WhatsApp rolling out longer group subjects, descriptions on iOS beta

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WhatsApp rolling out longer group subjects, descriptions on iOS beta

Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp is reportedly rolling out longer group subjects and descriptions on iOS beta. This will make it easier for users to better describe groups and reports WABetaInfo.

Beta users can now choose a longer group description, up to 2048 characters, as the previous limit was 512 characters.

Longer group descriptions will help group admins to save additional information for describing their groups.

Moreover, the characters of the group subject have been increased to 100 to provide admins more freedom when naming their groups.

The ability to choose a longer group subject and description is available for all users after installing the latest WhatsApp beta for iOS update from the TestFlight app, the report said.

Last week, a report mentioned that the messaging platform was rolling out similar changes to the group subjects and descriptions on the Android beta.

Meanwhile, it was reported that the platform was working on a new feature that will allow users to pin messages within chats and groups.

Twitter fixes bug that showed users ‘this tweet is unavailable’: Musk

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Twitter fixes bug that showed users ‘this tweet is unavailable’: Musk

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said on Monday that the micro-blogging platform had fixed the bug that showed users “this tweet is unavailable”.

When a user queried: “Is it just us seeing ‘this tweet is unavailable’ on more and more quote tweets in the feed, but when you click on it, the tweet appears? @TwitterSupport @elonmusk.”

Musk replied: “We think we fixed this bug today. Please lmk if you’re still seeing it.” Several users shared their status related to the bug on Musk’s post.

While one user said, “fixed for me”, another commented, “that’s old, ‘conservative bug’ that disappears tweets the AI doesn’t like. Years back it was a very regular thing to see”.

In December last year, Twitter went down for several users globally including in India, and Musk said that the outage was because of backend changes to make the micro-blogging platform faster.

For some users, timelines did not refresh and many accounts were shown as non-existent.

Also, the platform showed error messages to several users, “Something went wrong, but don’t fret — it’s not your fault. Let’s try again”.

Meta’s new headset to feature better MR tech: Zuckerberg

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Meta’s new headset to feature better MR tech: Zuckerberg

Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the new next-generation consumer headset which will be launched “later this year” will feature better-mixed reality (MR) technology.

“The Meta Reality ecosystem is relatively new, but I think it’s going to grow a lot in the next few years,” Zuckerberg said in the company’s latest earnings release.

“Later this year, we’re going to launch our next-generation consumer headset, which will feature Meta Reality as well, and I expect that this is going to establish this technology as the baseline for all headsets going forward, and eventually of course for augmented reality (AR) glasses as well.”

He also mentioned that there are now more than 200 applications on the company’s virtual reality (VR) devices that have made more than $1 million in revenue.

Last month, Meta improved its Quest’s hand-tracking technology with the new Hand Tracking 2.1 update, which features upgrades in reliability, accuracy, and system pinch quality to improve the consistency and flexibility of hand inputs in users’ VR applications.

Meanwhile, the company introduced a new heart rate tracking feature and Health Connect by Android integration on Meta Quest, so that users can keep track of all their fitness statistics.

YouTube Music contract employees on strike over unfair labour practices

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YouTube Music contract employees on strike over unfair labour practices

Dozens of third-party employees at YouTube Music, hired by Alphabet sub-contractor tech company Cognizant, have gone on strike over alleged unfair labor practices.

According to a report in The Verge, 40 striking workers alleged that both companies’ management has “leveraged unfair labor practices to get in the way of their union drive”.

They alleged that the vast majority of them are ready to vote yes in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election.

“In an act of retaliation, our employer is forcing an end to remote work before the vote, which would dramatically interfere with the fair voting conditions mandated by federal law,” said YouTube Music generalist Sam Regan at a strike in Austin, Texas.

YouTube Music’s content operations team is expected to return to the Austin office early next week. However, Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) said the majority of workers were hired remotely.

“Workers are paid as little as $19 dollars an hour and thus, cannot afford the relocation, travel or childcare costs associated with in-person work,” the AWU said in a statement.

