DuckDuckGo introduces a new tool to its browser to prevent apps from leaving traces on the internet

Most people use google chrome or firefox to browse the internet.
Although firefox is one of the best browsers (for computers and smartphones) there is an even better one (but only for smartphones) from the point of view of privacy: duckduckgo.
Maybe not everyone knows it but duckduckgo is also an alternative search engine to google.
As a search engine I don’t think it is up to par as many search results are not as relevant as google (or bing) but as a search engine it is unsurpassed.

A new tool from DuckDuckGo tries to prevent Android apps from tracking and tracking user data. It’s called App Tracking Protection, and it’s meant to offer greater protection from third-party trackers even over Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature, introduced starting with iOS 14.5, which allows users to disable app tracking.

The news was reported by the same development team, which explains that the tool was not released as an update, nor as a dedicated app. Those who request to try the new anti-tracking tool must download the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser from the Play Store and enable the feature. The Tracking Protection App will then work at the system level, and not just on the browser, preventing the tracking of data by third-party apps among those installed on the device.

Spotify puts lyrics in songs all over the world: the feature is free for everyone

Spotify has finally launched the feature that allows you to play lyrics in real time worldwide, having only made it available in some countries. The lyrics are provided by Musixmatch, through a database that is expected to cover “over 8 million” of songs. Lyrics on Spotify work on all the updated apps of the streaming music service, including those for iOS, Android, desktop, game consoles and smart TVs. You don’t need the Premium subscription to get them, since even users who log in for free can view them. In addition to using the lyrics out of curiosity or to get help in singing, it is also possible to share them on social media. Spotify claims the feature will be available for the “majority” of its music library. How to view lyrics on Spotify To access the lyrics on compatible songs via mobile app, simply access the “Now Playing” screen of a song and scroll up, while on the desktop there is a new button with a microphone icon. Also from the TV, still in the “Now Playing” screen, it is possible to access the lyrics of the song with the icon in the shape of a microphone.

Another fantastic Tesla project: in Australia it installed the “neighborhood battery”

A new TESLA project has arrived, concerning energy storage, but this time with medium-sized modules, called Powerpack, as protagonists. These large batteries were installed, with the collaboration of Ausgrid and the Australian Energy Foundation, in three different locations to function as “neighborhood batteries”. In summary, instead of offering individual citizens a small domestic battery, the Powerwall in Tesla’s case, a larger battery is installed that serves the whole neighborhood, so as to accumulate the excesses of renewable energy production (mainly from photovoltaics). The energy accumulated during the day can therefore be exploited by the community during the night, optimizing the self-consumption of production. It is not known which model was used, whether 100 or 200 kWh. The experiment started in the city of Canterbury Bankstown, in New South Wales, and will last three years, after which the real benefits will be evaluated.

Telegram could become paid for those who do not want to see advertising

Telegram will not become paid for everyone but only for those who want to avoid advertising that in the next period will also be introduced on the messaging system among the most used in the world. The already announced idea of ​​Pavel Durov, founder of the Telegram platform, is to allow those who want to use Telegram in a completely ” clean ” way without therefore any kind of advertising. For this there will be the ” Premium ” version which will clearly be paid and which will however allow you to have advantages in using the app.

Channel authors will be able to disable official advertisements in their channels for all users. Some channel creators would also like to “disable” ads in their channels. At the moment, as stated by the founder himself, Telegram is calculating the economic conditions for this option. Advertisers will soon be able to place an “invisible” ad in any channel that will not generate ads in that channel.

Ford’s CEO talks about Tesla (Elon Musk’s company) as a model to follow

During a virtual meeting involving 20,000 Ford employees around the world, Jim Farley explained why the company should take Tesla seriously as a dominant player in the all-electric market. According to Detroit Free Press, he pointed out the news according to Hertz has ordered 100,000 Tesla vehicles. The deal was worth about $ 4 billion and pushed Tesla’s market value beyond $ 1 trillion for the first time.

“Tesla now has smart people and resources. In addition, the Model 3 is the best-selling vehicle in Europe: not only the best-selling electric vehicle, but the best-selling ever,” were Farley’s words.

“We have to look to Tesla to understand what we can learn from them. First: they have a direct sales model, there is no one in between the company and the end customer. Three or four clicks to interpret the product with not much complexity to deliver it to the customer. The price is clear and cannot be negotiated. And there is an extensive remote booking and service system. “

“Second, Tesla maximizes the performance of the vehicle’s electrical part. Their customers pay less for a better battery. After the launch of each vehicle, they are also obsessed with the progress they can still make. How to improve the customer experience. , redesign electronic components, simplify, target quality based on the data they buy from vehicles and how they can manage each electron in order to fully purchase the battery. “

“Third, the product itself is highly differentiated from the rest of the thermal-propulsion industry and the complexity is minimal compared to OEMs,” Farley says, using an outdated term, Original Equipment Manufacturers, to identify traditional automakers to emphasize difficulties than meeting in modernity.

Now it’s official: Facebook changes its name to Meta. Zuckerberg: “Now we are a social network, we want to become a metaverse company”

Facebook has officially changed its name, now it will be called Meta. This was announced by Mark Zuckerberg, directly from the virtual stage of Facebook Connect 2021: “We are a company that builds technologies to create connections,” said the CEO. “Together, we can finally put people at the heart of our technology and together, we can unlock an incredibly bigger virtual monetization economy.” In addition to this, Zuckerberg stated that the Meta name “reflects better who we are and what we hope to build”.

There is a lot of similarity to what happened in 2015 with Google, which created the holding Alphabet to manage various companies. Facebook, along with Instagram, Whatsapp and Oculus, will now be managed by Meta.

