Mediabloid

Mediabloid the website where science and technology come together to offer the best articles that exist on the whole Internet about these topics.

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This is how your children skip parental controls

Marc had no idea that his two children, ages 10 and 6, were spending hours watching YouTube videos late at night when he installed the parental controls offered by Apple tablets. Although many parents worry about controlling their children's access to the devices they have in their homes by installing controls, on many occasions they are not entirely effective. We are talking about a digital native generation that is many steps ahead of their parents in computer skills and who obsessively look for ways to bypass the limitations.

In Marc's family, children can only use iPads on weekends in the evenings. Marc makes sure that these limits are met thanks to the Time of Use tool that is built into every iOS operating system. "One night I went into the little one's room and saw that he was watching YouTube videos. I was sure that the applications on that iPad were not working at that time and I was surprised," he says.

The most curious thing about this situation is that Marc works in an Apple specialty store, and he realized that his six-year-old son had found a bug in the control application that his father had installed. "I was able to see that from Apple's message application, iMessage, he could interact with other applications such as YouTube and preview the videos included in the messages. Apple's Usage Time allows messages and calls to continue to function without limits as in "security mode". "This very clever young boy had found that way to get out of control and I didn't even know it," says Marc.

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Google wants to dispense with the User-Agent in the next versions of Chrome

Defining user profiles is the basis of the advertising business: companies in the sector use all kinds of methods to collect as much information as possible in order to refine as much as possible the personalization of their campaigns.

However, at the same time, user preference is gradually going in the opposite way, that of preserving privacy... which forces companies to innovate and develop new technologies.

In this context, recent news can be understood as Google's intention to stop support for third party cookies in its Chrome browser: "The aim is to make the network a more private and secure site for Internet users, while at the same time supporting advertisers".

But, in addition to cookies, another resource used to profile users is the User-Agent. And the Mountain View-based company has begun to consider that it's time to do away with the latter as well.

[mediabloid]

Series that end, others that start, and more news

This last week has been very busy on Apple TV+. From series that end their season and others that appear suddenly, content that loses audience and another that returns, confirmations for future seasons and even a documentary of a mythical music group. Not to mention a lawsuit against Apple. All this in a week when Apple TV+ has received its first award in the Critics Choice Awards.

Series that end, others that start, and more news

Servant reaches his season finale today. The series directed by M. Night Shyamalan and focused on a couple that has lost their son has already ready its chapter number 10 that ends this first story. Although the news about Servant is her "season finale" this week, there has also been room for a lawsuit against her. Apparently, the director of a movie called "The Truth About Emanuel" has sued Apple and the director of the series because she has found multiple similarities with his work. Plagiarism? we'll see about that.

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How to stop seeing certain people’s posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter while following them

Surely you have a strange friend you follow on social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, who are a little... difficult. Maybe post too much or what he post doesn't interest you, so you'd like to stop watching it but without removing it from your friends list or stop following it, taking into account that in some social networks it is possible to know who is following you and who is not.

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter offer options to silence users, allowing you to keep them in your contact list or followed but without their posts appearing on your timeline. So, let's see how to do it on each of these networks. It's worth mentioning that the process is the same in iOS and Android apps.

On Facebook

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Windows 10 screenshots will have no secrets: these combinations allow you to get the most out of them

Take a screenshot It is very common today. A very useful function that is available in almost all operating systems and goes beyond the always used print screen that many have used since the beginning of the Windows era.

In the Microsoft operating system, as in the Mac, there are key combinations that save work by avoiding having to use the mouse to move through the different menus. So let's go through the main options to further express the possibilities offered by the screenshots.

Available shortcuts

Using only and exclusively Windows 10 we are going to give a twist to the well-known Print Screen key (Print Screen or PrtScr). This way we can capture the whole screen, but we can go a little further by adding different types of capture according to our requirements.

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What the richest people studied in every country in the world

Access to university education has become one of the best ways to predict how many richest people will have the Western societies. The gap between the most educated and those who left the educational system before reaching the faculty has increased during the last decades. And one of the best ways to predict whether a child will have more or less future income is to look at the educational background of their parents.