The AWU had filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB. Alphabet recently laid off 12,000 employees or 6 percent of its global workforce.

Google employees also staged protests in the US this week to call attention to labor conditions for sub-contracted workers and to support thousands of their recently laid-off co-workers.

Nearly 50 Google employees also protested outside a Ninth Avenue store in New York shortly after parent company Alphabet announced fourth-quarter profits of $13.6 billion.

YouTube releases ‘Go Live Together’ for creators to co-stream on phone

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YouTube releases ‘Go Live Together’ for creators to co-stream on phone

Google-owned video streaming platform YouTube has released the “Go Live Together” feature for creators to co-livestream and invite a guest on phone.

The company shared the information on Twitter from its TeamYouTube account, saying: “Introducing Go Live Together, a new way to easily start a co-stream & invite a guest, all from your phone! creators need 50+ subs to host co-streams, but anyone can be a guest!.”

The video streaming platform also indicated that it may introduce the feature to YouTube on the desktop version.

“From our early tests, we know many of you are excited to see this feature come to the desktop so you can co-stream right from YouTube on your computer this is something we’re still exploring,” tweeted TeamYouTube.

“Go Live Together” appears beneath “Go live” in the Create sheet on YouTube for Android and iOS.

Creators can send out a link to any guest. Moreover, creators can use their computers to schedule a live stream with a guest and then go live from their phones. They can also immediately go live from their mobile device.

Also, creators can switch up the guests they have on their live stream, but they can only have one person there at once. After inviting a guest, their stream feed will appear above their guest’s.

Twitter expands Blue service to 6 more countries

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Twitter expands Blue service to 6 more countries

Micro-blogging platform Twitter has expanded its Blue service subscription service to six more countries, taking the total to 12 where users can subscribe to it.

The Twitter Blue service is now available in Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, reports TechCrunch.

Additionally, the company is introducing a new Spaces tab featuring podcasts and curated stations for live and recorded spaces.

The Spaces page is already available to users without a Twitter Blue subscription, but it primarily displays the live audio sessions that are currently happening.

The platform is also bringing back themed stations that list Spaces station by topics, which the company had started testing in August last year before Elon Musk took over.

Moreover, the company is making podcasts available to only Blue subscribers and “some people on Twitter for iOS and Twitter for Android apps”, the report said.

In December last year, Twitter relaunched its Blue subscription service with verification, costing $8 for Android users and $11 for iPhone owners per month.

Apple crosses 2 billion active devices

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Apple crosses 2 billion active devices

Financial outcomes of its fiscal 2023 quarter which is closed on December 31, 2022, have been released by Apple, a Big firm that showed its two billion active devices in that.

Apple also got $117.2 billion in revenue on the quarterly report, a 5 percent decrease year on year, with quarterly earnings per weak with a share of $1.88.

“As we all continue to navigate a challenging environment, we are proud to have our best lineup of products and services ever, and as always, we remain focused on the long term and are leading with our values in everything we do,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in a statement.

“During the December quarter, we achieved a major milestone and are excited to report that we now have more than 2 billion active devices as part of our growing installed base,” Cook added.

Apple’s board of directors has declared a cash dividend of $0.23 per share of the company’s common stock.

Shareholders with records as of the close of business on February 13 will receive the dividend on February 16, the iPhone maker said.

“We set an all-time revenue record of $20.8 billion in our Services business, and in spite of a difficult macroeconomic environment and significant supply constraints, we grew total company revenue on a constant currency basis,” said Luca Maestri, CFO, of Apple.

“We generated $34 billion in operating cash flow and returned over $25 billion to shareholders during the quarter while continuing to invest in our long-term growth plans,” Maestri added.

Google may soon let users use Android phone as USB webcam

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Google may soon let users use Android phone as USB webcam

Tech giant Google is reportedly working on a new feature that will allow users to use their Android phone as a USB webcam.

