Creative writing is not for the faint of heart. It can be extraordinarily difficult. Even those who have enormous vocabularies can sometimes struggle to think of the exact word they need, and keeping references organized and all of the details of the plot straight can feel overwhelming at times. Fortunately, MasterWriter offers powerful writing, reference, and organizational tools all in one user-friendly program, and a two-year license for the Creative Writer version is currently on sale at 33% off....

Stuart Templeton said many organizations were still struggling to figure out what role the office should play within new, hybrid work environments now that knowledge workers were spending more time working remotely. Templeton made the comments after a survey of 1,000 UK knowledge workers by Slack found that many are going into the office and spending up to four hours on video calls. Slack said employers risked turning their offices into “productivity killers” if they couldn’t figure out how to make in-person working more meaningful....

Google announced the Google Distributed Cloud Edge and Google Distributed Cloud Hosted offerings at its Google Cloud Next 2021 conference this week. SEE: Google Cloud, General Mills expand cloud, analytics partnership Google’s distributed cloud products are built on its Anthos system, which is meant to simplify the management of hardware and virtual machines in Google Cloud, on-premise hardware, virtual machines in rival clouds, and edge devices where machine learning takes place....

For example, Google points out that the pie emoji looked like a slice of American pumpkin pie. The new emoji is a fully baked pie, with its contents a mystery. The new emoji will make their debut on Android devices whenever Google releases Android 12 later this year, but perhaps the best part of the announcement is that you won’t have to wait for Android 12 to get them. Developers of messaging apps can add support for the Appcompat API, and you’ll be able to see and use the new emoji, regardless of the version of Android your phone or tablet is running....

The 1,000 Languages Initiative is Google’s commitment to build an AI model that supports the 1,000 most-spoken languages across the globe to make information more accessible. “Language is fundamental to how people communicate and make sense of the world,” said Jeff Dean, Google senior fellow. “But more than 7,000 languages are spoken around the world, and only a few are well represented online today.” Also: I tested out an AI art generator and here’s what I learned Since the undertaking is extremely ambitious, the project will likely take many years to see fruition....

How to watch The Made by Google event will kick off at 10 am ET (7 am PT) and will be livestreamed on the event’s landing page on the Google website. The actual event will take place in Brooklyn, New York, but in-person attendance is limited to members of the press. However, the general public is welcome to watch the event’s livestream without any need to register in advance. On the event page, you can add the Made by Google event to your calendar to watch the livestream on launch day....

Google has two sync options available: Backup and Sync, which was built for consumer users, and Drive File Stream, which was built for business users. These clients are being combined into the new Drive for desktop. The change is coming to Google’s consumer users and to its Workspace users. This month, Google will prompt users to make the switch via notifications in the existing sync apps and will cut off functionality to them by September 2021....

In addition to charging the device, the dock will control all of your household devices, such as your home’s thermostat. Google said that, typically, tablets are “homebodies,” remaining home 80% of the time and only used at certain times of the day. With the charging speaker dock, Google hopes to transform the tablet from something that sits forgotten in your home into a device that is more of an integral part of your life....

The new fall detection feature will help Google’s relatively new Pixel Watch match the capabilities found on the popular Apple Watch. Coming just a few weeks after reports that the Apple Watch’s crash detection features are causing headaches for first responders, Google insists that its new fall detection feature will avoid false alarms. Also: Google Pixel Watch review: Google’s time to shine “Your Pixel Watch knows the difference between taking a hard fall and performing a vigorous physical activity or even quickly recovering from a small stumble – thanks to our machine learning algorithms and rigorous testing,” Google product managers Paras Unadkat and Edward Shi wrote in a blog post....

Deep learning programs, such as OpenAI’s GPT-3, continue using more and more GPU chips from Nvidia and AMD – or novel kinds of accelerator chips – to build ever-larger software programs. The accuracy of the programs increases with size, researchers contend. That obsession with size was on full display Wednesday in the latest industry benchmark results reported by MLCommons, which sets the standard for measuring how quickly computer chips can crunch deep learning code....

