Daily Archives: October 21, 2021

Thiel Foundation – Wikipedia

Posted: October 21, 2021 at 11:09 pm

The Thiel Foundation is a private foundation created and funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook.[1][2]

Thiel concentrates the bulk of his philanthropic efforts on what he sees as potential breakthrough technologies. In November 2010, Thiel organized a Breakthrough Philanthropy conference that showcased eight nonprofits that he believed were working on radical new ideas in technology, government, and human affairs.[3] A similar conference was organized in December2011 with the name "Fast Forward".[4]

The Thiel Foundation has three main internal projects: the Thiel Fellowship, Imitatio, and Breakout Labs.[5]

The Thiel Fellowship (originally named 20 under 20) is intended for young visionaries under the age of 20 and offers them a total of $100,000 over two years as well as guidance and other resources to drop out of school and pursue other work, which could involve scientific research, creating a startup, or working on a social movement. Selection for the fellowship is through a competitive annual process, with about 2025 fellows selected annually. Peter Thiel announced the fellowship at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2010.[6] The first round of fellows, based on applications made at the end of 2010, was announced in May 2011.[7][8]

Imitatio is a project funded by the Thiel Foundation that aims to understand the world through the lens of Rene Girard's mimetic theory.[9]

Breakout Labs is a grant-making body operating as part of the Thiel Foundation (a philanthropic organization created by Peter Thiel). Breakout Labs gives grants for early-stage scientific research that is too speculative or long-term to interest the for-profit sector (such as angel investors and venture capitalists) but may be unsuitable for traditional sources of funding for scientific research due to its radical or offbeat nature.[10] Grants are made through a competitive application and selection process.[11] Breakout Labs announced its first batch of grantees on April 17, 2012,[12] and its second batch of grantees on August 15, 2012.[13]

The Thiel Foundation supports outside groups in three main areas: freedom, science and technology, and anti-violence.[5] Some of the prominent organizations that have received major grants from the Thiel Foundation are described below.

Thiel believes in the importance and desirability of a technological singularity.[14] The Foundation has given over $1,627,000 to MIRI.[15]In February2006, Thiel provided $100,000 of matching funds to back the Singularity Challenge donation drive of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (then known as the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence). Additionally, he joined the Institute's advisory board and participated in the May2006 Singularity Summit at Stanford as well as at the 2011Summit held in New York City.

In May2007, Thiel provided half of the $400,000 matching funds for the annual Singularity Challenge donation drive.

The organization was a participant in the Breakthrough Philanthropy conference (November2010) and the Fast Forward conference (December2011).

In September2006, Thiel announced that he would donate $3.5million to foster anti-aging research through the Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation.[16] He gave the following reasons for his pledge: "Rapid advances in biological science foretell of a treasure trove of discoveries this century, including dramatically improved health and longevity for all. Im backing Dr. [Aubrey] de Grey, because I believe that his revolutionary approach to aging research will accelerate this process, allowing many people alive today to enjoy radically longer and healthier lives for themselves and their loved ones."

The Thiel Foundation supports the research of the SENSFoundation, headed by Dr.deGrey, that is working to achieve the reversal of biological aging. The Thiel Foundation also supports the work of anti-aging researcher Cynthia Kenyon.[17]

On April15,2008, Thiel pledged $500,000 to the new Seasteading Institute, directed by Patri Friedman, whose mission is "to establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems."[18] In February 2010 he provided a subsequent grant of $250,000, with an additional $100,000 in matching funds.[19]

In2011, Thiel was reported as having given a total of $1.25million to the Seasteading Institute.[20]

The Thiel Foundation is also a supporter of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which promotes the right of journalists to report the news freely without fear of reprisal,[21] and the Human Rights Foundation, which organizes the Oslo Freedom Forum.[22]

Thiel has also supported the life extension group, the Methuselah Foundation, founded by Aubrey De Grey.[23]

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How to Start a New Country 1729

Posted: at 11:09 pm

@jackbutcher: From Nations to Nodes.

