AUN Urdu News

Individual users should be allowed to take US tech giants to court for breaching landmark EU rules aimed at curbing their power, Privacy International, pan-European consumer group BEUC and a number of academics said on Tuesday. The call by the coalition of 31 groups and academics comes as EU lawmakers and EU countries thrashed out the final points of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) proposed by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager just over a year ago before it can become law. The draft DMA sets out a list of dos and don'ts for online gatekeepers, in effect targeting Apple, Alphabet unit Google, Facebook parent Meta, Amazon and Microsoft. It only allows business users to sue violating companies. "The DMA must enable users, both individually and collectively, to bring enforcement actions for violation of DMA rules before national courts," the group said in an open letter to EU institutions. While EU lawmakers are open to the idea, EU countries have so far ignored the ...

Following severe backlash from users, Meta-owned instant messaging platform WhatsApp is restoring the old contacts list, WABetainfo reported on Tuesday. According to the WhatsApp news trackers, the messaging app had introduced a new interface when you open your contacts list. “The new interface included your frequently contacted people and groups, and your recent chats,” it said. However, after the update, a lot of people complained stating that the new update was “horrible”. WABetainfo stated that people wanted the real contacts list in alphabetical order and the number of their total contacts. “Finally, probably after receiving bad feedback, WhatsApp is now restoring the old interface. It means you can use the old contacts list again,” the tracking platform announced. According to reports, the feature is rolling out today, but it may take some time before being restored for everyone. “Be sure to use the latest update of the play store that may help restore the functionality,”...

Pakistan ranked fourth in the world vis-à-vis the number of videos taken down by TikTok — over six million — during the July-September quarter of last year for violating its guidelines. According to the “Community guidelines enforcement report”, released by the video-sharing platform on Monday, it removed 73.9 per cent of content against which there were complaints that they encouraged harassment and bullying, while 72.4 per cent of videos found to be inciting hate were removed before anyone reported them. “In order to protect the safety of the community and to preserve integrity of the platform, 91.44m videos were removed across the world” between July 1 and Sept 30 last year, the report revealed. However, this number amounts to only one per cent of all videos uploaded on the platform and 95 per cent of these videos were removed before a user lodged a complaint. Eighty-eight per cent of them were taken off before the video received any views and 93 per cent were removed within 2...

Twitter Inc reported weaker-than-expected quarterly advertising revenue and user growth on Thursday and forecast revenue short of Wall Street targets, indicating that its turnaround plan has yet to bear fruit. Still, the social networking site said it made "meaningful progress" toward its goal of reaching 315 million users and $7.5 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2023, and said user growth should accelerate in the United States and internationally this year. Shares of the San Francisco-based company rose more than 8% after the results, but pared those gains in morning trading. Twitter has been pursuing big projects such as audio chat rooms and newsletters to end long-running stagnation and attract new users and advertisers. But the quarterly results raised questions about Twitter's plan as analysts had expected faster signs of progress. Monetizable daily active users, or users who see ads, grew 13% to 217 million in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, missing ...

Sony said on Wednesday it has created an artificial intelligence agent called Gran Turismo Sophy (GT Sophy) that was able to beat world's best drivers of the PlayStation racing simulation game Gran Turismo. To get GT Sophy ready for the game, different units of Sony brought in fundamental AI research, a hyper-realistic real world racing simulator, and infrastructure for massive scale AI training, the company said in a statement. The AI first raced against four best Gran Turismo drivers in July, learnt from the race and outperformed the human drivers in another race in October. "It took about 20 PlayStations running simultaneously for about 10 to 12 days to train GT Sophy to race from scratch to superhuman level," said Peter Wurman, director of Sony AI America and the leader of the team who designed the AI. While AI had been used to defeat humans in the games of chess, Mahjong and Go, Sony said the difficulty in mastering race car driving was the many decisions that ...

Jeff Bezos is determined to conquer aging and has started a new anti-aging company called Altos Labs, recruiting Hal Barron from GlaxoSmithKline to lead the research. Science however, still trying to piece together what causes aging and its effects. According to science, reports The Conversation, our genetic material changes over time and is said to be causing aging in humans, dividing only twenty times in an elderly person, compared to eighty to ninety times in a newborn. Along with these epigenetic changes, telomeres in human DNA shorten in length every time a cell divides. Immune cells, however, help stop the telomeres from shortening when they multiply. It is not decisive known what causes aging but it is believed that it could be a side effect of damage built up over time, possibly caused by metabolism or exposure to UV rays. Researchers still don't know if genes are damaged as a person ages over time, and this has not been proven. Aging sends some of the body's cells...

The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday dismissed a plea seeking a ban on popular online gaming application Players' Unknown Battle Ground (PUBG), in Pakistan. A citizen, Tanveer Sarwar, had moved the high court following violent incidents and killings involving youngsters fond of the game. However, the petitioner did not appear in court at today's hearing. The LHC disposed of the plea over the petitioner's discontinuation of the case's pursuit. The petitioner had contended in the plea that PUBG is creating intolerance in society, especially in youngsters who are addicted to playing this game. He maintained that the game was threatening to the life and health of the players and caused an adverse effect on their families as well. The plea sought an immediate ban on the gaming app in order to save the young generation from destruction. The federal government, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and other authorities concerned had been made respondents in the...

Chrome is changing its logo design for the first time in eight years. The difference is hard to tell, because the changes are quite subtle. Elvin Hu, designer for Google Chrome, shared the information on Twitter and initial look at the redesign in progress. According to Hu, Google has simplified the main icon by ‘removing shadows, refining proportions and brightening colours.’ If you squint hard, you may notice that the colours are more vibrant and the circle in the center seems bigger. “We simplified the main brand icon by removing the shadows, refining the proportions and brightening the colors, to align with Google's more modern brand expression,” Hu tweeted. “Fun fact: we also found that placing certain shades of green and red next to each other created an unpleasant color vibration, so we introduced a very subtle gradient to the main icon to mitigate that, making the icon more accessible.” Google has also created ‘OS-specific customizations’ according to Hu, w...

Microblogging site Twitter, which is quite popular among not only politicians, celebrities and other personalities, but also among the public when it comes to jotting down thoughts or to find out top trends and news. As we know, Twitter users are currently restricted to posting tweets only up to 280 characters, which is most of the time a sufficient character limit. However, MailOnline has cited a report suggesting that Twitter is planning to remove the 280-character limit and allow users to post lengthier Tweets. The publication quoted news leake Jane Manchun Wong as claiming that Twitter may soon roll out a new feature "Twitter Articles", which won't restrict tweeps from posting longer than 280 characters. Here is a screenshot, provided by Wong, of what the rumoured feature may look like. You may also have a look at the range of potential uses of "Twitter Articles", suggested by Wong. Exclusive articles Newsletter In-app UX On-platform conversation,...

What if you could test yourself for Covid-19 using your phone camera? Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have developed a system that works in this way. Preliminary experiments suggest the result is as accurate an indicator of infection as the PCR test. The research paper published in the journal JAMA Network Open, explains that ‘smartphone-based LAMP assay integrates reliable diagnostics with advantages of smartphone detection, offering an inexpensive diagnostic platform for SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A and B viruses that match the CDC RT-qPCR criterion standards.’ The researchers posit that the smartphone-based LAMP assay offers the potential to provide a critical tool to mitigate further stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the LAMP assay can be readily engineered to address novel CoV-2 variants and other pathogens with pandemic potential, including influenza. The method as ascertained by Cnet, requires test-takers to download the ap...