-type methods, but they’re brittle and far more prone to missed or errant strokes than hardware models....

The future has a way of taking your biggest fears and making them seem incredibly short-sighted. Remember when everyone was scared of clowns for an entire summer? Seems kind of trivial now in the wake of COVID-19. The current death count is 4.4 million. It’ll be the same with AI. Right now the general public’s terrified of robots. But robots are just computers that move. What if the only way for AI to become sentient is to do it the old fashioned way: with an organic body?...

Now, in a fresh turn of events, the retail giant has confirmed that it keeps transcripts and voice recordings indefinitely, and only removes them if they’re manually deleted by users. Then in May, the retail behemoth came under further scrutiny for its data collection practices after CNET reported that Alexa assistant not only keeps your voice recordings, but also keeps a record of your voice transcriptions for improving its AI algorithms, with no option to delete them....

The way companies that provide cloud storage for your images usually detect child abuse material leaves you vulnerable to privacy violations by the companies – and hackers who break into their computers. On Aug. 5, 2021, Apple announced a new way to detect this material that promises to better protect your privacy. As a computer scientist who studies cryptography, I can explain how Apple’s system works, why it’s an improvement, and why Apple needs to do more....

Twitter-based transaction monitor @whale_alert signaled the transfer late yesterday, when the hackers’ wallet suddenly transferred just over 30 BTC ($351,000) to a fresh, previously unused Bitcoin address. Tx: https://t.co/ipfik2Tpd2 — Whale Alert (@whale_alert) August 12, 2019 In 2016, hackers succeeded in stealing 119,756 BTC from seminal cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. Back then, that loot amounted to just $350 million, but today it’s worth more than $1.3 billion. Pretty much all of the stolen Bitcoin had remained “missing” since then, but US law enforcement did manage to retrieve a tiny portion of the pilfered Bitcoin earlier this year (22....

At the same time though, antitrust regulators in the US and Europe have been taking a much closer look as part of a growing desire to investigate the dominance of some large players in the technology market. One of the issues is the amount of control that platform operators have over significant parts of the economy, and their ability to act as “gatekeepers” to markets in an anti-competitive manner. The EU has recently introduced new legislation to cover online platforms....

It’s a frustrating situation when you rely on your computer for work, but can’t do anything because a server is messed up. That’s right, as developer Jeff Johnson noted, the issue was caused by Apple’s Online Certificate Service Protocol (OCSP) server crashed — largely due to many users downloading the new update simultaneously. The OCSP server is responsible for authenticating digital certificates of all apps — both Apple and third-party....

The phone was earlier rumored to release in March. However, the coronavirus pandemic pushed likely the launch date. Now it’s finally here, so let’s dive into the specs. The SE 2020 edition looks just like the iPhone 8 with a home button and Touch ID instead of Face ID. It’s powered by the company’s latest A13 processor, meaning it’ll a significantly more punch than it’s predecessor. The screen offers support for HDR10 and Dolby Vision for more vivid color quality....

In related news, the domestic pig, Sus domesticus, has recently been spotted flying south for the winter. Seriously though, my mouth was agape as I read Apple’s press release. I can still hardly believe it as I type this. Apple notes that the program, which begins in early 2022, will initially focus “on the most commonly serviced modules, such as the iPhone display, battery, and camera.” Apple’s Self Service Repair Online Store will include over 200 parts and tools to start, and the company will add more repairable items later next year....

But one company thinks its cracked the code for the perfect city vehicle: Arcimoto and its electric autocycles. These are somewhere between a car, bike, and motorcycle. Yesterday, Arcimoto cut the ribbon on a 250,000 square foot manufacturing facility — and launched two new vehicles in the process. I sat down with Mark Frohnmayer, CEO and Founder of Arcimoto, to learn more about the company and its plans. The power of a platform Arcimoto’s key vehicle is the Fun Utility Vehicle (FUV), which retails for a mere €15,700 ($17,900) — excluding available tax credits and rebates....

The good news is battery recycling has been getting traction, and there are now many companies in North America and Europe building recycling plants, including Li-Cycle, Northvolt, Redwood Materials, and ReLIB, to name a few. But here’s the bad news: there’s still a big fat elephant in the room for consumers and carmakers alike — can recycled materials be just as good a virgin ones? Yes! A thousand times yes!...

The government of New South Wales state is setting up cameras specifically made for catching drivers using mobile phones. The state’s transport department tested the system with cameras on two spots, and it’s now spending $88 million to install them on 45 spots. During the test, almost 8.5 million cars were examined and nearly 100,000 drivers were caught using their phones illegally. The government caught people texting, using social media apps like Facebook – some even took both their hands off the wheel to type that all-important status message....