Why Start a New Country?How to Start a New Country?1. Election2. Revolution3. War4. Micronations5. Seasteading6. Space7. Cloud CountriesMinimum Necessary InnovationWhat Counts as a New Country?

We want to be able to peacefully start a new country for the same reason we want a bare plot of earth, a blank sheet of paper, an empty text buffer, a fresh startup, or a clean slate. Because we want to build something new without historical constraint.

The financial demand for a clean slate is clear. People buy millions of acres of vacant land and incorporate hundreds of thousands of new companies each year, spending billions just to get that fresh start. And now that it is possible to start not just new companies but new communities and even new currencies, we see people flocking to create those as well.

The societal value of a clean slate is also clear. In the technology sector alone, the ability to form new companies has created literally trillions of dollars in wealth over the past few decades. Indeed, if we imagine a world where you couldn't just obtain a blank sheet of paper but had to erase an older one, where you couldn't just acquire bare land but had to knock down a standing building, where you couldn't just create a new company but had to reform an existing firm, we imagine endless conflict over scarce resources.

Perhaps we don't have to think too hard to imagine this world. It resembles our own. In the distant past people could only write on clay tablets, in the recent past they were executed for contemplating entrepreneurship, and in the immediate present they are arguing over replacing an ancient gas station. In these times and places, making a fresh start was technologically infeasible, politically impossible, or judicially punishable.

And that's where we are today with countries, with cities, with nations, with governments, and with much of the physical world. Because the brand new is unthinkable, we fight over the old. But perhaps we can change that.

There are at least six ways to start new countries that have been publicly discussed. Three are conventional and three are unconventional. We will introduce them only to deprioritize them all in favor of a seventh.

The most conventional way to start a new country involves winning sufficient power in an election to either (a) rewrite the laws of an existing state or (b) carve out a new one from scratch with the consent of the international community. This is the most widely discussed path, and by far the most crowded. Many people care about this avenue, perhaps too many.

The second obvious way is to carry off a political revolution. We don't advise attempting this. Particularly momentous elections are sometimes referred to as revolutions, though a revolution frequently involves bloodshed. Revolutions are infrequent, but everyone knows that they mean a new government.

The third conventional way is to win a war. We don't advise attempting this either! A war is of course not independent from the other two. Indeed, both elections and revolutions can lead to wars that end up carving out new polities. Like a revolution, a war is infrequent and undesirable, but again is widely known as a means by which national borders may be rewritten.

Now we get to the unconventional. The most obvious of the unconventional approaches and the one most people think of when they hear the concept of "starting a new country" occurs when an eccentric plants a flag on an offshore platform or disputed patch of dirt and declares themselves king of nothing. If the issue with elections is that too many people care about them, the issue with these so-called micronations is that too few people care. Because a state (like a currency) is an inherently social affair, a few people in the middle of nowhere won't be able to organize a military, enforce laws, or be recognized by other nations. Moreover, while an existing state may be content to let people harmlessly LARP a fake country in their backyard, an actual threat to sovereignty typically produces a response with real guns, whether that be the Falklands or Sakhalin.

Here we start to get interesting. Conceived by Patri Friedman and backed by Peter Thiel, seasteading essentially starts with the observation that cruise ships exist, and asks whether we could move from a few weeks on the water at a time to semi-permanent habitation on international waters (with frequent docking, of course). As the cost of cruise ships has fallen recently, this approach is becoming more feasible. But we haven't yet seen a working example.

Perhaps the most prestigious of the start-a-new-country paths is the idea of colonizing other planets. Unlike seasteading or micronations, space exploration started at the government level and has been glamorized in many movies and TV shows, so it enjoys a higher degree of social acceptability. People mainly think of it as currently technically infeasible rather than outright crazy. Elon Musk's SpaceX is one entity seriously contemplating the logistics of starting a new state on Mars.

