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Instagram Announces Two New Features to Fight Cyberbullying

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Cyberbullying has become the biggest issue of the current time, as trolling in the comment section of various social media platforms has hurt many people mentally, especially the teens. To overcome this issue, Instagram has announced a new feature for the platform, through which the users will be able to flag the hate comments on their posts. Though Instagram already has set a proper guideline for the users to follow and has got a filtering feature that screens the hate comments, it is quite time-consuming.

Instagram cyberbullying
Image Source: npr.org

“We can do more to prevent bullying from happening on Instagram, and we can do more to empower the targets of bullying to stand up for themselves. Today we’re announcing one new feature in both areas. These tools are grounded in a deep understanding of how people bully each other and how they respond to bullying on Instagram, but they’re only two steps on a longer path.” said Instagram head Adam Mosseri through a post.

The company has made the use of artificial intelligence for implementing the new feature, such that whenever anyone will try to post a comment, if the system finds it offensive, a question will pop up on their screen asking, “Are you sure you want to post this?”, along with an undo button, to change their action.

Though people will still be able to post the comment, according to Mosseri, the feature will produce high possibilities for the commenter to rethink about posting the comment.

Another feature, that the company is working on, is the ability of a user to restrict the other users’ interaction with the former’s account. This feature will help Instagram users, who are reluctant to blocking or unfollowing an account that is constantly cyberbullying them. If one user has restricted a specific account, the comments posted by that account will only be visible to the commenter, unless the former approves it for the other users. This way, the account owner can shadowban the users, who use hate speech, without them knowing about it. The banned user will also be restricted from seeing if the owner of the account has read their DM or is active at the moment.

Elon Musk Plans To Soon Stop Selling Tesla Cars (at Current Prices) to ‘Save Tesla’

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Tesla is known for its luxurious electric and self-driving high-end cars. But according to a tweet from the founder of the company itself, the consumers won’t be able to buy these fancy cars. No, it is not like that the company will stop making those cars, but with the integration of a new chip, these cars are going to be quite expensive, and not all the people will be able to buy them.

Tesla
Image Source: theverge.com

The company has taken the initiative in order to recover from the losses it has been suffering, due to the cheaper price of its luxury cars. To prevent and overcome them, the company will be embedding a newly developed chip to its new as well as old cars, including Model S, X and 3S, such that these will become fully-autonomous and will not need the intervention of a human driver.



Musk posted a tweet on his official Twitter account on Sunday that the company will be upgrading its old cars, and will integrate the new chip into them as well as to new cars. So the consumers have a limited time to buy Tesla cars. Upon a tweet asking about when these upgrade will take place, Musk replied, “End of Q4, most likely”.

This means the company has already started working on building those new chips for the cars. According to another tweet from Musk, the owners who have purchased the full self-driving feature, the $6000 software package, will get the upgrade for free.

The company launched this new custom chip in the month of March this year, which already have been integrated to new Model 3, Model X and S vehicles. The upgrade of the older cars is a part of Tesla’s ‘Master Plan, Part Deux’, under which the company intends to make every Tesla car fully-autonomous and bring its dream robo-taxis on the road.

With the integration of the new chip into Tesla cars, the price of these cars may reach up to $40,000, and if remained unsold, these cars can earn even more profits as a robo-taxi.

Sony Brings a Better Version of its Noise-canceling True Wireless In-ear Headphones

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Everything is going wireless, and Apple’s AirPods are the biggest example of the most loved wireless products. But it is not only Apple, but many other tech giants have brought feature-rich wireless headphone and earbuds, one of which is Sony. Sony has just announced a new pair of its in-ear headphones, WF-1000XM3, that the company is claiming will be noise-cancelling true wireless earphones.

Sony in-ear headphones WF 1000XM3
Image Source: techspot.com

According to Sony, the noise-cancellation has been improved in this version of in-ear headphones, and it can be easily put down with a touch of a button on the left earphone. The earphones have a set of buttons over it, to provide control for the playback.

The earlier version of the in-ear headphones was a bit heavy and did not cancel out the noise completely. But Sony has embedded this version of the earphones with QN1e, which offers even better sound dampening and makes them a bit lighter. A new digital audio converter (DAC) and amplifier have been integrated to the pair, such that these deliver 24-bit audio.

The earbuds are longer and do not have the wingtips as the earlier version had in it. Instead, it has got rubber on the tip for better support.

Both the earbuds are capable to connect with the device, and on a full charge, these can work for over six hours, along with noise cancellation. The earphones come with a charging case, that can charge the earbuds thrice when fully charged. In fact, if the case is also drained out completely, it can be charged in 10 minutes to provide 90 minutes listening time charging for the earphones. The case has got a magnetic latch, that keeps the earbuds at the place.

The WF-1000XM3 earbuds cost $230 for a pair. Currently, the company has made the earphones available for pre-orders on Amazon and Best Buy. It is shipping the earphone in the colour black and platinum silver. According to the announcement, these will be arriving the retail stores in coming August.

