Xpertfeed

  French news publisher Le Monde is launching a new comments section using Jigsaw's Perspective API. The EU elections  get underway tomorrow, and as debate heats up it's likely the comments sections of major news sites will be ablaze with fiery opinions, harassment, and general internet nastiness.    To help counter abusive online comments in France, Alphabet think tank Jigsaw has launched French-language versions of Perspective and Tune, its AI-powered, troll-fighting technologies. The Perspective API is first rolling out to the comments section of French news publisher Le Monde and will also be available to other publishers. The new version of  Le Monde's  comment system going live today will use Jigsaw's Perspective API to encourage readers to share views on news ahead of this week's 2019 European Union parliamentary elections. Perspective's machine-learning model is designed to determine whether a comment could be seen as toxic to a discussion. The mode...

  The message that came out of SAPPHIRE last week is that SAP remains all in on HANA, and that the future is making it cloud-native. While the recently closed  acquisition of Qualtrics  provided many of the headlines at SAPPHIRE last week, the fact that SAP remains fully committed to HANA had the most immediate significance. The future of SAP HANA was very much the spotlight of SAP chairman Hasso Plattner's  day two keynote . Normally, a speech about HANA would not make headlines. But in the wake of  major staff restructuring last winter  that lead to considerable  sturm und drang  about the future of HANA, it was important for SAP to reaffirm that it was staying the course. As Larry Dignan reported last week, HANA is the underpinning of the bevy of new services that SAP is releasing on its cloud platform. And SAP, like most of its enterprise technology brethren, is now adopting a cloud-first game plan for HANA development -- where new featur...

  Hacker threatens to release the code if victims don't pay in 10 days. Hundreds of developers have had had Git source code repositories wiped and replaced with a ransom demand. The attacks started earlier today, appear to be coordinated across Git hosting services (GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab), and it is still unclear how they are happening. What it is known is that the hacker removes all source code and recent commits from vitcims' Git repositories, and leaves a ransom note behind that asks for a payment of 0.1 Bitcoin (~$570). The hacker claims all source code has been downloaded and stored on one of their servers, and gives the victim ten days to pay the ransom; otherwise, they'll make the code public. To recover your lost code and avoid leaking it: Send us 0.1 Bitcoin (BTC) to our Bitcoin address ES14c7qLb5CYhLMUekctxLgc1FV2Ti9DA and contact us by Email at admin@gitsbackup.com with your Git login and a Proof of Payment. If you are unsure if we have your data, contact us ...

  Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics, Power BI, DevOps, all down for nearly two hours. Microsoft says a mishap during a DNS migration was behind a nearly two-hour Azure outage on May 2, between 19:43 and 22:35 UTC.  The global incident impacted a whole range of Microsoft cloud services, causing connection problems for core services like Azure, multiple services under the Microsoft 365 umbrella, Dynamics, and DevOps.  The incident had a knock-on effect for Azure compute, storage, App Service, Azure AD identity services, and SQL Database.  Microsoft was mid-way through migrating its legacy domain name system (DNS) to its own hosted Azure DNS, when "some domains for Microsoft services were incorrectly updated", it explains on the  Azure status history page .   Microsoft updated the page several times during the incident and as services were gradually restored.  The company assures customers that none of their DNS records were impacted during the event and tha...

  One of the biggest roadblocks I find to fast web browsing these days is the plethora of annoying notifications that websites offer me. Fortunately, Google Chrome offers a quick and easy way to block them. You've no doubt had this happen countless times already this week.  You browse to a website and you get a notification offering the chance for you to get more notifications. Something like this (although this one is from  a handy test site ): Hate them? Want them gone? Not a problem, if you use Google Chrome! Here's how: Click on the three dots button (top-right of the browser window) Click on  Settings Click on  Advanced From the  Privacy and security  section, click on  Content settings... Click on  Notifications Finally, click on  Ask before sending (recommended)  to change it to  Blocked You're done! Just this one tweak has dramatically streamlined my browsing experience. Try if out for yourself!

