Urdu News

TikTok on Monday began letting users upload videos as long as 10 minutes, ramping up the young platform´s challenge to veteran titan YouTube. TikTok, owned by ByteDance in China, launched with a one-minute limit on uploaded videos, but bumped the cap to three minutes last year. "Today we are happy to start rolling out the ability to upload videos up to 10 minutes long," TikTok said in response to an AFP inquiry. "We hope this will further stimulate the creativity of our creators around the world." TikTok more than tripling the length of videos comes as YouTube and Facebook-parent Meta strive to counter the rival with short-form content options and incentives to creators whose posts draw audiences. "YouTube is still ahead of TikTok in terms of time spent, but its not immune to the ´TikTok effect´," Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg told AFP. "The gap in time spent between the two platforms is narrow, and longer videos could help TikTok...

Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc has set up a special operations center to monitor the conflict in Ukraine, and it launched a feature so users in the country can lock their social media profiles for security, a company official said in Twitter posts on Thursday. Twitter Inc on Wednesday posted tips on how users can secure their accounts against hacking, make sure their tweets are private and deactivate their accounts. The company tweeted the safety tips in English, Russian and Ukrainian. Both social media platforms are often used by political activists and researchers to disseminate information during times of crisis. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on Thursday also raised concerns about the spread of disinformation about the conflict on social media. With one click, users in Ukraine can lock their profile to prevent users who are not their friends from downloading or sharing their profile picture, or seeing posts on their timeline, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of secu...

Individual users should be allowed to take US tech giants to court for breaching landmark EU rules aimed at curbing their power, Privacy International, pan-European consumer group BEUC and a number of academics said on Tuesday. The call by the coalition of 31 groups and academics comes as EU lawmakers and EU countries thrashed out the final points of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) proposed by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager just over a year ago before it can become law. The draft DMA sets out a list of dos and don'ts for online gatekeepers, in effect targeting Apple, Alphabet unit Google, Facebook parent Meta, Amazon and Microsoft. It only allows business users to sue violating companies. "The DMA must enable users, both individually and collectively, to bring enforcement actions for violation of DMA rules before national courts," the group said in an open letter to EU institutions. While EU lawmakers are open to the idea, EU countries have so far ignored the ...

Getting infected twice with two different Omicron coronavirus subvariants is possible, but rarely happens, a Danish study has found. In Denmark, a more infectious sublineage of the Omicron coronavirus variant known as BA.2 has quickly dethroned the “original” BA.1 variant, which is the most common worldwide, but it has remained unclear whether a person could get infected by both variants. A new study, led by researchers at Denmark’s top infectious disease authority, Statens Serum Institute (SSI), shows that people infected with BA.1 can get infected with BA.2 shortly afterwards, but that it is a rare occurrence. “We provide evidence that Omicron BA.2 reinfections are rare but can occur relatively shortly after a BA.1 infection,” the study authors said. BA.1 and BA.2 differ by up to 40 mutations. While BA.2 accounts for more than 88% of cases in Denmark, cases have started to increase in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Norway. The reinfections mostly affected young, unvaccin...

Pakistan logged 33 new COVID-19 deaths during the last 24 hours, which took the country's total death toll to 30,009, the National Command and Operation Centre's (NCOC) data showed Sunday morning. Meanwhile, Pakistan's overall case count since the start of the pandemic also went past 1.5 million as 1,644 new COVID-19 infections were detected after 49,866 diagnostic tests were conducted. However, the daily case count was relatively low during the last 24 hours due to which Pakistan's COVID- positivity rate fell to 3.29%. As per today's NCOC stats, 3,653 people suffering from coronavirus recovered during the last 24 hours, pushing the active case count down to 67,658. However, 1,386 patients are still being treated in critical care units. from Health - SUCH TV https://ift.tt/kURmqwJ https://ift.tt/VDrYlyL admin.web@suchtv.pk (Web Desk) https://ift.tt/kURmqwJ

Following severe backlash from users, Meta-owned instant messaging platform WhatsApp is restoring the old contacts list, WABetainfo reported on Tuesday. According to the WhatsApp news trackers, the messaging app had introduced a new interface when you open your contacts list. “The new interface included your frequently contacted people and groups, and your recent chats,” it said. However, after the update, a lot of people complained stating that the new update was “horrible”. WABetainfo stated that people wanted the real contacts list in alphabetical order and the number of their total contacts. “Finally, probably after receiving bad feedback, WhatsApp is now restoring the old interface. It means you can use the old contacts list again,” the tracking platform announced. According to reports, the feature is rolling out today, but it may take some time before being restored for everyone. “Be sure to use the latest update of the play store that may help restore the functionality,”...

