This experiment is part of a wider project to see how we can provide tools and help to people on Facebook who have interacted with or been exposed to extremist content, or who know someone who is.

“Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?” one of the notifications reads, a screen grab of which went viral on social media Thursday.

According to a screenshot shared on social media, the alert stated, “We care about avoiding extremism on Facebook.” “Others in your situation have gotten discreet help,” she says.
The user is then directed to a support page by the alert.

Another alert reads, “Violent groups try to use your anger and disillusionment.” “You have the ability to protect yourself and others right now.”
The user is also redirected to a help page as a result of the notice.

Facebook is sending users to a range of resources, including Life After Hate, an advocacy group that helps people quit violent far-right movements.

Over the last few years, Facebook has been blasted by detractors for failing to take sufficient steps to combat extremist content on its platform. For example, in 2020, the firm was chastised for failing to take down a militia group’s Facebook page, which encouraged armed residents to go to the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The company has also committed to do a better job of preventing the spread of false information and conspiracy theories. In May, Facebook’s independent oversight board encouraged the corporation to look into the role of its platform in the January 6 uprising.

The post Facebook is experimenting with prompts that ask users whether they are concerned that a friend is ‘becoming an extremist.’ appeared first on Information Stash.

Dr. John Batsis, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, remarked that the pandemic “actually promoted new techniques for remote monitoring, production, and development of devices.” “Wherever there is a customer need, there will be startups, equity, and businesses attempting to meet those requirements.”

Tyto Care, an on-demand medical exam company that aspires to duplicate in-person visits with home medical kits, is one company reconsidering televisits. Dedi Gilad, the company’s CEO and co-founder, came up with the idea eight years ago while his daughter was suffering from recurrent ear and throat infections.

Meanwhile, Sanford Health in the Midwest, the country’s largest rural health care organization, has adopted a similar strategy. Rather of adapting devices for remote usage, doctors taught patients how to record their results at home using the same tools they used during in-person appointments.

According to Sanford Health, “home monitoring kits” containing a fetal ultrasound monitor and a blood pressure cuff were distributed to patients with low-risk pregnancies, allowing women to use virtual care for nearly a third of their prenatal care appointments during the pandemic.

Other telemedicine startups, such as Kiira in Los Angeles, are focusing on increasing access to underprivileged areas. The company’s virtual care app, which links women to primary care providers, OB-GYNs, mental health experts, and more through phone, video, and chat 24 hours a day, seven days a week, aims to bridge the healthcare gap for women in college, particularly women of color.

Historically, black and brown people have faced numerous impediments to healthcare, including fees, access to care, and even access to clinicians of color. Students are frequently hesitant to enter because they do not see a provider who looks like them…. One of the things that has been absent for a long time is the ability to see someone who you can relate to and speak with a provider from the comfort of your own home.

Virtual visits can be conducted, prescriptions can be written, and lab tests can be ordered using the app. Kiira’s monthly fee is covered by colleges, so students don’t have to pay for it. It presently serves four universities and approximately 3,000 students, with ambitions to grow to 22,000 students later this year.

Spora Heath, another affordable telemedicine startup, focuses on offering a primary care network for African-Americans. The $10-per-month service compels its physicians, 90 percent of whom are persons of color, to complete “culture-competence training” and workshops in order to better understand and support the communities they serve.

These technologies are going to be integrally important in managing patient’s health now and in the future.

The post These telemedicine companies are transforming the way doctors will treat patients in the future. appeared first on Information Stash.

The Africa Blockchain Developers Call (ABDC) Pan-African Bootcamp on blockchain technology has declared its intention to hold a weekend conference on incorporating blockchain technology into Africa’s health sector.

In an attempt to execute comprehensive blockchain training sessions and promote the implementation of specially designed applications for different sectors in Africa, the Bootcamp, officially launched on 5 September, has taken on a host of African developers.

The Bootcamp also features virtual weekend conferences on many use-cases for blockchain. These conferences are aimed at encouraging creative and comprehensive discussions on the implementation of blockchain technology in Africa, including platform presentations by businesses and panel sessions on many Blockchain issues. The first meeting, focusing on Blockchain in Finance, took place on September 5. It featured a keynote speech given by Professor Anicia Peters, University of Namibia Pro-Vice Chancellor for Science, Innovation and Development.

