CTC BLOG

Reuters Nov 30, 2018 10:19 AM IST

The Trump administration, which has had sometimes strained relations with high-technology companies, will meet with top tech executives next week to discuss innovation and future jobs, several companies attending and a White House official said on Thursday.

Chief executives expected to participate include Microsoft Corp’s Satya Nadella, Alphabet Inc’s Sundar Pichai, Qualcomm Inc’s Steven Mollenkopf and Oracle Corp’s Safra Catz, a White House official confirmed. Others have been invited but not yet confirmed they will attend the roundtable discussions.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the Viva Tech start-up and technology summit in Paris. Reuters

Microsoft and Oracle separately confirmed they would take part. The sessions will focus on jobs of the future in the technology space, the White House official said.

President Donald Trump has had many run-ins with technology companies since he took office, including his accusations without evidence of bias by Alphabet’s Google, Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc and “trying to silence” people.

“I think that Google and Facebook and Twitter … treat conservatives and Republicans very unfairly,” Trump told reporters at the White House in August.

Next week, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing with Pichai to discuss Republican allegations of bias against conservatives — a charge Google has denied.

The roundtable, to be held next Thursday, will also feature Blackstone Group LP chief executive officer Steve Schwarzman and Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian.

The White House declined immediate comment. Blackstone declined to comment and Carnegie Mellon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

White House adviser Larry Kudlow said in early October that the administration was working on a meeting with tech companies.

“We’re going to have a little conference — the president will preside over it — we will have big internet companies, big social media companies, search companies,” Kudlow said at the time. Also attending, he added, would be “some who are dissatisfied with those companies.”

Trump met in June 2017 with the heads of 18 US technology companies including Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft, seeking their help to make the government’s computing systems more efficient.

Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator of the Gutenberg Times website, is hosting a Q&A session with Gutenberg’s phase 1 design and development leads on Friday, November 30, at 2pm ET (19:00 UTC). Matias Ventura, Tammie Lister, and Joen Asmussen will join Pauli-Haack to discuss their journey “Creating Gutenberg” over the past two years.

If you have any pressing questions about Gutenberg’s architecture, design, or the future of the project, this event is a good opportunity to speak to members of the team who have been building it full-time. The Q&A is free to watch but attendees who want to participate with questions will need to register. There are 100 seats available. Pauli-Haack will also be live-streaming the session to the Gutenberg Times YouTube channel.

Popular media platform Plex is taking another step towards solidifying its position as a one-stop media hub with announcement that it has partnered with the global music streaming platform Tidal. The new deal will give Plex members access to more than 60 million high-quality music tracks and over 244,000 videos, along with unique editorial content. Plex users will be able to access Tidal content directly from the Plex app through an exclusive subscription deal that will enhance the user of both services. Plex users will continue to be able to enjoy their own personal music collections alongside Tidal’s catalog, with everything seamlessly blended together within the Plex app, allowing users to search out their favourite music and other content regardless of where it’s located.

This latest update follows the addition of support for Plex News, Plex Podcasts, and Plex Web Shows earlier this year, effectively allowing users to access and curate all of their major media in a single location — music, podcasts, web shows, live TV, recorded movies and shows, and their own personal media collections — accessed through a single set of apps that are available on just about any platform. Tidal’s entire music catalog is available on Plex right at launch, and Plex users will also gain a number of advanced music curation and discovery features, including offering artist recommendations, filing in missing albums, augmented artist radio, new releases, universal playlists and universal search that allow Tidal and personal library content to be easily mixed together, and music videos.

Two plans are available: a $9.99 Tidal Premium plan provides standard access to Tidal along with premium Plex music features, while a $19.99 Tidal HiFi + Plex Pass subscription gives subscribers access to Tidal’s CD-quality lossless music library along with a Plex Pass subscription — a saving of $60 compared to purchasing both plans separately. Existing Tidal subscribers can simply link their current Tidal account to their Plex account and get started right away, and Plex users who already subscribe to Plex Pass can purchase either of the Tidal plans for a slight discount of $8.99 or $18.99. Both plans also start with a 30-day free trial.

tech2 News Staff Nov 29, 2018 19:35 PM IST

Pornhub, the Canada-based adult entertainment site, is one of the leading porn websites in the world. It was also one among the 827 sites that were kicked out of India’s internet portals, but a number of other porn sites continued their stay.

The move to block 827 porn sites was sought after news reports about the gangrape of a minor girl in a boarding school in Dehradun surfaced, as the reports stated that the boys who raped the minor girl engaged with pornographic content before committing the crime.

Representational image.

According to a report in The Indian Express, Pornhub VP Corey Price’s reacted to this ban by the Department of Telecommunication by stating that banning of porn sites is a “disservice to the people of India”.

He says that this ban might lead the Indian audience to access sites which may contain illegal content.

Pornhub, for which India is the third largest market, has definitely seen a hit in its numbers.

The government had even asked the internet service providers to block over 800 porn sites. But according to a report, Chief Justice HL Dattu had said, “Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court. Somebody may come to the court and say look I am above 18 and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room. It is a violation of Article 21 [right to personal liberty].”

Price too says as per the Express report, that there are “no laws against pornography in India and watching adult content privately”, stating that Pornhub was being used as a scapegoat.

When there are several issues like illegal content floating on the internet, Price states that their site has “parental controls”, a “strict terms of service” and even takes down pages which have non-consensual content. He also indicated that blocking porn sites would also lead to surge in VPN software usage, effectively making the ban pointless.

Mophie has announced a new Powerstation with Lightning connector 5,050 mAh battery pack, an ultra-portable and versatile solution designed specifically for iPhone and iPad users. Using a Lightning port for recharging, the new Powerstation means that iOS device users will have one less cable to carry around with them, and can also charge the new Powerstation from just about any dock with a Lightning connector as well. The 5,050 mAh battery provides an extra 15 hours of juice for a typical iPhone, and dual USB-A ports let you charge two devices at the same time. The power pack also features Mophie’s Priority+ Charging feature, allowing pass-through charging to ensure that your iPhone is powered up first before the Powerstation itself starts to recharge. The new Powerstation with Lightning Connector is being offered in three colors — black, red, and space gray — with an aluminum finish and is available starting today for $59.95 at mophie.com.

WordPress 5.0 will soon replace the editor with the new Gutenberg editor as part of a multi-phase project to improve the experience of authoring rich content. Phase 2 will shift focus to tackle site customization, bringing more complex layout and page builder capabilities to Gutenberg.

