Photo Credit: Forbes

Reportedly, your Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL can be unlocked even if your eyes are fully closed. This means anyone can unlock your phone when you are sleeping or simply not paying attention. This is even revealed by Google on their support page.

A support page about face unlock on Google reads, “Your phone can also be unlocked by someone else if it’s held up to your face, even if your eyes are closed. Keep your phone in a safe place, like your front pocket or handbag.”

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A spokesperson from Google said, “We don’t have anything specific to announce regarding future features or timing, but like most of our products, this feature is designed to get better over time with future software updates.”

This face unlock of Google is inspired by Apple but at least Apple doesn’t have this major privacy weakness. In iPhone, if you want to use this feature the user must be looking at the phone actively while paying attention.

Millions of people around the globe took full advantage of this and applied for the position. But unfortunately, it was not real. Later it was revealed by the Microsoft-owned LinkedIn that the position was open due to a security bug in their software. The bug let people all over the world apply on literally any firm’s official LinkedIn page for the job openings.

These high-profile job positions were listed in the company’s profile under the ‘jobs’ section. They were listed as any other job and seemed so legitimate that people were convinced that it was real. The issue came into notice when a job posting for Google CEO put up by Michel Rijnders.

As soon as the company realized about this issue they assured that they have removed the posting also that they are looking into the issue that made this post to go live. LinkedIn also assured everyone that it a place for real people to have a real conversation about their careers.

The older look had a standard blue colored text with the site or brand in the green text which would comparatively be smaller and less evident. The change of look gives more emphasis to the publisher as the brand logo is highlighted towards the left and on top of the standard blue text. Even though this fresh look is very light and makes a very small change in the overall look of the search results, it is surely going to satisfy a lot of publishers and brands especially because of the small logo or personal icon option. This especially adds a unique pictorial identity to the site and highlights it very subtly.

This would also make it easier for the users especially when they have some previous preferences with publishers, this icon representation would make it easier for them to directly click on the link of their preferred publisher by scrolling. Moreover also making it simpler for them to identify between publisher’s websites and ads that come in the search results.

The advertisement links are now also shown more prominently with a bold black “Ad” on a white background in place of the icon. This is surely going to be a plus point for Google and moreover for the publishers. This all new and improved look for the Google search results has been made official by Google themselves and is all set to be up and running in a few days.

Whether you are using Google or Facebook, a lot of information that you share with them are well tracked, and a few things that you are not aware even that are being tracked as well. Recently, it was found that Google has been keeping a track of all the purchases you make. Till now, I was not sure that Google is collecting my purchase history data this way.

Moreover, these are being done by them to improve user experience, but sometimes users get irritated of being tracked. Recently, as per CNBC report, your Gmail account has the purchase history that you made. That means if you are using Gmail id on shopping sites, and you receive various emails from them when you order something, they are tracked, and you can find all the purchases made visiting this link.

When I came to know about this, I was surprised to realize that Google remembered everything I bought. In fact, I have forgotten what else I bought in the early years, but Google still remembers everything, and the data is pretty well displayed.

Google admits that they do track the purchases, but they won’t use it to pitch ads, which is a relief for users as they won’t bombard with ads related to purchase history.

“To help you easily view and keep track of your purchases, bookings, and subscriptions in one place, we’ve created a private destination that can only be seen by you,” Google told The Verge in a statement.

Google also said that you could delete this information easily at any time. They added that they don’t use Gmail messages to show ads.

Apart from all these things, Google has been a great brand which offers a lot of free useful tools, and Gmail is one of them.

Twitter revealed it’s latest efforts in tackling terrorism by suspending a total of 166,153 accounts in Q2 of 2018 for promoting terrorism across the microblogging platform.

Twitter is under pressure from regulators and governments across the globe to remove extremist content or face consequences along with internet giants such as Facebook and Google.