The next conference, scheduled to take place on October 3rd, will focus on the theme: Blockchain in Health. The keynote speech will be given by Arnab Paul, President of the Kolkata Chapter in India. Several organizations and startups will also give platform presentations via their representatives based on medical use cases for blockchain technology.

Read More >>

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In the final pitching event, fifteen teams participated, but only seven were picked, adding $700k to the overall funding round for this class.

In addition to the funding, start-ups can also participate in the ongoing incubation programme at MEST.

Ashwin Ravichandran, managing director of MEST Africa, had this to say, speaking about the range.

This was the first time that our entrepreneurs were educated online and away from our campus for the most part, and I’m proud to say they came out stronger than ever. We are incredibly excited about the 7 companies in which we have chosen to invest and look forward to continuing our support and mentorship as they start their companies across the continent.

Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen
Welcome to the Final pitch of #MESTClassOf2020.

It’s been an incredible journey for these entrepreneurs and we are all so excited to learn about their ideas. pic.twitter.com/G43CEObSUA

— MEST Africa (@MESTAfrica) August 21, 2020

The seven startups include:

Shopa, a last-mile ordering and delivery startup for informal retailers in Africa.

Heny, a forum to explore new flavors and perspectives for young professionals by changing the way diners eat.

Boxconn, a network that offers companies and individuals access to a list of confirmed distribution partners nearest to them, instantly delivers packages from one location to another.

KPILens, a start-up that automates the documentation, tracking and assessment process for development organizations and makes it simpler.

Tendo, an online network that ties independent resellers to companies, aims to tackle two of the biggest issues facing Africa: unemployment and gender inequality.

Joovlin, helps fintech platforms and merchants increase their sales by interconnecting mobile wallet users and allowing them to transact with each other.

Eleka, streamlines onboarding procedures for customers that are fraught with lengthy and expensive labor measures.

Move In Rentals, Credia, Uyolo, VendoorPro, Trastea, Cornerstock, Colibri, and JidiTrust are the other startups that didn’t receive funding from MEST.

Last year, MEST invested $100k in eleven startups while celebrating its 11th year in business. The sum, $1.1 million, represented the organization’s largest single cohort investment.

And although the amount this year is $400k smaller, the selected startups will have the opportunity to enter the incubator ‘s portfolio of over 40 startups across Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.

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Navigating some of Gmail ‘s functionality can be a little frustrating. In this tutorial we will concentrate on Gmail ‘s Smart Reply and Smart Compose auto-completion tools, which are designed to save time.

Allowing a machine help you write emails and subject lines may make you feel a little weird, but if you’re willing to at least try it out for yourself, here are the ways to automate your Gmail responses.

Enabling Smart Reply and Smart Compose

To allow Gmail to generate responses and email text, you first have to opt in from your Settings menu. If you are a regular Gmail user (instead of G Suite enterprise edition), here’s what to do:

On desktop

• Click on the gear icon on the upper right side and find the Settings page.
• Scroll down to the separate Smart Reply and Smart Compose options and choose “On” for either or both to enable the automated suggestions.
• You can also choose to allow Gmail’s machine learning to personalize the suggestions based on the way you write your emails by choosing “Smart Compose personalization.” For example, if you greet your colleagues with “Hi, team” versus “Hello, everyone,” it will automatically drop in whatever you use most often.

If you use G Suite, you may notice that the option to toggle on Smart Compose is not available. Your G Suite admin must enable this for the organization, so contact the person in charge if you’d like to test this out at work.

On the Android or iOS app

• Tap the hamburger icon on the upper-left side to open the side drawer. Scroll down to Settings.
• Select the Gmail account you want to address
• Tap the checkbox on Smart Reply and / or Smart Compose to toggle the mode on

Once the settings are turned on, your Gmail is set up to suggest replies and help auto-finish sentences based on your writing style.

What it looks like

Basically, you just start typing, and Gmail will begin suggesting words that might fit the sentence you’re writing.