As this phase kicks off soon, it’s valuable to see what other platforms are doing on this front. Drupal has traditionally appealed to a more technical audience, and probably wouldn’t count Squarespace, Wix, and Tumblr among their competitors, but the project is getting more friendly towards site builders and content editors. Drupal has brought improvements to its usability, media, and layout experiences over the past few years in support of users who have demanded a more modern, simplified admin UI. The project is currently testing a visual design tool for building layouts.

Two weeks ago, Drupal founder and project lead Dries Buytaert previewed the new Layout Builder, an experimental feature that is stabilizing and expected to land in Drupal 8.7 in May 2019. Layout Builder offers layouts for templated content, customizations to templated layouts, and custom pages. These uses are especially important when building sites with large amounts of content that occasionally require template overrides and one-off landing pages.

Buytaert described how Layout Builder approaches the creation of one-off dynamic pages, which he said is similar to the capabilities found in services such as Squarespace and projects like Gutenberg for WordPress and Drupal:

A content author can start with a blank page, design a layout, and start adding blocks. These blocks can contain videos, maps, text, a hero image, or custom-built widgets (e.g. a Drupal View showing a list of the ten most popular gift baskets). Blocks can expose configuration options to the content author. For instance, a hero block with an image and text may offer a setting to align the text left, right, or center. These settings can be configured directly from a sidebar.

Buytaert’s demo video shows the Layout Builder in action. Its capabilities are similar to many of WordPress’ third-party page builders, such as Elementor and Beaver Builder.

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Layout Builder Poses Accessibility Challenges

Layout Builder is anchored on one of Drupal’s stronger features – the ability to create structured content, but it faces some of the same accessibility challenges that WordPress’ Gutenberg editor has encountered.

In his post introducing Layout Builder, Buytaert made some pointed remarks about Drupal’s commitment to accessibility:

Accessibility is one of Drupal’s core tenets, and building software that everyone can use is part of our core values and principles. A key part of bringing Layout Builder functionality to a “stable” state for production use will be ensuring that it passes our accessibility gate (Level AA conformance with WCAG and ATAG). This holds for both the authoring tool itself, as well as the markup that it generates. We take our commitment to accessibility seriously.

Some contributors are not as optimistic about Drupal being able to fulfill these bold claims in time to ship the feature in 8.7.0. Andrew Macpherson, one of the accessibility topic maintainers for Drupal 8 core, has proposed Layout Builder offer an alternative UI that users can access without the visual preview UI.

“Dries’ blog post about layout builder yesterday says we’re on track to mark this as stable for D8.7.0,” Macpherson said. “I’m not at all optimistic about that, because as yet there is no feasible plan for how it can be made accessible.

“A minimum viable product for Layout Builder accessibility would be at least one method which works, for each user task, for each input/output method. I don’t think we can say we have found a feasible approach. We’re in deeply experimental territory here – there isn’t a well-established, reliable pattern we can just copy to make the current layout builder accessible. Essentially, we’re making stuff up in a hurry, for a novel UI, with limited opportunity for design validation. There’s no guarantee that users are going to understand it, or find it easy to use. That’s why I’m not optimistic about it getting past the accessibility gate in time for D8.7.0.”

Macpherson said that WCAG strongly advises against providing alternate versions but allows for them in instances where the main version cannot be made accessible.

“I think we are effectively in this situation now, although we are still exploring ideas,” he said.

Macpherson also recommended they continue striving to make the drag-and-drop, visual-preview layout builder UI accessible at the same time. He referenced emerging principles of Inclusive Design for application developers, which recommend “offering choice,” giving users different ways of completing tasks, especially those that may be complex or non-standard.

“Eventually, I’d like to see BOTH layout builder UIs being accessible, and offer genuinely useful choices for everyone,” Macpherson said. “But let’s take the time to do it well, instead of hastily bolting on fixes for one type of interaction method at a time, in a rush to ship a single layout builder UI. ”

Macpherson’s proposal is still under consideration, but it provides an interesting perspective on similar challenges WordPress contributors are facing with Gutenberg. Modernizing UIs to make the site building experience more accessible for those who don’t know how to code has to be balanced with considerations for those who may not be able see very well or use a mouse. Drupal contributors are exploring providing an alternative accessible UI as a solution to empower more users to take advantage of the new Layout Builder.

Reuters Nov 29, 2018 18:23 PM IST

Germany’s antitrust authority has launched an investigation into whether US e-commerce giant Amazon is exploiting its market dominance in its relations with third-party retailers who use its website as a marketplace.

Germany’s Federal Cartel Office said in a statement on Thursday that it had received many complaints from traders about the business practices of Amazon of late.

General view of the Amazon.de distribution centre in Bad Hersfeld, Germany. Image: Reuters

“Amazon acts as a kind of ‘gatekeeper’ to customers. The double role as biggest trader and biggest marketplace means there is a potential to impede other traders on the platform,” said cartel office President Andreas Mundt.

Mundt said the investigation would examine the business conditions that Amazon imposes on traders using its site, including a lack of transparency over how it ends relations with merchants, delayed payments and shipping conditions.

An Amazon spokesman declined to comment on the proceedings beyond saying it was cooperating fully and would continue to work to support the growth of small and medium-sized businesses.

The European Commission is also investigating Amazon’s dual function and is asking retailers and manufacturers whether Amazon’s sales of own-brand products similar to theirs have harmed their business.

Germany is Amazon’s second-biggest market. It has faced a long-running battle with unions in the country over pay and conditions for logistics workers, who staged another round of strikes last week.

The cartel office said the probe into Amazon will seek to address any violations of German competition or anti-trust law, but does not foresee significant fines unless they are considered as part of a final ruling requiring a company to end any abusive market practices.

Investigators will contact retailers using the Amazon platform and examine their contracts.

The German antitrust watchdog is also investigating Facebook after finding the social media giant abused its market dominance to gather data on people without their knowledge or consent. Its ruling is expected in the New Year.

Apple Pay has launched in Belgium, according to a report by 9to5Mac, although it appears to have only landed at a single banking conglomerate thus far, Fortis, which comprises BNP Paribas, Fintro and Hello Bank. Other big banks in Belgium have yet to get on board, nor have there been any announcements as to when that might happen. Apple Pay has been gradually rolling out worldwide since its debut in 2016, and has apparently landed in Kazakhstan this week as well, along with Apple promising that a German rollout of the mobile payment service is also expected to come by the end of the year.

Reuters Nov 29, 2018 14:22 PM IST

BMW said it can force its hybrid cars switch to an electric-only mode in heavily polluted inner-city areas, helping its vehicles compete with pure battery-driven rivals as a raft of cities seek to create emissions-free zones.

BMW. Reuters.