And finally we arrive at our preferred method: the cloud country. Our idea is to proceed cloud first, land last. Rather than starting with the physical territory, we start with the digital community. We recruit online for a group of people interested in founding a new virtual social network, a new city, and eventually a new country. We build the embryonic state as an open source project, we organize our internal economy around remote work, we cultivate in-person levels of civility, we simulate architecture in VR, and we create art and literature that reflects our values.

Over time we eventually crowdfund territory in the real world, but not necessarily contiguous territory. Because an under-appreciated fact is that the internet allows us to network enclaves. Put another way, a cloud community need not acquire all its territory in one place at one time. It can connect a thousand apartments, a hundred houses, and a dozen cul-de-sacs in different cities into a new kind of fractal polity with its capital in the cloud. Over time, community members migrate between these enclaves and crowdfund territory nearby, with every individual dwelling and group house presenting an independent opportunity for expansion.

What we've described thus far is much like the concept of ethnic diasporas, which are internationally dispersed but connected by communication channels with each other and the motherland. The twist is that our version is a reverse diaspora: a community that forms first on the internet, builds a culture online, and only then comes together in person to build dwellings and structures. In a sense you can think of each physical outpost of this digital community as a cloud embassy, similar to the grassroots Bitcoin embassies that have arisen around the world. New recruits can come to either the virtual or physical environment, beta test, and decide to leave or stay.

Now, with all this talk of embassies and countries one might well contend that cloud countries, like the aforementioned micronations, are also just a LARP. Unlike micronations, however, they are set up to be a scaled LARP, a feat of imagination practiced by large numbers of people at the same time. And the experience of cryptocurrencies over the last decade shows us just how powerful such a shared LARP can be.

Let's pause and summarize for a second. The main difference between the seventh method (cloud countries) and the previous six (election, revolution, war, micronations, seasteading, and space) is that it straddles the boundary of practicality and impracticality. No one can claim that it's infeasible to build million person online communities or billion dollar digital currencies, or that it's physically impossible to architect buildings in VR and then crowdfund them. The cloud country concept "just" requires stacking together many existing technologies, rather than inventing new ones like Mars-capable rockets or permanent-habitation seasteads. Yet at the same time it avoids the obvious pathways of election, revolution, and war all of which are ugly and none of which provide much venue for individual initiative.

In other words, the cloud country concept takes the most robust existing tech stack we have namely the suite of technologies built around the internet to route around political roadblocks, without waiting for future physical innovation.

Having outlined these seven methods, the careful reader will notice that we played a bit fast and loose with the definition of what a "new country" is.

First, what do we mean by a new country? One definition is that starting a new country means settling a wholly new territory, like colonizing Mars. Another definition is that simply changing the form of government actually changes the country, like going from the Second French Republic to the Second French Empire. Rather than using either this strict or loose definition, we will use both numerical and societal definitions of a new country.

The numerical definition begins with visualizing a nationrealestatepop.com site similar to coinmarketcap.com, where the number of cloud country members, the acreage of real estate owned by those members, and the on-chain GDP are tracked in realtime. Eventually a cloud country of 5M people worldwide with thousands of square miles of (discontiguous) community-owned land and billions in annual income demands recognition.

This in turn leads us to the societal definition: a new country is a new member of the United Nations, one that is internationally recognized by other countries as a legitimate polity capable of self-determination.

This combination of absolute and relative metrics matches the emergence of cryptocurrency. Initially ignored, then mocked as an obvious failure, within five years after its invention Bitcoin attained a billion dollar market capitalization (a numerical success) and was subsequently listed on CNBC and Bloomberg alongside blue chip stocks (a form of societal recognition). At each step Bitcoin could keep ascending numerically on its own, with greater societal recognition following in its wake; by 2020 it had changed the trajectory of the People's Bank of China, the IMF, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and the World Bank.

