Facebook, on Friday, said it is acquiring GIF sharing service, Giphy. Giphy is a search engine and database for short animated images, called GIFs. The social network briefed about the deal in a blog post on Friday. It said Giphy would become a part of its subsidiary, Instagram. It also said that more than 50% of Giphy’s traffic already comes from Facebook and it’s apps. However, the company didn’t reveal how much it paid for the deal. Axios reports that Facebook buys Giphy for $400 million.
Facebook plans to integrate Giphy’s library more deeply into Instagram and other Facebook services. Vishal Shah, Facebook’s vice president of the product (Instagram) wrote, “By bringing Instagram and Giphy together, we can make it easier for people to find the perfect GIFs and stickers in Stories and Direct.” Facebook also said that it did not plan to change the core functionality of Giphy. It promised and assured the developers that they would continue to have the same access to the underlying code.
The Giphy team also wrote through their Medium blog, “We will continue to make Giphy openly available to the wider ecosystem.” The team assured their API/SDK partners and developers that “GIPHY’s GIFs, Stickers, Emojis, etc. aren’t going anywhere.”
People’s Reaction
On social media, some people called out to delete Giphy citing their privacy concerns. People don’t seem to be wanting Facebook to collect personal information about them.
And it’s done! I deleted my app and the account. It was nice using you @GIPHY
Facebook collects the data from people’s activity on the internet through various means to serve them personalized ads on its platforms.
Vishal Shah also wrote that the integration of Giphy with Facebook’s products would help people better express themselves. He wrote, “Both our services are big supporters of the creator and artist community, and that will continue.” He added saying, “Together, we can make it easier for anyone to create and share their work with the world.”
This acquisition of Giphy by Facebook may be a question of privacy for many, but it will make it much easier for Facebook (including Instagram) users to share GIFs and interact much effectively.
Apple is well known for innovation and keeps popping out new technologies. Its interest in augmented reality technology keeps it busy in creating new products. The iPhone manufacturing company is rumoured to be working on some kind of augmented reality headset. It is expected to launch a pair of smart glasses based on the technology. According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the Apple’s AR Goggles could arrive in 2022 at the earliest, reported MacRumors. TF International Securities’ analyst, Kuo also predicts that Apple’s first headset could at the earliest be launched in 2022. This means, there are still two years to go. Excited Apple fans have to wait for 2 years before they get a glimpse of a pair of smart glasses. This new innovative device from Apple will mark the company’s next major hardware expansion beyond the iPhone.
According to the reports from The Information and Bloomberg, Apple’s headset is expected to offer a combination of both AR and VR experiences. The glasses will run a new operating system, rOS (abbr. reality OS). Apple is also said to be exploring touch panels, head gestures, and voice control as a means of controlling the glasses.
Existing VR Headsets in the Market
There are already many VR headsets available in the market today, like Facebook‘s Oculus lineup, PlayStation VR, and HTC Vive. Microsoft too sells a headset, called HoloLens, which combines elements of both AR and VR.
You also need to know that Apple’s AR headset’s release date has been allegedly changed many times before. In 2018, it was told that the device could launch this year. Some rumours guessed the date to be the next year. However, a DigiTimes report from March this year claimed that it will most likely be in 2022. We don’t know exactly when the device will actually be launched, the dates may change again as they did before. But, one thing is clear that Apple’s AR goggles won’t come before 2022.
Gamers aren’t able to keep calm as Epic Games Store has debuted its biggest free game for a limited time in quite some time, GTA 5. Grand Theft Auto V Premium Edition is available to be claimed for free till May 21. Epic has already faced excessive traffic due to which their servers went down multiple times as they tweeted from their official account.
We are currently experiencing high traffic on the Epic Games Store.
We are aware that users may be encountering slow loading times, 500 errors, or launcher crashing at this time and we are actively working to scale. We'll provide an update as soon as we can.
Since its release in 2013, Grand Theft Auto V has been one of the most successful titles in Rockstar’s history receiving high commercial success. PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Windows PCs, you name it, GTA V is everywhere. GTA VI might be a long way away but Epic announced the following offer on it’s Official Twitter channel on 14th may 8:30 PM IST. While Epic has already featured AAA games before (Just Cause, Assassin’s Creed, etc.) and good games (FTL, Hyper Light Drifter) before as part of their free games program, GTA 5 is on another level entirely as it remains one of the best-selling games ever, to this day. According to a report, GTA V has sold at least 120 million copies since its release making it one of the most successful and loved video games of all time.