“The car switches off the combustion engine automatically,” BMW’s board member for development, Klaus Froehlich, told Reuters at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

Because of BMW vehicles’ connectivity and navigation systems, its cars can be converted to automatically disable engines, Froehlich said, adding that the new X5 sports utility vehicle has an operating range of 80 kilometers in electric-only mode.

BMW is currently demonstrating the technology to local authorities in German cities which may be forced to ban heavily polluting diesel cars as a way to meet European Union clean air rules.

A global clampdown on vehicle pollution in the wake of Volkswagen’s 2015 diesel emissions cheating scandal has prompted cities including London, Paris and Stuttgart to consider bans of combustion engine vehicles.

But customers have shied away from buying electric cars because of a lack of charging infrastructure, making hybrids a more attractive option for now.

Such a vehicle could be very important in regions such as Europe, where most drivers do not own multiple cars for different uses, he said. Germany’s highest administrative court in February ruled cities could ban diesel vehicles from some streets in order to improve air quality.

The new Apple Watch Series 4 will be getting its promised ECG feature as part of the upcoming watchOS 5.1.2 update, according to documents obtained by MacRumors. While the version of watchOS 5.1.2 that is currently in developer beta testing has not shown any indications of the ECG feature as of yet, internal Apple Store training documents have revealed that an ECG app will be included with the final public release of watchOS 5.1.2. As promised, the app is designed to provide basic ECG functionality to allow users to determine whether their heart rhythm shows signs of atrial fibrillation, thereby suggesting that they should consult a doctor for more comprehensive tests to determine if a heart condition actually exists.

According to MacRumors, the Apple training documents state that the ECG app is “regulated and only available in regions cleared for use,” which for now means the United States — the only country in which Apple has received appropriate regulatory clearance. Apple Store employees are also being told to advise customers that the ECG feature is “not intended to be a diagnostic device or to replace traditional methods of diagnosis,” and “should not be used to monitor or track disease state or change medication without first talking to a doctor.” MacRumors also obtained a separate Apple training document that indicates that watchOS 5.1.2 will also enable irregular heart rhythm notifications on all Apple Watch models back to the Series 1, although of course the ECG app will only be available on the current Apple Watch Series 4, since it’s the only one equipped with the necessary electrical heart sensor.

The Realme U1 will be launched in India today at 12:30 pm at an event in New Delhi. MediaTek’s new chip, the Helio P70 was launched recently, and the first Realme phone to feature the processor will be the Realme U1.

Not much is known about the device yet, except for a few details that were listed on Amazon.

Realme U1. Image: Amazon

In terms of display, the device has been confirmed to come with a “dewdrop notch.” The notch houses the front camera, which the company seems to be quite confident about. It is calling the Realme U1 as “India’s Selfie Pro.”

Realme claims that the device will sport the “most powerful selfie camera ever.”

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While the details about the megapixels are unknown, the Amazon listing reveals that the device will feature the following: High-resolution depth-engine, faster multi-frame noise reduction shots, anti-blooming engine and accurate AI-detection.

Realme also claims that the device is going to be the “world’s first” Helio P70 smartphone which will be a part of a new U series.

WordPress 5.0 will ship with a code block in the new editor but it doesn’t include syntax highlighting. The code is currently wrapped in pre tags. During the earlier days of Gutenberg’s development, the HTML block had syntax highlighting but the team was not satisfied with its implementation and decided to pull it until they could provide more consistent behavior across blocks.

For now, users will have to depend on a plugin to get syntax highlighting. SyntaxHighlighter Evolved is one of the first plugins of its kind to add Gutenberg support via its own block.

The plugin currently adds syntax highlighting to source code on the frontend only. Nevertheless, it’s a great use case for Gutenberg, as the plugin previously required you to remember how to structure the shortcode in a particular way in order to use it.

Ian Dunn contributed the Gutenberg support for SyntaxHighlighter Evolved. In the PR for this feature, Dunn said he wanted to give existing users a way to continue using the plugin after WordPress 5.0 is released:

The syntax highlighting only works on the front end, due to the nature of SyntaxHighlighter. Details are documented in the edit() function’s docblock.

Because of that, this isn’t the ideal syntax highlighting block[1], but this provides a way for existing users to continue using the plugin without having to migrate old posts to a different plugin.

Another limitation is that this PR only supports the language attribute of the shortcode, because I ran out of time/energy. This lays the groundwork, though, so the rest of them can easily be added in a future iteration.

SyntaxHighlighter Evolved is active on more than 40,000 installations and is also used on WordPress.com, so this update to the plugin should help those who rely on it to be able to use the new Gutenberg editor without having to switch back to the old editor when they need to add code to their content.

There is still some debate about the best way to provide syntax highlighting in Gutenberg. Another implementation called Code Syntax Block by Marcus Kazmierczak, extends Gutenberg’s existing code block to offer syntax highlighting, instead of creating a new block for it. It also uses PrismJS syntax highlighter.

Shiny Code is another approach that adds a new block for code and provides a preview inside the Gutenberg editor.

In the official plugin directory, the Enlighter plugin, which has 10,000 active installs, offers experimental support for Gutenberg that is being actively developed on GitHub. Kebo Code, a relatively new plugin with fewer than 10 installs, was created to offer syntax highlighting for Gutenberg and currently supports 121 languages and two themes. Users will have to switch to the frontend to see the code rendered with the theme selected.

SyntaxHighlighter Evolved does not yet provide a way for highlighting existing code blocks or transforming a core code block to use the plugin’s syntax highlighting. Converting all existing code blocks might take some time for those who have been using it extensively. Alex Mills, the plugin’s author, said he is considering all of these issues and welcomes patches on the GitHub repository for the plugin. Plugin authors may change their approaches over time, depending on where Gutenberg goes in the future, so users will want to evaluate available plugins periodically to see which ones suit their needs.

V-Moda has just announced a new set of accessories for its lineup of high-fidelity headphones and IEMs, starting with the new SpeakEasy DAC/AMP Lightning cable ($99.99), which allows owners of all V-MODA over-ear and on-ear headphones to swap out their analog 3.5mm cable for a direct Lighting connection for modern iOS devices with a high-performance DAC and amplifier that promises to deliver high-resolution sound well beyond most wireless headphones or even Apple’s own 3.5mm to Lightning adapter. The 24-bit DAC is Apple MFi-certified and features a signal-to-noise ratio of 114dB, along with a headphone amp that can deliver 31 mW of output power, while not deplete power consumption and more than a standard 3.5mm analog cable.

