Technology

Paramount is shutting down its TV studio as part of a new wave of layoffs

Published

2 hours ago

August 13, 2024

Paramount is shutting down its TV studio as part of a new wave of layoffs

In the memo, Clemons and Cheeks insisted that while Paramount TV is coming to an end, “our ethos will live on in shows that will continue to be enjoyed by global audiences for years to come.” Last week, Paramount said that, in order to bring down its spending costs, it was preparing to slash its headcount by 15% across its marketing, comms, tech, and finance divisions. That plan was always meant to be rolled out in three phases, and today, Cheeks and fellow co-CEOS Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins shared in a memo of their own that 90% of those job cuts should be finished by this September.

“The industry continues to evolve, and Paramount is at an inflection point where changes must be made to strengthen our business,” the CEOs said. “And while these actions are often difficult, we are confident in our direction forward.”

Technology

A woman’s Facebook nightmare after her entire phone’s camera roll becomes public

Published

3 hours ago

August 13, 2024

Press Room

A woman’s Facebook nightmare after her entire phone’s camera roll becomes public

Imagine logging into your Facebook account to see every single photo (yes, even those photos) posted on your profile for everyone to see. We received an email from Deborah, who had this exact nightmare happen to her:

“I recently discovered my Facebook account tricked me into having given them permission for my entire camera roll on my phone. Everything was available in my photos for anyone to view. I had taken pictures of my double mastectomy. When I clicked on photos on my FB page, I was startled to see EVERYTHING. Now I won’t put any photos on my phone [except] my profile picture.”

There are a variety of settings on Facebook that allow this situation to happen and how to prevent this from happening to you.

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A person on their Facebook account (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

How to prevent sharing all your photos on Facebook

1) Camera roll permissions on Facebook

Facebook will request permission to access your camera roll for photos and videos when you use the Facebook app on your mobile phone. This allows you to upload photos and videos from your mobile phone to your Facebook account. There are additional options once you decide you want to share your photos and video onto your Facebook account: You can give it permission to share none, some or all of your photos and video, so it is important to be intentional when selecting your preferred sharing option and reviewing it occasionally to verify that the permission setting still works for you.

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2) Preventing unwanted access

If you want to prevent Facebook or any other app from accessing your entire camera roll, follow the steps below (before following these steps, make sure your apps are updated):

On your phone:

On your phone’s main screen, go to Settings
Scroll down and tap Privacy & Security (or a similar option depending on your device)
Tap Photos

Steps to prevent sharing all your photos on Facebook (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Tap Facebook
Select the amount of access you want to give your Facebook app (None, Limited Access, or Full Access)

Steps to prevent sharing all your photos on Facebook (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

On the Facebook app:

Open the Facebook app
Tap the three horizontal lines or the menu icon (in the top-right or lower-right corner, depending on your device)
Tap on Settings & privacy

Steps to prevent sharing all your photos on Facebook (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Tap on Settings
In the drop-down menu, select Posts under Audience and visibility

Steps to prevent sharing all your photos on Facebook (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Under Posts, you can select Who can see your future posts? by setting the desired level of exposure you want in the drop-down (e.g., Friends, Friends except…, Specific Friends, Only Me, Acquaintances or Close friends).

Steps to prevent sharing all your photos on Facebook (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

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Reviewing previously posted photos:

Open the Facebook app
Select the photo that you want to review
Tap the three dots (on the top-right, depending on your device)
Tap on Edit post privacy
Select the desired level of exposure you want (e.g., Friends, Friends except…, or Only Me, etc.)
Tap Done (on the top-right, depending on your device)

Steps to review previously posted photos (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Third-party apps:

Always review permissions for access to camera roll or photo albums when using other apps (not just Facebook)
Do not grant full access unless it is vital to the functionality of the app.

Even if you set your permission preferences, it is good practice to periodically check your Facebook privacy settings to ensure they align with your preferences, especially with any operating system or app updates.

HOW TO REMOVE FACEBOOK ACCESS TO YOUR PHOTOS

3) Profile picture exception

When in doubt, it is best to limit any potentially sensitive photo or video on your Facebook account, with the exception of your profile photo. This way, you don’t have to go back and do damage control on each single image. You can always upload individual photos while making sure the privacy setting of each photo measures up to your liking.

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Kurt’s key takeaways

Whether it is the embarrassing number of selfies you’ve taken or personally sensitive photos you took and forgot about, having all your photos and videos blasted for all to view on Facebook is quite a nightmare. Whether it is Facebook or another app, it is always a good idea to limit their access to your camera roll and check the privacy settings within these apps. Remember, you’re not alone in navigating technology, and it’s commendable that you’re taking steps to protect your privacy.

Have you ever experienced a privacy breach on social media, and how did you handle it? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.

For more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Cyberguy.com/Newsletter.