Be aware that it won’t always come on for every email you write. Because Gmail needs context, you’ll likely find Smart Compose chiming in when you’re responding to an email or if you’re starting emails with some generic statements like “Nice to meet you” or “Hope you’re well.” If Gmail has a suggestion, an opaque set of text will appear next to what you’re typing.

On the desktop version of Gmail, you can press Tab to accept the suggestion. On the mobile app, if a suggested word or phrase appears, swipe right to add it to the email.

Smart Compose can also suggest email subjects. Leave the subject line blank, and start writing your email. Once you go back to fill out the subject line, Gmail will offer a suggestion that you can accept by pressing Tab on the desktop app or swipe right on mobile.

Smart Reply for canned responses

Smart Reply works a little faster than Smart Compose. Instead of suggesting words or short phrases for you, Gmail will offer three responses that might suit the email you’ve received. For example, if you’ve gotten an email reminding you of an appointment, Smart Reply may suggest responses like “Confirmed,” “Thanks,” or “I can’t make it.”

If you are in an email conversation with several people, be aware that responding with a Smart Reply will CC everyone on that email. You’ll have to manually remove the people you don’t want in that response, so it’s best to only choose Smart Reply for emails you mean to send to everyone in the thread.

Should you actually use it?

Choosing to let a machine write your emails may feel impersonal, but it’s not designed to write the whole email for you. Smart Compose and Smart Reply work best when you use them to add filler sentences or quickly respond to yes or no emails. Plus, Gmail has gotten a lot better at suggesting responses that will make sense 90 percent of the time. (In my experience, the responses tend to veer toward affirmative answers, so they may not work best if you’re less prone to agreeing to everything.)

The post How to enable and use AI-powered Smart Reply and Smart Compose tools from Gmail appeared first on Information Stash.

When enabled, the feature allows your Smartphone to receive notification of likely COVID-19 exposure.

However, there is a disclaimer that the software is an API that can only be enabled when the device has installed a third party tracking app.

According to the statement, the feature will remain dormant until it is activated by a COVID-19 contact tracing app, which can be deactivated at any time.

Google and Apple therefore say that the devices won’t be theirs thus saying that the identity of the user won’t be shared with other users.

To ensure this, Google announced that “Access to technology will only be provided to public-health users. Their applications must meet strict Privacy, Protection and Data Use requirements.”

Still, app creators should be committed to minimise the vulnerabilities of their products.

On Android phones, the feature can be found in ‘Google‘ under ‘Settings‘ where ‘COVID-19 exposure notification‘ is displayed. For Apple devices, ‘COVID-19 exposure logging‘ is found under ‘Health‘ in ‘Privacy settings‘.

By design, this technology is meant to support the efforts of governments and private players that are building contact tracing apps. When an app is used to opt in, it generates randomly changing IDs based on location. Through Bluetooth, it periodically checks other IDs to confirm if any is associated with the infection. And if it finds any, it sends a notification.

For this to work, a person who is affected or has been exposed to the infection needs to share their IDs with the app, which will immediately alert all that have come in contact with them.

While countries like India make contact tracing apps compulsory for residents, only a few startups have made an attempt at this technology in Nigeria; this explains why adoption is low.

In fact, on the Google Playstore, there’s currently no authorised contact tracing app available in the country currently. Conversely, on the Apple app store, it shows two apps, one of which has already been disabled.

Despite some countries already putting the pandemic behind them, infection cases are unfortunately still increasing across Nigeria. Currently, the figure stands at 25,694, with Lagos state  — 10,510 confirmed cases — still the epicentre.

As economic activities resume fully in states that were previously on mandatory lockdown, this appears to be the time for the adoption of massive contact tracing tools to reduce citizens’ chances of infection.

Recall that before now the use of smartphone tracking and surveillance for COVID-19 tracing have been adopted across the world in China, Hong Kong, Israel, and even in Rwanda.

But there are concerns that this feature has privacy risks, disproving Google and Apple’s promise. Considering past events, this scepticism is not misplaced.

Google, like other tech giants, has at some point been accused of turning user data into narrowly targeted ads without consent. This is often possible because users are usually unaware of the data they are agreeing to share and the company’s plan for the information.