Cryptocurrency was able to achieve these heights because money has both technical and political aspects. The numbers could be piled up before the societal accolades followed. Once Bitcoin had proven that it couldn't be easily counterfeited or hacked, the shared belief of the tens of millions of cryptocurrency holders worldwide was enough to get BTC from a market cap of $0 to a market cap of $1T+, and from there to a listing on every Bloomberg Terminal.

Could a sufficiently robust cloud country with, say, 1-10M committed digital citizens, provable cryptocurrency reserves, and physical holdings all over the earth similarly achieve societal recognition from the United Nations? A cloud country with a population of this size would actually fit right in the middle of the pack globally, as out of the 193 UN-recognized sovereign states approximately 20% of existing countries have a population of less than 1M and ~55% have a population of less than 10M. This includes many countries people typically think of as "real", like Luxembourg (615k), Cyprus (1.18M), Estonia (1.3M), New Zealand (4.7M), Ireland (4.8M), Singapore (5.8M), and so on.

These "user counts" are surprisingly small numbers by tech standards. Of course, mere quantity isn't everything. The strength of affiliation to our hypothetical cloud country matters, as does the time spent on the property, the percentage of net worth stored in the currency, and the fraction of contacts found in the community.

Still, once we remember that Facebook has 3B users, Twitter has 300M, and many individual influencers have more than 1M followers, it starts to be not too crazy to imagine we can build a 1-10M person social network with a genuine sense of national consciousness, an integrated cryptocurrency, and a plan to crowdfund many pieces of territory around the world. With the internet, we can digitally sew these disjoint enclaves together into a new kind of polity, a network state.

The next step is to describe exactly how we might go about this.

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How to Start a New Country 1729

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Google will make it easier to separate your work and personal life on Android – The Verge

Posted: at 11:09 pm

Googles Work Profile tool for Android, which lets you hide your work apps and data with the flip of a switch and keeps your personal phone use safe from your company, will be coming to more users next year. According to a blog post from the company, currently, the feature is limited to phones that your organization manages, but Google says itll start to become available to people using Google Workspace in 2022. After that, itll branch out with the ultimate goal of letting anyone using Android for work flip a switch to make their business apps disappear.

The ability to turn off work, especially when many of us are working remotely, is sorely needed. My colleague Monica Chin recently wrote a great argument for why you should have a personal laptop and a work laptop that you can close at the end of the day (and that doesnt expose your business to your company). Its nice to see Google making its software equivalent of that available to more people because while having two phones really cements the work / life walls, its just not practical for most (and could honestly be a bit of a headache).

Google also says that its working with identity and single sign-on providers Ping, Okta (choice of The Verges IT department), and Forgerock to improve security when users access their companys content. The company wants to have users authenticate in its Custom Tabs system, rather than a WebView, making the experience faster for employees and allowing providers like Okta to access more of the phones security information.

Googles focus on security, which includes pushing the Android Management API that comes with Androids recommended requirements set by default and lets enterprises get new features quickly, isnt just talk, either. Its also launched a bug bounty specifically for Android Enterprise, which will pay up to $250,000 if youre able to find a major vulnerability on Pixel devices running Googles business-focused software.

The focus on security, combined with the other improvements weve covered, makes it seem like Googles focusing on making Android more suitable for the future where many of us work remotely an especially relevant focus for the company, which is planning on (eventually) implementing a hybrid work system for its own employees.

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Googles app privacy briefings go live in the Play Store in February 2022 – The Verge

Posted: at 11:09 pm

Google is one step closer to launching its new data privacy section for Play Store apps. App developers can now fill out the relevant details via Googles new Data safety form on the Play Console. The company says the required information will be visible to users from February 2022 and mandatory for developers to submit by April that same year.

This new feature was announced back in May, after Apple started showing similar privacy and data disclaimers for apps in the App Store last December. The data section is supposed to give consumers a quick and simple overview of what apps are doing with their information. Developers will be encouraged to tell users the following:

Developers can now enter this information via the Google Play Console, and Google has added guides for developers to help them navigate this new requirement. Following our common protocols, well begin gradual rollout today and expect to expand access to everyone within a couple of weeks, said Google in a blog post.

