Following Xi Jinping's speech urging adoption of blockchain tech, the CPC releases a decentralized app for members to attest their loyalty on a blockchain — China's Communist Party (CPC) is taking its leader's support for blockchain to heart. — Following Xi Jinping's bombshell speech …
Nearly a year and a half after the Cambridge Analytica scandal reportedly scuttled Facebook’s fledgling attempts to enter the healthcare market, the social media giant is launching a tool called “Preventive Health” to prompt its users to get regular checkups and connect them to service providers.
The architect of the new service is Dr. Freddy Abnousi, the head of the company’s healthcare research, who was previously linked to an earlier skunkworks initiative that would collect anonymized hospital data and use a technique called “hashing” to match the data to individuals that exist in both data sets — for research, according to CNBC reporting.
Working with the American Cancer Society; the American College of Cardiology; the American Heart Association; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Facebook is developing a series of digital prompts that will encourage users to get a standard battery of tests that’s important to ensure health for populations of a certain age.
The company’s initial focus is on the top two leading causes of death in the U.S.: heart disease and cancer — along with the flu, which affects millions of Americans each year.
“Heart disease is the number one killer of men and women around the world and in many cases it is 100% preventable. By incorporating prevention reminders into platforms people are accessing every day, we’re giving people the tools they need to be proactive about their heart health,” said Dr. Richard Kovacs, the president of the American College of Cardiology, in a statement.
Users who want to access Facebook’s Preventive Health tools can search in the company’s mobile app to find which checkups are recommended by the company’s partner organizations based on the age and gender of a user.
The tool allows Facebookers to mark when the tests are completed, set reminders to schedule future tests and tell people in their social network about the tool.
Facebook will even direct users to resources on where to have the tests. One thing that the company will not do, Facebook assures potential users, is collect the results of any test.
“Health is particularly personal, so we took privacy and safety into account from the beginning. For example, Preventive Health allows you to set reminders for your future checkups and mark them as done, but it doesn’t provide us, or the health organizations we’re working with, access to your actual test results,” the company wrote in a statement. “Personal information about your activity in Preventive Health is not shared with third parties, such as health organizations or insurance companies, so it can’t be used for purposes like insurance eligibility.”
The company said that people can also use the new health tool to find locations that administer flu shots.
“Flu vaccines can have wide-ranging benefits beyond just preventing the disease, such as reducing the risk of hospitalization, preventing serious medical events for some people with chronic diseases, and protecting women during and after pregnancy,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, Director, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, CDC, in a statement. “New tools like this will empower users with instant access to information and resources they need to become a flu fighter in their own communities.”
There’s probably no more hotly anticipated series from any new streaming service than “The Mandalorian” on Disney+ — and now the good folks at Disney have given us a new trailer to hypothesize about.
There’s more action, more world-building, and much much more Werner Herzog (who could ask for anything more?).
The Lucasfilm team has been relatively mum about the details of the new live-action Star Wars series that Jon Favreau created for Disney+.
What we do know is that the series will star Pedro Pascal (he of the glorious “Game of Thrones” guest turn as Oberyn Martell), who will star as a “lone Mandalorian gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy.”
Mandalorians, a group of warriors whose ranks included Jango and Boba Fett, are notorious bounty hunters and it looks like Pascal’s character will be no different.
Other cast members include Gina Carano, Giancarlo Esposito, Nick Nolte and the aforementioned Herzog.
Directors for the show include Dave Filoni, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Taika Waititi (whose work on Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok wasincredible).
As the production values from the trailer indicate, it appears “The Mandalorian” is well worth the $100 million price tag for its 10-episode run.
Disney+ aired the first “Mandalorian” trailer back in August.
You'll be able to update your device from the Settings app, as seen here. [credit: Samuel Axon ]
Today, Apple released iOS 13.2, iPadOS 13.2, and tvOS 13.2 for supported iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV devices. The company also released a minor update labeled iOS 12.4.3 for iPhones and iPads that saw end-of-support with last month's iOS 13 release.
iOS and iPadOS 13.2 represents the first major new feature release since iOS 13 came out several weeks ago. Up to this point, Apple's unusually frequent updates have been focused on either bug fixes or on introducing features that were originally planned for the first version of iOS 13.
There's a mixture of new and previously planned here, but it marks the biggest update yet for iOS 13 users. Additions include Deep Fusion computational photography for better low- and mid-light photos on the latest iPhones, the ability to opt-out or opt-in to sharing Siri voice recordings with Apple, support for AirPods Pro and the Announce Messages with Siri feature, a bunch of new emoji, new smart home features, and a number of bug fixes.
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Microsoft says Strontium, also known as Fancy Bear/APT28, hackers are targeting 16 global sporting and anti-doping organizations ahead of 2020 Olympic Games — Microsoft said APT28 targeted “at least 16 national and international sporting and anti-doping organizations.”
French startup Welcome to the Jungle has raised a new $22.3 million funding round (€20 million). The startup is both a media company and a tech startup that wants to empower tech companies when it comes to recruitment. It doesn’t find the right candidate for you, it helps you get exposure, track application and facilitate onboarding.
Gaia Capital Partners is leading the round with existing investors Bpifance, XAnge and Jean-Paul Guisset also participating. With today’s funding round, the company wants to expand to more countries and develop new products.
This is also Gaia Capital Partners’ first investment. The firm raised a $110 million fund (€100 million) with around 40 limited partners, such as Sycomore Asset Management, Generali Investments and Bpifrance. The growth fund headed by Alice Albizzati and Elina Berrebi is going to focus on companies that have a positive environmental or societal impact at Series B stage and above.
Welcome to the Jungle is currently available in France, Spain and Czech Republic. Up next, the company is going to open offices in Germany and the U.K.
The company works with photographers and a video crew to create high quality profiles of other companies that are actively recruiting. This way, potential candidates can browse those profiles, learn more about companies and make up their mind.
Companies pay for those profiles to improve their branding, especially when it comes to recruitment. And it seems to be working well as there are now over 2,500 clients, including 250 in Spain and 100 in Czech Republic.
More recently, Welcome to the Jungle has started to expand beyond those showcases to tackle the recruitment process at large. The startup launched Welcome Kit, an applicant tracking system to manage job offers and take care of job applications.
With Welcome Kit, you can design a career site, write job postings and create application forms. Your recruitment team then receives applications, comments and collaborates with the rest of the team, sends emails using templates and more.
4,000 companies are using Welcome Kit. Collectively, they have posted about 150,000 job offers and received 2.5 million applications.
And now, Welcome to the Jungle is about to launch Welcome Home, the startup’s take on the good old intranet. The company realized that too many people who join a company don’t feel at home right away. And some people will even quit just a couple of months after joining a company.
You will be able to create an employee directory, post company-wide announcements and get information using Welcome Home. All of this should help create a more welcoming environment for newcomers.
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Katharine Gemmell / Bloomberg : Microsoft's partnership with Mistral AI will avoid a UK antitrust probe after the CMA finds Microsoft...
