Daily Archives: May 24, 2020

Facebook(NASDAQ:FB) Shops, the new online shopping platform just launched by the social media giant, has been a long time coming.

The company has experimented with e-commerce on Instagram for over a year and offers a number of tools for businesses to connect with customers such as chat through Messenger and WhatsApp, but it's never synthesized its apps before into one cohesive shopping experience open to all businesses.

Management had dropped a number of hints on the last earnings call about a new online shopping platform. As COVID-19 forced a number of businesses to close their brick-and-mortar doors, Facebook has set up tools for them to sell gift cards, allowed them to hold fundraisers, and set up a Business Resource Hub to help them with online sales and other needs.

COO Sheryl Sandberg said on the earnings call that 140 million small businesses use Facebook's products, and she noted that one in three businesses in the U.S. didn't even have a website. Many of those use a Facebook or Instagram page as their primary way of connecting with customers online. Allowing them to sell directly on Facebook is a logical next step.

Facebook calls Shops a "mobile-firstshopping experience where businesses can easily create an online store on Facebook and Instagram for free." Small businesses can display merchandise and customize their online stores with fonts and colors to sell to customers, using Facebook's tools to chat with shoppers and answer questions.

Facebook has partnered withShopify and other e-commerce software companies like BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and ChannelAdvisor to help businesses with back-end needs to set up their shops. Right now, Shops are rolling out to businesses using Instagram Shopping and Facebook Page Shop and will soon be available to others.

Image source: Facebook.

Facebook already has many of the components in place to build a powerful e-commerce business. Most importantly, the company has an unmatched audience online. Facebook itself had 1.7 billion daily active users as of the end of March, and 2.6 billion monthly active users.In its family of apps, which include Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, there were 2.4 billion daily users and three billion monthly users. Instagram, arguably Facebook's most valuable shopping platform, reached one billion monthly active users in 2018 and has grown ever since.

As of 2018, Facebook users spent an average of 38 minutes a day on the site, and time spent on its apps has gone up during the coronavirus crisis. That means Facebook has an extraordinary percentage of the world's attention, and adding shopping capabilities is one more way it can monetize its audience. After all, many of its users follow brands on Facebook and Instagram and use the platforms to get new ideas for things like travel, food, or home decor. Companies are eager to find customers, and with billions of users on Facebook and Instagram, it's essential for brands to have a presence there.

Facebook Shops also do something that Amazon, the e-commerce leader,cannot: provide discovery. Amazon works well for shoppers who know what they want but not so much for those looking to be inspired, who only have a sense of what they're looking for, or just want to browse. With its tight relationships with brands and users, Facebook looks perfectly suited to fill this void.

There's a huge opportunity in e-commerce, which has become a giant fast-growing market around the world, especially with the disruption from the pandemic. In the U.S., e-commerce has generated over $600 billion in sales in the last four quarters, and it took an 11.8% share of total retail sales on an adjusted basis, a record percentage. That shows that the e-commerce market is not only massive, it also has a lot of room to grow.

The pandemic has turned a lot of business models on their heads, and it hasn't been particularly kind to Facebook, which generates nearly all of its revenue from advertising. The company said revenue fell in March when the pandemic hit, and then recovered to flat year-over-year growth in April. For a company that was growing revenue by more than 25% before the crisis, that exposes a weakness, and e-commerce is one way to supplement its ad sales and diversify.

Amazon has gone in the opposite direction, leveraging its e-commerce platform to sell ads, but that shows that the two businesses are closely interconnected. Facebook still needs to execute on Shops, and it lacks the logistics prowess of Amazon, but the key pieces of the puzzle -- the customers and the brands -- are already in its pocket.

Read this article:

Facebook Shops Could Be Huge - The Motley Fool

O Facebook, my Facebook, you multi-billion dollar social behemoth critics love to hate, where would my pandemic-panicked soul be without you at 2 a.m. when Ive woken from another world-is-ending dream?

Where would I be at 10 a.m. when I realize Ive not only consumed my sugar allotment for the day but possibly my RDA of caffeine and fat, Im eyeing the alcohol and I dont even drink?

Or at 6 in the evening when I can't peel myself off Netflix to eat pasta again, much less cook it?

Where would I be at 4 and 8 and every other hour of the day when the only two people I directly engage with are off in the far corners of the house, and Im starting to talk to the stuffed lamb my sister gave me for Easter?