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Answers to the most asked CyberGuy questions:

Technology

How to save your online writing from disappearing forever

Published

9 hours ago

August 13, 2024

Press Room

How to save your online writing from disappearing forever

While the notion lingers that “the internet is forever,” it can also feel like it’s written on water. If you’re an internet-based creative, the company that publishes your writing or exhibits an online gallery of your work can suddenly fold (see: Gawker or Game Informer), migrate content management systems, or simply unpublish older work. In that case, the article you researched for a month, the story you carefully constructed, or the gallery of photos that you painstakingly put together could, in that moment, be forever unavailable. And if you’ve linked to your work in a blog or social network, that link has now become useless.

So what do you do? You can save a PDF of each of your works to a local drive, an online storage service, or to your preferred productivity app. You can create your own website to showcase your favorite works. You can use the paid tier of bookmarking services such as Pocket Premium or Raindrop Pro, which automatically save copies of the sites you bookmark.

Or you can archive and / or exhibit your work using a service created for that purpose. These archiving services offer a place where you can exhibit some or all of your work to potential fans or employers, and even (for a price) automatically find and save your work for you.

In this article, I’m going to concentrate on resources for writers and other text-based creatives. There are also resources out there for photographers and other visual artists, such as Flickr and 500px. We’ll cover those separately in the future.

The Wayback Machine can save copies of your online work — except when it can’t.

Screenshot: Internet Archive

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been archiving webpages since 1996, and if you’ve been putting your work online that long — or longer — there’s a good chance you can find it somewhere in the archive. However, not everything has been archived, and archived pages can be removed if the owners of the site request it.

You can request that a specific page be archived by using a browser extension (for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, iOS, or Android). The extension saves the page to the archive, allowing you to access it later, even if the original disappears. However, since the publisher of the site can, as mentioned, ask that the archive be removed, you may want to use the Wayback Machine to find pages you may have missed and archive them using a safer method.

In addition, at the time this was written, it was possible that the Chrome extension could itself disappear — when I last looked, a notification on the download page read, “This extension may soon no longer be supported because it doesn’t follow best practices for Chrome extensions.” (Part, no doubt, of the change in Google’s extension specification.) There are other, if less handy, ways to save your work to the archive, detailed in a blog written in 2017.

The Wayback Machine is free to use, although you can donate if you choose.

Authory can track specific sites and automatically add your contributions.

Screenshot: Authory

Authory is a long-standing app used by writers to preserve their writing. (Note: I’ve been using Authory for several years, ever since one of the publications I had written for decided to pull its archive off the internet and a colleague told me about the app.) Authory will automatically back up links to your material along with the actual text by scouring the online publications that you’ve specified; because it picks up anything you’ve written for those publications automatically, you don’t have to worry about losing any of your work. Authory also archives videos, podcasts, and individual social media posts or emails.

You can also use Authory as a portfolio to exhibit your content to others. By default, people who click on an article link in your portfolio are sent to the original source, but you can also choose to have them read it from the Authory backup — very useful if that source no longer exists.

Free plan: 10 items max, no auto-import

Paid plans: Standard plan ($15 / month or $144 / year) includes unlimited items, automated import of past and future items, searchable content, and more. Professional plan ($24 / month or $216 / year) adds custom domain support, Zapier app, and higher updates frequency.

Free trial: 14 days of Standard or Pro plan

Journo Portfolio can create good-looking sites that list articles, videos, and other media.

Screenshot: Journo Portfolio

Despite the name, Journo Portfolio touts its ability to be used by almost any creative who wants to show off work, including visual artists such as photographers and videographers. The emphasis (as can be guessed from its name) is more on creating a portfolio site than archiving, although, if you subscribe to its Pro or Unlimited plan, it will automatically back up saved articles, create an archive of screenshots, and let you import older articles.

And Journo Portfolio does offer a lot of resources for individualizing that portfolio: you can choose a theme for your homepage and, afterward, tweak that theme by adding blocks of content types, including images (with a gallery, if you so choose), quotes, maps, subscriptions, and a wide variety of other features. Its Unlimited plan even allows you to sell your art or other products from your site.

Free plan: A homepage with your name in the URL along with 10 portfolio items

Paid plans: Plus plan ($8 / month or $60 / year) offers a five-page site with 50 portfolio items. The Pro plan ($12 / month or $96 / year) adds the ability to store 1,000 portfolio items and do article backups as well as up to two collaborators, automatic article imports, and more. The Unlimited plan ($18 a month or $168 /year) gives you unlimited pages, portfolio items, collaborators, and more.

Free trial: A seven-day trial of the Plus plan on signup

Conifer is managed by a nonprofit arts organization and offers a robust free plan.

Screenshot: Conifer

Conifer, formerly called Webrecorder, is a web archiving service maintained by Rhizome, a nonprofit arts organization. This service works a little differently than Authory or Journo Portfolio, which archive screenshots or PDFs of your articles but can lose links and other interactive parts in the process. Instead, Conifer saves your pages as clickable “sessions” — including workable links — and organizes them into collections. According to Conifer, “viewers of a collection should be able to repeat any action during access that were performed during capture.” You can either keep your collection private or create a public listing of specific items from a collection in order to create a portfolio.