V-Moda today also unveiled V-Man ($99.99), a modern and unique stand to hang headphones or elevate other objects. Crafted to be a conversation starter as much as a utilitarian stand, V-Man is made from 100 percent stainless steel to provide a minimal and sleek Milano design inspired by the Vorticism movement and Brutalist and De Stijl design techniques. Rounding out the lineup of new accessories, V-Moda is also now offering a luxury travel case for its Remix Bluetooth Speaker, crafted in black vegan leather, starting at $34.95. All of V-Moda’s new products can be purchased directly at V-Moda.com, Amazon, or any authorized retailers.

Indo-Asian News Service Nov 28, 2018 15:37 PM IST

Three smartphone players — Xiaomi, Samsung and Realme — captured 57 percent of the Indian festive sales volumes as smartphone sales in the Diwali season (9 October – 8 November) grew 26 percent year-on-year (YoY) compared to the same period last year, a new report said on 28 November.

According to market research firm Counterpoint Research’s “Market Pulse”, this was driven by e-commerce platform Amazon India and Flipkart’s series of online sales and OEM promotions (such as Mi.com) that offered deep discounts and no-cost EMI on debit and credit cards.

Representational image.

“Flipkart stood out due to the most number of exclusives while Amazon benefited from the launch of OnePlus 6T,” Karn Chauhan, Research Analyst, Counterpoint Research, said in a statement.

While Xiaomi dominated the season with record performance, thus, widening gap with rivals, smartphone player Realme witnessed a record performance for any new brand ever in India, becoming the second largest brand across the e-commerce channels.

“Top three smartphone brands, Xiaomi, Samsung and Realme captured 57 per cent of the overall Diwali festive season smartphone sales. Xiaomi widened the gap with Samsung which still did relatively well in offline channels, capturing 30 per cent share,” said Tarun Pathak, Associate Director, Counterpoint Research.

“Newly-launched player Realme had a record festive performance for any new brand ever in India. Realme immediately captured 9 per cent share jumping to the third spot in overall sales volume performance. Huawei had a strong performance in online segment while Vivo performed exceedingly well in offline channels,” Pathak said.

“Emerging brands such as OnePlus, Pocophone, Asus and HMD Nokia also registered strong uptake during the festive season due to the new launches ahead of the festive sale period. Meanwhile, Apple’s new iPhones had a lukewarm response for its new and older iPhone models,” said Hanish Bhatia, Senior Analyst, Counterpoint Research.

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tech2 News Staff Nov 28, 2018 16:10 PM IST

A new device with the model name SM-M105F has surfaced online on Geekbench and it is most likely Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy M series device, the Galaxy M10.

Samsung is apparently working on a couple of smartphones in the M series, which are expected to be priced higher than the company’s Galaxy On series. A report from September did say that the Galaxy On-series could be renamed as Galaxy M, however. The other device in the range is the Galaxy M2.

Specifications revealed are very basic. According to the listing, the device features an Exynos 7885 SoC coupled with 3 GB of RAM. The device is running Android 8.1 Oreo.

Samsung Galaxy M10 listed on Geekbench. Image: Geekbench

It also reveals that the new smartphone in the Galaxy M series gets a single-core score of 724 points and a multi-core score of 3,637 points.

The Samsung Exynos 7885 chipset features an octa-core CPU which consists of a two Cortex-A73 CPU cores clocked at 2.2 GHz and 6 Cortex-A53 CPU cores clocked at 1.6 GHz, and a Mali G71 GPU.

In terms of optics, the chipset provides an option for dual 16 MP + 16 MP cameras which can be featured on either the front or back. Coming to connectivity, the processor offers support for LTE, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.

Jetpack 6.8 was released today, introducing the plugin’s first set of blocks for Gutenberg. The necessary infrastructure was added in version 6.6 and all existing features that touch the editor are in the process of being ported over to blocks. This release includes blocks for payment buttons, forms, maps, and markdown.

The Contact Form module is one of the plugin’s most popular features and one that users often enable on new websites. This block removes a major barrier to implementing a form on WordPress sites – new users will have no need to try to understand the concept of shortcodes in order to collect feedback on their sites. Creating a new form essentially works like adding blocks inside of blocks:

The Simple Payments button block is slightly different in that it already has the form fields set up so the user can fill them out for whatever they are selling. This block is available for users on the Jetpack Premium or Professional plan.

The map block makes it easy for users to embed an interactive map within the content of posts or pages. After signing up for a free Mapbox Access Token, users can select a location directly inside the new editor and preview it live with different map theme options and a color-picker for the marker.

Some of those who have tested Gutenberg may not be a fan of its current writing interface, but after you see some of these blocks in action for things like maps and payment buttons, it’s clear that this is a superior interface for these content types. Modernizing the interface for content that previously relied on shortcodes is where Gutenberg truly excels right now.

Development on the Gutenberg plugin has been so active that it makes sense that the Jetpack team waited until WordPress 5.0 RC to release any blocks. Jetpack users can take advantage of them now if they have Gutenberg installed, or wait until 5.0 is officially released. The Jetpack team is also working on a number of other blocks for existing features. You can follow the progress on upcoming blocks at Jetpack’s GitHub repository and log issues with blocks that have already been released.

Jetpack 6.8 also restores the Publicize module to the pre-publish sidebar, so users can continue automatically sharing posts after WordPress 5.0 is released. This version ensures compatibility with Jetpack’s widgets for those using the Twenty Nineteen theme. Check out the release post to see more blocks in action and the changelog for a full list of all the enhancements and bug fixes.

The gender gap in math and science isn’t going away. Women remain less likely to enroll in math-heavy fields of study and pursue math-heavy careers. This pattern persists despite major studies finding no meaningful differences in mathematics performance among girls and boys.

Among U.S. students who score the same on math achievement tests, girls are less confident in their math ability than boys are. That confidence predicts who goes on to major in math-heavy fields like engineering and computer science. The gender gap varies across STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and math. Women remain underrepresented in high-earning and high-demand fields that require the most math skills, such as engineering and physics. My team’s recent study finds women are 12 percent less likely to earn math-heavy STEM degrees than men.

My colleagues and I have studied gender gaps in STEM for several years, examining U.S. data on teenagers as they move from high school to and through college. Across our studies, we find a consistent pattern: Girls with strong mathematics ability in high school do not necessarily leave the sciences entirely, but they major in math-heavy fields at significantly lower rates than their otherwise identical male peers.

Here’s the good news: These patterns can change. In one study, we found that 12th-grade girls with the highest levels of confidence in their mathematics ability with challenging material are more three times more likely to major in math-heavy STEM fields than girls with the lowest levels of confidence.

Ability beliefs, girls and STEM

Our findings build not only on our own prior work, but also on decades of research finding girls underrate their abilities on tasks and careers that are culturally considered male.