Are There Any Catches? (NO!)
Rockstar is now offering the GTA V Premium Edition, which means that along with the access to the game itself, you also have access to GTA Online and a host of additional content not available in the Standard Edition. This deal is otherwise for about $24.99 but you can save all of that for other deals that may be coming soon as well. Worth mentioning is the fact that the game is not a demo, free trial, or with time-limited access. Checking out from the Epic Games Store once means you can keep the game with you for life.
The in-game micropurchases are, however, not included with the offer and will need to be paid for separately. The idea could be to give smaller games more exposure and recommendations while bigger games can have the opportunity to sell microtransactions for a much longer time in the future. The real moneymaker though is GTA Online, the also-free online component of the game loaded with microtransactions. It has become a hugely popular online world over the years and may end up hooking up people to it, getting them to spend money there down the road.
Are you not interested in sharing your watch list with others? You feel like your choices might make people judge you! Like you don’t want anyone to know that your favorite show is YOU and that you sympathize with Joe Goldberg. So, to stop all those prying eyes of your friends from barging into your Netflix profile, here a very cool feature introduced by the company called a parental lock. Now with this feature, Netflix allows you to set up PIN locks on your Netflix profile to restrict anyone to access it.
Source: How to Geek
Let’s Discuss How it Works
The best way of setting up a PIN lock on your Netflix profile is by visiting its official website.
Here are the necessary steps that you need to follow to set-up a PIN lock on your Netflix profile:
Go to the official Netflix website and select the ‘Account’ option on the dropdown menu.
On your ‘Account’ page, you’ll find a ‘Profile and Parental Controls’ option when you’ll scroll down and click on the arrow next to the profile you want to have a PIN lock on.
Now under the profile, you’ll find a ‘Profile Lock’ option. Click on the ‘Change’ option next to it.
Afterwards, you’ll be asked for your Netflix account credentials. Enter the credentials, after which you’ll find the option of setting a profile lock.
Now you need to enter a 4-digit security PIN, after which select the option of ‘Require a PIN to access XYZ’s profile’.You can even select the option that requires a PIN code for creating a new profile. Hit the save button, and now you have shielded your profile.
So, now if you visit your profile, you’ll see a lock icon under it. All you need to do is to click on your profile picture and enter your security PIN to let the app allow you access to your favorite shows and movies.
By any chance, if you forget your PIN lock, click on the Forgot PIN? Option at the bottom of the PIN entering box. You’ll get your PIN retrieved on the registered ID. Even for editing your profile, you’ll need this PIN lock.
This is a brilliant feature as it enables you to watch any content of your choice without getting apprehensive about what people might think. It even allows parents to have control of the quality of content that their kids are viewing lately by restricting their control to profile by the parents’ permission. Thanks to Netflix for taking care of this problem, and letting their customers have the best out of this app.
During this lockdown, you must be spending most of your time bringing on your favorite movies and shows. But still, you must be feeling a little lonely because you’ve lost that social connection with your friends. As you use to discuss over every episode you watched and your expectations and prediction about the next. Although you can even text your friends on social networking sites while watching the show but it lacks the feel and disrupts your viewing experience. Now you can easily chat or video calls your friends with various applications available to do a virtual watch party. Thanks to technology. By the use of these applications, you can watch movies online, you can conduct exciting movie parties with your friend where you can chat, gossip, and have the best time while watching some of your favorite shows.
For getting access to these apps you need to avail of its subscription. And even to share this viewing experience with your friends, they even have to own the subscription for the same. As these platforms don’t provide non-subscribers with the free viewing experience.
Let’s discuss about some of these apps to find out how to watch movies online .
Watch TV Shows and Movies Together with Friends Online
1. METASTREAM
Meta stream facilitates streaming with your friends with the option of live chat. This is available for platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube. In the case of Netflix, it will open in another window. For good viewing experience with friends, it is advised to watch it with Firefox for smooth functioning.
Type a display name and then click on “Get Started.”
There is a next screen with the option “Start Session” click on that.
Click on the “Invite” button to get a link. Click on “Copy” to send the link to any friends with whom you would want to start a movie party.
Once your friends start clicking on the link, they’ll become a part of the participant’s list. A box will appear to the left side of your screen with every member’s name. You just need to click on the green dots to allow them to be a part of this party.