Pakistan ranked fourth in the world vis-à-vis the number of videos taken down by TikTok — over six million — during the July-September quarter of last year for violating its guidelines. According to the “Community guidelines enforcement report”, released by the video-sharing platform on Monday, it removed 73.9 per cent of content against which there were complaints that they encouraged harassment and bullying, while 72.4 per cent of videos found to be inciting hate were removed before anyone reported them. “In order to protect the safety of the community and to preserve integrity of the platform, 91.44m videos were removed across the world” between July 1 and Sept 30 last year, the report revealed. However, this number amounts to only one per cent of all videos uploaded on the platform and 95 per cent of these videos were removed before a user lodged a complaint. Eighty-eight per cent of them were taken off before the video received any views and 93 per cent were removed within 2...

Twitter Inc reported weaker-than-expected quarterly advertising revenue and user growth on Thursday and forecast revenue short of Wall Street targets, indicating that its turnaround plan has yet to bear fruit. Still, the social networking site said it made "meaningful progress" toward its goal of reaching 315 million users and $7.5 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2023, and said user growth should accelerate in the United States and internationally this year. Shares of the San Francisco-based company rose more than 8% after the results, but pared those gains in morning trading. Twitter has been pursuing big projects such as audio chat rooms and newsletters to end long-running stagnation and attract new users and advertisers. But the quarterly results raised questions about Twitter's plan as analysts had expected faster signs of progress. Monetizable daily active users, or users who see ads, grew 13% to 217 million in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, missing ...

The representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Dr Palitha Gunarathna Mahipala on Friday said that Pakistan has shown a good response in fighting against COVID-19 as 40% of the Pakistani population has been vaccinated. Addressing a press conference, the WHO representative said that Pakistan has an efficient vaccination system and it has always ensured the availability of 9% of the vaccine in buffer stock. Appreciating the efforts of Pakistan against COVID-19, Dr Mahipala said: “I was surprised to see vaccination centres available in the smallest villages, and it is great to see Pakistan carrying out screening tests,” adding that “so far, 25 million coronavirus tests have been done so far, which is a huge number”. Talking about the Omicron variant, Mahipala said that "even though it's just the flu, [people should] still be cautious". He further said that Pakistan faced fewer hospitalisations during the fourth wave of the pandemic as the country is making th...

Sony said on Wednesday it has created an artificial intelligence agent called Gran Turismo Sophy (GT Sophy) that was able to beat world's best drivers of the PlayStation racing simulation game Gran Turismo. To get GT Sophy ready for the game, different units of Sony brought in fundamental AI research, a hyper-realistic real world racing simulator, and infrastructure for massive scale AI training, the company said in a statement. The AI first raced against four best Gran Turismo drivers in July, learnt from the race and outperformed the human drivers in another race in October. "It took about 20 PlayStations running simultaneously for about 10 to 12 days to train GT Sophy to race from scratch to superhuman level," said Peter Wurman, director of Sony AI America and the leader of the team who designed the AI. While AI had been used to defeat humans in the games of chess, Mahjong and Go, Sony said the difficulty in mastering race car driving was the many decisions that ...

Popular television host and PTI MNA Dr Aamir Liaquat Hussain has announced third marriage with an 18-year-old. Hussain tied the knot with Syeda Dania Shah on Wednesday. Taking to Instagram, the television personality introduced his wife and wrote, "Last night, tie [the] knot with Syeda Dania Shah, 18." He went on to add, "She belongs to an honourable Najeeb ut Tarfain “Sadaat” family of Lodhran, South Punjab." Adding on, he shared, "Saraiki, lovely, charming, simple and darling. I would like to request all of my well-wishers, please pray for us. I have just passed the dark tunnel, it was a wrong turn." On Wednesday, after months of speculation, actor Tuba Aamir has confirmed she has filed for divorce from Hussain. Taking to Instagram, Tuba shared a statement, in which she revealed the couple has been separated for 14 months. from Entertainment - SUCH TV https://ift.tt/Af6pFZY https://ift.tt/GM9L3fx admin.web@suchtv.pk (Web Desk)

The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday he had met with the Taliban's health minister for talks on the “dire” health and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus revealed that he met Qalander Ebad for talks on Tuesday. Ebad is part of a Taliban delegation visiting Geneva for a week of talks with institutions and non-governmental agencies on humanitarian access and human rights, as Afghanistan's new rulers expand their international engagement. The hardline Taliban movement returned to power in Kabul in mid-August as the United States ended its 20-year war in Afghanistan. Since then, Afghanistan has plunged into financial chaos, with inflation and unemployment surging, while the halting of aid has triggered a humanitarian crisis in a country already devastated by decades of war. Tedros had already met Ebad during his visit to Kabul in September 2021 in the wake of the Taliban takeover. “Despite some improvements s...

