As Dropbox continues its inevitable march toward an IPO, it’s going to look to bring in people with a lot of experience handling the operations of larger public companies — and it’s getting one today. Dropbox today said it is adding former Nike CFO Don Blair to the company’s board of directors. Blair will be joining the audit committee, the company said, and comes in with… Read More
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| A detailed look at Tacotron 2's model architecture. The lower half of the image describes the sequence-to-sequence model that maps a sequence of letters to a spectrogram. For technical details, please refer to the paper. |
We highly recommend that all people use VPNs — there’s no doubt about that. Just look at all of these common activities where VPNs prove useful. Indeed, there are many reasons to always use a VPN online, including but not limited to improved personal privacy. But not all VPNs are worth using. In fact, some VPNs are so bad that you’d actually be better off not using anything, than routing your traffic through their services. Here are some warning signs to look out for, plus specific VPN services to avoid if you value privacy. What Makes a VPN Bad for...
Read the full article: Not All VPNs Are Made Equal, Avoid These Ones!
Having already tackled the problem of fake news, Facebook is ramping up its efforts to curb engagement bait. This being posts that ask for likes, shares, or comments. Just like clickbait, engagement bait is designed to turn users from passive observers to active participants. Initially, individual posts will be demoted from the news feed, but Facebook will then start penalizing the people, pages, and groups who employ these tactics. The idea is to stop people from gaming the system, using high levels of engagement to improve their standing on Facebook. Gaming Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm Engagement bait is any post...
Read the full article: Facebook Demotes Posts That Beg for Likes
In November, the popular lip-syncing app Musical.ly announced its acquisition by Chinese social media giant Toutiao, owned by Bytedance, in a deal sources said was valued at $800 million to $1 billion. Today, the acquisition has completed, with Musical.ly officially joining Bytedance, the companies said. In addition, Musical.ly announced the launch of a $50 million “Creator Fund”… Read More
In November, the popular lip-syncing app Musical.ly announced its acquisition by Chinese social media giant Toutiao, owned by Bytedance, in a deal sources said was valued at $800 million to $1 billion. Today, the acquisition has completed, with Musical.ly officially joining Bytedance, the companies said. In addition, Musical.ly announced the launch of a $50 million “Creator Fund”… Read More
Trello is a terrific tool for managing projects and tasks. For project management with Trello, you can use its built-in tools for organization, tracking, and communication. However, what really makes Trello stand out are those features that are time-saving little extras. You may or may not know these tools exist, but using them can make the management of your next project more productive. The Kanban Method and Trello As a project manager, you have likely learned about the Kanban technique by now. Kanban is basically a visual method for managing items. Kanban is a Japanese word and the technique began with Toyota...
Read the full article: 5 Unique Trello Tips for Project Management
Echo Buttons got lost in the deluge of Alexa products announced by Amazon a few months back. Understandably so — they were fun, but weird additions to company’s portfolio of smart home products. The little glowing devices finally start shipping today, priced at $20 for a two-pack, and Hasbro’s offering one of the more compelling reasons to pick them up for the holidays.… Read More
Google is going to start blocking certain ads in Chrome, the company announced earlier this year. But now we know exactly when: February 15, 2018 (via VentureBeat) is the go-live date provided by the company for introduction of its built-in enforcement of the standards established by the Coalition for Better Ads, of which it is a member. This won’t block all ads on all websites –… Read More
Facebook wants to make sure you know about and control the photos of you people upload, even if they don’t tag you. So today, Facebook launched a new facial recognition feature called Photo Review that will alert you when your face shows up in newly posted photos so you can tag yourself, leave it be, ask the uploader to take the photo down, or report it to Facebook. The feature should… Read More
Toby Russell was one of the first people to get Shift founder George Arison into used cars — and now he’s going to be running his company alongside him as Shift said today it is appointing Russell co-CEO of the company. Arison said he was naming Russell co-CEO of the used car marketplace to help split off the role into what each executive would be best at, with Russell handling a… Read More
There’s an adage, “you get what you pay for.” However, on occasion, cheaper is better. That’s the case with an HDMI cable. As ironic as it may seem, purchasing low-priced cables for high-end devices, almost any HDMI cable will work. Learn about the best HDMI cables for your devices, from PCs, Macs, and Fire devices to LG and Samsung TVs. What Makes a Good HDMI Cable? Cables generally witness massive markups based on seemingly important, but ultimately useless, stats. The same phenomenon holds true for micro USB cables as well. For instance, ferrite cores reduce interference. These lend inductance, therefore...
Read the full article: Best HDMI Cable for LG and Samsung TVs, Displays, and More
Giving tech gifts may make you feel warm inside, but sometimes seeing your loved ones tearing open presents isn’t as good as watching your worst enemy unwrap a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A gift which you know is going to bring them years of misery. Here are nine tech gifts to buy your worst enemy. 1. Any 3D Movie Kicking off the list is one of those things that promised to be “Better than ever!” Namely, 3D. The shambled efforts of manufacturers to provide three dimensions on a two-dimensional plane has finally led to Sony and LG dropping support for...
