Blind users of Facebook just got an upgrade in the social network’s ability to explain photos to them — and the same technology helps everyone else, too. In brief, Facebook’s artificial intelligence technology now uses verbs, not just nouns, in the photo captions that computers can read to blind people. “Until recently, these captions described …
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Now playing: Watch this: 5 things we learned about Snapchat from its IPO 1:29 It’s official: Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, is going public. First, the basics of the IPO. The company is said to be valued at $20 billion to $25 billion, and is looking to raise $3 billion in the offering. It will list on the New …
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Now playing: Watch this: Facebook rakes in the money 1:31 Facebook may be fighting a fake news problem, but it’s making real money. For months, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has grappled with big questions about the social network’s role in the media industry. Things like: What’s the company’s responsibility in curbing the spread of misinformation? Is the onus on Facebook to …
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Your aimless channel surfing could lead you right to Facebook video. Facebook is working on an app for television set-top boxes like Apple TV, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Facebook, which has 1.79 billion monthly active users, declined to comment on the timing of the app or where else it might be available. The app could bring Facebook video …
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In an odd twist, Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging app — which won applause last year when it turned on end-to-end encryption by default — is being sued in German court over privacy concerns related to the way it collects and shares data with Facebook. That’s because in August, WhatsApp changed its terms and privacy policy, saying it would coordinate more with …
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More than 1.7 billion people use Facebook every month, which means lots of people scan see lots of imaginary and made-up stories pretending to be legit at any given time. (We’re looking at you, #PizzaGate conspiracy theorists.) It’s been a problem on the world’s largest social network for at least a year, but made headlines during the 2016 US election …
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How big of a deal is having a removable battery in your phone? Well, if you were LG, it’s a huge deal. Nearly all of its flagship phones have had them, bucking the trend of sealed-in batteries. That will no longer be the case when LG unveils its G6 next month. The company will follow everyone else and seal up …
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Browser makers pay lots of attention to speeding up all the parts of loading a website — downloading a page’s programming instructions, running JavaScript code, pushing graphics and words to the screen — to spare us annoying waits. By contrast, refreshing a page you’ve already loaded seems pretty ho-hum. But programmers for Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome browsers have been …
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The last thing I want to see before messaging my buddies is an ad. But that’s exactly what could happen to Facebook Messenger’s 1 billion users. The social network is now testing ads on the Messenger home screen, right below your conversations with your bffs (you’ll have to scroll down to see it). For you, that’s another ad to gloss …
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Every year Google removes a lot of ads that violate its policies, but 2016 was the worst year yet. The search giant, which earns billions as the web’s largest purveyor of digital advertising, said it removed 1.7 billion so-called Bad Ads in 2016, up from 780 million in 2015. The offending ads range from payday loan ads, which Google banned …
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