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YouTube Working Towards Bringing Transparency to the News Section for its Indian Users

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For the past two years, the internet has become more accessible for the Indians, due to high connectivity and low-cost plans. This has led to increased screen time for Indian smartphone users. According to a report from YouTube, the Indian users have become more active on this video streaming platform, tripling the number of users in the past two years, especially on the news channels.

youtube news
Image Source: business-standard.com

Keeping this in mind, YouTube is now focusing on the news section on the platform and is working towards promoting authoritative news and bringing transparency for the users on YouTube. The company is launching three new features in support for the sources that provide authoritative news and to provide transparency to its viewers, i.e. Top News, Breaking News, and Fact-Checker labels.

As the name suggests, Top News feature will display a shelf of news on the platform, where the latest and important news from the trustworthy news sources will flash frequently. The Breaking News again will show the breaking news from reliable sources, and the news will reflect directly on the homepage of YouTube. And, the Fact-Checker Labels, will help the users with the context and sources from where the news has been produced.

The company has also introduced the information panel for its users, such that the users can easily look for the context fo a specific content, event or even a publisher and make their own decision, i.e. to believe or not to believe on that very content.

The information panel, as well as the fact checker, will include the information both in Hindi and English languages, and along with India, those features have been launched in thirty other countries too. The fact-checker works on the open source Schema.org ClaimReview markup process.

The information panel will also label the government-funded news channels on the platform with “funded in whole or in part” as well as “public broadcast service”, such that the users will be able to judge the authenticity of the news sources. The information panel will also include a link to Wikipedia or other authorised informational sources of the news channel.

YouTube has mentioned making an investment worth $25 million for the news section on its platform and will work towards building a better online presence for the news channels.

UK Govt is Preparing New Guidelines for Social Media Platforms to Protect Children

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According to the recent reports, Facebook, Instagram as well as Snapchat will have to remove the like button and in the case of Snapchat, the streaks for the users under 18. The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) has said that it is going to impose 16 new rules for various social media platforms in order to make those platforms safer for young kids.

social media platforms
Image Source: wsj.com

One of those rules is indicating towards removing the like button from the different social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as according, to ICO the like button nudges the kids to stay online on those platform for a longer time.

“We’ve launched the draft of our Age Appropriate Design code, which sets the standards for those designing, developing and providing online services to children.” a tweet from the official account of ICO stated.

ICO is also working on the other rules to stop the social media companies from nudging the users younger than 18 years old, to reduce the screen time for them and to control their privacy. According to the new rules the social media platforms will have to keep the user information private by default, and until necessary, the kids should not be asked to share their private information.

The new guidelines will also prevent the companies to ask the kids under 18 to share their geolocations in any circumstances, as the geolocations map the accurate location of the phone.

The initiative of crafting new rules, for keeping the kids under 18 safe, has been taken by the government of UK, after the MPs and other public figures criticised those social media platforms for bad effects on the children. In fact, the Duke of Sussex has called those platforms more addictive than drugs and alcohol.

Though it is a great initiative, for now, it has been only taken in the UK. In fact, in the UK too, the rules will be imposed only in 2020, after the consultation will be over in May 2019, for the other rules. The ICO will start working on making the guidelines starting from Monday, and will consult and take opinions from the public as well as experts. After the guidelines come into effect, the companies would need to pay fine in millions and billions, if it failed to follow.

The World’s Biggest Plane from Stratolaunch Completes its First Flight Successfully

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The world’s biggest aeroplane from Stratolaunch took its first flight on Saturday, from the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California shortly after 10 AM ET. The aeroplane is a 5,00,000 pounds heavy aircraft, which has been built to launch rockets to the Earth’s orbit from the air.

stratolaunch
Image Source: fool.com

The aeroplane has a 385-foot wingspan, with the capacity of flying to an altitude of 35,000 feet. The plane has been built to help the rockets self launch them from the air to space. For the test flight, the plane did not carry any rocket with it and went to an altitude of 15000 feet reaching a speed limit of 189mph. After flying smoothly for 150 minutes, the flight landed safely.

“The flight itself was smooth, which is exactly what you want a first flight to be. It flew very much as we had simulated and as we predicted,” said test pilot Evan Thomas. He further added, “The systems on the aeroplane ran like a watch.”

Though during the test flight, the aeroplane did not carry any rockets with it, the company intends to take at least a 250-ton rocket along with a satellite to the stratosphere, i.e. to an altitude of 35,000 feet, soon in the coming future. In fact, the company has signed a contract with Northrop Grumman, to take its Pegasus XL rocket to space with the newly launched aeroplane.

This dual-fuselage aeroplane has got six Pratt & Whitney engines and 28-wheel landing gear. The maximum take-off weight for this aeroplane is 1.3 million pounds. In the past years, the company was planning to carry the SpaceX’s modified falcon rockets to space, but the partnership could not last long.

It has been almost eight years since the company has been working on this aeroplane and on the launch, the company constantly kept on remembering the founder of Stratolaunch and the co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, who died last year in October.