Read the full article: 9 Tech Gifts to Buy Your Worst Enemy
The streaming box that aims to bring sanity to your streaming world by combining all your streaming hardware sources into one will ship on Valentine’s Day next year, according to The Verge. Caavo offers a solution to a very modern problem – making it easy to switch between devices including your DVR, your Roku, your Apple TV, your PS4 and other devices seamlessly, using one remote… Read More
The holidays exist for a reason. If nothing else, they’re the days when you get to sleep in, watch Netflix, and not worry about work. And Christmas is the king of all holidays, bringing a never-ending stream of Christmas-themed entertainment with it. But what happens if you don’t celebrate Christmas? Or if you’ve had enough cheer for one year? Or if you just hate Christmas for no good reason? Enough With the Cheer Feeling like you’ve had enough of the cheesy stuff that fills the schedules over the holidays period? If so, welcome to our list of hand-picked anti-Christmas movies...
Read the full article: 10 Movies on Netflix for Anyone Who Hates Christmas
Have you ever made a purchase online and found that the item went on sale just days later? This is frustrating, because if you had waited, you could have saved money. But did you know that many stores offer a price guarantee? This means that if a product you buy drops in price shortly after you purchase it, you can get a refund for the difference. Yet it’s a hassle to monitor all your purchases and contact the store if this happens. That’s where the incredibly useful service called Paribus comes in. It takes the headache out of getting the refunds...
Read the full article: Paribus Can Save You Money When Shopping Online
While the world was focused on bigger names like Apple and Samsung, one of the industry’s great workhorses went ahead and released a dual-screen smartphone. But the Axon M’s dual-screen technology isn’t the result of industry breakthroughs. At its heart, the Axon M is an average phone with one (admittedly compelling) gimmick to justify its flagship price. Read More
The Drafts app ($4.99) is more than just an iOS text editor. You can use it as the first stop for everything you write, and use its extensibility to send it anywhere. It starts with a customizable keyboard, which allows you to add one button actions. Then there are an array of export actions once you finish creating. If you’re looking for a truly powerful note-taking app, with serious extensibility, Drafts might be for you. Using the Drafts App Drafts works on every iOS device. You can collect your ideas on everything from the Apple Watch to the iPad Pro. On...
Read the full article: Drafts Is the Powerful iPhone Note-Taking App You’ve Been Looking For
Facebook and WhatsApp have been issued with formal notices by France’s data protection watchdog warning that data transfers being carried out for ‘business intelligence’ purposes currently lack a legal basis — and consequently that Facebook Inc, WhatsApp’s owner, has violated the French Data Protection Act. Read More
When choosing which movie to watch next, you might reluctantly turn to your personalized Netflix recommendations or Amazon suggestions. You might sift through a few trailers. Perhaps you like to scan a couple of reviews. But what should you do if you want to evade the spoilers that come with trailers? The biases that come with reviews? The terrible movies that repeatedly come from algorithmic recommendations? Choose One of These Best-Of Lists for Top Movies In these cases, you’ll want to turn to a “best-of” list that compiles critically acclaimed movies already proven to be well received and masterfully created....
Read the full article: The Top Movies You Haven’t Seen Could Be in These Trusted Lists
Our verdict of the Mindkoo Unicat Cat Ear Headphones:You can get better headphones for under $50, but these are super cute and light-up. 710Looking for a last minute pressie for the kids? The Mindkoo Unicat wireless headphones might be just the ticket. With a unique cat ear design that lights up, a solid build quality, the Mindkoo Unicat are available in 5 different color combinations for just $35. They run wirelessly over Bluetooth 4.2, or wired, and the battery lasts a solid day. For a limited time, you can get 35% off using coupon code 72DMDJQD, making them just $24! At the end...
Read the full article: Mindkoo Unicat Cat Ear Headphones: Cute, and They Light Up (Review and Giveaway)
Yesterday Twitter said it would begin enforcing new hate speech rules to shutter accounts that promote violence against citizens to further their causes. Read More
Windows 10’s search function can find pretty much anything on your PC. But do you ever feel that it finds too much? From searching the contents of your files to including hundreds of file types, that’s a lot of information to sort through. Thankfully, Windows makes it easy to exclude certain types of files from your searches. How to Exclude Files Types From Window 10 Search Open the Start Menu and search for index. Open Indexing Options. Click the Advanced button, then switch to the File Types tab. Uncheck any types of files you don’t want to see in search....
Read the full article: How to Exclude File Types From Windows 10 Search
What will the world look like 10 years down the line? For that matter, what will the world look like long after you and I are gone? Glimpse into the future with these sites that chart timelines of mankind as well as the world at large. This isn’t about horoscopes though. It’s an educated “guesstimate” of where the world is heading, based on current scientific research and available data. For example, these sites depict a realistic outcome of climate change, and how mankind might fight it. The bottom line is that instead of relying on flights of fancy and science...
Read the full article: 5 Sites That Predict Timelines of Humans and Earth
Facebook is adding a Snooze button to your timeline. This enables you to temporarily unfollow someone without having to unfriend them. And their updates will start appearing again automatically after 30 days. Which is perfect for those who have annoying Facebook friends. Facebook is all about friends. Not your real friends, of course, but “friends” who you barely know. Maybe you met them at a party, or perhaps you work with them. Either way, you’re now Facebook friends. And if you can’t bring yourself to unfriend them, you can at least hit Snooze. Unfriend, Unfollow, or Snooze… You Choose Facebook’s...
Read the full article: You Can Now Temporarily Snooze Facebook Friends