It is more or less clear depending on the country where one lives, but in general, in those countries where the effects of the economic crisis have been felt most, are those countries where it can be said that the social elevator has broken down, or is functioning imperfectly, more slowly, more stagnatically. A correlation can then be seen between greater wealth and greater university education, but this is not a perfect balance. Uneducated millionaires are everywhere.

The most obvious example is Amancio Ortega, the richest man in Spain, recognized as the owner of the multinational clothing company Zara, and one of the five wealthiest men in the world. Born in a remote village in the mountains of León, Ortega built a textile empire without ever having passed through the upper echelons of academia. This is a situation that is often repeated in other countries of the world, where from time to time authentic examples of the "self-made men or women" appear, who manage to conquer the system despite coming from the bottom.

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This is Rolls-Royce’s new giant aircraft engine called Ultrafan, which wants to achieve more efficient flights than ever before

Rolls-Royce is not only known for its legendary (and very expensive) cars, but also for its engine manufacturing division for the aerospace industry, both military and civilian.

The company aims to have 16,000 of these engines in service on military aircraft and a further 13,000 engines on commercial aircraft, an area in which they are now looking to go further with the creation of the Ultrafan, a giant 3.7 metre diameter engine that is set to be a particularly efficient solution for the future.

Roll-Royce and the Carbon fiber as a key element

One of the keys to this gigantic engine is the use of carbon fiber blades manufactured by robots, which have been developed by Rolls-Royce specifically for that work, during the last 10 years of research that the company has invested in that purpose.

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Hispanic Digital Library, the free digital library of the Spanish National Library

For more than a decade, the Hispanic Digital Library has been one of the most impressive projects of the National Library of Spain, which, despite being unknown to the general public, is no less important and worthy of remembrance.

Launched at the beginning of 2018, this initiative arises as the digital library of the highest library institution in Spain, offering free access to a worldwide documentary and bibliographic collection of enormous value.

In this enormous Hispanic Digital Library, you can even find sound recordings on perforatde discs or wax cylinders

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Even stray dogs can innate interpret complex human gestures

Dogs were domesticated 10,000-15,000 years ago, making them probably the oldest domesticated animals on the planet. This continuous interaction with the human being has been going on for so many years, which is what has undoubtedly led to the fact that there has always been a great deal of emotional communication between dogs and humans.

Innate to dogs, they can understand the most complex gestures simply by observing humans and this may have some implications for reducing the conflict that exists between stray dogs and humans.

Stray dogs

Understanding complex human gestures spontaneously, without prior training, is a dog skill, as a new study published in "Frontiers in Psychology" suggests. In that study, approximately 80% of the participating dogs successfully followed the gestures of pointing to a specific location.

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Some news from Apple in 2020 and more

We are waiting for the new Apple events and launches, the first ones this year 2020. And although there are no serious rumors to think about yet, there is one event that may well take place at the end of March, and that is the launch of a new iPhone SE and the iPad Pro that have been promised for so long on websites dedicated to making predictions about “the world of Apple“.

We are waiting for the new Apple events and launches, the first ones this year 2020. And although there are no serious rumors yet to think about that, we one event that may well take place at the end of March, is the launch of a new iPhone SE and the iPad Pro that have been promised for so long in the predictions.

But while this is happening, we can take a look at what the other media are saying about Apple’s news. So here are some of the things to look forward to this year from Cupertino’s company.

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Seven apps to create a time lapse video on Android

As wikipedia mentions: “Time-lapse photography is a technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much more spread out than the frequency used to view the sequence”.

Time-lapse videos have been relatively popular for a few years now, when cell phones were powerful enough to process them, so many cell phones include the feature in their camera app. However, this is sometimes limited, so it is better to use third-party applications for creating time-lapse videos. These are the best available nowaday on Google Play.

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Office is updated and Microsoft Word has a new feature regarding email mentions

Office has just received a new update within the Insider Program. Microsoft has released a new compilation which is already being distributed to Office insiders under number 12508.20000.

