This article aims at providing a set of curated recommendations so that you can prevent bugs in production, and find issues much quicker. Handling these applications in production is a complicated task: Often, there is no documentation available, the application has been written in a legacy technology stack, or both. There are very few training sessions, and it’s common to be called in to provide support for an application about which you know little....

Some of us will have more experience with this than others, but there’s no denying that adapting to this new norm isn’t easy, especially if you suddenly find yourself sharing a desk with your partner, or trying to keep your kids under control. [Read: 7 tips for my fellow humans stuck working from home] At Growth Quarters, we strive to give you actionable advice to help you take your business to great heights, but we’re also on hand to provide lighthearted relief when things get tough....

What starts out as the Tesla of designs gets turned into a practical Subaru, with all the safety features and no-frills… or it ends up looking like a beat-up junkyard scooter with no wheels. Designers start muttering something about pixels and padding, devs send passive-aggressive Slack messages, and coffee break encounters become frosty. Why can’t we all just get along? Including developers in the design process and designers in the development process can help you develop a much better workflow and outcome by combining their different expertise and perspectives....

The discourse surrounding artificial intelligence ethics is wide, varied, and completely out of control. Those debating technology ethics tend to be the people with the most at stake financially – politicians, big tech developers, and researchers from major universities. It can be difficult to gauge their motivations when the biggest argument against deploying dangerous AI systems without consideration for the potential harm they can do typically boils down to: “regulation might stifle innovation....

But with the demise of the headphone jack and my dislike of dongles, I can’t keep a pair of plugged in. So, I switched to the next best thing: Wiress buds. This meant I had to find a pair that suited how I wanted to use them. I’m just gonna say it: Airpods are not the solution. I know a lot of you might be marching towards my house with pitchforks and torches already, but take a deep breath, sit down, and hear me out....

The company on Tuesday shut down accounts, apps, pages, and platform access associated with the NYU Ad Observatory, which investigates the transparency of online political ads. Facebook said the team’s data collection methods violated the social network’s rules around user privacy. Laura Edelson, one of the researchers whose accounts was banned, slated Facebook’s actions: Democratic Senator Mark Warner issued a statement defending the project. He described Facebook’s actions as “deeply concerning....

On Thursday, the ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to order a range of federal agencies to hand over their records about the tech’s usage at airports. The lawsuit centers on concerns that the government can use facial recognition to track our movements, and has refused to provide details about what it’s doing with the tech. To find out more, the ACLU is seeking details on the government’s contracts with airlines and airports involving facial recognition, what it does with the biometric information, and their analyses of the tech’s effectiveness....

Adobe’s move comes as something of a surprise, considering we haven’t seen similar moves from other major tech companies yet. Adobe seems to be taking an extra cautious approach in interpreting the wording of the order, which seems to mainly be focused on the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro and those who support him. Meanwhile Google Drive, PayPal, OneDrive, other major software services based in the US still work in the country, although it’s possible that may change soon....

But it all changed this April, when Iraq hosted its first ever nationwide hackathon. The aim was to bring together aspiring entrepreneurs, and solve some of the pressing issues faced by the country through innovation. Organized by the Iraq Technology and Entrepreneurship Alliance (ITEA), the event saw a collaborative effort between 700 youth activists across the cities of Erbil, Baghdad, Basra, Sulaimaniya, and Mosul. Between developing plastic recycling solutions, creating bicycle stands for university students to combat congestion, and developing 3D projections and installations for Erbil’s Citadel, they are part of a blooming tech ecosystem of Iraq that aims to bring about meaningful and lasting change in the region....

The scientists behind the technique claim that it’s the first time patches of plastics in coastal waters have been detected via satellites. The system studies images collected by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellites to spot debris floating in the world’s oceans. These objects absorb and reflect light to produce a “spectral signature” in the data that contain clues about what they are. Researchers from Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK then trained an algorithm to classify the different objects by spotting differences in their spectral signatures....

