Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Facebook said Thursday it would expand its climate information hub and direct its users to experts to debunk myths and hoaxes in the field in a ramped up effort to fight misinformation.

The social media giant said it has added a section to its climate hub that features "facts that debunk common climate myths" and will rely on climate communication experts from the George Mason University, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, and the University of Cambridge.

The information hub is already available in France, Germany, Britain and the United States, and is being expanded to Belgium, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Spain, South Africa and Taiwan.

"Along with expanding the center, we're improving it. We added a section that features facts that debunk common climate myths," Facebook said.

"We already direct people to the Climate Science Information Center when they search for climate-related terms, and will keep doing that where the center is available. In countries where it isn't, we will soon direct people to the UN Environment Programme, a leading global environmental authority."

Source: https://techxplore.com/news/2021-02-facebook-debunk-climate-myths-hub.html

Facebook is testing news feeds that will de-emphasize politics as part of an effort to reduce inflammatory content on the platform

Facebook said Wednesday it began rolling out news feeds with less political subject matter in line with a plan outlined by chief Mark Zuckerberg to reduce inflammatory content.

The leading social network said it would begin testing the change "for a small percentage of people" in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia this week, and the United States in the coming weeks.

"During these initial tests we'll explore a variety of ways to rank political content in people's feeds using different signals, and then decide on the approaches we'll use going forward," product management director Aastha Gupta said.

The change won't affect information about the Covid-19 pandemic and content from global health organizations or from official government agencies.

"As Mark Zuckerberg mentioned on our recent earnings call, one common piece of feedback we hear is that people don't want political content to take over their News Feed," Gupta said.

"Over the next few months, we'll work to better understand peoples' varied preferences for political content and test a number of approaches based on those insights."

The move comes with Facebook and other platforms under fire for enabling political misinformation and manipulation, notably during election periods.

Zuckerberg said last month Facebook is seeking to "turn down the temperature" on its sprawling platform by reducing the kind of divisive and inflammatory political talk it has long hosted.

He said the social media giant will no longer recommend politics-themed groups to users and was working on ways to reduce the amount of political content served up in users' news feeds by its automated systems.

"We're still going to enable people to engage in political groups and discussions if they want to," Zuckerberg said last month.

Source: https://techxplore.com/news/2021-02-facebook-news-politics.html

By Alex Hern, the UK technology editor for the Guardian

The app is updating its privacy policy. It’s part of an integration that’s moving in only one direction

‘A significant proportion of WhatsApp users avoid Facebook itself while still using the chat app it owns.’ Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

If you use WhatsApp – as around 30 million British people do – then you’ve probably already seen that the chat app is planning some changes.

Every user will, by 8 February, have been presented with a screen that warns them that the app is “updating its terms and privacy policy”. WhatsApp is open about the changes, emphasising that the “key updates” affect how the company processes user data, and how businesses can use a new set of features that integrate WhatsApp’s shopping features with Facebook’s wider business.

But the announcement also underscores a truth that many had been reluctant to acknowledge: if you’re a WhatsApp user, you’re a Facebook customer, and while the two services have historically been quite distinct, the process of integration only moves in one direction.

On the face of it, this latest change need not spark inordinate concern. The most important data held by WhatsApp – the contents of user conversations – remains sacrosanct. The end-to-end encryption used by the app to protect the contents of all chats means that no one, including WhatsApp, knows what users are saying to each other, nor can they easily find out.

That encryption is constantly under attack, chiefly by law enforcement agencies that want a return to the heyday of the 2000s, when criminal conspiracies could be easily uncovered by demanding phone companies hand over the contents of SMS messages. But it has held firm, in part because Facebook’s long-term commercial vision is for more encryption, not less – a view Mark Zuckerberg laid out in 2019, when he posted a long note to his Facebook page titled A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking.

But that note also laid out Facebook’s long-term plans for WhatsApp: merging the chat app with the company’s wider social network, in the name of “interoperability”. “With interoperability, you’d be able to use WhatsApp to receive messages sent to your Facebook account without sharing your phone number,” Zuckerberg wrote, “and [in commercial transactions] the buyer wouldn’t have to worry about whether you prefer to be messaged on one network or the other.”

Two years on, those goals are close to being achieved. Already, Facebook and Instagram users can send direct messages to each other without needing to switch apps. And this latest change will, from February, deepen the integration between Facebook and WhatsApp, allowing users to interact with shops that host storefronts on the former without leaving the latter.