While announcing their annual transparency report, Twitter revealed that 91% of the account promoting terrorism got suspended before their first tweet while the rest of them got banned after their first tweet or as soon as they raised the red flag.

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There is a 19% drop in the suspension of accounts from the first quarter where the internet giant blocked around 205,156 accounts between Jan 2018 to Jun 2018 while just blocking 166,153 accounts between Jul 2018 to Dec 2018.

CEO Dorsey applauded the company’s AI for helping them to tackle terrorism over the platform efficiently.

Twitter VP, told that the dropping number is because the number of organizations or individuals using Twitter is reducing year on year due to the company’s regulations and policies.

Twitter received an account information request from 86 countries where the US comprises only 30 percent of global government information requests and 35 percent of all global accounts specified in the same category while the second highest volume of information requests was submitted by Japan with 24% of the total requests.

Twitter is rolling out features to tackle serious issues from 2013 itself. To help in these serious Twitter introduced the “report abuse” button in 2013 where people could manually report ‘abusive’ tweets.

Terrorism is just spreading out like wildfire and this is a great step to fight it efficiently.

A few days ago a former Youtube engineer spilled beans on how a group of engineers plotted to kill Microsoft’s Internet Explorer through Youtube back in 2009 nearly 10 years ago.

Frustrated by the retarded Internet Explorer the group started to figure out how they can get rid of this aging browser. After a couple of months of discussion and planning the group came up with a plan to place a banner above the video that only shows up only to the IE 6 users saying that ” We will be phasing out the support for your browser soon “.

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This all happened without Google’s permission as they figured out a way to bypass code enforcement by creating a special set of code which they called “OldTuber” that let them make direct changes to Youtube codebase easily.

After banner started showing up the press started to question that why Google wants to kill Internet Explorer when there is a large group of people who are still using the browser and to get out of this the group told everything to Google’s PR team. After which two Google Lawyers demanded to remove the banner immediately because this action was against the EU’s anti-competitive behavior but the team explained that they have programmed the banner to display random browsers and demonstrated it to the lawyers after which they went back to their work.

The engineer who led the team, Chris Zacharias said that “We saw an opportunity in front of us to permanently cripple IE6 that we might never get again”.

At that time Youtube was getting around 18% of its traffic especially from IE 6 which dipped massively within a month of this action.

Zacharis told on his blog that, within one month, over 10 % of global IE6 traffic dropped off while all other browsers increased in corresponding amounts”.

Soon after Youtube, the banner started to show up on other Google websites mainly Google Docs. Just after the banned went live one of the Docs team employees went with the plan to his manager to convince him to do the same.

After 4 years of wait the rebels won the battle, IE 6 user base dropped below 1% in the US which convinced Microsoft to finally kill the IE 6 and the irony was that Microsoft also got frustrated and launched a countdown website to accelerate the death and also distributed t-shirts and cake to celebrate the final moments of IE6.

One of the best features of the Pixel lineup is its Playground feature where you can play with a pool of characters using AR ( yes something similar to Pokemon Go). Basically, these are AR stickers that are specifically designed to interact with users and you can click a photo with them or you can shoot a video whatever you want.

We have seen many additions of promotional characters such as characters from Star Wars and Marvel Cinematic Universe during their big releases and this time Playground got a bunch of Pokemon’s to play with.

Spotted by many users around the globe, the Playground received a new package of AR stickers that feature four of the famous Pokemon’s and they are none other than Pikachu, Charizard, Jigglypuff and Mr. Mime ( they are some of the best Pokemon’s).

To install this package, you have to open the stock pixel camera app, then tap on more and then on Playground after that hit on the sticker icon in the bottom and then finally tap the green install button. Once installed you can start to play with each Pokemon individually or with all of them.

This sticker pack is basically to promote the upcoming Pokemon film, Detective Pickachu which stars the Deadpool fame Ryan Reynolds giving voice to none other than our favorite Pickachu.

