Archive for the ‘Media Control’ Category

From voice control to Story replies, heres everything in Snapchats big update – Digital Trends

Snapchat will soon respond to your voice and help you find new places to hang out, all inside an app with a new way to navigate. During the annual Snap Partner Summit on June 11, Snap Inc. announced a long list of new features heading to the app, including several that build on the social networks fundamentals, from replying to Stories to adding a hashtag-like feature called Topics.

First, a new action bar that adds shortcuts at the top of the app makes getting around a little simpler, Snapchat says. The new navigation bar changes based on what screen you are in. While Snapchats gesture controls are one of the biggest hurdles for new users trying to find all the different features, Snapchat users have complained loudly over major design changes in the past.

But users will also soon simply be able to ask Snapchat for what they are seeking. Voice Scan is a voice search for different lenses, where users can just say, Snapchat, make my hair pink, for example. The voice control is activated by touching and holding on the camera screen.

Another camera tool, Scan, will allow users to tap and hold to use a different type of Lens that helps recognize whats in the photo. The feature is starting with PlantSnap, which can identify 400 different plants and is activated by pressing and holding on the screen. Other camera-focused updates include the addition of Local Lenses designed for a specific neighborhood and enhancements to Lens Studio, the desktop app for building a Lens.

Snapchat Places aims to help users find popular hangouts in the community or when traveling. While Snap Map typically shows where friends are, Places adds businesses to that map, including details like hours, the address, and reviews from Tripadvisor and FourSquare. Snap Inc. says that food ordering from Postmates, DoorDash, and Uber Eats will also be added to Places soon.

Stories, a major part of Snapchat that many apps have now copied, adds two new features. Story Replies allow users to add comments to Stories from Snap Stars, which can then be turned into stickers. The platform says replies will be filtered for bullying and hate speech.

Topics functions like a hashtag designed for Stories. Using a Topic sticker in a Story submits the content for potential inclusion in a topic-wide Story. Snapchat users can browse through topics to find interests, with topics like Life Hacks and Oddly Satisfying.

In a move to expand news on the platform, Snap Inc. also announced Happening Now, a spot for watching breaking news in Story format. It has partnered with trusted news organizations for the feature, with journalism coming from The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Reuters, NBC News, ESPN, NowThis, E! News, BuzzFeed News, and others. The section will also include publicly submitted Snaps from the community, Snapchat said. Snapchat didnt go into detail on the process to get those Snaps included in a way that prevents fake news. The feature also includes local weather and personalized horoscopes.

The list of announcements also includes several new ways other apps are building Snapchat integrations and vice versa. Snap Minis are HTML5 snippets that power functions directly inside a chat room. With the Move Tickets by Atom Mini, for example, friends can choose a showtime, seats, and pay for tickets inside of a chat, along with watching trailers together. The original list of Minis powers features from studying with a friend to planning a festival.

Third-party apps will also be able to integrate Snapchats camera and lenses with updates to the Camera Kit. Apps from Nike, MLB Ballpark, Squad, and Triller are among the first expected to bring a Snapchat camera into their own apps.

For gaming, Bitmojis can soon be used in 3D inside third-party games on mobile devices, PCs, and even gaming consoles. The first games and companies integrating the feature include Scrabble Go, SingHeads, and Uno. Snap Games is also adding 10n new titles.

Snapchat also announced new Snap Originals and expanded features in the Here For You feature designed to support mental health.

Some of the tools, such as Places and Story Replies, are already rolling out to iOS and Android today, while other announcements are glimpses of whats heading out to the app next.

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From voice control to Story replies, heres everything in Snapchats big update - Digital Trends

Spreading faster than the virus – The Kathmandu Post

Last April, I received a forwarded message from my friend. It was a TikTok video of a fruit vendor moving stuff in his cart, apparently a Muslim. An appalling statement followed: If I could, I would slaughter these type of people, they are the real virus. This was from a well-educated person. In this case, as with many others in Nepal, the clip was found to be fake, clickbait media. But it spread with urgency; it was sharedirrespective of age, gender and education statusfairly quickly and without any cross-verification. This raises some pertinent questions. What is fake news and why does it occur? Why do we fall victim to it? And most importantly, how can we save ourselves from it?

Understanding the problem

One might argue that the cases of fake news in Nepal has not reached a point of concern; but if learning from our southern neighbour is anything to go by, we are on the way there. If this goes unchecked, the consequences will be severe. Without the need to present evidence to back up claims, the fake news industry has become all-pervading even putting lives at risk.

