One of the most untrue myths about gamers is that they’re all antisocial and awkward. In fact, gamers are some of the most social people online. Games are simply more fun when played together with others, and that’s true for both single-player and multiplayer games. Are you looking for a social network where you can meet other like-minded gamers? I’ve got good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that gaming social networks are passe. Most “Facebook for gamers”-type sites are defunct, abandoned, or gone. The good news is that there are plenty of faux social networks...
Read the full article: 3 Awesome Social Networks Just for Gamers
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Google confirms it has now addressed an issue that caused the YouTube app to drain the battery excessively when running on iOS devices, even when the app was idle in the background. In some cases, users reported the device would even become heated as a result of the problem, but not everyone experienced this issue. It’s unclear to what extent the issue affected the combined iOS and… 
Google.org is donating $7.5 million to racial justice organizations Vera Institute for Justice, LatinoJustice, The Leadership Conference and R Street’s Justice for Work Coalition. This brings Google.org’s total amount of funding to racial justice organizations to $32 million since 2015. Google.org’s racial justice portfolio arc has focused on the three Ps: policing,… 
Google announced today it’s expanding the focus of its Google Trends service – the site that lets anyone track what the world’s web searchers are looking for in both real time and non-real time. The service now includes data from more Google products beyond web search, the company says, with the addition of search data from verticals like Google News, Shopping, Images and… 
Over the holiday weekend, The New York Times found that one of its Twitter accounts had been locked. @nytimesworld was frozen for a full 24 hours over a innocuous tweet about a story in which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized for the country’s treatment of indigenous school children. Twitter restored the account Sunday afternoon, apologizing to The Times “for… 
As YouTube reels from a series of scandals related to its lack of policing around inappropriate content aimed at children, obscene comments on videos of children, horrifying search suggestions, and more, a new app called Jellies has arrived to offer parents a safer way to let their kids watch videos on mobile devices. Jellies was built by Ken Yarmosh, founder of Savvy Apps, which has been… 
This is software to save lives. Facebook’s new “proactive detection” artificial intelligence technology will scan all posts for patterns of suicidal thoughts, and when necessary send mental health resources to the user at risk or their friends, or contact local first-responders. By using AI to flag worrisome posts to human moderators instead of waiting for user reports,… 
So you’ve had a nice, calming two-day respite from all of the bargain hunting. But don’t worry, it’s almost over. It’s Cyber Monday, a holiday made up in 2005 because Black Friday wasn’t quite doing the trick. Sure it’s a crass cash-in and yet more grist for the end of year Capitalist mill — but the deals! Over the past few years, Cyber… 
A few years ago jailbreaking your iPhone was all the rage. The cat-and-mouse game of hackers versus Apple was great fun and some of the open source products available to jailbreakers – namely the Cydia alternative app store – added amazing features and customizability to the iPhone. Some devs even launched only on jailbroken phones, thumbing their noses at Apple’s walled… 
YouTube is firefighting another child safety content moderation scandal which has led several major brands to suspend advertising on its platform. 
Snapchat is rolling out new filters that can recognize what’s in your photos in order to suggest graphics, like borders or stickers, to accompany your posts. These filters today are capable of recognizing images of objects like pets, sports, and food, as well as specific locations, like beaches or concerts. The quiet release of the new filters was first spotted by Mashable, which… 
Anything you can do, AI can do better. Eventually. On October 12, NASA put on its own demonstration, pitting an AI-piloted racing drone against world-renowned drone pilot Ken Loo. Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who have spent the last two years working on drone autonomy (which was funded by Google), built three custom drones equipped with cameras for vision and… 