Contemporary data on U.S. students who were 10th graders in 2002 and were followed through 2012 show that girls do better in school than boys do and are more likely to graduate from college. Girls are increasingly prepared for college-level math, thanks to the fact that they take more STEM courses in high school, even in computer science.

In one of our case studies on computer science undergraduates at two research universities, we found that women were more likely to take further computer science courses if they perceived that they had high skills and felt challenged. These findings complement those of our national study, which showed that women with positive math ability beliefs were more likely to choose math-heavy STEM majors.

Girls are excelling at math. Still, boys think they can do better. Among those at the 90th percentile of mathematics ability in 12th grade, boys rate themselves higher than do their female peers.

Progress failures and promising interventions

The push toward equity has not just been slow; it at times seems to go in reverse. Emerging research suggests gender gaps in STEM seem wider in more economically developed countries and more affluent zip codes. Since the personal computing and technology boom, women have been losing representation among degree earners in computer science.

Among U.S. universities, we found the gender gap in math-heavy fields was widespread, but worse at less selective institutions. And, while the majority of community college students are female, after controlling for student and institutional characteristics, the gender gap in natural and engineering sciences at two-year colleges is slightly worse – 12.4 percent more men – than at four-year institutions – 11.7 percent more men than women.

There are signs of promise as institutions collaborate on gender equity and try other interventions, from introductory course redesign to curricular changes aimed at students’ beliefs in their abilities. While not directly focused on this issue, organizations may engage in confidence-raising to get girls and women into math-heavy fields like coding.

As someone who has studied this issue closely, I believe those of us interested in gender equity should make female confidence a priority. This includes both directly building up girls’ and women’s confidence and educating influential actors in their lives. Socializing messages and support from mentors, teachers, peers and parents may help counter gendered stereotypes and create spaces for girls to build confidence in their ability to succeed in math and science.

YouTube has announced new discounted student plans for its YouTube Premium and YouTube Music services, providing eligible students with a 40 to 50 percent discount over the normal subscription rates. YouTube Music is being offered for students at $4.99/month, half of the normal $9.99/month price tag, while YouTube Premium for students will be $6.99/month, down from the normal $11.99/month pricing. YouTube is also offering a special promotion for students who sign up before January 31, 2019, enabling them to lock in a $5.99/month rate for the life of their subscription. YouTube Music is Google’s latest response to Spotify and Apple Music, both of which have been offering student plans for some time now. YouTube Premium is an expanded service which combines all of the benefits of YouTube Music while also offering users ad-free video, background playback, offline viewing, and access to all YouTube Originals. The new student plans are currently only available in the U.S., to full-time students at an accredited college or university, although YouTube notes that it will be expanding to more countries in the future.

tech2 News Staff Nov 27, 2018 16:44 PM IST

A day after Huawei teased a poster of a smartphone that features the company’s iteration of Samsung’s Infinity-O display technology, an image of a person carrying a smartphone with an in-screen front-camera seems to be doing the rounds of the internet.

Spotted by GizChina in a report, the image features an individual in a subway carriage in China listening to music on a device which is rumoured to be the Nova 3S. The unit being used is definitely a functional prototype since the individual appears to be browsing on the smartphone and also has his earphones plugged in.

The smartphone seen in the image could be the Huawei Nova 3S. Image: GizChina

Nothing about the Nova 3S is known yet, but given that Huawei launched the Nova 2S last December, we should see the successor to the device launch soon. The highlight of the phone is expected to be the Samsung Infinity-O inspired in-display selfie camera, which is essentially a small hole on the top of the phone’s display from where the front-facing camera peeps out.

Huawei will release the world’s first hole-screen mobile phone before the Samsung Galaxy A8s, which will be released in December, but the A8s may also be released in December, so who will start, it will wait and see.
Huawei’s offensive against Samsung has never weakened. pic.twitter.com/MqefEgK7j0

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) November 26, 2018

If not the Nova 3S, there are rumours that it could be the Nova 4. Huawei launched the Nova 3 and Nova 3i this year in July. The Nova 3 was launched at Rs 34,999 for a variant with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB of storage, while the Nova 3i has launched at Rs 20,990 for the base variant with 4 GB RAM and 128 GB storage.

The highlight, at the time, for both the Nova 3 and Nova 3i was that they featured dual-front and dual-rear cameras, despite the difference in price.

The highlight for the new phone will probably be the Infinity-O-like display and also possibly an in-display fingerprint scanner which we’ve already seen Huawei debut with the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. Huawei hasn’t yet branded it, so we don’t know what it will be called.

The Associated Press Nov 27, 2018 16:58 PM IST

Apple is launching a new program designed to address the technology industry’s scarcity of women in executive and computer programming jobs.

Under the initiative announced Monday, female entrepreneurs and programmers will attend two-week tutorial sessions at the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters.

The camps will be held every three months beginning in January. For each round, Apple will accept up to 20 app makers founded or led by a woman. The app maker must have at least one female programmer in its ranks to qualify. Apple will cover travel expenses for up to three workers from each accepted company.

Customers walk past an Apple logo inside of an Apple store at Grand Central Station in New York, US. Image: Reuters

Like other major tech companies, Apple has been trying to lessen its dependence on men in high-paying programming jobs. Women filled just 23 percent of Apple’s technology jobs in 2017, according to the company’s latest breakdown. That’s only a slight improvement from 20 percent in 2014, despite the company’s pledge to diversify its workforce.

The idea behind the new camp is to keep women interested and immersed in the field, said Esther Hare, Apple’s senior director of world developer marketing.

Apple’s training camp is “a great step forward,” said Lorrain Hariton, CEO of Catalyst, a group that fights for equal rights for women workers. “There a lot of talented women in technology. Hopefully, this helps set a tone for the entire industry.”

But it’s not clear how much of a dent Apple’s new program will make. Google also offers training for girls and women pursuing careers in technology, but its program hasn’t done much to diversify the workforce so far. Women were hired for nearly 25 percent of Google’s technology jobs in 2017, up from nearly 21 percent in 2014, according to the company.

Apple and other technology companies maintain that one of the main reasons so many men are on their payrolls is that women traditionally haven’t specialized in the mathematical and science curriculum needed to program.

But industry critics have accused the technology companies of discriminating against women through a male-dominated hierarchy that has ruled the industry for decades.

Apple isn’t saying how much it is spending on the initiative, though, beyond travel expenses, the company will be relying on its current employees to lead the sessions.

