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The word ‘bot’ is increasingly being used as an insult on social media

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The word ‘bot’ is increasingly being used as an insult on social media

An analysis of millions of tweets reveals the changing meaning of the word “bot”

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Calling someone a bot on social media once meant you suspected they were actually a piece of software, but now the use of the word is shifting to become an insult to someone you know is human, say researchers.

Many efforts to detect social media bots use algorithms to try to identify patterns of behaviour that are more common in automated accounts controlled by computers, the traditional meaning of a bot, but their accuracy is questionable.

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“Most recent research really focuses on the detection of social bots, which is problematic in itself because we have this ground truth problem,” says Dennis Assenmacher at Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences in Cologne, Germany, meaning we don’t know if detections are accurate.

To investigate, Assenmacher and his colleagues looked at how users perceive what is a bot or not. They did so by looking at how the word “bot” was used on Twitter between 2007 and December 2022 (the social network changed its name to X in 2023, following its purchase by Elon Musk), analysing the words that appeared next to it in more than 22 million English-language tweets.

The team found that before 2017, the word was usually deployed alongside allegations of automated behaviour of the type that would traditionally fit the definition of a bot, such as “software”, “script” or “machine”. After that date, the use shifted.

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“Now, the accusations have become more like an insult, dehumanising people, insulting them, and using this as a technique to deny their intelligence and deny their right to participate in a conversation,” says Assenmacher.

While the cause of the shift is unclear, Assenmacher says it could be political in nature. The team looked at high-profile accounts followed by each Twitter user, such as those of politicians and journalists, to classify users as left or right-leaning. It turned out that left-leaning users were more likely to accuse others of being bots, and those who were accused were more likely to be right-leaning.

“A potential explanation might be that media frequently reported about right-wing bot networks influencing major events like the [2016] US election,” says Assenmacher. “However, this is just speculation and would need confirmation.”

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NYT Mini Crossword today: puzzle answers for Tuesday, October 1

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NYT Mini Crossword today: puzzle answers for Saturday, September 21

The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle’s continued success — and it’s all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now. 
In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.

Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well.  I solved today’s puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee.
In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team’s process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it’s worth moving into a more active development phase “where the game is coded and the designs are finalized.” So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn’t get the response it is hoping for. 
Digits’ beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games’ website

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Cara Merakit Rack Server 42U Perforated door Merk JAT

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The entire Vivo X200 family appears in all color options

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The entire Vivo X200 family appears in all color options

The Vivo X200 puzzle is slowly coming together. Vivo confirmed the front and rear designs of the Vivo X200 recently, and now all three smartphones from the series have surfaced, in all color options.

The entire Vivo X200 series shows up online in all color options

The devices in question here are the Vivo X200, Vivo X200 Pro, and Vivo X200 Pro Mini. As expected, the three phones will look very similar. Designs of all three phones appeared on JD.com, one of China’s largest retailers.

If you check out the gallery below, you’ll get to see all three phones. You can see their backs and their sides here. All three models will have flat sides all around, which will be rounded slightly towards the edges. They will all have a circular camera island on the back, with ZEISS optics.

These designs lead us to believe that all three phones will have flat displays. We know that the Vivo X200 will, thanks to Vivo’s confirmation, but the other two will as well, almost certainly. The bezels will also be quite thin, though they may differ from one model to the next.

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The Vivo X200 & Vivo X200 Pro Mini will have a similar camera layout

The Vivo X200 and Vivo X200 Pro Mini have a similar camera layout on the back. That layout does differ from what the Vivo X200 Pro offers so that phone will be easy to differentiate.

The Vivo X200 and Vivo X200 Pro will be available in the same color options. Moonlight Black, Moonlight White, Sapphire Blue, and Titanium colors are coming, as you can see.

The Vivo X200 Pro Mini, on the other hand, will be available in white, pink, green, and black colors. Vivo will likely use Moonlight Black and Moonlight White names here too, while we still don’t have official names for the pink and green models.

The Vivo X200 series will become official on October 14. That much has been confirmed by the company. These devices will launch in China, while there’s still no info regarding a global launch. They will be coming to more markets, though.