Jeff Bezos is determined to conquer aging and has started a new anti-aging company called Altos Labs, recruiting Hal Barron from GlaxoSmithKline to lead the research. Science however, still trying to piece together what causes aging and its effects. According to science, reports The Conversation, our genetic material changes over time and is said to be causing aging in humans, dividing only twenty times in an elderly person, compared to eighty to ninety times in a newborn. Along with these epigenetic changes, telomeres in human DNA shorten in length every time a cell divides. Immune cells, however, help stop the telomeres from shortening when they multiply. It is not decisive known what causes aging but it is believed that it could be a side effect of damage built up over time, possibly caused by metabolism or exposure to UV rays. Researchers still don't know if genes are damaged as a person ages over time, and this has not been proven. Aging sends some of the body's cells...

The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday dismissed a plea seeking a ban on popular online gaming application Players' Unknown Battle Ground (PUBG), in Pakistan. A citizen, Tanveer Sarwar, had moved the high court following violent incidents and killings involving youngsters fond of the game. However, the petitioner did not appear in court at today's hearing. The LHC disposed of the plea over the petitioner's discontinuation of the case's pursuit. The petitioner had contended in the plea that PUBG is creating intolerance in society, especially in youngsters who are addicted to playing this game. He maintained that the game was threatening to the life and health of the players and caused an adverse effect on their families as well. The plea sought an immediate ban on the gaming app in order to save the young generation from destruction. The federal government, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and other authorities concerned had been made respondents in the...

Chrome is changing its logo design for the first time in eight years. The difference is hard to tell, because the changes are quite subtle. Elvin Hu, designer for Google Chrome, shared the information on Twitter and initial look at the redesign in progress. According to Hu, Google has simplified the main icon by ‘removing shadows, refining proportions and brightening colours.’ If you squint hard, you may notice that the colours are more vibrant and the circle in the center seems bigger. “We simplified the main brand icon by removing the shadows, refining the proportions and brightening the colors, to align with Google's more modern brand expression,” Hu tweeted. “Fun fact: we also found that placing certain shades of green and red next to each other created an unpleasant color vibration, so we introduced a very subtle gradient to the main icon to mitigate that, making the icon more accessible.” Google has also created ‘OS-specific customizations’ according to Hu, who explain...

Microblogging site Twitter, which is quite popular among not only politicians, celebrities and other personalities, but also among the public when it comes to jotting down thoughts or to find out top trends and news. As we know, Twitter users are currently restricted to posting tweets only up to 280 characters, which is most of the time a sufficient character limit. However, MailOnline has cited a report suggesting that Twitter is planning to remove the 280-character limit and allow users to post lengthier Tweets. The publication quoted news leake Jane Manchun Wong as claiming that Twitter may soon roll out a new feature "Twitter Articles", which won't restrict tweeps from posting longer than 280 characters. Here is a screenshot, provided by Wong, of what the rumoured feature may look like. You may also have a look at the range of potential uses of "Twitter Articles", suggested by Wong. Exclusive articles Newsletter In-app UX On-platform conversation,...

The head of the World Health Organisation met Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Saturday for talks on Covid-19, including on the stalled investigation into the pandemic’s origins. WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, visiting Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics, posted a picture on Twitter of the pair sitting with officials in a meeting room. “Pleased to meet with Premier Li Keqiang. We discussed Covid-19 and the need for an aggressive effort on vaccine equity this year to vaccinate 70 percent of all populations,” Tedros said. “We also discussed the need for stronger collaboration on Covid-19 virus origins, rooted in science and evidence. “I welcomed his support to strengthen WHO and discussion about a pandemic accord to advance global preparedness,” he added. A Chinese government statement on the meeting said Li called for solidarity, cooperation and more understanding among nations to defeat the pandemic. On tracing the origins of the virus, it said Tedros adhered to...

