Category: Uncategorized

Patients from poorer backgrounds are missing hospital operations because they can’t afford to take time off work, a leading health chief has said. Neil Guckian, chief executive of the Western Trust, described it as “an indictment on society”. Giving evidence to the Stormont health committee, he said Do Not Attends (DNAs) were a major issue…

Energy bills for a typical household will rise by £21 a year in January, the energy watchdog has announced. It means someone paying by direct debit and using a typical amount of gas and electricity will pay £1,738 a year, which remains high compared with pre-Covid norms. Prices rose in October and with a similar…

Digital wallets and payment apps — like Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, and PayPal — are facing stronger regulations under the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the nation’s bank and financial service watchdog. Through a new rule passed Thursday, the agency will have the power to supervise the behavior and policies of nonbank companies…

Tubi, the free ad-supported streaming service owned by Fox, has unveiled a new feature designed to set it apart from its rivals, such as Pluto TV and the Roku Channel, as well as put it in closer competition with short-form video-sharing platforms like Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.  Called “Scenes,” the feature allows viewers…

WhatsApp Business has grown to over 200 million monthly users over the past few years. That means there are tons of businesses sending messages to users — and some of these messages could be considered spam. For customers, the only option was to either let them send messages and offers or block the business account altogether.…

This morning, at around 7 a.m. PT, the social media platform Reddit experienced yet another outage after experiencing one yesterday afternoon. Thousands of users are currently unable to access its website and app. As of this writing, 51,221 users reported problems on Downdetector.com, up from the 47,000 users who reported problems yesterday. According to its…

Spotify is enhancing the audiobook experience for premium users through three new experiments: video clips, author pages, and the ability to add visuals that appear while users listen. These initiatives are part of Spotify’s effort to improve its audiobook offering and bring listeners closer to their favorite authors and stories. One notable feature being introduced…

WhatsApp announced on Thursday it’s rolling out voice message transcripts. The Meta-owned company says the new feature will come in handy when you’re on the move or in a loud place where you can’t listen to a voice message. A similar feature was announced last year for Apple’s Message app, a top WhatsApp competitor, with…

After several complaints about its algorithm, Meta’s X competitor Instagram Threads is making changes that will allow it to surface more content from people you follow in the algorithmic feed. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a Threads post that the social network has adjusted its algorithm to show less content from accounts you don’t…

YouTube announced on Thursday that its Dream Screen feature for Shorts now lets you create AI-generated video backgrounds. Up until now, Dream Screen could only create image backgrounds. The new capability is possible due to the integration of Google DeepMind’s AI video-generation model, Veo, which can create 1080p video clips in various cinematic styles. Users can…