Facebook’s new name will tie the company together in its efforts to build the metaverse, the parallel universe imagined by Zuckerberg that is based on augmented reality. However, the rebranding that has materialized in these hours for many observers is also due to documents and internal investigations that for weeks have put the company’s top management under pressure and lowered user confidence.

Meanwhile, the @meta Twitter handle has appeared and the meta.com site now redirects to a Facebook welcome page outlining the changes, while the large banner in front of the Facebook headquarters now also bears the Meta logo.

Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post Thursday that the structure of the company will not change, it will change the way it reports financial results. In practice, the Facebook app will join Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus under a parent company with a new name, modeled on Google’s rebranding with Alphabet in 2015.

Social media (especially facebook) are thinking about new technologies: is the future the metaverse?

Perhaps to try to explain the concept in the simplest of ways, the best way is to somehow take up the explanation of whoever coined this new term, which in fact transforms the future into the present. The concept of the metaverse was introduced by Neal Stephenson, an acclaimed author of science fiction books. Speaking of this metaverse, a virtual universe in fact, the author means a real world of virtual reality. A virtual reality shared with other network users. Let’s talk about a transformation of the internet. If we now navigate in front of the screen, with the metaverse we enter the screen in virtual reality. And here it will be possible to meet our friends, take a trip using the resources of the network without ever leaving the desk, attend a virtual concert. Physically remaining seated in front of the PC but with our avatr able to move in the virtual world and interact with it. The key to the metaverse are glasses for augmented reality and objects of this type.

Last week, a rumor leaked that Facebook will change its name shortly to clean up its political image and to diversify services beyond social networks. Pending the conference in which the new name of the IT giant will be presented, information is emerging on what its interests will be in the future.

Mark Zuckerberg said he has repositioned some of the company’s teams to “make services for the young-adult audience our guiding star”. The comment from the CEO of Menlo Park came during a conference with the company’s shareholders, and should respond to the lack of interest of young people in Facebook and the decline in the time they spend on the social network. According to Zuckerberg, in fact, “Many of our services have been designed to be the best for all users who use them, and not just for teenagers and young people”.

The choice to shift the focus of Facebook from the general public to that of young people is due to very precise calculations: the company predicts that the growth of users among older people and among the elderly will be very slow in the coming years, but also which would become much faster if, instead of focusing on all age groups, social media preferred only younger users.

Sweden: Here is the electric bus that recharges from the street with the wireless charging system under the road surface

ElectReon (TASE: ELWS.TA), a leader in the development of on-road wireless charging technology for electric vehicles – commercial, public transport and passenger, today announced the launch of the first fully operational bus using the Dell’s wireless charging infrastructure. company in the city of Visby on the island of Gotland, Sweden.

After a long test phase with some trucks, which were able to absorb up to 70 kW at a speed of 80 km / h, with 90% efficiency, a public transport bus took service, also in Gotland, in the city of Visby. The bus works the same way, and runs on an electrified test road, covering the line that has been called “Smartroad Gotland”.

The vehicle therefore does not need to be recharged at columns or pantograph connections from the top, but takes all the necessary energy from the road, through various receptors located in the part below the floor.

The architects of the technology are the engineers of ElectReon, a company based in Israel, which deals with both the drowning of the charging system in the street and the systems on board vehicles. It is not the only successful project for ElectReon, which already has collaborations in Italy, France, Belgium and Germany, as well as Tel Aviv.

Once the tests with the bus have also been validated, it should move to the large-scale construction, according to the original project, which foresees over 2,000 km of electrified roads in Sweden by 2030, to achieve zero emissions by 2045.

Facebook will change the name of its company

According to the well-known tech site The Verge, Facebook may announce next week that it will change the name of its parent company. The change should only concern the company nomenclature, not the products. Currently, both the famous social network and the company that controls it, and which also controls Instagram, WhatsApp and other services, are called “Facebook”: it would be the latter to change its name, while the social network will continue to be called Facebook.

The next name change, which Mark Zuckerberg could unveil during “Connect”, the annual conference scheduled for October 28th, seems to have a very specific and ambitious purpose. It’s time for Facebook to be known for more than social media (and all the evils that that entails). There is no doubt that with the rebrand, the blue Facebook app would become one of the company’s products such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus and others. And Zuckerberg would thus try to free the entire company from the social network which in the last period is a very random mix of joys and sorrows.

Telegram breaks another record! It has been downloaded and installed on smartphones more than a billion times

Telegram has reached a new record and this time it has done so in the Android platform and in its PlayStore that is the virtual store where all users can download applications. In this case that the application has passed for the first time a milestone that few other applications have reached this Russian during their life and we are talking about the download record on the Google PlayStore.

As reported directly on the Google PlayStore card, Telegram has been downloaded and installed on smartphones for more than a billion times. A staggering figure that few other applications have ever reached in the history of Android and which has certainly also been allowed by the latest downs of Facebook and WhatsApp.

But that’s not the only reason: Telegram over the years has been a shovel of many that no one had been able to formulate messaging in a simple application now. And if everyone has their preferences for the messaging system, it is clear that the functionalities that observe Telegram have not passed, indeed they are precisely those that have resulted in the success that the app has today. We speak clearly of the possibility of creating channels where to send messages to real communities of users, use stickers, customized or even created directly on the portal and then a user friendly aspect that over the years has improved in usability allowing anyone to use chats in fast and safe way.

And we remember, a story of a few weeks ago, as just with the down of Facebook and WhatsApp, Telegram has managed in a few hours to obtain the beauty of over 70 million new users. In short, a success that has no limits, just like the features that the app has and that are coming in the future.