While these privacy concerns remain, we cannot undermine the possible positive impact of the tools this Apple-Google feature will effectively support. Perhaps, it is a case of choosing the lesser evil.

The post The Adoption rate of the Apple-Google COVID-19 tracker feature in Nigeria appeared first on Information Stash.

Universities like NC IUL is one of the few among many offering online degree acquisitions that are equally as accredited as the traditional, offline ones. Technology continuously improves the way we learn and the speed at which we can access huge amounts of information. Here is a quick overview of how technology has affected education and how it might be in the nearest future.

One of the most important aspects of technology in education has been its ability to create a global platform. Education with the help of technology has crossed borders globally and with a seamless transition. Online courses can be accessed by students across the world and people are able to have video conferences to offer a personalized teaching experience. Assessments are now all electronic and web based, making it easier for online students to receive results fast and effectively.

Remember carrying stacks of textbooks from class to class? Well, you can forget that now because textbooks are becoming digital. Students can have access to all of their learning materials in PDF files or online through their educational institutions. These eBooks make studying more affordable and accessible to students, increasing their ability to actually use the materials. This has been a huge shift from the reliance on paper-based books and will continue to revolutionize the way we learn.

You may not think of video games as a learning tool at first, but many of them have been designed to help students in many instances. Video games can help stimulate the mind to help with problem-solving skills by developing them to be more educationally goal-oriented. Even video games that are not educational on the surface may help us learn and gather information. This also goes along with mobile games. Many students have access to a smart device and can solve puzzles or learn on the go. Multimedia tools are also being used to enhance the educational experience. Videos and animation have created learning tools for the more visually oriented students making it more fun and engaging for those who can learn better this way.

Students are definitely becoming more engaged with technology tools because it is what they have grown up with. If you think about how most students in universities have been raised surrounded by video games, new gadgets, and the Internet, then you can understand how important technology has become for education. Students can access more information quicker from anywhere they might be with the aid of technological tools. What this shows is that the progression will be positive and help globalize education by creating a common language: new technology. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for our educational systems and how it will adapt to this encouraging trend.

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With numerous advantages over hybrid applications, native apps have ruled the game for so many years. It’s due to the ability to embed features brilliantly, to let the app perform functions in a sublime manner and to embrace the hardware in an ideal manner, which still is beyond hybrid framework’s competence. Cross-platform apps face a crucial choice in their development planning phase – should the application be developed as a native app, or should it be developed as a hybrid or web-based application? This question used to impact the amount of work to be done – namely, until recently, choosing to pursue a native approach for your application meant consigning your development team to simultaneously developing functionality in Objective C/Swift (for iOS) or Java (for Android).

However, this is no longer a consideration when it comes to creating a native app experience. Below we’ll look at using JavaScript to create a cross-platform native app experience by examining React Native and the combination of AngularJS 2 and NativeScript.

Native Apps:

Native apps have a number of advantages over hybrid and HTML 5-based apps. First, native applications are closer to the device’s processor, meaning that on average native code will perform better than equivalent code written for a hybrid framework. Additionally, a native app lets you build in some features that may not be available in your hybrid framework of choice, as you can target specific platforms with specific features, integrating with the hardware on a mobile device can be done right in the same set of source code, rather than having to include a custom module or non-web component in a hybrid app. Couple this with being able to provide an idiomatic user experience for a given device, and choosing to develop a native app becomes a much more compelling choice. By using a framework with a native component, we can further mitigate the costs necessary to develop the app natively.

React Native

In March 2015, Facebook introduced React Native, a tool built to allow developers to use the same base JavaScript code on either iOS or Android. As React was a set of functions with minimal external side effects and a tangential dependency on a DOM, Facebook was able to abstract away the use of a DOM as the primary rendering model into a pattern that allows for the easy substitution of native components instead of web views and HTML components. Thus, using the same code, an application can implement alert windows using UIAlertView on iOS and android.app.AlertDialog on Android, all without having to write any extra native code to support the UI views. Further, the capability of the tool enhanced when it was coupled with React’s speed, which allows you to build a super powerful cross-platform mobile application without making you write the entire code again. Couple this with React’s focus on speed and dirty-rendering, and you can build a blazing-fast cross-platform mobile application with only one code base.

