LS/i on draft new Report on production, emission and exchange of closed captions for worldwide language character sets (Latin and non-Latin) [from ITU-R WP6B]
Source: ITU-R WP6B
Study Questions: Q26/16

If you’ve ever been on an Easter egg hunt, you understand the thrill and disappointment that typically comes with this activity. You see a colorful object and rush towards it only to find out it’s a candy wrapper. When you eventually stumble upon an easter egg, the thrill and frisson of relief you feel are […]

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UX design is a dynamic, interdisciplinary industry that’s constantly evolving. With global demand, countless job opportunities, low barriers to entry, accessible online resources, affordable UX certifications, higher-than-average salaries, there’s never been a better time to venture into this industry. Here we look at ten important reasons why you should become a UX designer and where […]

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Wireframing is the first and the most crucial step in deciding the fate of an application. The right wireframe can make an excellent app – turning an idea perfectly into an app, while a wrong wireframe can break everything. And to make a wireframe perfect, you need a wireframing tool to solve your design purpose.  […]

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With over 4.8 billion users currently on the internet across the globe, the digital world as we once knew it continues to adapt to accommodate modern forms of interaction and communication across the social sphere. As e-commerce booms and social platforms multiply, it’s clear that a digitally native world is only around the corner. With […]

The post From Users To Players: The Future Of UX Design In The Metaverse appeared first on Usability Geek

Product development has been a hit sauce for the last two years now. Not participating in this debate seems challenging when all that’s been trending is the widespread hiring of expert product managers to changes in product development aspects. Whether you’re building physical products or a software solution, this comprehensive list of product development trends […]

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DNA-testing company 23andMe (Nasdaq: ME), once an industry leader that attracted millions of customers, including rapper Snoop Dogg and investor Warren Buffett, has announced significant cuts to its operations, with plans to lay off 200 employees or roughly 40% of its workforce. The company also said it will discontinue development of its therapeutic programs. Here’s what to know about the latest development and what led up to it.

Board exodus

The latest move comes as the company looks to stabilize after facing significant challenges, including the resignation of all seven independent board members in October.

Data breach

Last year, 23andMe suffered a massive data breach when hackers accessed the personal information of 6.9 million users. The incident led to a class-action lawsuit, which, in September, 23andMe agreed to settle for $30 million.

The problem with SPACs

In 2021, 23andMe went public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. It later expanded into drug-discovery and weight-loss sectors. However, as DNA test kit sales declined, so did its financial health. By fiscal 2023, it reported a $312 million net loss, with its stock down 98% since going public, currently at about $4 after a reverse stock split in October 2024.

Separate reports have found that things have often not ended well for companies that took advantage of the pandemic-era SPAC boom, which led to billions in losses for investors and a number of bankruptcies for companies.

What’s next for 23andMe and its employees?

The layoffs are expected to result in $12 million in severance, termination, and transition-related costs and are part of a broader plan to streamline the business and achieve annual cost savings of $35 million.

The company says it is exploring various strategic options for its therapeutic programs, including potential licensing agreements and the sale of assets in its development pipeline.

“We are taking these difficult but necessary actions as we restructure 23andMe and focus on the long-term success of our core consumer business and research partnerships,” said Anne Wojcicki, cofounder, CEO, and chair of the board, in a statement.

Shares of 23andMe were up almost 6% to $4.87 on the news, which was announced late yesterday. The stock is down more than 73% year to date.

The New York Times Tech Guild is ending a week-long strike that started one day before the U.S. presidential election and will return to work on Tuesday, it said in a post on X on Monday.

More than 600 tech workers of NYT, including software engineers, designers and product managers, had gone on a strike amid stalled contract negotiations over pay and job security, planning daily protests during the crucial election day period.

Negotiations between the guild and the publisher have not progressed since the strike began, the spokesperson for the New York Times said in an email response.

“We look forward to continuing to work with Tech Guild to reach a fair contract that takes into account that they are already among the highest paid individual contributors in the company,” the spokesperson said.

The Tech Guild has been in contract negotiations with NYT for more than two years.

“We clearly demonstrated how valuable our work is to The New York Times, especially on election night, and showed that we have the full support of subscribers and allies across the country going forward,” said Kathy Zhang, Tech Guild unit chair.

—Jaspreet Singh, Reuters

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, fueled by the internet of things (IoT), is dramatically reshaping the manufacturing landscape. This new era, often referred to as Industry 4.0, integrates advanced digital technologies with traditional manufacturing processes, creating a highly automated and interconnected production environment. From factory floors to our daily lives, sensors are now ubiquitous, connecting disparate systems and driving unprecedented innovation and advancements in productivity, efficiency, and automation.