And Google deserves a lion’s share of the blame. How it started There were approximately 85,000 research papers published globally on the subject of AI/ML in the year 2000. Fast-forward to 2021 and there were nearly twice as many published in the US alone. To say there’s been an explosion in the field would be a massive understatement. This influx of researchers and new ideas has led to deep learning becoming one of the world’s most important technologies....

That said, being creative is clearly one of the most remarkable human traits. Without it, there would be no poetry, no internet, and no space travel. But could AI ever match or even surpass us? Let’s have a look at the research. From a theoretical perspective, creativity and innovation is a process of search and combination. We start from one piece of knowledge and connect it with another piece of knowledge into something that is new and useful....

The stores, one in Beijing and one in Hangzhou, took an exploratory dip into the waters of honor-system retail. But these stores were more than a test of the model’s economic viability – they were also a means to gather data on social trustworthiness. The results? A rather abysmal 62% of shoppers paid for their merchandise. But times have changed, the company says. Last week, commemorating National Credit Day (June 6), Alipay kicked off another 24-hour cross-provincial trial, placing four unmanned public sharing cabinets in cities across the country, including an umbrella-borrowing station in Chengdu, and a toy-borrowing cabinet outside of a kindergarten in Zhengzhou....

SpaceX, which plans to launch 12,000 satellites in total, has so far deployed 540 (supposedly enough to start basic operations), and OneWeb 74 — all while Project Kuiper’s lack of government approval has kept its satellite count to exactly zero. [Read: Elon Musk’s 420th Starlink satellite is more than just a weed joke] As noted by Business Insider, Project Kuiper must launch 50% of its planned constellation within the next six years (by July 30, 2026), and the rest within nine (July 30, 2029)....

By: Todd Feathers Over the past six years, a little-known private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, has built an educational software empire that wields unseen influence over the educational journeys of tens of millions of children. Along the way, The Markup found, the companies the firm controls have scooped up a massive amount of very personal data on kids, which they use to fuel a suite of predictive analytics products that push the boundaries of technology’s role in education and, in some cases, raise discrimination concerns....

Named BLOOM, the large language model (LLM) promises a similar performance to Silicon Valley’s leading systems — but with a radically different approach to access. While tech giants tend to keep their vaunted LLMs hidden from the public, BLOOM is available to anyone for free. It’s also multilingual — unlike Google’s LaMDA and OpenAI’s GPT-3 — an unusual feature in an English-dominated field. These features could democratize access to technology that’s set to make a deep impact on society....

According to an announcement on Google’s Android developer blog, Android Auto devs working on navigation, parking, and EV charging apps can now push them to production. In other words, apps from the likes of Chargepoint, PlugShare, A Better Route Planner, and T Map, should start appearing on the Play Store very soon. By pushing the apps to production, it means drivers can now use the apps as part of Android Auto on their car’s main infotainment screen without needing to be signed up to the beta program....

The whitepaper also highlights the importance of the role of the App Store to protect your data and let you safely download apps. The company argues that the App Store is designed to block and detect attacks, but sideloading changes this threat model and allows attackers “more resources to develop sophisticated attacks.” Apple has given many examples describing the pitfalls of sideloading on Android based on previous reports. These risks include losing data privacy, downloading a copycat through another app store or a website, an increased chance of installing an app with malware, and installing a game that passes parental controls and exposes children to harm....

As reported by MacRumors, Kuo claims that the foldable iPhone might sport an “8-inch QHD+ flexible OLED display.” Kuo estimates that the company expects to sell 15-20 million folding units in 2023 “based on Apple’s requested capacity plan.” Interestingly, Kuo notes that he expects Apple will adopt a fancier “silver nanowire” touchscreen because existing capacitive technology does not support more than one fold or rollable designs (Apple actually already used this technology in the HomePod)....

The new announcement comes as a part of Apple’s “App Store Small Business Program” initiative. Under this project, only developers whose apps cumulatively earn less than $1 million per year can qualify. If during a year, their apps cross the million-dollar mark, Apple will levy 30% rates till the year-end. If revenues fall below $1 million for a developer, they can apply for the program next year. The company claimed that this initiative will benefit “the vast majority of developers,” without specifying a number....