Technology
Thousands of Amazon warehouse workers to vote on whether to form company's first US union
Thousands of Amazon warehouse workers at an Alabama facility will begin voting next month on whether to unionize their workplace, potentially paving the way for the first US-based union at the e-commerce giant.
DNA test can help identify pneumonia in Covid patients: Study
A team of scientists and doctors from the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have developed a DNA test which they claim will quickly identify secondary infections in Covid-19 patients, who have double the risk of developing pneumonia while on ventilation.
Facebook is playing whack-a-mole against 'stop the steal' groups after Capitol riots
Groups and individuals spreading lies about the 2020 election and calling to protest the outcome have continued to hide in plain sight on Facebook, even as COO Sheryl Sandberg this week tried to downplay the platform's role in the Capitol riots.
Mobile numbers of WhatsApp on Web users found on Google Search
Technology|: New Delhi: As WhatsApp faces intense scrutiny over its upcoming data and privacy policy in India and elsewhere, another user data violation has been reported, this time on the WhatsApp on Desktop (Web) application, allegedly exposing personal mobile numbers via indexing on Google Search. Although WhatsApp is primarily a mobile app, currently being used by over 400 million users in India, some working professionals also use the instant chat app on their desktops and PCs via the Web version. Independent cybersecurity researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia on Friday shared some screenshots showing indexing of personal mobile numbers of WhatsApp users via Web version on Google Search. "The leak is happening via WhatsApp on Web. If someone is using WhatsApp on laptop or on an office PC, the mobile numbers are being indexed on Google Search. These are mobile numbers of individual users not business numbers," Rajaharia told IANS. Earlier this week, concerned at private group chat links being available on Google Search, WhatsApp said that it had asked Google not to index such chats and advised users not to share group chat links on publicly accessible websites. Google had indexed invite links to private WhatsApp group chats, meaning anyone can join various private chat groups with a simple search. The indexed WhatsApp group chat links have now been removed from Google. "Despite WhatsApp advising users and telling Google to remove the earlier exposed group chat links, the mobile numbers via WhatsApp Web application are now being indexed on Google Search," Rajaharia noted. A WhatsApp spokesperson said in an earlier statement that since March 2020, WhatsApp has included the "noindex" tag on all deep link pages which, according to Google, will exclude them from indexing. "We have given our feedback to Google to not index these chats. Links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website," the company spokesperson said. The issue was first cropped up in February last year when app reverse-engineer Jane Wong found that Google has around 470,000 results for a simple search of "chat.whatsapp.com", part of the URL that makes up invites to WhatsApp groups. According to Rajaharia, the latest leak of personal mobile numbers via WhatsApp on Web has not been addressed so far by the either Facebook-owned platform or Google.
Dubai Customs' all-new work-from-home platform is live
Markets|Technology|: Dubai: As many as 250 of Dubai Customs’ staff will initially benefit from the new work-from-home platform introduced by the government entity. More employees will start having access in subsequent phases to the Smart Tasks platform. “This will help our work systems have more resilience in the face of any future challenges,” said Ahmed Mahboob Musabih, Director-General of Dubai Customs. “The vast changes witnessed during the spread of the pandemic has necessitated the need to think differently and smartly.” Smart Tasks was chosen from among 19 competing solutions. “We tested the platform on a selected group of employees, and it proved to be very efficient in managing work-from-home system,” said Juma Al Ghaith, Executive Director of Customs Development Division. It is fully integrated with Dubai Customs’ internal systems. New work-from-home protocols It was in December that Dubai approved a work-from-home system at its government departments. It is to be done in sync with the latest technology and create a lean work environment that would also meet the requirements for future job opportunities.
As Wikipedia turns 20 it aims to reach more readers
Technology|: Paris: Wikipedia celebrates its 20th anniversary on Friday and the collaborative, volunteer-produced internet encyclopedia aims to spend the next 20 years further expanding free access to information. Founded on January 15, 2001 by the American-British entrepreneur Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia is now the seventh-most popular website in the world, with its more than 55 million articles being consulted 15 billion times every month. The website started in English but within two months had already launched in German and Swedish. It is now available in 309 languages. But Wales doesn't intend to stop there, with the languages of the developing world in the website's sights. "That's really important that the next billion people, two billion people who come online are going to want to participate in Wikipedia, to grow their own storehouse of knowledge, and they're going to rely on us to support that work, and that's a big part of how I think about the future," Wales told AFP in an interview. In 2006, Wales set the goal of having 100,000 entries in Wikipedia for every language with more than one million speakers, but he recognised that Wikipedia is still at least 20 years from achieving that. Wikipedia's non-profit status nature make it an outlier among today's internet dominated by the likes of Google and Facebook, and hark back to the web's early idealistic days when the open-source movement harnessed the talents of volunteers to offer free access to tools and knowledge. Wales said he was inspired by such collaborative efforts. "I'd seen the growth of open-source software, free software, and to me it seemed obvious that you could use the same kind of techniques to build a free encyclopedia, so I was in a real kind of panic because I thought this is such an obvious idea that other people will do it," he said. "But we actually were probably two years into the project before anybody noticed or cared, so maybe it didn't have to be so urgent." Wikipedia continues to be a volunteer-driven effort, with each language site built up independently from original contributions rather than translated articles. Unlike traditional encyclopedias, contributions by non-experts are welcome, which has driven innumerable debates about content and have led to restrictions on updating certain entries. The website has also come in for criticism due to the fact that its volunteers are overwhelmingly white males from Western countries, with critics saying it lacks information about women and developing nations
How hot was 2020? It depends who you ask, but it was another one for the record books, agencies say
News/Technology & Science: On Thursday, NASA and NOAA released their look at the 2020 state of the climate. While the numbers may not be exactly the same, the message is: Earth is continuing to warm and it has dire consequences.
Critics denounce 'climate-change denialism' reports commissioned by Alberta inquiry
News/Canada/Edmonton: A $3.5-million Alberta government public inquiry into alleged foreign-funded anti-energy campaigns has posted commissioned studies that experts say are based on junk climate-denial science, bizarre conspiracy theories and oil-industry propaganda.
