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Visit https://t.co/K3S07w5uEk and join the fight to stop 2020 from becoming “1984” https://t.co/tpsiCW4gqK — Fortnite (@FortniteGame) August 13, 2020 Some backstory is necessary to understand what’s going on here. Epic Games has long been critical of the revenue cut Apple receives from every transaction made via apps it approves. Specifically, Apple takes a 30% revenue cut. This is an industry standard — Steam and the Google Play Store take the same cut — but Epic has been attempting to change that standard for a while....

This is an extension of the old Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) app. The WWDC event now has a dedicated tab in the new app that is meant for folks attending the annual gathering. There’s also a video section for videos from WWDC sessions. Apple’s aim with this app is to make content from the developer website easily available in a mobile-friendly format. The company has app design accelerators in India and China....

iPhone sales were incredibly strong, growing 8 percent Wearables growth skyrocketed (Tim Cook said that if you collated the Apple Watch, Beats headphones, and AirPods sales, it’d match a “Fortune 150 company) — overtaking Mac revenue And services (including things like Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Pay, Apple Card, and others) saw a 17 percent year-over-year increase On the surface, this is fantastic news for Apple. This time last year, iPhone sales were slowing, and it had to chop revenue predictions....

Each of the big five events caused at least a 40% loss of all species on Earth. Yet humans hold a particular grudge against the most recent one, which brought a sudden end to the 160-million-year history of the dinosaurs. This was the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, and it happened 66 million years ago, wiping out about 75% of all species on Earth at the time. Except for sea turtles and crocodiles, no four-legged animals bigger than 25kg survived....

The device’s primary screen is a 15.6-inc 4K UHD display with 16:9 aspect ratio. Its secondary screen is a 14-inch 4K UHD display, called ScreenPad Plus, with a 32:9 aspect ratio. The tech company has crafted the software in such a way that the secondary screen can be used as a separate monitor or an extension to the primary display. Asus has also managed to include a physical keyboard just below the secondary screen....

However this year, because of plenty of noteworthy launches, the ₹20,000-₹35,000 ($270-$470) price band is filled with great options for consumers. For the past couple of months, I’ve used the OnePlus Nord, the Poco X3, and the Google Pixel 4a for a few weeks each, one after another. These phones offer different things, so if you’re certain about your preferences, it’s easy to pick a device between them. And we’ll talk about that more, but first, specifications....

BBC Russia, which reported the breach, said “it’s possible that this is the largest data leak in the history of the work of Russian special services on the Internet.” The documents included descriptions of dozens of internal projects the company was working on, including ones on de-anonymization of users of the Tor browser and researching the vulnerability of torrents. A Tor network routes internet traffic through random relays across the world, allowing users to conceal their location and internet usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis....

National agencies and private space companies — such as NASA and SpaceX— aim to colonize Mars and send humans into space for long-term missions, but they have yet to address the intimate and sexual needs of astronauts or future space inhabitants. This situation is untenable and needs to change if we hope to settle new worlds and continue our expansion in the cosmos — we’ll need to learn how to safely reproduce and build pleasurable intimate lives in space....

In its current state, video already accounts for over 66% of all internet traffic, with Cisco predicting it to reach 82% percent of all consumer internet traffic by 2021. With some analysts estimating that 1 minute of good video being worth almost $2 million in marketing pull, there is good reason to regard video as the new preferred medium of content. However, the current model of advertising revenue fueling the industry’s growth is a centralized one that sees video sharing platforms take the lion’s share....

LinkedIn analyzed the skills listed by its members from the APAC region over the last five years to identify the top 10 rising skills. The report found blockchain to be the fastest growing skill in Singapore and among the top three in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Vietnam. According to LinkedIn, blockchain as a skill is mostly utilized for setting up and managing distributed and decentralized public ledgers....

The thing is, society evolves exponentially, and at their outset, cutting-edge technologies are never mainstream. General audiences find them too complex, bizarre and unrealistic. For instance, long before the Internet, people did not believe in paper and printing. Yet, when Johannes Gutenberg printed his 42-line Bible, he changed the world forever. Blockchain technology has fallen victim to that same kind of thinking. Though it is likely to become the next big thing, most people have never heard of it, or they find it too complex to fathom....