Esper’s Mishaal Rahman posted on the decentralized social media platform Mastodon, “using an Android phone as a webcam became really popular during the pandemic, but you’ve typically had to install a third-party app to do so.”

“You may not have to do this in the future, though, as Google is adding support for turning Android devices into USB webcams!”

He further mentioned that “Android is adding a new ‘DeviceAsWebcam’ service” that will turn an android device into a webcam.

“Specifically, this refers to Android devices with kernel support for the standard UVC (USB video class) gadget mode,” he added.

According to Rahman, the Android device’s kernel might need to be compiled with ‘CONFIG_USB_CONFIGFS_F_UVCy’ for the new functionality to work.

Meanwhile, last month, it was reported that the tech giant was working on a new ‘Bluetooth Distance Measurement’ application programming interface (API), which will help users to measure the distance between their smartphones and connected devices.

IBM, NASA join hands to research impact of climate change with AI

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IBM, NASA join hands to research impact of climate change with AI

Tech major IBM and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center have announced a collaboration to use IBM’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology to discover new insights in NASA’s massive trove of Earth and geospatial science data.

The goal of this joint work is to advance the scientific understanding and response to Earth and climate-related issues like natural disasters and warming temperatures, also the collaborative work will apply the new IBM AI foundation model technology to NASA’s Earth-observing satellite data for the first time.

Foundation models are types of AI models trained on a broad set of unlabeled data, can be used for different tasks, and can apply information about one situation to another.

“Applying foundation models to geospatial, event-sequence, time-series, and other non-language factors within Earth science data could make enormously valuable insights and information suddenly available to a much wider group of researchers, businesses, and citizens. Ultimately, it could facilitate a larger number of people working on some of our most pressing climate issues,” Raghu Ganti, principal researcher at IBM, said in a statement.

Over the last five years, these models have rapidly advanced the field of natural language processing (NLP) technology, and IBM is pioneering applications of foundation models beyond language, said the company.

“Building these foundation models cannot be tackled by small teams,” Rahul Ramachandran, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said in a statement.

“You need teams across different organizations to bring their different perspectives, resources, and skill sets,” he added.

Moreover, IBM and NASA plan to develop several new technologies to extract insights from Earth observations.

The first model will be trained on over 3,00,000 earth science publications in order to thematically organize the literature and make it easier to search for and discover new knowledge.

The second model will be trained using the popular Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS2) satellite dataset from the USGS and NASA, with applications ranging from detecting natural hazards to tracking changes in vegetation and wildlife habitats, the company mentioned.

Further, this agreement’s other potential IBM-NASA collaborative projects include developing a foundation model for weather and climate prediction using MERRA-2, an atmospheric observation dataset.

Netflix introduces new features to Premium plan members

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Netflix introduces new features to Premium plan members

Streaming giant Netflix has announced new features that will be available at no additional cost to members, who are already on the Premium plan, choose to upgrade, or are signing up for the first time.

The company introduced two features — Spatial Audio and more download devices.

With Spatial Audio, Netflix members with Premium will be able to enjoy the highest quality sound experience available, whether they are watching at home on TV or a computer, or on the go with a phone or tablet.

The streaming giant said that “spatial audio brings an immersive, cinematic sound experience on any device with no additional equipment required — and now it’s available on more than 700 of our top watched titles, including ‘Stranger Things’, ‘The Watcher’, ‘Wednesday’, and ‘Knives Out: Glass Onion'”.

Moreover, the company mentioned that Netflix members like the option to download series and films to watch offline on more devices, particularly as they travel and switch between devices.

To make this possible, Netflix introduced the “more download devices” option, which will increase the number of download devices from four to six for premium members, so members can watch Netflix on their devices anytime, anywhere.

Meanwhile, the streaming giant shared its rules and exemptions to explain how it plans to maintain account sharing within a household.

The company has updated its FAQ pages for countries where it is already testing extra membership fees for account sharing — Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru.

By charging extra fees for extended usage of the streaming service outside the household, the company hopes to reduce account sharing this year.

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