Click on the three dots appearing on the top right and then click on “Chat”. A rectangular chat box will appear on the screen where you can start chatting.
To watch videos, you have the option of pasting URL in the bar and then click on “Add to Session.” You’ll get the video you want.
2. NETFLIX PARTY
Netflix Party option is only available with Netflix, where you can synchronize your streams with your other friends. It comes with the feature of live chat which is present at on side of the screen. This enables chatting with your friends at the time when your show is streaming.
Open your Netflix app and start playing any of your favorite shows.
Now the Netflix Party extension icon next to the address bar should turn from grey to red, Click on it.
A pop-up window appears on your screen that can “Create Netflix Party.” You can either take total control over the streaming or can leave it open for everyone to join. And afterward, click on “Start the Party”.
This time there is another pop-up window on your screen with a link in it. Click on the option “Copy URL” and share it with your family and friends. If you lost the link, you could find it again by clicking on the Netflix Party extension icon.
Netflix party provides you with an icon where you can go and change your nickname.
You can join the ongoing Netflix Party just by clicking on the link provided by the initiator and then click on the Netflix Party icon. With this, you’ll be a part of the existing Netflix Party.
3. SCENER
Scener comes up with the option of video chatting and text chatting while watching Netflix. Currently, this option is available for Netflix only but they are planning to extend its reach. In Scener you are provided with a virtual remote control which you can pass around to your friends. It has the same functionality that a normal remote has, you can pause, rewind, and play. The one who has the remote has the remote button on his/her screen can only pass it to any other friend he wishes to.
Source: TechCrunch
How to launch it:
Download Scener’s Chrome extension. The extension will ask permission to read and change your data on Netflix and Scener too.
Open the app and enter your name and email address to create your Scener account.
Then open your Netflix account and create a private theatre.
Scener will ask for your permission to enable camera access. Click on “Yes”.
You can either share the link or code to your friends to join the party. The link can be sent to friends who don’t have the Scener app already downloaded on their devices. And code to the ones who already have the app pre-downloaded. Once they open the link, they’ll get an app downloading option. They just need to download the app to join in. With this, they’ll get added to the theatre.
To send code to somebody, you need to click on the button at the top of the sidebar, the one that looks like a person with a plus sign on top.
Select a show or a movie and click on the play button to start watching.
4. TWOSEVEN
Like Scener, TwoSeven also has the video chatting option, but it supports more platforms other than just Netflix. this app supports Amazon Prime Video, HBO Now, YouTube, and Vimeo. On paying a subscription fee, you can even get access to apps like Hulu and Disney Plus. The subscription price usually is between the range of $5 to $20 a month, but due to the situation of COVID-19, they have reduced it to $3 per month.
Source: Trusted Reviews
How to launch it:
Download the TwoSeven extension. The extension will ask to grant it permission to show notification and read and change data on the website.
Now create an account by clicking on the extension icon and do the entries like name and email address as asked.
Click on the icon with the name TwoSeven on the address bar and then click on “Go to twoseven.xyz”
Click on “get started”. Select “Account” to have access to your profile settings.
Click on “Start Watching”. Afterward, a pop-up window will appear on the screen to create a private room. You can either allow everyone the access to control the mic and webcam or let only the admins have access to it.
Click on the sign with two people and a plus sign. Then click on “Copy Link” and now you can share the link with your friends. Once you do so the watch session will start adding members.
To enable video and audio, click on the camera and microphone icon on the right side of the screen.
The chats will appear on the bottom of the screen.
Click on the button for the chosen video source at the top of the screen. While watching videos on YouTube, you’ll have to paste the URLs.
Nvidia GTC 2020 yet another Keynote to be shifted to an Online-only event amidst the pandemic
Nvidia planned to hold a proper GPU Technology Conference 2020 keynote had to be canceled due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Thus, the company decided to unveil its products via a pre-recorded keynote presentation yesterday. The company’s drive towards development and releasing new products has unabatedly continued as NVIDIA’s next-generation GPU architecture – Ampere, and the first products that will be using it were announced.
Image Courtesy: Nvidia
The company was expected to unveil enterprise-related products along with its latest GPU architecture, and Nvidia didn’t disappoint. Ampere is the name of Nvidia’s 7nm architecture for its GPUs and compute units. While we don’t have a lot of details about the new architecture itself, there sure were a bunch of enterprise products that were announced, which use the Ampere architecture.