Fake news and doctored videos are a cause for concern globally. The term 'infodemic' has even been coined during this crisis, referring to an information pandemic. Creators of fake news have a huge incentive in its spread. Viewership increases, increasing advertisement revenue. Viral journalism is the new trend. Politicians have a lot to gain by endorsing fake news or creating some. Social media spreads opinions faster, whether substantiated or not. Party propaganda, jingoism and fascism, all these in some way may be attributed to a rise in the culture of fake news and its spread.

Another major but less discussed consequence occurs on health. Random things are advertised to reduce cancer, random herbal products help you lose weight, and unverified processes help to tone your skin. These concern people directly and thus spread faster. Fake news has been used by many to validate their most improbable claims, like a debate on climate change, the impact of the fashion industry on climate change, the nature and cause of philanthropy and so forth. This has created confusion among people, and more importantly, diverted attention away from causes that needed serious action.

For the most part, social media has been a boon, connecting people, sharing ideas, connecting the dots, and promoting ideas and culture. With the advent of fake news, the line has become thinner. It is good that social media companies like Twitter have acknowledged the issue of fake news and promised to take action to counter it. Sadly, the effort has not been able to control the deluge of information created.

Generally, this has mostly impacted the older generation. They have a hard time believing that one can write 'news stories' without substance. At some point, we have all been offended by news stories shared by relatives on social media. Even millennials and Generation X fall victim to fake news of a more sophisticated nature. We classify news as fake or credible based on our experience, our interest, our horizon of knowledge and prejudice. News items shared by friends and family are thought to be bona fide.

So, how can we break this chain? How can we help ourselves and people who are victims to come out? How do we mitigate the impact? The answers are not that straightforward. The media is rightly touted as the fourth pillar of democracy, so curbing media activities comes with a consequence. Restricting the media would make matters worse, as it increases the risk of the media becoming controlled by those in power.

The most plausible action would be to increase literacy among consumers. We can run effective campaigns to make people aware of fake news, their sources, their impacts and their consequences. The government, media houses, journalists and regulating agencies should first acknowledge this as a serious problem and be on the same page to mitigate its impact. More importantly, friends and family, schools and non-governmental organisations have a bigger role to play in this. Media literacywith critical thinking, reflection and ethical behaviour at its coreis a key part of what it means to be educated in todays world.

Random news sites

Lets say that without restricting the media, the government passes a law making it mandatory for any site claiming to be a news site to be registered. And it tells people to consume news only from those sites registered with the government (with some technique like a tick for validity). This way, news from sites other than validated ones will be considered as opinion. This will make the media more credible and reduce the chances of people consuming fake news from random news sites. Additionally, government vigilance against fake news will help.

The government should try to contact social media giants like Facebook and YouTube to discourage the circulation of fake news. WhatsApp itself turned to print media to make people aware of false news and information by printing ads in newspapers in India. The government should coordinate with Facebook and ask it to pull down fake news and information and disable fake accounts. Fake news has been there since the birth of mass media. But the impact has never been so severe as now with communications happening at lightning speed. If left untreated, this will make matters even worse. We better start acting now.

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Spreading faster than the virus - The Kathmandu Post

Why Amit Shah Should Take Charge of the Defence Ministry As Well – The Wire

Extreme problems require extreme solutions may be an overused clich, but we do have an extreme situation on the India-China border. Even the most friendly and moderate media voices concede that weve had the most serious military stand-off with the Chinese since 1962. We need an extraordinarily extreme man to fix the Chinese for making extraordinary efforts to send infiltrators into New India.

We need a new Raksha Mantri.

Most strategic experts will readily concede that in recent years, our optimal pursuit of maximum national security has been critically weakened because we have had an unfortunate string of inadequate defence ministers. Starting with A.K. Antony (compulsively indecisive ), Arun Jaitley (part-time), Manohar Parrikar (unwell, unexcited, un-engaged), Nirmala Sitaraman ( fish out of water), and, now, Rajnath Singh, a mofussil man, locked in the political rhetoric of 1990s. And they all have one common trait: they have all been reactive.

Rajnath Singh may once have been a senior political figure but is now completely without any weight. The rise of Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh has been so choreographed as to hack away whatever clout the defence minister may have once had. And, the generals, always good at reading the political leaves, do not take him seriously. Nor can he take them on for the Chinese ingress into our territory. The Krishna Menon precedent need not necessarily be re-activated but surely everyone agrees we need a change of guard at the Ministry of Defence.

We need to convert our current adversity into an opportunity to give New India a proactive, activist, and perhaps interventionist defence minister. And Amit Shah is the very man for the moment.