This AR sticker package is supposed to come to a few of the LG and Moto handsets in few upcoming days. We highly doubt that other than any device other than LG G7 ThinQ and Moto Z3 is going to get these stickers as none of the device other than these supports the Google Playground.

We have seen these types of the sticker in the past also during the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Netflix hit Stranger Things and one package featuring Childish Gambino.

One of the most competitive markets today has got to be the online shopping market. When one begins to talk about online shopping the name “Amazon” is bound to come up.  The tech giant has always been a pioneer in the world of online shopping and has introduced schemes and plans that have revolutionized online shopping as we now know it.

In early 2005 Amazon announced its Prime feature that basically enabled a user to have a variety of additional services upon payment of $79 to the company. These services included the very lucrative 2-day delivery guarantee which assured all Prime users the delivery of their orders in less than 48 hours from the time of placing the order.

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The move not only attracted more customers to shop online but also forced other shopping portals to follow suit, today, most shopping portals have the two-day delivery option. Amazon, however, is choosing to push the limits of its resources as it is now saying that by the end of 2019 they will be ready to introduce a one-day delivery guarantee to all of its Prime users. Now this change will be expensive and it will maybe increase the amount to be paid for a Prime membership slightly higher than its current $119.

The move by Amazon, already the largest online shopping platform in the world is now going to strengthen its position at the top of the food chain. The other companies will have to try and follow suit eventually but it is infinitesimally harder for these companies to do this given that they do not possess the resources that Amazon has access to.

Even Amazon in all its might can offer this service other than on a select number of products that it estimates comes up to almost a million products. There is a certain amount of speculation on the practicality in the fulfillment of this promise as it would force them to hire more workers, find a sustainable means of speedy transport while not putting the safety of these workers on the line. If somehow Amazon does manage to pull it off some analysts are doubtful that it would be as successful as it was in 2005. It sounds like it is offering a lot more but in truth, the Prime users receive their packages well in advance from the two-day deadline.

The customers may not be greatly impressed by a revision of merely the rule on paper while it is already in practice. But, this move does not fail to set the other online portals scrambling to catch up as they always do right after Amazon announces anything new. In a poll conducted it was found that the customers value the free delivery more than the limited time in which they receive their package.

Amazon, however, is not one to rest, it is working on shipping packages at an unbelievable pace of 2 hours by partnering up with rapid delivery service providers. They are also working with drones that will deliver packages in 30 minutes, they have not started testing it in the mainstream yet. They are in their early stages of testing in England, on an interesting side note Google just received clearance to test its drones in Virginia. The question is, to what length will these companies go to in order to provide us with the comfort of “convenience” and are they taking it too far?

The entry of tech giants in consumer finance was something that seemed almost bound to happen. There have been many cases of the tech giants that have waded into these shark infested water, it was never seen openly in the public domain.

All this one could say changed recently as we saw in Cupertino, California where Apple released their new credit card last month with a great deal of pomp. This was a pioneering move by both Apple and the industrious bank, Goldman Sachs who are one of the key partners in the deal.

In the announcement, one would not have known that Goldman Sachs had played such a major role in the decision when we saw the mere passing reference made to them as nothing more than a footnote in the event. The entire event was handled and hosted by Tim Cook the CEO of Apple Inc. as the CEO of Goldman Sachs stood on the sidelines and clapped while in truth he should have been proposing the plan along with Cook on stage.

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This entire situation is in a way satirical and almost accurate representation of what the market and Wall Street will be reduced to if in future they continue to collaborate with these technological giants.

However, the question that most people have on their minds is whether or not these banks are ready to sacrifice their place in the driver’s seat because of the millions of customers that partnership with these tech giants would bring them into their banks. This is is a dilemma that the banks clearly have to face where they lose something integral irrespective of the decision they make.

If they choose not to entertain the partnerships of these tech giants they lose out on an opportunity to have millions of new customers join them. But, if they do accept a partnership they seem to be taking a backseat in all the ventures and decisions and may just become another front for these extremely successful companies.