A compilation that focuses on Microsoft Word, as the rest of the applications that make up the Microsoft Office suite don’t get new features beyond the expected fixes and performance improvements that have come to Outlook, PowerPoint, and Excel have achieved.

Microsoft Word Office

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Happy 2058 of the Hispanic Era: why the Iberian Peninsula used another calendar for ten centuries

In Spain, numerous medieval charters of the “Hispanic Era” have survived, documents in which the kings of the time gave certain norms and privileges to a population. But these documents have a peculiarity: they are dated several years after the death of the king who signed them. Are we facing a massive forgery of documents?

Not at all, the explanation is simpler and more interesting at the same time: you may not know it but, for 1000 years, Roman Hispania and the kingdoms that succeeded it were governed by their own calendar, unlike in the rest of Europe. The charters, in short, are well dated, but not based on the calendar in force today, but on the so-called “Hispanic Era”, whose year 1 coincides with our year 38 BC (or “before the Common Era”, as each one likes).

Why the 38 BC?

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Jack Dorsey asks Elon Musk how to fix Twitter and his solution points to the “bots”

Jack Dorsey often think about the Twitter future, it is part of his role as the head of the platform, and although he refuses to provide an option to edit the tweets as historically requested by many users, but he is open to suggestions.

Specifically, those made by Elon Musk, the peculiar businessman in charge of Tesla and SpaceX, who has had to imagine himself at the head of the platform in order to advise his friend Dorsey.

"Basically, how can you tell if the feedback (on Twitter) is real or if someone is trying to manipulate the system?"

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Turn your MacBook into a typewriter with this great free app

Those of us who are a certain age remember very fondly the typewriters, which were a kind of precursor to the laptops we use today.

The truth is that typing is a completely different experience, both because of the sound, the touch of the keys and because of a key aspect: if you make a mistake while typing, you have to keep going and you cannot erase or correct your mistakes.

Many options to configure the typewriter

If you're looking for a similar experience in the digital version, a good option is to try Winston, a new free application for macOS that has been developed by Chris Messina (who claims to have been inspired by Ommwriter to bring this tool to life).

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Meditation and walks, the two secret weapons of Steve Jobs success

Steve Jobs' creativity is one of the most outstanding qualities of his genius, which Jobs enhanced through two very simple techniques: walks and meditation. Both allow us to clear our minds and renew our thoughts, putting a brake on our busy and stressful daily lives.

Steve Jobs' famous walks

The anecdotes in which Steve Jobs appears on a walk, alone or accompanied, are numerous. When interviewing potential candidates for a job at Apple, the length of the walk was a clear indicator of the candidate's value. The longer it lasted, the more likely the future employee was to be hired, perhaps because the conversation that took place was interesting to Apple's co-founder.

In Steve Jobs' official biography, author Walter Isaacson remembers inviting him to speak at a conference. Jobs declined, though he said he would go with him and then walk and talk. Isaacson said:

I didn't know yet that taking a long walk was his favorite way to have a serious conversation. As it turned out, he wanted me to write his biography.

At this time, Isaacson thought Jobs' request for a ride was "strange". However, it was already known to his friends, employees and acquaintances. One of them, named Robert Friedland, also remembers him taking barefoot walks on the company campus.

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This is ’Blendy! – Juicy Simulation‘, the juice maker game that collects as many downloads as bad reviews

Normally, when testing applications and games, the interest they generate and which is shown in the large number of downloads they get, is usually linked to the positive ratings they accumulate. Today’s case (Blendy! – Juicy Simulation) fulfills the first factor, as right now it is the most downloaded free Google Play app in many countries – such as the United States – or one of the most downloaded in others – such as Spain, where it is in second place.

The surprise comes when we look at its average score – 2.9 or 3 out of 5, depending on the day – and the amount of negative comments it accumulates. The argument of ‘Blendy! – Juicy Simulation’ also leaves us a bit surprised: all we have to do is put ingredients in a blender, prepare a juice and serve it in a glass. With this in mind, we decided to test the game to see what it is all about.

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