He is tough, even tougher than the prime minister. And, what is more, he can easily handle defence in addition to his current responsibility at North Block. In fact, he is today quite underworked as he has fulfilled all the promises the BJP made in its 2019 manifesto, that too in just one year. In any case, home is a status-quo ministry and as home minister, Shah has ensured that the juggernaut of coercion and control remains well-oiled. His surplus energy and time can thus be better utilised in South Block rather than getting squandered in virtual rallies for a no-contest in Bihar, so many months away.

Whereas the Chinese have posed a-here-and-now challenge that needs to be dealt.

Chinas Galwan valley grab is designed to weaken us psychologically and damage our morale. As it seeks an assertive global role for itself, Beijing wants to deter India from its resolve to become a vishwa guru.

True, the Chinese leadership may have a civilisational claim to Sun Tzu, but we also have the historical heritage of Chanakya. And, Amit Shah has more than once proven himself to be the rightful legatee of that heritage. Repeatedly, the best and the brightest among our media have anointed him Modern-day Chankaya.

It helps that Amit Shah has two other qualities: he is obsessed with infiltrators, and is a nibbler par excellence. If Chinese infiltrators can nibble our territory, we also need to have a minister who is adept at the art of nibbling. A man who can nibble Congress MLAs in state after state can be confidently relied upon to start playing the nibbling game with the Chinese. It is an enterprise that admits of no restraint, no moral qualms, and no second thoughts.

The idea of the same man presiding over the home and defence ministries may not be all that palatable to the Lutyens lobby but it is an idea whose time has come. India needs to think out of the box on how to bring about maximum symbiosis between the tools of internal security and the instruments of external security. We need the strategic convergence of four Ss, as Modi might put it: Shakti (strength), Suraksha (security), Samanvaya (harmony) and Samajhdari (insightfulness). The man to bring about this convergence is Amit Shah.

He will bring to the job a raw energy. He will know how to make the generals respect the political leadership. Perhaps the corrosive juglabandi between mediocre ministers and mediocre generals will finally be disrupted.

And there is more. Amit Shah brings in an uncluttered clarity. If violence is deemed to have a curative, beneficiary effect at home in taming opponents as well as in firing up the partisans then, why should we be so squeamish about the use of force against our national enemies?

As home minister, Amit Shah had, on August 5, 2019, undone one of Jawaharlal Nehrus follies, Article 370; now, he can be tasked with the responsibility for undoing the consequences of Nehrus greatest folly of trusting the Chinese. He is perhaps the only man who has the Chankayan cunning to divine the adversarys deepest design and then to move to neutralise the enemys ill-intent.

An additional benefit perhaps a totally intended consequence of a joint home-defence minister will be that Amit Shah would take on the role of Indias security czar. He will acquire a decisive voice in the conceptualising and conducting of our foreign policy. And that may not be all that bad, because it would put an end to the undeserved and unnecessary importance the Ministry of External Affairs gets accorded in our scheme of things

The new India has to recognise that it is time to drain out the Nehruvian politeness that has got institutionalised in the MEAs organisational blood-stream. This effete mandarinate thinks that etiquette and protocol are a solution to an aggressive China. Too much importance is attached to diplomacy; it got us nowhere with Islamabad, and finally it was only surgical force that made the Pakistanis read the message on the Modi wall.

In recent times, the prime minister has repeatedly and earnestly assured the nation that it is time to take bold reforms. A new Raksha Mantri, a new Security Czar is the boldest reform possible. It will send an unmistakable and unambiguous message across to all of Indias enemies, internal and external.

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Why Amit Shah Should Take Charge of the Defence Ministry As Well - The Wire

Ontario to Resume Family Visits in Long-Term Care Homes, Retirement Homes, and Other Residential Care Settings – Government of Ontario News

Ontario to Resume Family Visits in Long-Term Care Homes, Retirement Homes, and Other Residential Care SettingsStrict Health and Safety Guidelines Will Be Required to Protect Residents, Visitors and Staff

TORONTO In consultation with the Chief Medical Officer of Health, the Ontario government announced the gradual resumption of visits to long-term care homes, retirement homes, and other residential care settings.

Family and friends will be allowed access to these settings beginning June 18, 2020. Long-term care homes will allow outdoor visits of one person per resident each week at a minimum. Retirement homes will resume indoor and outdoor visits in designated areas or resident suites when physical distancing can be maintained. Other residential care settings will be able to allow outdoor visits of two people at time. Physical distancing will be required for all visits.This approach will ensure the health and safety of residents, staff and visitors.