Prime Day Sale

Amazon Teasing the Customers with Early Sale Prior to the Prime Day Sale on 15 July

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The biggest sale of the year, the Amazon Prime Day Sale, is only ten days away, and Amazon has claimed that people will get the most attractive deals in the sale. The sale is to kick off on 15th of this month and is expected to be of a bigger scale even than the Black Friday. The event will last for two days and is only open for the Prime members.

According to the company, along with big discounts and offers, it will be launching over 1000 new products. The Prime users will get access to major discounts in almost every category available on the website, though the offers will be valid on limited stock.

But even before the sale, Amazon has come with major discounts on various products, including the popular Fire TV Recast, which the company is currently selling at the lowest price to date. There is also a big discount on the Amazon’s Alexa, along with few other Amazon devices, too, including Fire TV Stick 4K bundle, Echo Dot, etc. The company as a pre-sale has also put great discounts on smartphones, laptops, DSLR, and other electronic devices.

Prime Day Sale
Image Source: cnet.com

The upcoming Prime Day Sale though will have similar products on sale, but this time, the sale will go even cheaper. The company has promised ‘never before offers’ on select premium smartphones. For the sale, the company has put discounts on over 5000 other products in the electronics category.

Amazon will also put out a great discount (up to 60 %) on Books as well. In fact, the company is offering a three months subscription of Kindle Unlimited for free. On a regular basis, the fee for a month costs $9.99/£7.99 per user.

Though the offers are exclusively for the Amazon Prime members, you can get the 30-days free trial subscription to take advantage of the sale. And, if any person is from the U.S., they can get the same deals with three months for $9.99, whereas on the regular days they need to pay three times more for a subscription.

Ola London

Ola Now to Run PHV Ride-hailing Service in London

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We are flooded with the ride-hailing services and Uber being the leader among them all, is giving a tough challenge to even many of the home-grown companies in various countries. Ola the India-based ride rental service provider has been also facing similar competition, ever since Uber has entered India. But to move ahead and beat the competition, Ola finally crossed borders and launched its first international ride-hailing service in Australia in January 2018.

Ola London
Image Source: mynation.com

Now the company is moving even forward and will be starting its ride-hailing service in the capital city of the UK, i.e. London. Last year, Ola started operating in South Wales, and it has now obtained the license from Transport For London (TFL) to start private hire vehicles (PHV) ride-hailing service in London. Though the validity of the license is only one year, and it is a non-carriage license.

According to the rules of the Transport Regulatory of London and the PHV licensing, the Ola drivers will need to register themselves and their vehicles with the license to run the Ola service in the city. Any vehicle that is having a seating capacity of up to eight passengers is eligible for the registration.

“London is one of the world’s most iconic cities and hosts a progressive mobility environment. We couldn’t be more excited to bring Ola to London in the time ahead! We are looking forward to building world-class mobility offerings for London, by collaborating with drivers, riders, the government and local authorities. Londoners will hear more from us closer to our launch in the city, as we get ready to serve them.” One of the Ola spokespeople said.

With more than 8 million people living in London, the scope for the service is quite high. Along with the PHV cabs, Ola also holds the license for the Black cabs, and over 10,000 drivers are already registered with Ola platform. The company has plans to collaborate with local drivers, transport services and government to bring better services to people of London and will be launching its services by the end of this year.

Since last August, the company has been expanding in various cities of the U.K and got the PHV licence for Liverpool, Birmingham and Reading in March this year.

BMW Daimler

BMW and Daimler Couples Up on Automated Driving Technology

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Self-driving cars have been one of the centres of interest of most of the tech giants, and now, BMW has announced a partnership with the manufacturers of Mercedes Daimler, to head in the same field. The two companies will be working together to develop various services under automotive technologies. These services will include the driver-assistance systems, smart cruise control, automated driving on highways as well as parking, and more.

BMW Daimler
Image Source: thefinancialanalyst.net

According to the announcement made by the two, these plan on building fully autonomous vehicles that would require no human intervention. The companies explained that these will be developing the technology of the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Level 4, such that the vehicles would not need any human support for driving. There may be some conditions in which there will be the obligation of human support, but normally, these vehicles would be self-driving. The SAE levels are set to determine the level of automation, a product can render, especially the transport vehicles.

The companies also revealed that these will be hiring over 1,200 technicians from the two German auto giants for the development work. This partnership is looking forward to bring robo-taxi technology for urban areas, and these vehicles will not be dependent on human support even for the motorway driving and parking.

The companies joined with nine other firms also published a whitepaper, titled, “Safety First for Automated Driving,” as the answers to the concerns of human safety while riding a self-driving car.

Though the two companies have partnered to work on a single technology, the two will be implementing the same on their own cars separately. The announcement has also revealed that the platform developed with this partnership will be open for other companies to implement on their vehicles as well. The vehicles embedded with this technology will be out around 2024 or later.

The two companies have already signed an agreement on autonomous technology in February, and they are also in partnership with other automobile companies for the same. In fact, BMW had joined its hands with companies like Intel and Mobileye NV to work on autonomous technology. With this partnership, BMW will be launching the level 3 iNext vehicle in 2021.