If you’re comfortable with Facebook’s use of data (or that of its much closer subsidiary Instagram), it might be difficult to care about this. The company was recently forced by Apple to provide a privacy “nutritional label” on its iOS app, revealing how it works with user data. The labels disclosed more than 100 different pieces of data that may be collected, many of which are directly linked to user profiles, including health and fitness data, “sensitive info” and search histories. For the typical user, who has an account on both services, adding in the small amount of information WhatsApp has is a drop in a bucket by comparison.

But the change does start to eat away at the idea that you can be on WhatsApp without a Facebook footprint. The two apps’ very different histories and intended uses have led to a split in demographics among their users, and a small but significant proportion of WhatsApp users, drawn by the encryption, ad-free nature and no-frills interface, avoid Facebook itself while still using the chat app it owns.

For those users, this latest disclosure should become a watershed moment: a WhatsApp account and a Facebook account are still two separate things, but from here on out, every change is going to move in one direction. WhatsApp still collects much less data, so there’s no need to panic and sever ties immediately. But a privacy-conscious user would be well advised to begin thinking about what alternative platforms they could use to contact people who are currently only available through Facebook’s portfolio of apps.

Thankfully, there are alternative options, the most well-known of which is Signal, a free app developed by the non-profit that created WhatsApp’s own encryption system. With its roots in the privacy and security community, Signal’s technical underpinnings are second to none, and the app has spent the past few years working on becoming a viable alternative to slick user-focused services such as Facebook Messenger, without compromising on the features that make it a must-have for its more paranoid user base.

It should be no surprise that Signal is a viable alternative to WhatsApp: the non-profit which currently bankrolls the app was started with a $50m loan from Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp itself. Alternatively, you could listen to Elon Musk, who this week tweeted the simple message “use Signal”. He’s now the richest person in the world, so he must be right about something, it seems.

Whether you decide to switch or not – or just to set up a back-up chat app in case you feel the need to change down the line – the important thing is to make an active choice, and not allow a thousand small changes to add up a state of affairs you’d never have actively agreed to. We can’t all read the terms and conditions, but we can at least pause before clicking “Agree”.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/11/whatsapp-facebook-app-privacy-policy

We’re thrilled to announce our series A funding led by Swanlaab, alongside CDTI, Nauta Capital, Bankinter and Encomenda. This will help us on our mission to keep on building technology that puts people-first and can be built by anyone. #nocoderules!! 

Landbot closes $8M Series A for its ‘no code’ chatbot builder – TechCrunch

Barcelona-based Landbot, a ‘no-code’ chatbot builder, has bagged a $8M Series A led by the Spanish-Israeli VC firm Swanlaab, alongside support from Spain’s innovation-focused public agency, CDTI. Previous investors Nauta Capital, Encomenda and Bankinter also participated in the ro…

https://social.techcrunch.com/2021/01/20/landbot-closes-8m-series-a-for-its-no-code-chatbot-builder/

Source: https://www.idealista.com/news/inmobiliario/internacional/2021/01/07/788527-barcelona-y-madrid-entre-las-mejores-ciudades-del-mundo-para-vivir-y-trabajar
(The original news is in Spanish, thanks to Google Translate.)

The World Best Cities 2021 ranking, prepared by Resonance Consultancy based on a combination of statistical data and reviews generated by Google, Facebook or Instagram users, places Barcelona and Madrid among the ten best cities in the world to live and to work. The Ciudad Condal occupies the eighth position and the capital of Spain is the tenth in this classification after climbing two positions in the last year.

The crisis caused by the pandemic has affected tourism, hospitality, commerce and leisure. This means that large cities that benefit from these sectors to make their destination more attractive to reside or travel have been greatly diminished. Despite this, Barcelona remains in eighth place and Madrid is included in this prestigious selection.

In this benchmark, Barcelona stands out especially in sections such as internet promotion (7th), urban quality (9th) and cultural programming (11th). Those responsible for this report, who plan to hold their annual summit at the Fira facilities at the end of April, highlight the fact that ten Barcelona-based start-ups have consolidated and grown even during these months of crisis. Those ten companies are Mediquo, Factorial, Payflow, Holded, Landbot, Amenitiz, Learnlife, Tradler, Remy Robotics, and Hubtype.

Despite Brexit, London is ranked at the top of the best cities on the planet for the fifth year in a row, so it has always led since the creation of the ranking. It stands out mainly for the open, fresh and breathable air, for its landscapes and open spaces, and for its promotion and programming.

