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Machinal issues, on the other hand, such as broken doors or overheated brakes, can increasingly be fixed before they cause severe delays. Thanks to thousands of sensors and big data analytics, train maintenance has become much more efficient. It’s a development that took a flight since 4G became available in the Netherlands, allowing data to be processed at a much higher speed. This includes check-in data, status measurement points on tracks, and information sent by sensors in the trains....

In the early days of influencer marketing, brands had little choice but to leave social ambassadors to interpret messages in their own voice. The ‘freebie in exchange for a post’ model was commonplace and marketers were left watching and waiting for a mention. But, as the industry has evolved into more formal paid partnerships, brands have felt entitled to more creative control over the work. In a sense, it’s understandable....

It is not surprising that the demand for new cars plummeted. In Germany – Europe’s largest car market – new car registrations in the first half of 2020 declined by 35% compared to the same period in 2019, and during the height of restrictions (April), sales slumped a historic 61%. Sales for 2020 across the rest of Europe’s largest car markets in the first half of 2020 performed even worse: Spain (-51%), UK (-49%), Italy (-46%), and France (39%)....

Even a whole year after GDPR’s implementation, there’s still a lot of confusion regarding how emergency services can properly operate under it. But despite these early difficulties, there’s actually a way for emergency services to do their jobs and comply with GDPR — and even become better at saving lives because of it. What’s the problem? Representatives of emergency services in Europe and beyond gathered last month at the EENA conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where GDPR frequently popped up....

Back in the day, audiophiles would add one of those ginormous multi-band equalizers to their stereo setups, allowing listeners to tweak every facet of their system’s sound to their highly individualized liking. With all the multi-channel audio and incredibly intricate sound mixing that happens in today’s entertainment, you might not think you need that level of audio fine tuning anymore. But if you’re a gamer, particularly competitive gamers looking for any additional edge, hearing that distinct gun slide lock behind you or that twig snap in the brush could be the difference between life and death....

Global research company Gartner says that 90 percent of current enterprise blockchains will need to be replaced in the next 18 months if they are to remain “competitive, secure, and avoid obsolescence,” it said in an article spotted by Computer Weekly. “Many CIOs overestimate the capabilities and short-term benefits of blockchain as a technology to help them achieve their business goals, thus creating unrealistic expectations when assessing offerings from platform vendors and service providers,” said Adrian Lee, senior research director at Gartner....

When you’re launching a new company, product, or service, there’s an incredible amount of little decisions to make. Of course, you’d like every single decision to be the perfect one, but that never happens. Instead, most of your choices will be mediocre, with many bad ones and only a few good ones. At the end of the day, you just have to hope your mediocre and good decisions make up for your many bad decisions....

— Xbox (@Xbox) December 13, 2019 The Series X, more so than any console that’s come before it, resembles a brick. I saw one particularly amusing comparison to a refrigerator. It works in vertical or horizontal orientation, and is designed to function quietly. Xbox head Phil Spencer told Gamespot the name of the console came in part because “it gives us freedom to do other things with that name so that we can create descriptors when we need to....

As it stands, the consensus is that EVs and regular cars will reach price parity within the next decade. This is expected to happen when batteries cost $100 per/kWh, after that, EVs could become cheaper than their combustion counterparts. According to the study, from investment bank UBS, we should expect the price per kWh of making battery packs to reach this level by 2022, The Guardian reports. When this happens, UBS says the extra cost of making EVs compared to their fossil fuel equivalents will decrease to $1,900 (£1,470) per car....

According to research from The Sunday Times Driving, the UK government is losing £1,000 in fuel duty and emissions-based taxes in the first year when someone switches to an EV. This isn’t surprising when we consider that more than 50% of petrol’s cost is duty and tax. As soon as demand for petrol and diesel falls, the government’s purse strings tighten. The report says that when a petrol driver switches to an EV, they save an average of £592 a year in excise and VAT, and £305 in the emissions-based showroom tax....

According to court documents, Paige Thompson was indicted yesterday after hacking Capital One bank and 30 other entities, and has been charged with wire fraud, and computer fraud and abuse. Thompson allegedly created a software program to scan for and identify cloud customers that had incorrectly configured their firewalls, and in doing so, had left their systems exposed to external attacks. It appears that Thompson was able to exploit the vulnerability and send remote commands to servers to take control of those systems....

The company today revealed an interactive map that tracks where people are experiencing symptoms from the novel coronavirus throughout the US, based on data from an ongoing survey the company is running with Carnegie Mellon. The map is granular enough to let you see an estimated percentage of people with COVID-19 symptoms down to the county level To reiterate, the map shows an estimated percentage of people experiencing self-reported COVID-19 symptoms, not confirmed cases....

The process is quite simple. On the desktop log into your Facebook account and tap on the arrow on the upper right corner to access your settings. Then tap on the ‘Your Facebook Information’ menu on the left and select ‘Transfer a Copy of Your Photos or Videos.’ From there you will be asked to select a destination for your photos — Google Photos is the only option at the moment....

The social media giant has started blocking all links from thepiratebay.org, TorrentFreak has noticed. The ban applies to both posts and private chats. “Your message couldn’t be shared because this link goes against our Community Standards,” a warning reads. “If you think this doesn’t go against our Community Standards let us know.” This is hardly the first time The Pirate Bay has landed itself in hot water with Facebook. Unlike previous times, though, the Zuck empire is barring users from sharing any links to The Pirate Bay’s domain ⁠— not just direct links to torrents....

Usually, if you’re part of a group, you can check out fellow members’ profiles. But it’s not possible when you’re not part of it – especially when the group is private. Security researcher Mohamed Shariff found a pair of bugs that allowed non-members to check group members using queries in graphql, a query language developed by Facebook. The first vulnerability was that attackers can see members of a group with the same city or the same university....

The tech giant is currently operating without a third-party fact-checking service in the Netherlands over the continued dispute of allowing political ads to contain misinformation. However, Facebook insists it’s not an “appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny.” For the past year, NU.nl has been Facebook’s only third-party service after Leiden University pulled out of it partnership with the social network over similar issues, as first noted by The Verge....

This mighty rebrand, according to The Verge, is happening for one reason: the metaverse. In more real terms, the Zuck wants to position Facebook as more than a social media company. On the information we have, it seems this move is like Google reorganizing under the Alphabet name. That means it’s unlikely the Facebook app itself will receive a name change, instead there’ll be an umbrella business that all the company’s separate units sit under....

As reported by The New York Times, a Russian-linked Facebook campaign has been found testing new disinformation tactics targeting African countries including Mozambique, Cameroon, Sudan, and Libya. Yesterday, Facebook said in a post that it had removed three “inauthentic” Russian influence networks from the platform that were linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin — a close ally to the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. As detailed in Facebook’s post, the US had previously indicted Prigozhin for interfering in the 2016 presidential election....

Facebook has taken heat from just about everybody over its decision to do basically nothing about its political ads. Its policy could best be described as the company taking its collective hands off the wheel — and if we, the users, were fooled by a lie or a misleading fact in a political ad, then that was basically on us for not doing our research. Now its trying to reframe the issue as the result of Facebook not having the guidance to do anything else....

Just a warning, in case it wasn’t obvious, I’m going to be spoiling the opening crawl of Rise of Skywalker. So if you want to go into the film completely unspoiled, click off now. I’m serious. This is your SPOILER warning. Still here? Okay. In the opening crawl of Rise of Skywalker, we’re told that the galaxy has heard a mysterious broadcast from the long-dead Emperor Palpatine threatening revenge. You don’t hear this broadcast in the movie, and this is enough context to be getting on with....