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Snap stock plummets as it blames Apple and the supply chain for sales miss – MarketWatch

Posted: at 11:09 pm

Snap Inc. predicted a weaker holiday season than expected and pointed the finger at Apple Inc. and supply-chain constraints Thursday afternoon, and shares fell more than 20% in after-hours trading.

Snap SNAP, -0.71%, the maker of photo messaging app Snapchat, said privacy changes imposed by Apple AAPL, +0.15% on iOS devices hurt Snaps ability to target and measure its digital advertising.

Our advertising business was disrupted by changes to iOS ad tracking that were broadly rolled out by Apple in June and July, the company reported. Broadly speaking, these changes have upended many of the industry norms and advertiser behaviors that were built on IDFA (Apples unique device identifier for advertising) over the past decade.

While we anticipated some degree of business disruption, the new Apple-provided measurement solution did not scale as we had expected, making it more difficult for our ad partners to measure and manage their ad campaigns for iOS.

Read: Opinion:Snap points to possibility of Apple causing the long-feared ad-mageddon

In a 65-minute webcast Thursday, Snap Chief Executive Evan Spiegel described Apples changes to analysts as a frustrating setback, and said his advertising customers tools were essentially rendered blind.

Were now operating at the scale necessary to navigate significant headwinds, including changes to the iOS platform that impact the way advertising is targeted,measured, and optimized, as well as global supply chain issues and labor shortages impacting our partners, Spiegel said in a statement.

Compounding matters, Snap said global supply chain disruptions and labor shortages caused companies to pull back on their advertising spending, and a cautious holiday forecast suggested fears that advertisers uncertain about their holiday supply would advertise.

Snap SNAP, -0.71% announced a net loss of $71.9 million, or 5 cents a share, down from a loss of $199.8 million, or 14 cents a share a year ago and besting street predictions of a loss of 10 cents a share, according to analysts polled by FactSet. Snaps sales improved 57% to $1.07 billion the companys first billion-dollar quarter but they were lower than Street estimates of $1.1 billion.

Snap said it expects the Apple privacy changes and global supply chain disruptions to linger through the holiday season, typically the biggest of the year for advertising companies. Executives issued fourth-quarter revenue guidance of $1.165 billion to $1.205 billion, significantly short of the $1.36 billion projected on average by analysts polled on FactSet.

The fact that these challenges are largely exogenous makes the provision of guidance particularly challenging and complex, Snap Chief Financial Officer Derek Andersen said in the webcast late Thursday.

(W)e still expect these headwinds to continue to impact our business throughout Q4 as the adoption of new measurement solutions will take time, Andersen said. It is still not clear what the longer term impact of the iOS platform changes may be, and this may not be clear until at least several months or more after the ecosystem stabilizes and advertisers are able to fully implement the new solutions we aredeveloping.

Thursdays precipitous drop in stock erased recent gains; Snap shares are up 50% so far this year, while the broader S&P 500 index SPX, +0.30% has improved 21% in 2021. Shares of Facebook Inc. FB, +0.32%, by comparison, are up 25% this year, but they also fell in the extended session Thursday, by more than 6%. Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, +0.08% GOOG, +0.26%, Twitter Inc. TWTR, -0.61% and Pinterest Inc. PINS, -2.12% also dropped in late trading.

The results the first from a major social-media company during earnings season are being closely watched by investors in the other social-media companies. Those companies, like Snap, are heavily dependent on digital advertising, which swooned/galloped in the September quarter, according to Wall Street analysts.

Snap reported 306 million daily active users in the third quarter, edging an average analyst forecast of 301.8 million, according to FactSet.

On Tuesday, Snapannouncedthe launch of a global creative studio, called Arcadia, to help brands develop augmented reality advertising and experiences. The studio which has already teamed up with Verizon Communications Inc. VZ, -0.41%, Shake Shack Inc. SHAK, -1.54%, and World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. WWE, -0.05% will partner with brands and creators to engage with Snapchats millennial and Gen Z audiences.