It is followed by New York, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, Dubai, Singapore, Barcelona, ​​Los Angeles and Madrid. For example, from the second classified it stands out that "the urban heart of the United States was broken by the pandemic and has a long way back", from the French capital that "the hell of Notre-Dame struck again the Parisian determination. But the City of Light is built resiliently ", or Moscow that" the captivating capital of Russia is a cultural goldmine that spans the centuries. "

Christmas is coming, how is your plans and wishes for the new year? Have you achieved this year's goal?  We all know 2020 has been a tough year, by Covid-19. I hope you are well and healthy, and getting better with your business by using Landbot. 🥰

We've interviewed with some colleagues of Landbot, about their Christmas plans and wishes for the coming year. Of course, with Landbot we collected the answers.

Now let's check the review!

We received plans and wishes by 7 colleagues. 

Between them, Leroy is the first colleague who participated in the activity.

About the plans and wishes, Osumi told us most about his plan. Pedro said most about his wishes.

So let's take their answers to show, by Landbot demo:

Here comes the first colleague Leroy, let's see what's her plans and wishes:

Leroy 

Plans: Luckily, I'm in my hometown with my family. It will be more or less the same holidays since we all are ok, but with a bittersweet feeling this time due to what's happening all around the world.

Wishes: I wish Landbot all the best. The compay it's working like a charm but I believe it deserves to be a massive success and those days are coming for sure!

On the other hand, I wish we could find a solution for COVID-19 soon, and hopefully all this mess really helps us to be better citizens and human beings, by redescovering what is really important.

Thanks to Leroy and her sincerely wishes and happy plan! Wish her merry Christmas and may the situation of Covid get passed soon.

Now let's see Pedro, who talked most about his wishes, how did he talk about his plans and wishes:

Pedro 

Plans: With close family and friends. We're a small group this time, but the spirit is high!

Wishes: They are a few:
1. For all our frontliners — the doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, paramedics and so on — to get a well-deserved rest.
2. For us all to be kinder to one another. Please leave xenophobia and racism in 2020.
3. To travel again like a normal person, safely and without paranoia.
4. For the US president to “Make America Great Again”, this time for real. Joe Biden, we're watching you.
5. For our team: To keep on making everyone feel valued ( colleagues, partners, customers and followers ) and encouraging empowerment, now more than ever, so we can all help build something bigger than ourselves.

As we can see, Pedro has a big mind for the world. Thanks to Pedro and his passionate wishes.

Now let's take a look at how did Osumi talk about his plans and wishes, he talked a lot about his plans!

Osumi 

Plans: This year I won't be able to get together with family/friends like years before and we won't be able to go out of the city for Christmas either. However, I will be able to have at least one dinner with my parents and meet up with some friends over the holidays, not in the same way (no night party), but it's better than nothing!

Wishes: I hope the pandemic situation gets better so we can get back to normal life as soon as possible and also looking forward to meeting up again with my Landbot family. 💚

Osumi is quite sorry about can't get together with his friends, family, and Landbot team due to the pandemic situation. Just like most of us wished, we hoped the life can get normal like it was before Covid. Thanks a lot Osumi for sharing your feelings and wishes, hope you could have a good time during Christmas, and we see you soon! 
The following simple but sincerely plans and wishes are from the rest of colleagues who also took a part of the activity. 

fake one 
Pans: home alone 2
Wishes: I wish you... stay home

jojojo 
Plans: Alone, in my cave
Wishes: Freedommmmmm

Hodor 
Plans: With family, which I didn't see for a long time
Wishes: Health & Happiness. Enjoying the small and simple thing

Don Tommasino 

Plans: With my family at my hometown, hopefully I'll be able to share time with my friends there too.
Wishes: I hope that the vaccines work fie and everybody can drop the masks by summer.

(Most of above colleagues use fake names😎)
Now here come my plans and wishes: 

Plans: Due to pandemic situation of Spain, I can't reunite with my family and my colleagues, I'm trapped in a small city named Salamanca. Fortunately I still can have a dinner of Hot pot with my roommate. After that, I will continue working. 💪
Wishes: I hope one day our office can be filled up with people again, because of Covid, now our office is a little bit empty and quiet. Also I hope we can make this community more active with joint efforts by all of us! 

(Photos by Niklas )

After read these plans and wishes, I wonder how is your plans and wishes? You can leave here a comment to talk about that. 😊

Also in next year,I hope our cooperation could be closer and your business could be prosperous. Landbot team will do our best to help you and your business, we will introduce more practical features. We will listen to your opinions in our community and various channels. 🙏

Merry Christmas!! Goodbye 2020!!🥳🥳🥳

Source: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3601533/microsoft-releases-native-office-apps-for-m1-macs.html?utm_campaign=subscribers-NaN&utm_medium=subscribers_push_notification&utm_source=subscribers

Microsoft on Tuesday released native versions of its core Office productivity applications for Apple's new ARM-based notebooks.

