Computer World

Facebook-owned WhatsApp has updated its privacy policy. As per the new policy, WhatsApp will start sharing users' phone numbers with its parent, allowing for, what the company claims, more relevant advertisements and friend recommendations on the social network. The move is WhatsApp's first update to its privacy policy since it was acquired by Facebook in 2014. Facebook Inc's popular messaging service WhatsApp announced this in a blog post. In the blog post, the company also said that it will explore ways for businesses to send messages using its platform over the next several months. However, it has promised that it won't sell or share your number with advertisers But in case you still not happy and don't want WhatsApp to share your number with Facebook, you have 30 days to opt out. This means that if you don't want your phone number to be shared with Facebook, you have a window of 30 days to opt out. WhatsApp has kept the policy change a bit hidden, but t...

Apple Maps  has come a long way since its disastrous launch back in 2012, but the Cupertino company still has plenty of room to improve. Three Apple patents published recently show how the firm continues to work on its mapping app, and hints at a few features that might be in development. The first patent describes a system for rendering 3D maps in data-less areas. Apple says it can achieve this by pulling data from nearby areas to create a detailed 3D map. A second patent dives into how the company could  create 3D  models by combining multiple data sets. For example, Apple Maps would use the 2D footprints of buildings along with 3D data  for their heights to create an accurate rendering. Finally, a third patent shows how Apple Maps could combine satellite maps with additional data for a “hybrid” view. The app’s current satellite view already layers on some data, but this version could include even more information. Apple li...

Earlier this year Elon Musk announced plans to push further into artificial intelligence research through  OpenAI , a non-profit research firm where he serves as co-chairs. Now the organization has revealed a surprising new plan to train its AI by forcing it to read through Reddit comment threads. MIT Technology Review  reports that OpenAI plans to run the project on a new DGX-1 supercomputer developed by  NVIDIA . The computer was hand-delivered to Musk by NVIDIA  CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. It costs $129,000 and packs 170 teraflops of computing power (that’s about as much as 250 regular servers). DGX-1 is specifically designed for deep learning, a branch of  machine learning  which focuses on feeding large amounts of data into an AI network. The more data the computer takes in the faster it will get. “Deep learning is a very special class of models because as you scale up the models, they always work better,” said OpenAI resea...