Augmented reality is one of our most exciting long-term opportunities because it is simultaneously very early in its technological development and already used by hundreds of millions of people, Spiegel said in the webcast. More than 200 million people engage with AR every day on Snapchat, across a variety of use cases including entertainment, fashion, education, and the arts.

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Snap stock plummets as it blames Apple and the supply chain for sales miss - MarketWatch

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Brave browser replaces Google with its own search engine – The Verge

Posted: at 11:09 pm

Brave, the privacy-focused browser that blocks third-party ads and trackers by default, is switching to using its own search engine by default, the company has announced. The change will be applied for new users, and will affect which search engine is used via the browsers address bar. Brave Search will replace Google in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, Qwant in France, and DuckDuckGo in Germany. More countries will be switched over in the coming months.

Its a significant step for Braves fledgling search engine, which launched in public beta earlier this year, since most people just take what theyre given. The search engine set as the browser default is a valuable promotion tactic, and so important that the practice has become a significant focus of antitrust scrutiny. In Europe, Google now offers a choice of search engines for Android users after it was fined $5 billion by EU regulators for, among other things, illegally tying Google search to Android. Over the years, Google has also paid companies like Apple and Firefox to be the default search engine in their browsers.

As we know from experience in many browsers, the default setting is crucial for adoption, and Brave Search has reached the quality and critical mass needed to become our default search option, and to offer our users a seamless privacy-by-default online experience, Braves co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich said in a statement. He added that its search engine now handles nearly 80 million queries per month.

Although the switch will boost Brave Searchs prominence with Brave users, the browsers marketshare is so small that it doesnt even register against established competitors like Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Opera, according to data from StatCounter. Nevertheless, as of September 2021, Brave claims that its browser had almost 40 million monthly active users.

As well as boosting the prominence of Braves search engine, the move is a sign of its confidence in the new privacy-focused service. Brave Search is notable for being built on Braves own independent index of the web, whereas many competitors rely on a mix of results from larger indexes like Microsofts Bing (although Brave has said it will pull in results from other providers where it cant produce enough of its own). The company says its search engine does not track users, their searches, or their clicks.

Alongside the change in default search engine, Brave is also launching a new opt-in system for users to contribute their data and help improve its search results. Brave claims its Web Discovery Project collects search and browsing data in a way that cant be linked to individual users, and that cannot be sold to advertisers or handed over to the authorities.

Brave Search is currently free to use and does not show any ads, but the company says that it plans to roll out ads in its free version in the future, as well as launch an ad-free premium service.

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Google faces a fine of up to 20% of Russian revenue this month – Reuters

Posted: at 11:09 pm

The logo of Russia's state communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, is reflected in a laptop screen showing Google start page, in this picture illustration taken May 27, 2021. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/Illustration/File Photo

MOSCOW, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday it would this month seek to fine U.S. tech giant Google a percentage of its annual Russian turnover for repeatedly failing to delete content deemed illegal, Moscow's strongest effort yet to rein in foreign tech firms.

Communications regulator Roskomnadzor said Google had failed to pay 32.5 million roubles ($458,100) in penalties levied so far this year and that it would now seek a fine of 5-20% of Google's Russian turnover, which could reach as much as $240 million, a significant increase.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Russia has ramped up pressure on foreign tech companies as it seeks to assert greater control over the internet in the country, slowing down the speed of Twitter (TWTR.N) since March and routinely fining others for content violations.

Opposition activists have accused Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Apple (AAPL.O) of caving to Kremlin pressure after they removed an anti-government tactical voting app from their stores.

Roskomnadzor earlier in October said it would ask a court to impose a turnover fine on social media firm Facebook(FB.O), citing legislation signed by President Vladimir Putin in December 2020.

"A similar case will be put together in October against Google," Roskomnadzor said in emailed comments to Reuters on Tuesday, noting that the company also owned video-hosting site YouTube.