Collectively tagged as Microsoft 365 for Mac Apps — formerly labeled Office 365 ProPlus — the flagship applications Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word have been updated so that they run on the Apple Silicon-powered MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini without requiring translation.

On systems powered by Apple's new M1 system-on-a-chip, macOS 11 — aka Big Sur — uses the Rosetta 2 technology to run existing Intel-based applications. Rosetta 2 translates Intel-based code into code that runs on the M1 SoC.

[ Further reading: SharePoint Online cheat sheet ]

Rather than translate the code again and again each time the application is launched, Rosetta 2 does the translation once, prior to the first time the app is run, then stores the translated code for subsequent use. On the other hand, native applications do not require such translation and thus launch faster than Intel apps.

To eliminate confusion, developers can packages both the native and Intel versions of an app into a single binary, called a Universal App.

(If all this sounds vaguely familiar to long-time Mac users, it should: The initial iterations of Rosetta and Universal Apps debuted in 2006 with OS X Tiger, to run applications written for the PowerPC processor on then-new Intel-based Macs.)

Users with automatic updates enabled will start to receive the M1-native apps today. Alternately, users can choose App Store from the Apple menu, then select Updates, or from an Office application, pick Check for Updates from its Help menu.

RECOMMENDED WHITEPAPERS

Teams, the Office most aggressively promoted by Microsoft this year, has yet to appear in a Universal App edition for M1 Macs.

"Teams is currently available in Rosetta [2] emulation mode on Macs with M1 and [in] the browser," wrote Bill Doll, a senior product marketing manager, in a post to a Microsoft blog. "We are working on universal app support for M1 Macs and will share more news as our work progresses."

Microsoft

Microsoft 365 for Mac Apps now run on M1-powered Macs.

Credit: Google

Google has released a new app called blob Opera—a machine learning application that allows songwriters of all skill levels to compose songs—operas or otherwise—performed onscreen by four singing "blobs." In announcing the new app on its website, Google suggests such compositions might just be the perfect holiday present. The app was created by artist David Li.

The idea, Freya Murray, program manager for Google Arts & Culture suggests, is to explore what she describes as humanity's first instrument—the voice. The app is available on Google's Arts & Culture, EXPERIMENTS page. Users can program four singing blobs with assistance from a behind-the-scenes machine learning algorithm. Programming is done by dragging sliders for each of the blobs for different parts of the score. blob Opera then puts them all together (in melodies and harmonies) into a composition and the blobs perform it. The blobs are colorful armless and legless creatures with mouths, eyes and Santa hats. They sing upright next to one another, as if a small choir.

The blobs have been programmed to replicate the style of opera singers by training them with operas sung by real singers: Christian Joel, Frederick Tong, Joanna Gamble and Olivia Doutney. And to that end, each of the four blobs performs one of four singing voice ranges: tenor, bass, mezzo-soprano and soprano. The performances are not the voices of the human singers—instead, they are generalized versions of opera singers based on training.

Users who wish to experiment more deeply can edit their songs by changing pitch, vowel sounds and the notes they originally chose when composing a song. They can also take over during a performance, allowing one of the blobs to sing a solo on the fly. They can also share their performances with others. And for those who are not pleased with their compositions, the blobs also perform standard songs such as Christmas carols.

Source: https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-facebook-tool-fans-celebrities.html

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55299779?at_custom4=0C2DD506-3E06-11EB-BB14-610516F31EAE&at_custom2=twitter&at_custom3=%40BBCBreaking&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_campaign=64&at_medium=custom7

Google applications including YouTube, email and Docs have suffered a rare service outage, with users unable to access many of the company's services.

The outage started shortly before noon UK time, lasting more than half an hour before services were restored.

Users around the world reported problems with Gmail, Google Drive, the Android Play Store, Maps and more.

Google's search engine, however, remained unaffected by the problems affecting its other services.

The brief outage had a significant impact on the company's millions of users, many of whom rely on Google services for basic work apps such as email and calendars.

Users of Google Docs could continue to work if they had synced documents offline but were unable to use any online features.

The outage also affected Google-connected smart devices such as Home speakers - leading some users to complain on social media of being unable to switch off some lights in their homes.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

It also had a knock-on effect on other apps, with players of the smartphone game Pokémon Go, for example, reporting being unable to log in.