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Amazon’s Fire HD 10 tablet drops to a record-low price ahead of October Prime Day

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Amazon's Fire HD 10 tablet drops to a record-low price ahead of October Prime Day

If you’ve been on the lookout for a killer deal on a perfectly decent tablet for streaming videos and catching up on some reading, hunt no more. Just ahead of the October edition of Prime Day, Amazon has , which is a discount of $65. This matches the tablet’s lowest price to date, which we saw .

The deal is for a model with 32GB of storage and ads on the lockscreen. Expanding the storage is easy enough thanks to the microSD slot, but to get rid of the lockscreen ads you’ll need to buy a different version (which, ).

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The base Fire HD 10 has dropped back down to its lowest price to date. You can snap up one of Amazon’s tablets for $75 ahead of the October edition of Prime Day.

$75 at Amazon

You probably won’t be doing as much creative work on a Fire HD tablet as you might on an iPad Pro. But for kicking back and catching up on a show or reading a Kindle book, Amazon’s tablet certainly does the trick. It has a 10.1-inch Full HD display with a promise of up to 13 hours of battery life. Amazon says it delivers 25 percent faster performance than the previous model and it has 3GB of storage.

You can use the tablet to keep up with family and friends using messaging apps or hop on video calls with the help of the 5MP front-facing camera. You can also use a stylus to sketch in various apps. There’s Alexa integration as well, of course — you can use the tablet to control smart compatible home devices and get a live view of connected security cameras.

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One thing worth noting is that Amazon has yet to hold its usual fall devices event, so it may be using the October Prime Day sale to get rid of its current inventory of devices on the cheap before announcing upgraded models. Even if Amazon does have new tablets to show off in the coming weeks, though, you’ll still have a solid device in hand if you snap this one up.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice in the lead up to October Prime Day 2024.

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507019-B21 HP Blade Server Cabinet BLc7000 Rackmount Enclosure

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507019-B21 HP Blade Server Cabinet BLc7000 Rackmount Enclosure



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Invesco raises its valuation of Swiggy to $13.3B

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Invesco raises its valuation of Swiggy to $13.3B

U.S. asset manager Invesco has raised the value of its stake in Swiggy, ascribing an implied valuation of about $13.3 billion to the Indian food-delivery and quick-commerce startup that is on track to go public in about a month.

In a disclosure on Tuesday, Invesco’s Developing Markets Fund said it valued the 28,844 shares it owns in Swiggy at $219.25 million as of the end of July 2024. The asset manager bought the shares in Swiggy for $190.47 million.

Invesco invested in Swiggy in early 2022, leading a $700 million round in the Bengaluru-based startup. The round valued the company at $10.7 billion.

Invesco has been fairly conservative with its assessment of its holdings in Swiggy. When the market dipped in 2023, Invesco lowered its estimated value of Swiggy to $5.5 billion at the end of July 2023, and held it at about $12.3 billion at the end of April this year.

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Firms use different methodologies to calculate the valuation of privately-held companies. Generally, they use the market performance of a publicly listed rival to benchmark such companies. Zomato, Swiggy’s chief rival, has had a market cap between $22 billion and $30 billion in recent months.

Baron, another investor in Swiggy (though it owns fewer shares in the food delivery startup than Invesco), valued the Indian firm at $15.1 billion at the end of March this year.

“Swiggy is well positioned to benefit from structural growth in online food delivery in India, in our view,” Baron said in a letter in June. “We believe India’s food delivery industry is still in its infancy and will continue to scale over the next several years thanks to a growing middle class, rising disposable income, higher smartphone penetration, and structural shifts in consumer preferences driven by a tech-savvy, younger population. The industry has also become a duopoly between Swiggy and Zomato, which bodes well for the future profitability and scale of the company.”

The mark up in valuation comes at a time when many investors have cut the value of their holdings in several Indian and overseas startups. In a June update to its investors, wealth and asset manager 360 One said it valued VerSe, an Indian startup that operates the popular news aggregator Dailyhunt, at $2.9 billion, down from the $5 billion price tag at which VerSe raised its last private round in April 2022.

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#60 One ascribed a valuation of about $900 million to online meat and seafood retailer Licious, and $1.9 billion to edtech company upGrad, TechCrunch previously reported.

Swiggy is seeking to raise as much as $1.4 billion in the IPO at a valuation range of $13 billion to $15 billion.

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