Cloud, data, and artificial intelligence were hot topics for several major players this week, including SAP and Google. We’ve got these latest developments and more in our Big Data Roundup for the week ended May 22, 2016.
Tag: Makes
IBM Makes Quantum Computing Available on IBM Cloud to Accelerate Innovation
“This moment represents the birth of quantum cloud computing. By giving hands-on access to IBM’s experimental quantum systems, the IBM Quantum …
Telegram pushes supergroup limit to 5,000 people and makes them viewable to anyone in the public
Telegram has announced a handful of updates today as the mobile messaging company doubles-down on its group-chat efforts.
First up, Telegram is pushing the upper limit of groups from 1,000 people to 5,000 people — this comes just four months after the company increased the limit from 200 people to create the thousand-strong so-called “supergroups.” These groups are distinct from normal groups — once your group reaches 200 people you can now elect to upgrade it to supergroup status which optimizes it for larger communities of people. For example, new members will be able to see the whole message history when they join, and when someone deletes a message it will be deleted for everyone in the group. Also, because supergroups can be particularly large, notifications are muted by default to prevent your phone from buzzing itself into oblivion.
Above: Telegram Public
In addition to larger groups, Telegram now lets users push supergroups to the public using a shareable short link, meaning anybody can view the group’s conversation history — but they’ll need to join before they can post messages. Group admins will also be given extra controls to thwart spammers, including blocking and reporting tools. Public groups are already live in Europe and the U.S., and will be rolling out gradually to other countries, though interestingly Telegram said that “several countries in Asia” don’t yet have the feature due to a history of “significant spam activity.”
Elsewhere, Supergroup admins can also now pin important news to the top of a chat, meaning everyone who joins for the first time or opens the app after some time away, will see the message. This is similar to features in other messaging apps and social networks, such as Twitter which lets you pin a tweet to the top of your timeline.
Founded in 2013 by Pavel Durov (creator of Russian social networking giant VK) and his brother Nikolai, Telegram has emerged as a major player in the increasingly competitive chat app realm. This is in part due to the company’s focus on encryption, while the app also offers a secret chat feature that makes it easy to delete messages or schedule a time for them to self-destruct.
A few weeks back, Telegram announced it had passed 100 million monthly active users (MAUs), representing a 60 percent rise in just nine months. While this is still some way off its competition, with the likes of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp which claim almost two billion MAUs between them, it’s still a sizable entourage of users. And by focusing on building not only the size of the groups but also the visibility, the company’s hoping it can maintain its recent growth spurt.
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Microsoft pact makes Baidu the Edge browser’s default search engine in China
Microsoft has announced a new partnership with Baidu, the hugely popular Chinese search engine. In China, Baidu.com will be the default home page and search engine for the new Microsoft Edge browser. Additionally, Baidu will deliver Universal Windows Applications for search, video, cloud and maps for Windows 10. The company plans to deliver a customized experience for Baidu’s more than 600 million users, featuring local browsing and search. Microsoft will make it easy for customers to upgrade to the official Windows 10 via a Baidu “Windows 10 Express” distribution channel. Microsoft isn’t abandoning Bing in China in its support for Baidu. According to Yusuf…
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This Guy Makes Art Out of Sloppy Photoshop Disasters
People spend years mastering the tools of Photoshop. They labor arduously to create seamless images with no trace of manipulation. Lucas Blalock labors arduously as well. But in his art, the artifacts of cutting, duplicating, and transforming become the very backbone of the finished product.
‘Destiny:’ Bungie Makes It Harder To Get Exotic Weapons With ‘Three Of Coins’
Last weekend, Guardians all over the world had a field day with a new item in Destiny called the Three Of Coins — a consumable purchased from Xur that raised the chances of getting an exotic engram from the next boss you killed. The thing is, it never specified which boss you had to kill, and so people went off to farm one particular low level Kell to reap the rewards. Don’t expect a repeat this weekend. Bungie has addressed the exploit in a hotfix by reducing the effectiveness of the Three of Coins overall. And so it goes as it always goes in Destiny: exploit goes up, exploit goes down.