Despite the widespread outage, Google's service dashboard initially showed no errors - before switching to red status across all services.

"We're aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Gmail," the statement said, with the word "Gmail" replaced by other services.

The Google crisis may have been brief - it took services offline for less than an hour - but it was an unnerving reminder of just how dependent millions of people have become on services in the cloud.

Anyone who tried to open a Google Document or respond to an urgent Gmail message will have felt a sense of dread when the message came back: "Please try reloading this page, or coming back to it in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience."

The pandemic has shown us just how valuable services like the Google Cloud Platform can be to keep a workforce collaborating productively from home. 

But the businesses that have opted for Google's Cloud will have been unnerved by today's incident - however brief. They will want to know exactly what went wrong and to get assurances that it won't happen again.

The cause of the problem is unclear. However, while it lasted, users were still able to access the websites' landing pages in "incognito mode", which does not store a log of the users' browsing activity.

Google has been contacted for comment, but one spokesperson said they had been unable to access their email during the outage.

Such failures in Google's systems are rare, though a problem with some servers caused difficulties for US users in June 2019.

In that instance, the culprit was a change to server settings that was supposed to have been applied to a few machines in a specific region but was accidentally applied to many more.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/30/facebook-confirms-it-has-acquired-kustomer-sources-say-for-1b/?guccounter=1

Today Facebook  made one of its biggest plays yet to build out the services it provides to businesses on its platform: It is acquiring Kustomer, a startup founded with the aim of disrupting the customer services industry with a new approach to providing agents with better data and a more unified picture of users by bringing together the many social media and other channels and longer history between them and the company in question.

Terms are not being disclosed, but we have confirmed with sources very close to the deal that it was for $1 billion. Reports of the deal (and alleged price) were published earlier today by the WSJ.

Kustomer  — co-founded by CEO Brad Birnbaum and Jeremy Suriel (the two worked together across a range of other places, including Airtime and AOL and had sold a previous startup to Salesforce) — had raised around $174 million in private funding from investors that included Coatue, Tiger Global Management, Battery Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Cisco Investments, Canaan Partners, Boldstart Ventures and Social Leverage. It was last valued at $710 million, according to estimates from PitchBook.

Facebook’s interest in Kustomer is very straightforward, while at the same time a very significant sign of what it hopes to do strategically.

The social network has been slowly building up a big business providing customer services to businesses on its platform, and the plan now is to double down on that with a platform that will do much more of that, potentially as a paid service.

There are some 175 million people using Facebook this way today, covering both those who use Facebook to engage with businesses that use Facebook as their primary online “identity” — in place of a website or mobile app of their own, companies today often simply have a Page on Facebook — and those businesses that provide conversation channels on Facebook-owned messaging apps like Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp as a complement to other ways (and sometimes the sole way) to contact them.

Considering that Facebook has upwards of 2 billion users, 175 million doesn’t sound like a lot.

But as the company starts to see more keen competition from the likes of Snapchat, TikTok and likely others over time, having a better product to sell businesses alongside their other services will give Facebook a better way of locking them into the Facebook ecosystem. It will also give the company a stronger shot at a newer revenue stream to complement advertising, which remains its biggest cash cow by a big margin.

Indeed, customer service is an interesting play for Facebook to be making. The company has been investing in and building a number of additional features for businesses on its messaging apps — most recently on WhatsApp, for example, it started to make it easier for businesses to let people shop and do more on the app. Within that customer service is a huge industry that stretches well beyond the Facebook walled garden.

Indeed, the specific term Kustomer and other CRM companies use to describe what they do is “omni-channel” customer relations. That is to say, it gives the Kustomer business users a complete picture of the many disparate places where “conversations” might be happening with customers — be it on apps, on social media, in websites, via chatbots, or email, etc. The logic is that this makes the agent more efficient and gives him/her a better picture of both how the business is faring across those channels, and more context about a specific user contacting the company from one of those channels, as well as a more complete picture of the customers themselves.

For Facebook, its “customer relations” profile up to now has been about users within its app walls. This gives it a much bigger opportunity to essentially control that bigger picture and bigger relationship, regardless of the platform being used.

Coincidentally, it was only earlier this month that I reported that Snap acquired Voca.ai, which makes customer support voice bots.

While we have no idea how Snap will use that tech — some have speculated it could be to build more voice commands and audio-based tech for its Spectacles — I wrote at the time that it would make a lot of sense to bring this into a bigger product portfolio providing more tools to businesses already using Snapchat to market themselves. This Kustomer acquisition feels very timely in that regard.