Our nation’s mobility ecosystem is now in the early innings of a similar transformation. Simply put, the mobility ecosystem can be defined as the critical infrastructure—physical and digital—that touches people’s lives every day. It’s where vehicles get fueled, charged, washed, serviced, and repaired. And it’s where travelers get their necessities.

Modernization of the convenience store

This industry is becoming increasingly complex. And as driver expectations evolve, technology advances and a multi-energy future takes shape, there is an urgent need to digitize, connect, and optimize these operations. One prime example of this need is the modern convenience store.

These stores are becoming go-to destinations and now offer a range of essential services, including fueling, charging, car wash, craveable food, beverages, and other on-the-go staples. A recent survey by Vontier found that American drivers are not only prioritizing convenience and a one-stop-shop experience but are also willing to pay more and even drive a little out of their way to get it. Nearly 60% of respondents indicated they would be happy to pay a markup on convenience store products if it meant making only one stop. This suggests a growing consumer demand for convenience and efficiency that aligns with the broader trends of digital transformation. However, many of these assets and services still operate in silos like they did decades ago, missing out on valuable data and insights that could enhance efficiency and revenue.

Imagine a future where the early morning rush at a bustling convenience store is seamlessly orchestrated. The store owner, feeling confident and prepared, watches as her employees anticipate the familiar routine. An Amazon delivery driver rolls in for his usual fill-up and coffee, while a family on their way to the beach picks up sandwiches to go while charging their electric vehicle (EV). Behind the scenes, linked payment systems can make this a reality, streamlining transactions and providing valuable data insights. By leveraging advanced analytics, businesses—from large convenience store chains like Circle K, 7-Eleven, Wawa, and Sheetz, to the small family-run businesses—can understand driver behavior, tailor offerings for digital-savvy consumers, track asset usage, optimize maintenance, avoid downtime, anticipate trends, improve workflows, and perhaps most importantly, exceed customer expectations and improve customer loyalty.

The commercial fleet market

A similar transformation is happening in the commercial/industrial fleet vehicle market. As the industry looks to modernize and decarbonize, integrating traditionally disparate systems and data can help fleets make better, quicker decisions and improve their key performance metrics. Managing mixed fleets (gas, diesel, natural gas, EV, and hydrogen fuel types) and deciding the right time to transition fleets is a major challenge and requires multiple technologies and capabilities across telematics, route planning, fuel logistics, EV network management, and energy management. An integrated platform can help make recommendations on how to best manage and fuel fleets at the lowest total cost of ownership while helping achieve sustainability and compliance goals. It can also provide valuable visibility, planning, monitoring, reporting, and control across the entire fleet, optimizing operations and reducing costs.

It’s time for the mobility industry to seize this opportunity and pioneer a smarter, more sustainable and connected ecosystem. By leveraging IoT principles, we can digitize and improve operations, unlocking new revenue streams, improving customer experiences, and enhancing productivity, uptime, safety, and sustainability,

Industry 4.0 has paved the way. To achieve Mobility Ecosystem 4.0, we must break down the silos that have traditionally hindered progress. The stakes are nothing short of monumental: increased productivity, efficiency, and a more sustainable future for all. 

Mark Morelli is president and CEO of Vontier. 

Facebook and Instagram users in Europe will get the option to see less personalized ads if they don’t want to pay for an ad-free subscription, social media company Meta said Tuesday, bowing to pressure from Brussels over privacy and digital competition concerns.

Meta Platforms has been offering European Union an ad-free subscription option for about a year to comply with the continent’s strict data privacy rules, but regulators had accused the company of giving people a false choice.

The company said in a blog post that while people will still be able to choose between the subscription and existing free versions, it would also start giving free users an extra option over the coming weeks to see digital ads that are less personalized.

This means ads will be targeted at users based only on what they see during their current session on Facebook or Instagram going back no more than two hours, plus minimal personal information such as age, location, gender as well as how they engage with ads.

Data from all of a user’s previous time spent on Facebook or Instagram, which is typically combined to precisely target an individual with tailored ads, won’t be used.

“While this new choice is designed to give people an additional control over their data and ad experience, it may result in ads that are less relevant to a person’s interests,” Meta said in a blog post. “That means people will see ads that they don’t find as interesting. This drop in relevance is inevitable given that drastically reduced data is being used to show these less personalized ads to people.”

People who choose the new option will see ad breaks that can’t be skipped for a few seconds, Meta said.

European Union regulators had accused Meta of breaching the 27-nation bloc’s digital rules when it gave user the option to pay a monthly fee to avoid being targeted by ads based on their personal data.

The U.S. tech giant had rolled out the option after the European Union’s top court ruled Meta must first get consent before showing ads to users, in a decision that threatened its business model of tailoring ads based on individual users’ online interests and digital activity.