The SPARK business database showed that Google's turnover in Russia in 2020 was 85.5 billion roubles. A 5-20% fine would amount to between 4.3 and 17.1 billion roubles.

Google is currently fighting a court ruling demanding it unblock the YouTube account of a sanctioned Russian businessman or face a compounding fine on its overall turnover that would double every week and force Google out of business within months if paid.

($1 = 70.9450 roubles)

Additional reporting and writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Kirsten Donovan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Google faces a fine of up to 20% of Russian revenue this month - Reuters

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How to Talk to the World Through Free Translation Apps – The New York Times

Posted: at 11:09 pm

Need to have a conversation in a language you dont know, make sense of a printed sign or quickly translate a message? With Google and Apple revving their machine-learning engines in their Google Translate and Apples Translate apps, theres a whole new world of communication possibilities right in your pocket.

Keep in mind that computer interpretation is not perfect. You may get some awkward translations (and stares). Third-party apps may be more in depth. But these freebies can provide a general sense of things and become learning aids. Heres a quick tour.

Google Translate is in its 15th year and available on the web, as a Chrome browser extension and as an Android and an iOS app. Apple released its Translate app last year for the iPhone and added it to last months iOS 15 update for the iPad.

Google Translate supports more than 100 languages, while the version from Apple handles 11. Depending on the app and language, you may need an internet connection, unless the content is available to download for offline use. Audio pronunciation or other features may not be available for some languages. And read the apps privacy policy if you have data-sharing concerns.

Google Translate and Apples Translate are fairly easy to use. Just tap open the app and choose the languages you want to translate between. Enter text or say it aloud to get the translation through screen and speaker.

Both apps support a Conversation mode, where you can carry out a bilingual chat (in a supported language) with someone as the app automatically translates. And you can save favorite phrases for later reference in both apps.

Google Translate and the Google Lens visual search tool can use your phones camera to scan and translate the text on signs, in books, within photographs and in other printed matter. Just open the camera app, point it at the text you want to convert and tap the Translate button.

Apples Live Text feature, new with iOS 15, offers similar abilities. Point the camera at text and when a yellow frame appears around the words, tap the text icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Select the words to convert and tap Translate from the pop-up menu on the screen. You can translate text in photos the same way.

Youll find that the baked-in powers of translation extend to other compatible apps, too. For example, in Google Translate on an Android phone, tap the Menu icon in the top-left corner, choose Settings and enable the Tap to Translate function. When you find text that you want to convert, highlight the words and tap the Translate option in the pop-up menu, then select the language you want.

Apples Translate converts text in compatible apps on iOS devices (like the Safari browser) and can replace text youve typed with a translated version. Select the text you want to convert, and from the menu above, tap Translate; you may need to tap the arrow at the end of the menu to get to that option. When the full Translate menu appears, you can see and hear the translation and then choose one of several options, including Replace with Translation.

Dont forget that your virtual assistant can also be of service. The Google Assistant for Android and iOS has an interpreter mode to translate conversations in dozens of languages on demand. Just say something like Hey, Google, be my Mandarin interpreter and follow along. Apples Siri works with the Translate app to provide quick language tips as well just say something like Hey, Siri, how do I say, Wheres the nearest train station? in French?

While the apps provide hands-free interpretations, there may be times when you want to type in a language you already know (or dont). Android and iOS both include alternate keyboard layouts for dozens of languages.

To add an alternate-language keyboard in Googles Gboard for Android or iOS, open an app that accepts text input (like your mail app), tap the Settings icon, then Languages and Add Keyboard to select a language. Tap the three-dot More icon on the Gboard menu to get to a Google Translate option for your typed text.

On an iPhone or iPad running iOS 15, open the Settings icon and choose General and then Keyboard. Select Add New Keyboard and choose a language from the menu. Once you have added the new keyboard(s), you can switch between them by pressing the globe icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen.

