Tech

Although the US election is over, the problem of fake news isn’t. Apple CEO Tim Cook said it’s time to do something about it.

“All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news,” Cook said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph on Friday. Cook also called for governments to lead information campaigns to crack down on fake news in an interview with a British national newspaper. The scourge of falsehoods in mainstream political discourse came to the fore during recent campaigns, during which supporters of each side were accused of promoting misinformation for political gain.

An idea that started in his parents basement, nineteen year old Kai Kloepfer from Boulder, Colorado created a gun that works like a smartphone.

If the gun is picked up by an authorized user, a sensor recognizes the fingerprint and it will fire. “I think this could be huge, I think this could be the future of firearms,” Kloepfer said.

This fingerprint sensor utilizes technologies from biometric security measures, which might be the solution to solving the United States’ gun violence problem (and not only in US).

Alan Turing was a mathematician who lived in the twentieth century and which is considered the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. In 1950 he wrote an article in Mind (1) in which he formulated the basics of his test, a criterion for deciding whether a machine is able to think or not. A computer can mimic human thought and deceive a person?

Snap, the owner of messaging app Snapchat, filed public documents for a share offering Thursday, seeking to raise up to $3 billion in a keenly anticipated Wall Street debut.

The California-based tech firm, which allows users to send images that vanish within seconds, was expected to be one of the biggest tech company IPOs in recent years with a valuation likely to top $20 billion.
The company revealed in the documents that it made sales of $404m last year, but a loss of $515m.
In outlining its business plan, Snap said it generates revenue primarily through advertising and emphasized its willingness to take risks to drive user engagement at numerous points throughout the filing.

The OTC Swiss Blockchain Consortium announced a new Ethereum-based “encryption module” for their blockchain-based transaction platform for securities that are traded over-the-counter (OTC), as reported in the press release.

Launched in September, the consortium includes Swisscom (Switzerland’s largest Telco Company), SIX (the Swiss Market Exchange operator), and Zürcher Kantonalbank (Switzerland’s 3rd largest bank), but also do the young and innovative companies ti&m, Inventx and Incore Bank. The group is receiving support from Switzerland’s Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI), a research organization supported by the federal government.

Yahoo says its closing its Verizon deal in the second quarter instead of in the first quarter, which is when it initially said the deal would close. The $4.8 billion deal was originally slated to close in the first quarter, but that was before Yahoo reported two massive data breaches that analysts say may scrap the entire deal.

Although Yahoo continues to work to close the acquisition, there’s still work required to meet closing the deal’s closing conditions, the company said in an earnings statement, without elaborating.

Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, has recently announced a launch of a robot lawyer which will be assigned a task to process letters of complaints. The innovation will axe approximately 3000 specialists currently working in the bank structure, according to a report by TASS agency, citing Sberbank’s Deputy CEO Vadim Kulik.

On the sidelines of the annual Gaidar Forum, Kulik announced robot lawyer was launched in Q4 of 2016, with full robotization to be completed in the first months of 2017. “It means that approximately 3000 specialists who have been processing letters of complaints will be freed from performing this particular task. We have quite ambitious plans. We are planning to launch robot lawyers in a range of fields", he added.

IBM reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street expectations on Thursday, thanks largely to the company’s transition towards higher-margin and faster-growing businesses like the cloud and Big Data analytics. But the iconic New York-based enterprise technology company has now suffered 19 straight quarters of declining year-over-year total revenues, a streak that has kept would-be investors on the sidelines.

While earnings per share rose 4% from a year ago, revenues were down 1%, the company said. IBM’s revenue has decline from the year-ago quarter since April 2012, when sales were nearly flat.