A100 GPU, HGX A100, and DGX A100
Nvidia’s A100 GPU its first GPU using the new Ampere architecture. The GPU packs in it 54 billion transistors and Nvidia calls it “the world’s largest 7-nanometer processor”. The A100 GPU also comes with Nvidia’s third-generation of Tensor Cores, which Nvidia claims offers 20 times faster AI performance. It also, for the first time, supports double-precision performance. The company is claiming a 2.5 times performance boost over the Tesla V100.
Alongside the A100 GPU, Nvidia also announced hardware that uses these A100 GPUs in multiple combinations. The DGX A100 announced packs in eight A100 GPUs that off a whopping 5 petaflops of AI performance. Together, the eight A100 GPUs in the DGX A100 offers 320GB GPU memory and 12.4 TBps bandwidth.
The customizable HGX A100 baseboard was also announced by Nvidia which can be used by OEMs to create their own A100 based server systems. Nvidia partnered with Dell, HP Enterprise, Gigabyte, and SuperMicro among others to offer HGX A100 based systems to enterprise customers.
Lastly, the company also announced the EGX A100 edge compute unit. This can “carry out real-time processing and protection of the massive amounts of streaming data from edge sensors“. The new Mellanox SmartNIC was also announced by the company which is present inside the EGX A100. As we expected, these are all enterprise-grade announcements. Another aspect to note is that Ampere based graphic cards are also in the works. We don’t have dates yet, but we do expect Nvidia to talk more about consumer GPU’s in upcoming months. Its about time for the rumored RTX 3000 series graphics cards to be revealed.
Dell, on May 13 launched a new XPS 17 laptop along with a redesigned XPS 15 laptop. The computer manufacturing company has made major changes this time. The display panels are now taller and bigger with a 16:10 display. Besides, there is support for next-gen ports like USB-C on the new XPS laptops family. The new XPS 17 and XPS 15 come with a new design and features. Here’s everything you need to know about both the laptops.
About XPS 15
This is the most significant update in the new XPS 15 design in nearly five years. XPS 15 features 16:10, 15.6-inch display, and Intel’s latest 10th Gen processors. The new 15.6-inch display trims the bezels from all sides making it an edge-to-edge display.
It is available in 4K or Full HD resolutions along with a tiny webcam at the top. The laptop includes two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports, a regular USB-C 3.1 port, and a full-size SD card reader. Dell also claims the battery life of up to 25 hours.
The new XPS 15 is available at a starting price of $1,299.99.
About XPS 17
Dell launched a new XPS 17 laptop along with the redesigned XPS 15 laptop. As the name implies, it is a larger 17-inch laptop from the XPS family. According to Dell, this is the “most powerful XPS laptop ever.” The company boasts it to be the smallest 17-inch laptop on the planet. “The XPS 17 is the smallest 17-inch laptop on the planet,” says Donnie Oliphant, Dell’s marketing director of XPS products. It’s even smaller than most 15-inch existing laptops in the market.
In XPS 17 also, Dell has opted for a 16:10 aspect ratio on a 17-inch display. Like XPS 15, there are beyond 4K and full HD display panel options and a top-mounted HD webcam.
The XPS 17 is not yet available for shipping but is expected this summer. It is priced starting at $1,499.99.
Facebook along with African and global telecom companies including China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, and Vodafone, is planning to build one of the world’s largest subsea cable networks. It is aimed at boosting internet availability across three continents. This place is where billions of people are still offline, without having any access to the world of the internet.
Photo credit: ANDER GILLENEA/AFP via Getty Images
The companies will lay cables across Africa through a project called 2Africa. The cable length will stretch to 37,000km connecting Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This project will bring connectivity to the people of 16 countries in Africa who still don’t have the internet. The 37,000km cable will interconnect Europe through Egypt, and the Middle East through Saudi Arabia with Africa via 21 landings in 16 countries.
What Telcos Said
The companies in a joint statement said they are expecting the system to be live by 2023 or early 2024. Also, this will be delivering more data than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables currently serving Africa. The companies said, the design capacity on key parts of the system will be up to 180 terabytes per second. However, neither Facebook nor the telecom operators reveal how much money they’re going to invest in the project.