Apple has launched a limited time promotion for its GiveBack trade-in program, offering customers upgrading to a current iPhone up to $100 of additional trade-in value for their old iPhones. For example, customers trading in an iPhone 6 Plus will receive $200 in credit, an increase of $100 over the usual trade-in value, while the iPhone 8 can be traded in at $300, only $25 more than the usual $275 credit. The bonus appears to be limited to purchasing only the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, or iPhone XR, and is not available for customers who may only be looking to upgrade to an iPhone 7 or iPhone 8 series model. [via MacRumors]

Press Trust of India Nov 27, 2018 17:17 PM IST

Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can synthesise fake human fingerprints and potentially fool biometric authentication systems.

Fingerprint authentication systems are a widely trusted, ubiquitous form of biometric authentication, deployed on billions of smartphones and other devices worldwide.

However, researchers from New York University (NYU) in the US revealed a surprising level of vulnerability in these systems.

Using a neural network, they evolved a fake fingerprint that could fool biometric authentication for one in five people.

Representational image.

Much the way that a master key can unlock every door in a building, these “DeepMasterPrints” use artificial intelligence to match a large number of prints stored in fingerprint databases and could thus theoretically unlock a large number of devices.

The work builds on earlier research led by Nasir Memon, a professor at NYU. Memon, who coined the term “MasterPrint,” described how fingerprint-based systems use partial fingerprints, rather than full ones, to confirm identity.

Devices typically allow users to enrol several different finger images, and a match for any saved partial print is enough to confirm identity.

Partial fingerprints are less likely to be unique than full prints, and Memon’s work demonstrated that enough similarities exist between partial prints to create MasterPrints capable of matching many stored partials in a database.

Researchers took this concept further, training a machine-learning algorithm to generate synthetic fingerprints as MasterPrints.

“Fingerprint-based authentication is still a strong way to protect a device or a system, but at this point, most systems don’t verify whether a fingerprint or other biometric is coming from a real person or a replica,” said doctoral student Philip Bontrager.

“These experiments demonstrate the need for multi-factor authentication and should be a wake-up call for device manufacturers about the potential for artificial fingerprint attacks,” he said.

President Donald Trump has suggested to the Wall Street Journal that tariffs may be coming on all Chinese imports if trade negotiations between the two countries don’t soon improve in the U.S.’ favor. A new round of comprehensive tariffs like this would also likely include most of Apple’s products, which have previously managed to avoid being caught up in the fray between the trade giants. Trump mentioned this possibility in the interview, although some of his aides have suggested that mobile phones and laptops could still be exempted from tariff increases, fearing a possible consumer backlash. However, in referring to these product categories, Trump acknowledged the possibility, stating that “I can make it 10% and people could stand that very easily.” Apple naturally declined to comment on the President’s remarks, although the company has previously gone on the record with U.S. trade authorities as saying that tariffs would put the company at a disadvantage against foreign competitors and of course result in higher consumer prices in the U.S.

While President Trump is expected to meet with President Xi Jinping of China at a summit at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires later this week, officials in the Trump administration have suggested that the two are unlikely to come to a deal, indicating that the president’s comments may be trying to prepare the market for a negative outcome. China is attempting to convince the U.S. to suspend its planned 2019 increase on tariffs as well as lifting the existing heavy taxes on steel and aluminum produced in China. However, the U.S. is unlikely to accede to these terms, with Trump adding that the only way the two countries could reach a deal would be for China to ” open up their country to competition from the United States” and curb its theft of U.S. intellectual property.

Reuters Nov 27, 2018 14:28 PM IST

Alphabet Inc’s Google in May introduced a slick feature for Gmail that automatically completes sentences for users as they type. Tap out “I love” and Gmail might propose “you” or “it.”

But users are out of luck if the object of their affection is “him” or “her.”

Google’s technology will not suggest gender-based pronouns because the risk is too high that its “Smart Compose” technology might predict someone’s sex or gender identity incorrectly and offend users, product leaders revealed to Reuters in interviews.

Gmail product manager Paul Lambert said a company research scientist discovered the problem in January when he typed “I am meeting an investor next week,” and Smart Compose suggested a possible follow-up question: “Do you want to meet him?” instead of “her.”

The Google name is displayed outside the company’s office in London, Britain. Image: Reuters

Consumers have become accustomed to embarrassing gaffes from autocorrect on smartphones. But Google refused to take chances at a time when gender issues are reshaping politics and society, and critics are scrutinizing potential biases in artificial intelligence like never before.

“Not all ‘screw ups’ are equal,” Lambert said. Gender is a “a big, big thing” to get wrong.

Getting Smart Compose right could be good for business. Demonstrating that Google understands the nuances of AI better than competitors is part of the company’s strategy to build affinity for its brand and attract customers to its AI-powered cloud computing tools, advertising services and hardware.

Gmail has 1.5 billion users, and Lambert said Smart Compose assists on 11 percent of messages worldwide sent from Gmail.com, where the feature first launched.

Smart Compose is an example of what AI developers call natural language generation (NLG), in which computers learn to write sentences by studying patterns and relationships between words in literature, emails and web pages.

A system shown billions of human sentences becomes adept at completing common phrases but is limited by generalities. Men have long dominated fields such as finance and science, for example, so the technology would conclude from the data that an investor or engineer is “he” or “him.” The issue trips up nearly every major tech company.

Lambert said the Smart Compose team of about 15 engineers and designers tried several workarounds, but none proved bias-free or worthwhile. They decided the best solution was the strictest one: Limit coverage. The gendered pronoun ban affects fewer than 1 percent of cases where Smart Compose would propose something, Lambert said.

“The only reliable technique we have is to be conservative,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, who oversaw engineering of Gmail and other services until a recent promotion.

New Policy

Google’s decision to play it safe on gender follows some high-profile embarrassments for the company’s predictive technologies.

The company apologized in 2015 when the image recognition feature of its photo service labeled a black couple as gorillas. In 2016, Google altered its search engine’s autocomplete function after it suggested the anti-Semitic query “are jews evil” when users sought information about Jews.

Google has banned expletives and racial slurs from its predictive technologies, as well as mentions of its business rivals or tragic events.

A “Women’s Walkout” at Google in protest over payout to Android chief Andy Rubin. Image: Reuters

The company’s new policy banning gendered pronouns also affected the list of possible responses in Google’s Smart Reply. That service allow users to respond instantly to text messages and emails with short phrases such as “sounds good.”

Google uses tests developed by its AI ethics team to uncover new biases. A spam and abuse team pokes at systems, trying to find “juicy” gaffes by thinking as hackers or journalists might, Lambert said.

Workers outside the United States look for local cultural issues. Smart Compose will soon work in four other languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French.

“You need a lot of human oversight,” said engineering leader Raghavan, because “in each language, the net of inappropriateness has to cover something different.”