Andrew Fox, a researcher at UC Davis, and co-author Tade Souaiaia from SUNY lead a team of researchers in an experimental study to determine if behaviors related to anxiety and depression could be mitigated by manipulating the amygdala, the part of the brain that controls memory and emotions linked to memory. In order to land on a specific molecule – in this case neurotrophin-3 – the team used RNA sequencing, viral-vector gene manipulation, functional brain imaging, and behavioral phenotyping to reverse-engineer the brains of primates....

Over the weekend, Twitter user Stacksmashing managed to break into Apple’s tracking device. They also managed to dump the firmware of Apple’s new device (although this hasn’t been made public). Feast your eyes on this: /cc @colinoflynn @LennertWo pic.twitter.com/zGALc2S2Ph — stacksmashing (@ghidraninja) May 8, 2021 We can all agree on one thing: this is cool. Apple is renowned for the strong security of its devices, so actually hacking an AirTag is a fantastic achievement....

The not-so world wide web Ask any technocrat about the internet, and they’re bound to mention how it’s associated with boundless opportunity and the chance to connect with anybody across the world. Unfortunately, countless studies have shown that low access to the internet hinders social mobility and access to opportunities. Internet access is a modern development indicator, signaling that it’s as much a virtual as it is a social divide. According to a recent UN report, only 57% of people in developing countries are using the internet vs 90% of people in developed countries....

The company teased the game with a video titled “Know Your History,” which cribs footage of KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov discussing sleeper agents in Western intelligence. That, combined with the tagline, “Know your history, of be doomed to repeat it,” leads me to believe it’s going to be a spy thriller — which makes the Black Ops moniker more fitting, in my opinion. That’s all we really know about the game so far — there isn’t any gameplay footage in the teaser, and most of it’ll probably have to wait until we actually see the game next week....

And the thing is, it’s actually a pretty decent machine. While it’s not quite capable of playing the latest AAA video game blockbuster at full whack, for typical day-to-day computing tasks, I can’t fault it. At the heart is an Intel Core i-8265U processor. This chip, which Intel released halfway though 2018, strikes a delicate balance of speed and power efficiency. Speaking of which, most reviews we’ve seen suggest users can expect between 5 and 7 hours of battery life, which should be enough to last the working day (assuming you’ll have intermittent access to mains power) or a medium-haul flight (say, New York to London)....

In August, I wrote about the Google Nest Hub as my top choice for a smart device in the kitchen. It has a good screen that’s just the perfect size, and nice loudspeakers. Apart from the screen with 1280 x 800 resolution, the device has dual-channel speakers with 10W output from each channel. It also has a front-facing camera so you can call your friends and family directly from the device....

Remembering to exercise, keeping up with thousands of irrelevant emails, all while having to actually, you know, get up on time is tough. Hell, sometimes, it can feel downright impossible. But… what if there was a solution to your multitasking misery? Well, say hello to the Fossil Gen 4 Explorist smartwatch, something that promises just that. And, luckily, it’s currently on offer. Aren’t you a lucky thing? Usually, it sells at $275, but the watch is down to $199 for a limited time only....

I don’t really need to sell this much. If you’ve got an Xbox, you know what the controller is like. That said, I will say this is an excellent deal, and one worth considering if you’re in the market. According to CamelCamelCamel, this is the cheapest this controller has ever been. Typically, this Xbox One controller retails for around £50. At its peak it sold for an eye-watering £65. Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar deals emerge in the coming months....

At some point in our lives, most of us have used large computer files. Whether it’s editing videos, managing photo libraries, or even just playing games, having to do something on a creaking, slow hard drive is an absolute pain. Of course, many computers come with SSDs pre-installed these days, which makes general operation whip-fast. But most external storage available today still uses old-fashioned spinning hard disks. That means getting big files on and off those drive can be an absolute pain, especially if you work with something like video....