And what to do if a native speaker tells you the apps translation is way off? Visit the Help & Feedback menu in the Google Translate settings or report it to Apples Translate Feedback page.

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Bill Gates says climate tech will produce 8 to 10 Teslas, a Google, an Amazon and a Microsoft – CNBC

Posted: at 11:09 pm

Bill Gates, the fourth-wealthiest person in the world, doesn't need to make money by investing in climate change. But for those who are looking to strike it rich, Gates sees plenty of opportunities.

In an interview that aired Wednesday as part of the virtual SOSV Climate Tech Summit, Gates said future returns in climate investing will be comparable to what the biggest tech companies have produced.

"There will be eight Teslas, 10 Teslas," Gates said. "And only one of them is, is well known today."

The electric car company led by Elon Musk has doubled in value in the past year and is up over 2,000% in the past five years.

"For the winners, anybody who invested in Tesla is feeling very smart," Gates said.

He predicts the gains will be spread out over a wider swath of companies, beyond the electric vehicle space.

"There will be, you know, Microsoft, Google, Amazon-type companies that come out of this space," Gates said.

Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975, while Amazon and Google were launched in the 1990s as the internet was taking off. They're now three of the four most-valuable U.S. companies. Currently, Gates is worth $134.3 billion, according to Forbes.

SOSVis a Princeton, New Jersey-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage climate-tech start-ups.

Gates invests in clean tech through his firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which also counts Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Ray Dalio as investors.

While Gates is bullish on the sector, he said that a lot of money will get washed away, just as did when the internet bubble popped, adding that today it's "like the early days of software and computing."

Gates said much of the technology is "at the lab level," and that investors will need to be careful in assessing the economic viability of the idea.

Also, many of the projects will need a lot of investment before they can be proven to work.

Some things like nuclear fusion, nuclear fission and energy storage require "hundreds of millions or, in the case of nuclear, billions" of dollars to test out, he said. "You're not quite sure whether" those technologies are "going to be able to contribute or not," he said.

In addition to hefty capital commitments, climate tech needs governments to set "encouraging policies" that facilitate the adoption of zero-emissions technologies, he said.

Investors wanting to put money into the space with less risk "can be part of financing solar fields," he said.

The more difficult markets to predict are direct air carbon capture, hydrogen, steel and aviation fuel.

"We will have a high failure rate," Gates said. But there are enough ideas that "we have a likelihood of substantial success," particularly with the right government assistance, he said.

"Somebody who can't afford risk or if you expect near term returns it's, you know, I would look elsewhere," Gates said.

WATCH: The future of nuclear power

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Bill Gates says climate tech will produce 8 to 10 Teslas, a Google, an Amazon and a Microsoft - CNBC

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How to use the strikethrough feature in Google Docs to indicate text that should be removed – Business Insider India

Posted: at 11:09 pm

Google Docs offers features that are essential for creating memos, tailoring resumes, and editing essays. A useful tool to help edit your documents is the strikethrough function, which places a line through selected text. This allows the person who's editing the document to show what information should be deleted before it's published, or it can be used stylistically to show a change of thought while writing.

1. Open Google Docs in a browser and create a new document or select an existing one.

2. Highlight the text you want to strike through.

3. Click Format, on the menu bar at the top of the page.

4. Hover over Text to reveal another dropdown menu.

5. Select Strikethrough to add a line through the highlighted text.

Note: You can also use the shortcut keys to perform a strikethrough on the highlighted text. Press Command + Shift + X on a Mac or Alt + Shift + 5 on a PC.

1. Open the Google Docs app on your phone or tablet and select a document.

2. Tap the Pen icon at the bottom of the screen to start editing.

3. Double-tap to highlight a word or drag the cursor to select multiple words.

4. Tap the Font icon (an A with lines next to it) in the menu at the top of the screen.

5. In the Text tab, tap the S icon to perform a strikethrough.

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How to use the strikethrough feature in Google Docs to indicate text that should be removed - Business Insider India

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