The attacks have been detailed by cybersecurity researchers at CrowdStrike, who suggest the campaign targeting Windows systems is the work of a cyber-criminal group they track as Scattered Spider – also known as Roasted 0ktapus and UNC3944. Scattered Spider is a financially motivated cybercrime operation, which researchers say takes particular interest in telecoms and the business outsourcing sectors, with the objective of gaining access to mobile carrier networks. It’s thought that the attackers initially gain access to networks by using SMS phishing attacks to steal usernames and passwords....

Watching that episode at the time, Olivia Widjaja never imagined she would one day end up doing something similar, except she did during her four month internship as an initial orbit determination engineer at Electro Optic Systems (EOS). “What [EOS] mainly do is detect space debris that’s about to collide with another object, and use high-accuracy lasers on Mount Stromlo [Observatory in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory] to track it and provide more accurate predictions....

Cybersecurity researchers at Fox-IT, part of NCC Group, examined over 700 negotiations between ransomware attackers and ransomware victims in order to analyse the economics behind the digital extortion attacks that demand a ransom payment – often millions of dollar in Bitcoin – in exchange for the decryption key. They found that if the victim has cyber insurance and that the attacker knows about it, then there’s little manoeuvre for negotiating for a smaller ransom payment, because the attackers will exploit the existence of the cyber insurance to cover the payment they’re demanding....

The best way to watch ESPN3 from anywhere is by using a virtual private network. A VPN is a tool that makes the platform “think” you are accessing it from a different location since you are assigned a new IP address. But not all VPNs are made equally. After trying more than 15 VPNs, I recommend ExpressVPN as it proved to be the best at unblocking ESPN3. I was able to watch sports events seamlessly and in HD....

My team and I tested a bunch of different methods and found one that works. You’ll need a phone running Android 6.0 to 10.0, GPS spoofing software, and a simple app called a VPN to do it. However, since Niantic also actively blocks VPN connections, some VPNs won’t work with PoGo. ExpressVPN is the best VPN for changing Pokemon GO locations. Its huge network of 3,000 servers in 94 countries are great for changing your location, and its top-notch security keeps your real location hidden....

Case in point, the swipe actions. Out of the box, Gmail is set up such that a left swipe of an email deletes it and a right swipe snoozes it. Or, if you’re using a non-Gmail email account, the left swipe will delete it, and the right swipe is disabled. Also: How to use confidential mode in Gmail to protect sensitive information So, how do you configure those swipes to do exactly the thing you want?...

Now, there is a caveat to this. Your best bet for successful printing from ChromeOS is to add a printer that is attached to another machine on your network and shared out. So if you have a Linux, MacOS, or Windows desktop, attach your printer to that machine and share it to your network. Once you’ve done that, adding the printer to your Chromebook is as simple as it gets....

Problem is, those important emails can easily get lost in the deluge of nonsense. Aside from unsubscribing from marketing email lists, what can you do? Well, Gmail does have a very powerful built-in feature that you can make use of to cut through the noise and get to what’s important. The Label system makes it very easy to tag emails such that they are easier to find, filter, and never miss....

Whether the other people in your household use their own computers or share a PC with you, your best bet is to set them up with their own unique Windows accounts. You can do this a few different ways – directly in Windows, through Microsoft’s Family app, and online at your Microsoft account site. Here’s how to create and manage family accounts in Windows 10 and 11. Also: The ultimate Windows troubleshooting trick For this to work, each person needs a Microsoft account so that they can log into any PC and so that you can manage their access centrally....

The truth is that deleting apps in MacOS is as easy as 1, 2, 3, literally. Just three steps separate you from more disk space on your computer. Here’s how you can delete those unwanted apps from your MacBook. Also: I put the Apple Watch Ultra through a Tough Mudder. Here’s how it held up How to delete apps on a MacBook You can also press Option (the ⌥ key) to make the apps jiggle....