Widespread Challenge

Google is not the only tech company wrestling with the gender-based pronoun problem.

Agolo, a New York startup that has received investment from Thomson Reuters, uses AI to summarize business documents.

Its technology cannot reliably determine in some documents which pronoun goes with which name. So the summary pulls several sentences to give users more context, said Mohamed AlTantawy, Agolo’s chief technology officer.

He said longer copy is better than missing details. “The smallest mistakes will make people lose confidence,” AlTantawy said. “People want 100 percent correct.”

Yet, imperfections remain. Predictive keyboard tools developed by Google and Apple propose the gendered “policeman” to complete “police” and “salesman” for “sales.”

Type the neutral Turkish phrase “one is a soldier” into Google Translate and it spits out “he’s a soldier” in English. So do translation tools from Alibaba and Microsoft. Amazon.com opts for “she” for the same phrase on its translation service for cloud computing customers.

AI experts have called on the companies to display a disclaimer and multiple possible translations.

Microsoft’s LinkedIn said it avoids gendered pronouns in its year-old predictive messaging tool, Smart Replies, to ward off potential blunders.

Alibaba and Amazon did not respond to requests to comment.

Warnings and limitations like those in Smart Compose remain the most-used countermeasures in complex systems, said John Hegele, integration engineer at Durham, North Carolina-based Automated Insights Inc, which generates news articles from statistics.

“The end goal is a fully machine-generated system where it magically knows what to write,” Hegele said. “There’s been a ton of advances made but we’re not there yet.”

WordPress 5.0 RC 1 was released over the weekend after a string of five betas that began in late October. According to the Gutenberg stats page, more than 1.1 million sites have the Gutenberg plugin installed and users have written more than 980,000 posts using the new editor. These numbers are conservative estimates, as the numbers only include WordPress.com sites and sites running Jetpack.

Most of the changes included in the RC were outlined in the Gutenberg 4.5 release post last week. An update published today shows 12 PRs waiting for review in the 4.6 milestone, 14 open issues in the 5.0.0 milestone, and more than 150 issues open in 5.0.1 and subsequent releases. Dev notes for 5.0 have been published and tagged on the make.wordpress.org/core blog.

WordPress 5.0’s official release date was set for November 27 but after further evaluation the date has been pushed back. Last week WordPress core core committers, contributors, and former release leads made strong, last-minute appeals to hold off RC and defer the release to January. Development is moving forward desipite the pushback. A new release date has not yet been announced. The current plan is to monitor feedback on the RC and the team will make a decision from there.

Mullenweg Responds to Critics on Twitter, Reiterates Vision for Gutenberg

Over the weekend, Matt Mullenweg responded to critics on Twitter who voiced concerns about his leadership and communication throughout WordPress 5.0’s development. One particular post titled “Let’s Take A Very Serious Look At Gutenberg,” written by WordPress developer Cameron Jones, sparked conversation. In response to Cliff Seal, who urged Mullenweg to “re-cast the vision of WordPress in a way that accounts for the apparent urgency of this effort,” Mullenweg responded:

Many people who try to start publishing with WordPress fail; those who don’t struggle with shortcodes, embeds, widgets; those who can toggle to code view to do basic tasks in the editor, and for clients set up elaborate meta-field and CPT based schemes to avoid catastrophe.

Gutenberg aims to solve these problems, improve the WP experience for all its users, and open up independent, open source, beautiful publishing on the web to a class of users that couldn’t publish with WordPress before.

It may seem rushed to people unused to this pace of development and improvement in the WordPress world. However this has been a pace sustained for almost two years now, and we still look slow compared to some modern software. Speed of iteration is enabled by the new tech stack.

It bothers me at a deep, moral level to hold back a user experience that will significantly upgrade the publishing ability and success of tens or hundreds of millions of users. It hasn’t been ready (for core) yet, so it’s not released. I hope it will be soon!

This may all look very quaint in retrospect, when we look back three or five years from now. It’s a tough transition but the foundation Gutenberg enables will be worth it.

Matt Medeiros, another vocal critic of Mullenweg’s leadership on WordPress 5.0, recorded a video, expounding on his concerns about transparency and the rushed pace. He summarized the frustrations that inspired him to make the video.

“While I agree WordPress needs innovation to reach new users that desperately require freedom over their content, especially within the context of today’s social networks, I don’t agree and am also discouraged by Matt not sharing the product vision with the community,” Medeiros said. “It’s polarizing to build software under the guise of openness with a mission to democratize publishing, but not give the same people volunteering to ‘Five for the Future’ a voice for the future.

“Lack of communication, not Gutenberg or the team developing it, has lead to the current divide and we’re left asking — why? WordPress has always had a branding problem and this continues to muddy the lines between open source project and WordPress the ‘product.’”

The 5.0 release is heading into the home stretch but Gutenberg has several phases ahead with many more years of development. Mullenweg’s responses on Twitter over the weekend indicate he is interested in keeping the lines of communication open throughout the process. He said he plans to dedicate more time to responding directly to feedback.

“One thing will try: I’m going to open up some listening office hours in the next week so people can talk directly,” Mullenweg said. “I want everyone to be and feel heard, as they have been since the beginning of this process in 2016.”

Apple has increased its carrier subsidies in Japan to effectively drop the price of the iPhone XR, 9to5Mac reports. Japanese carrier NTT Docomo is now offering the iPhone XR on a 24-month contract for approximately $100 less than the original price — a move that is widely believed to have been authorized by Apple due to lower than anticipated demand for the new model in that country. While Apple’s iPhone still dominates the smartphone market in general, the iPhone XR does not seem to have been the runaway hit that Apple expected — Japanese customers have instead been flocking toward last year’s iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus models, resulting in lower sales of both the iPhone XR and iPhone XS. While NTT Docomo is the only carrier to be offering the reduced price thus far, it is expected that other Japanese carriers will soon follow suit.

Indo-Asian News Service Nov 26, 2018 15:06 PM IST

Infinix, the online smartphone brand of China-based Transsion Holdings, on Monday launched the NOTE 5 Stylus” as its first smartphone with a stylus pen for Rs 15,999 in India.

Infinix Note 5

The stylus “XPen” would enable the hand-writing recognition feature on the phone and would allow users to doodle, write and paint.

Designed with 4,096 sense of pressure, the stylus would be able to produce fine and detailed lines as well, the company said in a statement.

“Apart from the Stylus, it stands out with features such as Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled cameras, fully Metallic unibody, fast charging and Android One experience,” said Anish Kapoor, CEO, Infinix Mobile India.