Bollywood superstar Lata Mangeshkar, known to millions as the "Nightingale of India" and a regular fixture of the country's airwaves for decades, died Sunday morning at the age of 92. The Indian government has announced a two-day national holiday to mourn the legendary singer. Mangeshkar was born in 1929 and started her musical training early under the tutelage of her father Deenanath, singing in his theatrical productions when she was just five. Her father's death when she was only 13 forced her to take on the role of breadwinner to support four younger siblings, and the family eventually moved to Mumbai in 1945. There she pursued a career as a playback singer, recording tracks to be mimed by actors, and her high-pitched voice soon became a staple of Bollywood blockbusters. In a move reflecting her huge following, she was invited by the government to sing a patriotic tribute to the soldiers killed in the 1962 Indo-China war at India's Republic Day commemor...

What if you could test yourself for Covid-19 using your phone camera? Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have developed a system that works in this way. Preliminary experiments suggest the result is as accurate an indicator of infection as the PCR test. The research paper published in the journal JAMA Network Open, explains that ‘smartphone-based LAMP assay integrates reliable diagnostics with advantages of smartphone detection, offering an inexpensive diagnostic platform for SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A and B viruses that match the CDC RT-qPCR criterion standards.’ The researchers posit that the smartphone-based LAMP assay offers the potential to provide a critical tool to mitigate further stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the LAMP assay can be readily engineered to address novel CoV-2 variants and other pathogens with pandemic potential, including influenza. The method as ascertained by Cnet, requires test-takers to download the app developed b...

Facebook's parent firm Meta on Wednesday delivered a gloomy mix of a sharper-than-expected drop in profit, a decrease in users and threats to its ad business that plunged shares some 22 per cent in after-hours trading. Already jittery markets have punished pandemic-era darlings including Netflix for disappointing results, with Meta getting a taste of that after its $10.3 billion quarterly profit and daily user-growth fell short of expectations. Yet the signature Facebook platform also reported losing roughly one million daily users globally between the last two quarters of 2021 — a tiny number on an app with nearly two billion daily users, but a potentially worrying signal of stagnation. CFO Dave Weiner told analysts that user growth was impacted by “headwinds” including disproportionate growth in the Asia-Pacific during the pandemic that has slowed and an increase in mobile data prices in India. “In addition to these factors, we believe competitive services are negatively im...

As reported earlier, popular messaging application WhatsApp was working on extending the time limit to delete messages for everyone in chats. Currently, WhatsApp allows you to delete messages that are up to 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds old. It was said that the company will soon roll out a new time limit of 7 days and 8 minutes.  However, according to the latest news, WhatsApp is planning to use a different and shorter time limit for the feature.  Now, the messaging app may allow users to delete messages for everyone within two days and 12 hours. One of the possible reasons for WhatsApp abandoning its plans to extend the time limit for deleting messages to one week is that it is highly unlikely that the recipient does not open or receive the message for a week. Another could be that the sender would have made their mind to delete the message rather earlier than wanting to delete a very old message. The new time limit is not yet available to the users since it is s...

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan wants the public to stop being lazy and get a booster shot if they haven't already, as Pakistan continues its battle against the Omicron-driven fifth COVID-19 wave. He urged people to get their COVID-19 booster shots if six months had passed since they got their second vaccination dose. "Scientific data has shown that people need an additional dose of the vaccine despite being fully vaccinated for protection against COVID-19 if six months and over have passed," Dr Sultan said, while addressing a meeting of the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) in Islamabad. He said that earlier, the NCOC was only asking people to get the booster dose, but now it is recommending it again based on scientific evidence. The SAPM said that the additional dose is being administered for free so people should benefit from it as much as possible. "The biggest advantage of getting a booster shot will be that we ca...

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan wants the public to stop being lazy and get a booster shot if they haven't already, as Pakistan continues its battle against the Omicron-driven fifth COVID-19 wave. He urged people to get their COVID-19 booster shots if six months had passed since they got their second vaccination dose. "Scientific data has shown that people need an additional dose of the vaccine despite being fully vaccinated for protection against COVID-19 if six months and over have passed," Dr Sultan said, while addressing a meeting of the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) in Islamabad. He said that earlier, the NCOC was only asking people to get the booster dose, but now it is recommending it again based on scientific evidence. The SAPM said that the additional dose is being administered for free so people should benefit from it as much as possible. "The biggest advantage of getting a booster shot will be that we ca...