Details were provided today by Premier Doug Ford, Christine Elliott, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health, Dr. Merrilee Fullerton, Minister of Long-Term Care, and Todd Smith, Minister of Children, Community and Social Services.

"Thanks to the hard work of our frontline workers and the collective efforts of everyone in stopping the spread, we can now allow families to reunite with their loved ones safely and in person with strict public health measures to protect residents, visitors and staff," said Premier Ford. "But I ask everyone to be cautious and act responsibly as the battle to contain COVID-19 is not over and the risk to our loved ones still remains."

Visits will resume next Thursday, one week after the release of visitor guidelines. They will be subject to strict health and safety protocols, including requiring visitors to pass active screening every time they visit, confirming with staff that they have tested negative for COVID-19 within the previous two weeks, and complying with the infection prevention and control protocols. This includes bringing and wearing a face covering during visits.

Additionally, long-term care and retirement homes, as well as other residential care settings, must meet the following conditions before they welcome visitors:

For retirement homes, visitor admissions will vary from home to home depending upon their individual circumstances.

"We know the visitor restrictions have been tough on residents, as families and loved ones play an important role in providing care and emotional support to residents. We are confident these visits can occur safely," said Minister Fullerton. "With the possible spread of COVID-19 in our long-term care homes still being a real threat, people will need to follow strict health and safety protocols in order to protect our most vulnerable."

"Seniors living in retirement homes have been doing their part to stop the spread of COVID-19," said Raymond Cho, Minister for Seniors and Accessibility. "Our government appreciates their cooperation and we are happy they will soon be able to enjoy visits with family and friends while continuing to stay safe."

Other residential care settings will also be allowed visitors under similar rules. These residential care settings include homes serving people with developmental disabilities, shelters for survivors of gender-based violence, and children's residential settings.

"We are all looking forward to the day when we can once again see family and friends, and spend time together," said Minister Smith. "Today is an important first step in reconnecting loved ones who have been separated all spring."

As the COVID-19 outbreak evolves in Ontario, the direction on visits at long-term care homes, retirement homes and residential settings will continually be updated keeping the safety and emotional wellbeing of residents and staff at the forefront.

Visits have been restricted since mid-March, with only essential visitors permitted to enter long-term care and retirement homes.

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Ontario to Resume Family Visits in Long-Term Care Homes, Retirement Homes, and Other Residential Care Settings - Government of Ontario News

Port surveillance to get 5G boost as trial involving drones begins – straits times

SINGAPORE - Drones will dot the skies above Singapore's southern coastal waters as part of a 5G trial to improve port surveillance.

The one-year flight trial, which will start in August near Marina South Pier, will test how Airbus drones can be remotely controlled over 5G mobile networks for the inspection and management of port incidents.

In a joint statement on Thursday (June 11), the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and M1 announced the partnership with with aviation giant Airbus.

"We believe that 5G will sharpen Singapore's competitive advantage as a key trading and connectivity hub in the region and beyond," said IMDA chief executive Tan Kiat How, urging other enterprises big and small to join in building Singapore's 5G ecosystem.

"This collaboration will establish key cellular 5G performance... requirements to enable (unmanned aircraft) to safely integrate and fly in national airspace systems," said Airbus head of unmanned traffic management Isabel Del Pozo De Poza.

This localised 5G network to be set up by telco M1 is not part of Singapore's two planned nationwide networks that will blanket the entire island with 5G signals by 2025.

Singtel and a joint venture between StarHub and M1 have been awarded licences to build the two nationwide 5G networks.

5G networks promise lower latency and higher surfing speeds than their 4G predecessors. These advantages are expected to translate to more precise, safe and reliable communications for unmanned aircraft operations.

5G technologies also provides more precise real-time data on the location and position of drones than satellite technologies, which are more commonly used today.

In addition to the coastal trials, M1 and Airbus signed a memorandum of understanding to conduct 5G trials for inland areas to address the growing interest in unmanned aircraft systems such as drones from other industries.

Last month, IBM, Samsung and M1 announced a tie-up for a 5G smart manufacturing trial to look at ways the technology can improve the control of smart devices on factory floors such as robotic arms.

Singtel and M1 previously began testing the remote control of port equipment like cranes and driverless vehicles over a 5G connection with port operator PSA International last year.

IMDA launched a $40 million fund with the National Research Foundation last June to accelerate the rollout of 5G technology in six strategic clusters, including maritime operations.

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Port surveillance to get 5G boost as trial involving drones begins - straits times