Conifer feels like a work in progress. It’s not as simple to master as either Authory or Journo Portfolio, and it doesn’t provide any kind of automated saving, but its free plan makes it a viable alternative, especially because it lets you save as many items as you can fit in 5GB of space, while Authory’s and Journo Portfolio’s free plans limit you to just 10 items.

Free plan: 5GB of storage

Paid plans: For $20 a month, you get 40GB of storage and the option to add more for $5 / month per 20GB. For an annual payment of $200, you get the same 40GB, along with the option to add the 20GB for $50 a year.

Technology

Forget drones, this street-smart robot could be future of local deliveries

Published

9 hours ago

August 13, 2024

Press Room

Forget drones, this street-smart robot could be future of local deliveries

In recent years, the e-commerce landscape has transformed dramatically, with delivery drones and robots emerging as pivotal innovations. Vayu Robotics has introduced its first delivery robot, “The One,” which aims to revolutionize how goods are delivered. Let’s explore the features of Vayu’s robot, its implications for the future of delivery services and its broader impact on the e-commerce industry.

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The One delivery robot (Vayu Robotics) (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Innovative technology behind Vayu Robotics

Vayu Robotics, founded in 2021 by a team of experienced engineers and technologists, is at the forefront of developing cutting-edge robotics technology for real-world scenarios. The company’s mission is to remove hardware and software bottlenecks that have hindered e-commerce growth.

The One stands out due to its unique combination of AI and low-cost sensing technology. Unlike traditional delivery robots that rely heavily on expensive Lidar systems, Vayu’s robot uses a proprietary vision system called Vayu Sense. This innovative system integrates low-cost CMOS image sensors with advanced computational imaging and machine-learning techniques. The result is a cost-effective, high-resolution robotic vision system with depth perception and object detection capabilities that can operate effectively in challenging conditions.

The One delivery robot (Vayu Robotics) (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Vayu Drive: AI-powered autonomy

Complementing the Vayu Sense system is the Vayu Drive, a proprietary foundation AI model for robotics autonomy. This model is trained using both simulated and real-world data, eliminating the need for HD maps and localization technology (Lidar).

The Vayu Drive operates similarly to large language models, processing multimodal inputs, including image tokens from cameras, instruction tokens for robot tasks and route tokens for road-level navigation. Its unique “state” feature allows for efficient processing of large context windows, enabling the robot to operate at 10 frames per second.

The One delivery robot (Vayu Robotics) (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

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Features and capabilities of The One

The One is designed to carry up to 100 pounds of goods and can travel at speeds of up to 20 mph. Its maximum range on a single charge is between 60 and 70 miles, making it suitable for both urban deliveries and in-store operations.

Measuring 3.3 feet in height, 5.9 feet in length and 2.2 feet in width, The One is compact enough to navigate various environments without causing significant obstruction. It can autonomously navigate through crowded areas, load customer orders in supermarkets and deliver packages directly to doorsteps. Upon arrival, it can open its side door and utilize a robotic arm to release the package, streamlining the delivery process.

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The One delivery robot (Vayu Robotics) (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

REVOLUTIONARY DELIVERY DRONE COULD BE DROPPING A PACKAGE AT YOUR HOME

The future of delivery robots

As e-commerce continues to grow – projected to account for 23% of American retail purchases by 2027 – the demand for efficient and cost-effective delivery solutions is on the rise. Vayu Robotics has already secured a significant commercial contract to deploy 2,500 of its delivery robots with a major e-commerce player, starting in San Ramon, California. This deployment marks a significant step toward scaling robotic delivery services across the United States and potentially beyond.

The company’s technology is not limited to delivery robots. Vayu is working with a leading global robotics manufacturer to replace Lidar sensors with Vayu sensing technology in other robotic applications. Furthermore, the company’s software is designed to be robot form factor agnostic, with plans to expand into quadrupedal and bipedal robot markets in the future.

The One delivery robot (Vayu Robotics) (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Industry recognition and funding

Vayu Robotics has garnered significant attention from investors and industry experts. The company emerged from stealth in October 2023 with $12.7 million in seed funding from backers, including Lockheed Martin. Kanu Gulati, partner at Khosla Ventures, expressed confidence in Vayu’s potential, stating that their novel sensing and AI foundation models address a robotic challenge with immense economic and societal impact.

As Vayu’s co-founder Anand Gopalan noted, “Autonomous delivery robots are only the tip of the iceberg,” hinting at the broader potential of their scalable robotics architecture to empower businesses across industries.

The One delivery robot (Vayu Robotics) (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)

Kurt’s key takeaways

Vayu Robotics has really shaken things up with its new delivery bot, The One. It’s not just another robot on wheels, it’s a game-changer. Think about it: This little guy can navigate city streets, load up orders in stores and even deliver packages right to your doorstep. Sure, it might take some getting used to seeing robots rolling down our streets. But if it means more efficient deliveries and maybe even lower prices on the things we buy online, I think a lot of people will be on board.

Are you ready to have a robot deliver your next pizza or grocery order? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.

For more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Cyberguy.com/Newsletter.

Ask Kurt a question or let us know what stories you’d like us to cover.

Follow Kurt on his social channels:

Answers to the most asked CyberGuy questions:

Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.