The dual-SIM smartphone comes with a 5.93-inch FHD+ FullView Display, 6 GB RAM and 64 GB internal storage.

The smartphone features a 16MP AI rear camera with dual LED flash and 16MP AI front camera including features like Bokeh effect and timelapse amongst the others.

Powered by MediaTek P23 Octa Core 64 bit processor and a 4000mAh battery, the smartphone runs on Android Oreo 8.1 (Android One) with features like Google Lens, Assistant, AI Power Management and 18W Fast Charge that could charge the phone in one hour, the company claimed.

The “NOTE 5 Stylus” smartphone will be available from December 4 in two colours — bordeaux red and charcoal blue exclusively on Flipkart.

Apple has announced a new series of coding education sessions coming to all Apple Stores for the first half of December. As part of Apple’s Everyone Can Code program, customers will be able to register for any one of thousands of free “Hour of Code” sessions being held at all Apple Stores worldwide from Dec. 1 to Dec. 14. The sessions form part of Apple’s Today at Apple events, providing opportunities for anybody to learn coding regardless of skill level. Specific Kids Hour sessions will also be held to help aspiring young coders (ages 6–12) get started on coding with robots, while older kids can attend sessions using Swift Playgrounds and iPad to learn more advanced coding concepts.

In recognition of Computer Science Education week, Apple has also created a new Hour of Code Facilitator Guide to help educators host Swift Playgrounds sessions in their own classrooms, as well as a Swift Coding Club kit that can be used to kick off extracurricular coding programs. The new kits will give students aged eight and up the ability to collaborate, prototype apps and explore how coding can make a difference in their communities using fun activities from Swift Playgrounds and App Development with Swift.

Indo-Asian News Service Nov 26, 2018 17:02 PM IST

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said there’s “70 percent chance that he will go to Mars”, despite a “good chance” of him not surviving either on his way or after landing, the media reported.

“We’ve recently made a number of breakthroughs that I… am just really fired up about,” Musk was quoted as saying in an interview with Axios on HBO on Sunday, the CNET reported.

“I’m talking about moving there,” said a thrilled Musk, as he spoke about his ambition.

Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and Founder of the Boring Company. Reuters

He, however, agreed that the risks were high.

“Your probability of dying on Mars is much higher than on Earth,” Musk said, adding “There’s a good chance of death.”

Even if you make it to Mars, you could still end up dying in its harsh conditions, but Musk remains certain he wants to go.

“There’s lots of people who climb mountains. People die on Mount Everest all the time,” Musk said. “They still like doing it for the challenge.”

The SpaceX founder cautioned though that for those who want to go to the Red Planet they need to start saving because a voyage to Mars will cost “around a couple of hundred thousand dollars”.

Musk’s spaceship designed for interplanetary travel ‘Starship’ (formerly known as the BFR) is a fully reusable vehicle designed to take humans and supplies to Mars and also to dramatically cut travel time within Earth.

This two-stage vehicle — composed of a Booster and a Ship — is designed to eventually replace the company’s Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and the Dragon spacecraft.

It is designed to service all Earth orbit needs as well as the Moon and Mars.

Starship is also set to fly a private passenger — Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa — to Moon and is scheduled to start in 2023.

Maezawa, 42, is the founder and CEO of Zozo, the largest online fashion retailer in Japan.

Avast adds brand-new features to the antivirus range for 2019

Avast has launched its 2019 antivirus software range with some great new features added to Avast Free Antivirus, Avast Internet Security and Avast Premier.

Avast are one of the most well-known antivirus providers, offering a solid range of virus and malware-fighting tools to keep your PC protected. The launch of its 2019 antivirus range includes three new and improved features to enhance your PC protection.

The new Sensitive Data Shield is one of two powerful new features. Essentially, it stops spyware from snooping through your tax files, health records, and other documents to enhance your privacy protection.

Avast’s Anti-Phishing feature is also improved for the 2019 range. It now automatically protects you against scams and fake sites, with no browser extensions needed.

Do Not Disturb Mode

The Do Not Disturb Mode is a new feature that gives you complete control of notifications and message pop ups. Film fans and gamers will be sharing in this delight and will no longer wince every time a message pops up to interrupt their enjoyment and escapism.

Essentially Do Not Disturb Mode will silence all notifications while you are running an app in full screen mode. That’s right, Windows notifications, popups from other apps and busy social media profiles will no longer be a distraction. Even Avast’s own antivirus notifications will be blocked.

This is an upgrade to the Game Mode feature, which was limited to only blocking popups during full screen games. Do Not Disturb Mode is promised to work with almost any app running on full screen.

The first, and obvious, benefit will be that it silences the notifications – preventing those awkward situations we mentioned before. Another perk is that it works automatically and is on by default. Just open nearly any application in full screen mode and Avast say that no other application will be able to distract you.

Gamers will also be delighted to hear that this feature has been enhanced with them in mind. Not only does the Do Not Disturb Mode prevent any notifications interrupting their gaming session on the full screen, it also goes further. By prioritising system resources for the user’s gaming it will create smoother gameplay and reduced lag, no matter how many popups are occurring behind the scenes.

How do I get these awesome new features?

All of the new and improved features are included in Avast Internet Security and Avast Premier, while Avast Free antivirus includes the improved Anti-Phishing and new Do Not Disturb Mode features.

If you’re already using one of Avast’s antivirus products, make sure you’re running the latest version. Alternatively, you can download them right here on FileHippo:

WIN AVAST PREMIER FOR A YEAR

To celebrate the launch of Avast’s new do not disturb mode, we’re giving away a year of Avast Premier for five lucky winners.  

To enter, simply head over to the FileHippo Facebook page and leave a comment on the pinned post with the correct answer to the competition question. Good luck!

Competition terms and conditions.
1: The competition is run by FileHippo and is not associated or affiliated with Facebook in any way. 2: To enter: correctly state the answer A, B or C in the comments on the original Facebook post, found here. Answers commented anywhere other than on the original post will not be counted. Any entries from fake or suspicious accounts will not be entered into the draw. 3: Only one entry will be recorded per user, if more than one comment/entry is received, it will not be counted. 4: The competition closes at 22:00 BST on October 21st, 2018. Entries received after this time will not be counted. 5: Five winners will be selected at random from the comments of the original Facebook post, provided they have given the correct answer. Each winner will receive a license key that can be redeemed for one copy of Avast Premier, valid for one year from the activation date. Prizes cannot be exchanged or transferred. 6: The winners will be announced via a Facebook post and contacted via direct message within 10 days after the competition closes. You must respond in order to claim your prize. If we have not heard from you within 30 days of this announcement, you forfeit your right to claim your prize.