The company also said Tuesday it’s slashing monthly subscription prices for the ad-free option. Web users will pay 5.99 euros ($6.36), down from 9.99 euros previously, while iPhone and Android users will be charged 7.99 euros instead of 12.99 euros, which includes commissions charged by the Apple and Google mobile app stores.

Meta’s new subscription model could hit the company’s lucrative digital ad business in one of its biggest markets. The company said it has already factored the new offering into its most recent business outlook and financial guidance.

The options are available to users 18 and older in the EU’s 27 member countries, plus Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

—Kelvin Chan, Associated Press business writer

One of the best ways of learning something is building a lab for it. Especially when it comes to complex topics like network authentication. When I started learning about network authentication and Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), I found that

Keychron has been leading the charge in mechanical keyboard design and development, and COO Paul Tan shares more about it and what's to come.

Get ready to explore the different methods of automating technical and business challenges with Azure in James Rudley’s new course; Automation With Microsoft Azure. In this course you will learn a range of azure features including: Azure Automation Functions Logic Apps ARM Templates Update Management Azure PowerShell Ready to master Azure? You can buy this [...]

What it is: GeoGuessr is a fun map-based game where students get virtually “dropped” somewhere in the world, and must explore the landscape around them through Google Street View to determine where in the world they are. When they’ve determined where in the world they are, they click on the world map to make a...

“Do you…want to form an alliance…with me? “ It was January 3, 2010, that I first created a blog post of this title. It was initially inspired by a blog post that I came across on Problogger titled, “Let Me Show You Inside a Secret Blogging Alliance.” Of course, any time I heard the word...

What it is: BombBomb is an email service that lets you record and embed video directly in your email. That is a totally oversimplified explanation because BombBomb does SO much more. This is one of those pieces of technology that has been life-saving for me during the pandemic and one that I will continue using...

"I am still alive": Users say T-Mobile must pay for killing "lifetime" price lock arstechnica.com
Fans who use IPTV to illegally stream sport at risk of '10 year prison sentence' as organised crime warning sent sportbible.com
FCC Issues Inquiry Designed to Improve Provider Customer Service telecompetitor.com
AT&T vs. Verizon: Who's leading the convergence race? lightreading.com
Fractured Streaming So Bad Injured NFL Players Turn To Illicit Streams To Watch Their Own Teams techdirt.com
A US federal judge allows 150+ cases from school districts against Meta, Google, and Snap alleging their apps contributed to students' mental health crisis bloomberg.com
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Pentagon s commercial satellite internet services program soars to $13 billion spacenews.com
Comcast, Charter Sue FTC Over Efforts To Make Canceling Services Easier techdirt.com
Election 2024: How will the candidates regulate big tech? engadget.com
Netflix, Disney, Comcast, Google, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount to Spend Combined $126 Billion on Content in 2024 thewrap.com
Old issue haunts UScellular s latest spectrum deals fierce-network.com
5G customer growth surprises - again - in Q3 lightreading.com
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Net Neutrality Heads Back To Court; Corrupt Supreme Court Could Dismantle U.S. Broadband Consumer Protection techdirt.com
What a Trump victory means for tech: antitrust woes die down, except for Google, TikTok survives, AI progress accelerates, social media shifts right, and more nytimes.com
Cellular Providers Leverage Q3 Phone Promotions in Battle for Customers telecompetitor.com
Frontier adds record fiber subs as shareholder vote looms lightreading.com
Canada orders TikTok's business in the country to be dissolved, citing national security risks, but says it is not blocking Canadians' access to the app reuters.com
T-Mobile deploys private 5G for Jacksonville shuttle service rcrwireless.com
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Seems like I feel like organizing my digital life. I stumbled upon PARA, a simple, comprehensive system for organizing any type of digital information across any platform. Intrigued.

eM Client has acquired the longtime email app Postbox and discontinued sales and development. While Postbox users can still use the app and receive support for several months, it’s time to start looking for a replacement.

With the release of new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models based on the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips, Apple has addressed every niggling annoyance in the previous generation—these are glorious machines. But they still aren’t cheap.

Apple has increased the base amount of memory in the M2 and M3 MacBook Air models, possibly to ensure optimal performance for Apple Intelligence.

Struggling with window resizing surprises in macOS 15 Sequoia? Adam Engst guides you through configuring Sequoia’s new tiling features to improve your Mac window management.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Elon Musk will head a new U.S. Department of Government Efficiency ("DOGE").

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I’ve used plenty of webcams, mostly for work meetings and catching up with family. They usually get the job done, but finding one that really stands out is rare. That’s when I got my hands on the EMEET SmartCam S800-or as they call it, a “SmartCam.” I was given a unit to test, and while…

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