The tech companies also have a reason for needing these partnerships. As they enter the world of consumer finance these tech giants need these Wallstreet heavy hitters in order to navigate this new terrain. It is not all great news for the banks as mentioned earlier as if these deals are agreed upon the more lucrative facets of the company like the customer relations and branding will go to the tech companies. The stakes, however, are higher than they have ever been with almost 40% of the $1.35 trillion in revenues that will go to these companies like Amazon and Apple, and maybe also to price competition.

American tech companies are in a way looking to their Chinese counterparts like Alibaba and Tencent as inspiration, these companies have already become major players due to their mobile applications that have greatly increased their ease of transactions, investing and payments.

American companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple are not far behind as they have begun to encroach on the turf of the banks. Google has Google Pay, Apple has Apple Pay, Amazon has Amazon Cash and Amazon Pay with which customers shop online and even Facebook is looking to enable payments via Whatsapp. These tech giants are doing this in order to fuel their revenue growth and also help them strengthen their grip on the market.

The committee’s monthly choices on interest rates eventually prove how far our cash travels. Still, it appears like something like the individuals whose lives they want to influence maximum.

In fact, current governor Mark Carney is that the one hundred and twentieth in an exceedingly continuous line of white men to own headed the Bank.

Women comprise half the united kingdom population, however simply ninth of the Financial Policy Committee. There’s conjointly not one black, Asian or minority group (BAME) member. It’s obvious the Bank includes a diversity downside.

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The general public Accounts Committee (PAC), in the last month, was way off its diversity targets for next year with very limited proof the gap is closing immediately rather.

The Bank selected 2 women: Banking Standards Board chair Dame Sidonie-Gabrielle Claudine Colette Bowe and former Virgin cash boss Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia in a Gregorian calendar month, to its Monetary Policy Committee.

The Bank’s chief in operation officer Joanna Place conjointly said:

We’ve got done heaps quite simply gender and quality, in terms of diversity and inclusion. and we have a variety of workers networks. we’ve got inclusive events. Also, we’ve got an upbeat strategy. we’ve got done a psychical trait diversity survey. we’ve got started to examine the societal aspect.

Many hope that the Bank’s hunt for a replacement governor – that began earlier in the week – might herald the beginning of a replacement era with a feminine governor at the helm for the primary time in its history.

Labour MP Rachel Reeves [chairs the business board and who was a social explorer at the Bank of European nation before turning into an official]: 

He says its high time now for the Bank to act.

Well, we have witnessed two women prime ministers but don’t hold any ladies chancellors or Bank governors.  “The miserable fact is that the Bank has not done adequate recruitment, train and raise gifted ladies. Thus much more to be inline to lead generation ahead, to foster women economists who can hold the powerful statuses”.

Rejuvenating..

Wendy Carlin [professor of social science at University faculty London], says:

Further, the concern isn’t with the Bank of England. As when you Google “economists” by default you’ll get a large class of pictures of economists in groups, who operate the monetary chart. Such a responsive unit is rejuvenating. If peoples totally see men in suits that don’t affect them.

Prof Carlin is leading a world project [the CORE project] to reconstruct the process social science is tutored, with the purpose of widening its appeal.

We’re signifying abundantly that social science is acting to address the issues, which we are to meet. Furthermore, treating monetary stability yet it is too concerning inequality, work, and future environmental factors.

Dr. Margaret Heffernan [ Author & the former chief government of 5 businesses] says:

The limited number of girls in the sector is a concern. Taking it as an opportunity in this profession, women are somewhere been dominated by men.

As per a recent survey by the yank Economic Association of quite nine- 200 economists advise concerning the rooted issues.

“A certain group of feminine economists who felt discriminated against, compared with twelve-tone music of men. While women felt they have been treated unequally while choosing the candidates for financing and promotion related jobs”.