“Without a doubt, he would have been exceptionally proud to see his aircraft take flight. Even though he wasn’t there today, as the plane lifted gracefully from the runway I did whisper a ‘thank you’ to Paul for allowing me to be a part of this remarkable achievement,” said the Stratolaunch CEO Jean Floyd.

Facebook Might Bring Back the Chat Feature to its Mobile App

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Almost five years ago, Facebook started pushing its users to use its standalone messaging app, Facebook Messenger, by disabling the chat feature from its social media app. At the time, most of the people were annoyed with this step taken by the company, but in past years they have become apt with the messaging app.

facebook messenger
Image Source: hanoitimes.vn

But in recent years, having got the most of the user engagement on the messenger, rather than the social media platform, it might be possible that Facebook is encouraged to bring the chat feature back to its Facebook app. Noticeably, the Facebook messenger is currently serving to over 1.3 billion monthly users, which is huge.

According to a tweet by the researcher Jane Manchun Wong, Facebook is testing the basic chat feature on its social media app. Wong tweeted, “Facebook is bringing the Chats back to the app for preparing integrated messaging.” In fact, she had tweeted a few hours before this tweet that she will be uncovering one upcoming feature that most of the people will like.

About a month ago the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg had mentioned that the company will be having its emphasis more on its messaging unit. He had also expressed his intention for unifying all the messaging app from Facebook, i.e., Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. And, now the testing of the new chat feature for the Facebook app may be the company’s first step towards the very objective.

For now, the company is testing a basic chat feature for the Facebook app, and according to reports, there is no support for the video call, image sharing, the sticker sharing and the other Messenger options in it.

The company has not commented on the matter yet, and there may be a possibility that the feature remains unreleased for quite some time, as it is still in testing. According to Wong, there has been no mention of dissolving the Facebook Messenger as it will continue to serve the users that are on Facebook solely to use the messaging app and are not active on the Facebook app.

SpaceX Successfully Completes its First Falcon Heavy Commercial Mission

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SapceX falcon heavy
Image Source: orlandosentinel.com

SpaceX has finally launched its first commercial mission with the Falcon heavy carrying the Arabsat-6A, a high-capacity telecommunications satellite in its payload, on Thursday. The satellite is built by Lockheed Martin, for Saudi Arabian corporation Arabsat. The launch took place from the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. EDT, after a delay due to the bad weather.

Falcon is the most powerful rocket in the world. The launch on April 11 was its second flight attempt following a successful test launch in February 2018. After 9 minutes of launching Falcon, the three booster rockets, too, landed back on Earth, safe. The three core rockets will be ready for reuse in a few days. These core engines are capable of generating 5.1 million pounds of thrust together. In the previous launch, two of the three boosters had landed safe, but the third one had crashed into the ocean as ran out of fuel at 300 miles per hour.

Despite the delay due to the wind, the events took place as were planned. The two boosters landed at the LZ-1 and LZ-2, and the third, the core booster, landed on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone-ship.

After the 34 minutes of the takeoff, the Arabsat-6A payload detached itself from Falcon and went into the orbit making the mission a success.

The satellite launched by Falcon is a communication satellite, which will provide the television, radio, Internet and mobile communications services to the people of the Middle East, Africa and parts of Europe.

Last year, the SpaceX had 21 successful launches for its customers. This year the company intends to take humans to space and has partnered with Boeing Co. signing a contract with NASA for its Commercial Crew program, to board American astronauts to the International Space Station.

UK Users will Now Get to Spend Their Cryptos with the New Coinbase Visa Debit Card

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In recent years, people have become more inclined towards investing in Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, but still most of the times, they are not sure of how to spend their cryptos. But now, Coinbase has announced that it is going to launch a debit card that will allow people to spend their cryptocurrencies on daily expenses.

coinbase visa debit card
Image Source: clark.com

Although Coinbase had support for the Shift card, a similar card that allowed the users to liquidate their cryptos, and use them to withdraw cash at various stores. But almost two months ago, Shift discontinued its services with Coinbase, and now Coinbase itself has come with a more feature-rich debit card for its users.

The company is launching a debit card along with a Coinbase Card app, that will help the users to manage all their cryptocurrencies and choose among those cryptocurrencies as to which one they want to spend. The app will generate instant receipts, notifications on every transaction and will help the user to manage their crypto balance. The card can also be used for ATM withdrawals with a free withdrawal limit of £200 per month, and also does not have any maintenance cost.

The card is a Visa debit card issued by PaySafe and will cost a 2.49% interest on every purchase made through it. Issuing the card alone will charge the user a £4.95 ($6.48). The card will come with a spending limit of £10,000 ($13,092) per day and every reverse transaction will cost the user a £20 ($26.19).

Earlier in 2017, the London Block Exchange was working on a similar Visa card but failed to launch one. Also, many other companies have developed such cards in the past, but to use those cards the users had to pre-load a specified amount on them.

Coinbase will be responsible for every conversion of the crypto into fiat, and the amount will be deducted on the basis of the current rate of the cryptocurrency. With the Coinbase debit card, the users will be able to spend on movie tickets, food and other similar purchases. For now, the company has only announced the debit card for its UK and EU users.