  Former and current Mozilla engineers are reaching their boiling points. A former high-ranking Mozilla executive has accused Google of intentionally and systematically sabotaging Firefox over the past decade in order to boost Chrome's adoption. He is not the first Firefox team member to come forward and make such accusations in the past eight months; however, his allegations span far beyond current events and accuse Google of carrying out a coordinated plan that involved introducing small bugs on its sites that would only manifest for Firefox users. OOPS AFTER OOPS Johnathan Nightingale , a former General Manager and Vice President of the Firefox group at Mozilla, described these issues as "oopses." "When I started at Mozilla in 2007 there was no Google Chrome, and most folks we spoke with inside [Google] were Firefox fans," Nightingale recollected in a  Twitter thread  on Saturday. "When Chrome launched things got complicated, but not in the way you might...

  At the Google Cloud Next conference, Google showcased the next step it's taking to get security keys in the hands of more people Security keys offer one of the most secure authentication methods for logging into an account -- it requires plugging in a physical key. Many people, however, may not want to pay for an extra security device, or they may simply forget to carry it with them. Now, Google is trying to make this authentication method more accessible by enabling any phone running Android 7+ to serve as a security key to protect personal Google accounts and professional Google Cloud accounts. "Think of it like a security key in almost every modern Android phone... a very easy-to-use form factor for over a billion users," Rob Sadowski, Google's Trust and Security marketing lead, told reporters last week. "Having that as your authenticator really makes it easy to use and always available." While any form of two-step verification improves your security, s...

  Microsoft alarms Windows 10 users by sending random and misspelled messages through its News app. Microsoft says a "configuration error" in the Windows 10 News app was the cause of users seeing nonsensical notifications that made some of them think their machines had been infected with malware.  Something went wrong last Friday at the Microsoft unit that oversees the Windows 10 News app.    Windows 10 users on Reddit  started to report  seeing "weird" notifications from the Microsoft News app titled 'My Movies', accompanied by the message: "This is a test notification".  It was then followed by the dodgy-looking "Thsi test notification". Some users also received a third notification, simply stating "Test Notification".  The notifications confused users who  couldn't tell  whether it was just a mystery bug or a malware infection, prompting some to consider wiping their machines.  A user on Microsoft's answers forums was...

  It's time to update all of your iOS devices. Apple on Monday held an event, where it announced several new services. One of those services, Apple News Plus, launches  alongside the release of iOS 12.2 and macOS 10.14.4. Apple also announced Apple Card, a credit card that lives inside Apple Pay, a new Apple TV app for users to subscribe to individual channels, and Apple TV Plus, the company's subscription service for original programming. Shortly after the event ended, Apple released iOS 12.1 for iOS devices and the changelog reveals the update includes more than just Apple News Plus. Some of the highlights included the ability to use Siri on your iPhone to play a video or show on an Apple TV. There are four new Animoji -- an owl, boar, giraffe, and shark. Also included are improvements to Apple Pay Cash, and the ability to multitask while AirPlaying a video from an iOS device to an AirPlay device without interrupting the audio or video stream. You can read through the  ...

  Google’s upcoming Android version, currently referred to only as Android Q, will arrive later this summer with a trove of privacy enhancements. Details about these new additions have been revealed earlier this week after Google published  blog posts  and  new Android support pages  for Android Q following the release of a first beta version earlier this week. Below are all the privacy-focused features that are expected to land in the stable version of Android Q at the end of August. Access to clipboard data Android apps can no longer access the Android operating system’s clipboard data unless they are in focus (running in the foreground aka on screen). Apps can access clipboard data while in the OS background if they are also the default input method editor (IME) –aka the default keyboard apps. MAC address randomization on by default Google introduced  MAC address  randomization  in Android 6.0 , but devices broadcast a random MAC addr...