AngularJS 2 + NativeScript

Kendo UI, introduced by the team at Telerik was intended to produce magical stuff (in this case hybrid and HTML5 apps) by blending it with the popular Angular framework. When used for hybrid apps and HTML 5 apps, this created a consistent cross-platform UI experience simply by leveraging the tools provided in the framework. When Telerik began working on NativeScript to provide a true cross-platform native experience, the dependence of Angular 1.x on tight coupling with a DOM for rendering posed problems when attempting to create a native UI map for Angular applications. However, with the advent of Angular 2, this all changed. Angular 2’s looser coupling with a DOM for rendering allowed the developers of NativeScript to perform similar tasks to those performed by Facebook when genericizing React Native – abstracting away view rendering and components so that a DOM was no longer necessary. As a result, Angular 2 integrates easily with NativeScript, allowing you to code your native app in a declarative style that can run on any mobile device platform.

Comparison:

The fundamental difference between the two, lies in the approach they follow in creating mobile applications with the help of the same written code base. Both of them have their advantages and disadvantages, which can’t overlap to dismiss the other. Let’s see what they have to offer. NativeScript takes a holistic approach, working to be a true “Write it once, run it anywhere” framework. This means that a lot of the UI elements used will be decidedly lower-level, as NativeScript is attempting to manage the UI in a transparent and repeatable way between the multiple platforms it supports. Add in the coupling with Angular 2, and you can create cross-platform applications that, through the virtue of Angular’s declarative UI focus, are more conceptually consistent than an application having to interpret between multiple UI paradigms.
On the other side of the debate is React Native, which chooses to embrace – rather than hide – its multi-platform nature. This means that while you can write React Native code in a platform-agnostic manner, you can also get down to the platform-specific UI layer. Stated another way, React’s goal is to abstract the business logic while supporting the differences inherent in UI rendering between each platform, while NativeScript has a focus on creating a singular development experience regardless of platform. Couple this with React’s focus on speed of rendering and execution, and you can easily create performance-focused cross-platform apps that can both run on the same code base, and leverage platform-specific components at will.
Which approach you prefer will ultimately be dependent upon the needs of your application – relatively generic database-powered apps will likely favor NativeScript as the UI is not typically resource-intesive enough to warrant a more platform-focused approach. And even in that case, the use of Angular 2 to drive the application’s architecture negates a lot of the speed benefit that React Native brings to the table. However, the use of Angular 2 with NativeScript requires adopting a traditional Angular architecture for your application’s code, something which React’s library approach doesn’t require. Additionally, with NativeScript being a separate project from Angular 2, this introduces additional dependencies into your application’s pipeline – a problem not as pronounced with React Native, which handles all of the cross-platform functionality in the React framework itself.

Conclusion:

Cross-platform app development has levelled up big time, be it NativeScript app development or React Native app development. Choosing between React Native and a combination of Angular 2 and NativeScript is, in many ways, similar to choosing between React and Angular themselves. React is designed as a blazing-fast lightweight rendering framework to be leveraged within the context of a larger application, and React Native continues this pattern of providing tools instead of patterns. Angular, on the other hand, is an opinionated application development framework that has a “right way” of developing applications in mind, something that the integration of Angular 2 and NativeScript carries further at the slight expense of deeper native device integration.
Thus the choice between the two is largely the same. Is you application focused on complex UI with lots of rendering and custom elements? If so, React Native might be the right choice for you. However, if having a single cross-platform code base with a declarative UI paradigm is more in-line with what you envision for your application’s architecture, then combining Angular 2 and NativeScript can help you realize the same gains you’d see in adopting Angular for a web application, all while maintaining similar development patterns and program architecture.

The post AngularJS VS React Native appeared first on Information Stash.

Many of the 20,000 European workers questioned said a steady stream of emails, messages and notifications kept them from concentrating.

Others said the way their employer deployed technology also stopped them being more productive.

One expert said many staff suffered high levels of technostress.

Read Full Article..

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