Apple introduces more lessons for kids to learn about coding and creativity

Apple wants to build the coding and creative skills in your young ones this summer. Canadian kids can take part in things like Apple Camp, new weekly Kids Hours, and How to Get Started with Coding sessions. For those interested in the Apple Camp, it’s a free three-day experience for children ages 8 to 12 years old. The camp teaches kids about coding, illustration, movie making, and composing of music. In Apple Stores around the world, there are now also weekly Kids Hour that educates about different, fun hands-on projects like “Sphero Maze Challenge,” “Making Movies Together,” and “Creating Music with GarageBand.”

There are also new daily How To sessions at Apple Stores. The new one geared towards kids is the Get Started with Coding sessions. This gives children a chance to explore coding concepts and use the same code professional developers use. Apple’s Swift Playgrounds app for the iPad helps make coding lessons more interactive and fun for beginner coders from ages 12 and up. If you’d like to check out these lessons and sign up, you can find out more in this link.

Popular ‘GTA 5’ modding tool gets shut down, fans react negatively to the news

If you’ve used OpenIV mod for Grand Theft Auto V, we’re sure you’re already aware of the news that publisher Take-Two Interactive served a cease and desist order for the fan-made modding tool. And the developers took it down saying they don’t have the time to try and fight the order. This extremely popular modding tool was used not just create and modify content like vehicles, weapons, gameplay features, and effects, but it also served as an improved video editor. Take-Two reasoned that while they aren’t against modding as a whole, they say OpenIV threatens the security of the GTA Online mode. In a statement they say, “Take-Two’s actions were not specifically targeting single player mods. Unfortunately OpenIV enables recent malicious mods that allow harassment of players and interfere with the GTA Online experience for everybody. We are working to figure out how we can continue to support the creative community without negatively impacting our players.”

The GTA 5 community reacted rather negatively to the news saying there isn’t any evidence that the tool interferes with GTA Online. They’ve flooded the Steam page for the game with negative reviews and started a petition over at Change.org that already has over 20,000 signatures. The petition titled “Save OpenIV,” says “The closing of OpenIV leaves 10,000s of people without access to be able to mod their games, and leaves 10,000s of people without the ability to continue their hobbies.”

Source: SlashGear + PC Gamer

You now have the option to have Cortana as your default assistant on Android

If you rely heavily on Microsoft’s Cortana assistant and use an Android phone, you’re going to like the latest update. The app can now be your default assistant on your smartphone. Much like with Google Assistant, when you long-press your home button, it can pull up Cortana. And if you do enable it, you can carry over the actions you do on your smartphone with your Windows 10 laptop or PC. So if you miss a call, you can be alerted on your PC or if you create a reminder on your laptop, it’ll show up on your smartphone.

It’s pretty simple to change digital assistants. You just let the app walk you through the process when you install and log in. It’ll prompt you to change from the Assist app to Cortana. One downside is Google won’t let you launch Cortana by voice. You’ll still have to do it the old-fashioned way and tap on the button.

Source: Android Police

Google to rely on AI and human oversight to help stop terrorists

Google, like all the other giant tech companies, are under pressure to help get rid of extremists’ online presence. And the tech giant’s response to this includes four steps to help flag and remove pro-terrorism content on its pages, especially on YouTube. One way is to rely on its machine learning tech that can automatically flag and take out terrorist videos. At the same time, it’ll keep up “innocently-posted” clips like news reports. Another way is to build on its counter-radicalization system, which will show anti-extremist ads to would-be terrorist recruits and pull ads from extremist videos.

But artificial intelligence won’t be enough, as Google acknowledges. The company intends to “greatly increase” the number of people who are part of its YouTube Trusted Flagger program to help find these terrorist material faster. The company is also working with anti-extremism groups to help get rid of recruiting-oriented content. Google even wants to take on videos on YouTube it sees as containing “inflammatory” religious or supremacist material. These will come with warnings and Google will stop them from getting ad revenue, viewing recommendations, and comments. Whether these measures will work is an entirely different story, but we appreciate the effort.