What Facebook Said
Najam Ahmad, who is the Vice President of Network Infrastructure at Facebook, said they (Facebook) are very excited to be collaborating with their 2Africa partners on this project. He called it“the most comprehensive subsea cable that will serve the continent.” On the same note, the CEO of MTN Group’s wholesale operation at MTN GlobalConnect, Frédéric Schepens said,“MTN GlobalConnect is delighted to participate in this bold 2Africa subsea cable project.” He also said, they are proud to be playing a key role in providing the benefits of a modern connected life, which he called a core MTN belief.
All the telcos along with Facebook are quite excited to invest in this project. It will bring connectivity to a billion people living across these 3 continents. This subsea cable will also help Facebook and others lower down their bandwidth costs.
Amazon has recently launched a new range of tablets under its Fire Tablet lineup. The company usually launches 2 tablets which include a normal one and another is a kids-oriented option. But this time they’ve launched a range of three new Fire tablets.
It is an 8-inch tablet with a custom Android-based Fire operating system. The company says that this time the new 2.0GHz quad-core processor is quite faster than the previous one. The tablet comes with a 2GB RAM.
The tablet doesn’t have an extraordinary spec, but its best for streaming and casual web browsing purpose. This time, they have replaced the MicroUSB with a USB-C connector.
The screen display is 1280 x 800 pixels, which are not that great but are perfectly watchable. And even the battery life has improved as it has gone up from 10 to 12 hours.
The internal storage options available this time are 32GB instead of 16GB and 64GB instead of 32GB which supports microSD card expansion. The device comes with a 9W fast charger and six months of Kindle Unlimited. But the British customers only get three months of Kindle Unlimited.
Let’s Talk about each Model Specifically
Fire HD 8+
The Fire HD 8+ has an 8-inch screen resolution and because of that ‘+’ it comes up with some additional features like 3GB RAM instead of 2GB. It also supports wireless charging. This tablet is priced at $110 whereas the wireless charger option is available at $140.
Fire HD 8 Kids
It is the same as the previous kids-oriented Fire HD tablet. It comes with about 20,000 apps, games, books, and more hand-picked especially for kids, and educational content from PBS Kids, Nickelodeon, and more. This device comes with parental control plus 2 years of free guarantee. This tablet is priced at $140.
Fire HD 8
This tablet also has an 8-inch screen, which seems the same as its last version, but now it’s available in different color options like black, plum, twilight blue, and white. This time it has come with a faster processor, which seems 30% quicker than the existing version. The active memory is also increased to 2GB instead of 1.5GB, which will also contribute to its faster performance. The storage has been increased too, with options like 32GB and 64GB. And with its microSD card, you can raise memory to 1TB.
Amazon has come up with a decent offering with better performance than the previous version and with an addition of available design options.
Chinese smartphone maker company Xiaomi unveiled MIUI 12 late last month in China. MIUI is an android-powered custom operating system used by Xiaomi in its smartphones. Earlier, the MIUI 12 global launch date was revealed by the company through its Twitter handle @miuirom with a simple maths puzzle. It was more of a tease than the revelation and the answer for the puzzle happened to be 19. Because of this people assumed the date to be May 19.
MIUI 12 Global Launch Confirmed Date
Now Xiaomi has confirmed the global launch of its custom made android-based operating system to be on 19 May. In a tweet the company said, “Get ready to meet our best release of the decade.” As a confirmation to the launch date, the tweet added, “Stay tuned for #MIUI12, and see you on May 19, at 8:00 p.m.” The date and time of the global launch of MIUI 12 in terms of Indian Standard Time (IST) is May 19, 2020, 05:30 PM IST.
Get ready to meet our best release of the decade. Stay tuned for #MIUI12, and see you on May 19, at 8:00 p.m.
MIUI 12 comes with a cleaner UI, privacy upgrades, Super wallpapers, forced Dark Mode, new always-on display themes, Mi Health, redesigned camera app, and many more. It is based on Google’s latest mobile OS, Android Q a.k.a Android 10. It brings several amazing new features with this update.
The gesture controls for full-screen mode are now more in line with Google’s implementation. Floating windows for supported apps is a new feature to enhance multitasking on your Xiaomi device.
It is expected that the Indian variant of the MIUI 12 may be released sometime after the global launch. The developers have already started beta testing for MIUI 12 in India. If you want to learn whether your device will get the update or not, then tuning in to the live stream on 19th May would be a good thing. During the launch, you may get to know about all the features and other information from Xiaomi itself.
Don’t forget, it’s 19 May 2020; 05:30 PM IST or 08:00 AM ET.