Better than a therapist, better than a sister or a friend, each of whom will eventually roll over and fall asleep or demand a co-pay, my Facebook is an omnipresent blank canvas on which to express the deep underpinnings of my every-changing Covid-coaxed neuroses.

Zoom yes, wish-we-bought-stock-in-Zoom may have captured the corner on family meetings and tele-conferencing during these stay-home times. But for a whole lot of people around the world, right up there with food, clothing and masks that fit, is the brainchild Mark Zuckerbergs started in his Harvard dorm room.

No meeting ID, nor time limit, required, Facebook offers news, a marketplace, games, and a hang-out with a choice of 2.4 billion monthly users, 24-7 and free -- a full-service community that has become doubly important with the social losses created by the pandemic.

"For this person in solitary confinement, its my lifeline," says my one friend, a poet and former Unitarian-Universalist minister who lives in Indiana.

"Its my coping mechanism," says another friend, "my main news source," says a friend in Cleveland.

"I love seeing what other people are doing, thinking, how they are coping with all this," says my friend Becky.

"Our TimeBank organization, where people exchange services with each other, is more active than ever with COVID. We would struggle to find community were it not for Facebook," says Abby in Kent.

The Facebook platform, which quickly caught on when it debuted in 2004, attracting 6 million users within 18 months, becomes especially critical when the usual community as we know it is on hold, when we are yet desperate for reliable sources of global and local information, when we need to stay connected with family and friends, when we are looking to others to see how they are handling a pandemic, sometimes in the middle of the night.

Are you OK? Am I OK?

If one friend isn't awake, another one is.

In the weeks since the pandemic hit, messaging across the platforms services increased 50% in countries ravaged by the virus, says MarketWatch.com. Video messaging on Facebooks Messenger and WhatsApp more than doubled. In Italy, time spent on Facebook has soared 70% since it was hard hit by the crisis.

Even former Facebook deserters are on again, including those who supported a 2018 #DeleteFacebook campaign. The anti-Facebook movement was fueled by a scandal involving the political data company, Cambridge Analytica, which collected the personal data of 50 million Facebook users without their consent and used it for political advertising purposes. Returning users include Scott Scott Erickson of Texas who got back on when he found out he had COVID.

"It really showed me that for a lot of people, Facebook is the only way they know how to stay in touch with people," Erickson told c/net.com. "So now I'm using it very resentfully."

Not everybody loves everything about Facebook. Besides the Cambridge-Analytica fiasco, people were turned off by Facebook allowing fabricated articles to be posted as if they were true. Both concerns have since been duly noted, with Zuckerberg testifying before Congress to be more diligent. In an effort to stem the tide of Covid misinformation, in April, Facebook enlisted the help of 60 fact-checking organizations to help weed out misinformation about COVID-19 and began warning users about liking and posting fake stories. The organization went so far as to create a COVID-19 Information Center, an evolving collection of facts about the pandemic that have been checked by a news team.

Still, trust in a corporation, once lost, is hard to regain. Theres also ugly politics on the site; disagreeing family members; "trolls" who get their kicks out of going on people's pages and spewing venom; and just downright mean-spirited people looking for a fight.

But for those who love Facebook, they really, really love it now.

Masters in the the art of scrolling past the vitriol, not averse to unfriending and unfollowing, Facebook aficionados have found a way to make their experience their own a cornucopia of pretty pictures, fact-based information, and solid connection with others at a time when we need each other more than ever.

"Today was a good day," I posted one day last week. "I raked leaves from the back of the garden, got my heart rate up and felt the sun on my face. My sons did restorative yoga with me in the living room. I texted with my daughter and two of my three sisters. I brushed my teeth."

The next day: "I am a sloth from Slothville," I wrote. "I ate an illegal amount of chocolate. My friend and I had a thing we had to work through. My dishwasher backed up. The drain in basement backed up. There were messes everywhere, including me."

Both times, most notably when I was a slug, Facebook reminded I am not alone.

"Mama said there'll be days like this," said one friend.

"Right there with you," said another.

"I got you!" wrote one friend I only know from Facebook.

Facebook can be addictive, say some, a rabbit hole when there are other things to do.

Meanwhile, for millions of people around the globe, like a good neighbor (used to be), Facebook is there.

Says my friend Allison, holed up in Columbia, S.C. with her husband: "How else would I play Word Blitz? Over and over and over."

Journalist Debra-Lynn B. Hook of Kent, Ohio, has been writing about family life since 1988 when she was pregnant with the first of her three children. E-mails are welcome at dlbhook@yahoo.com.

See the rest here:

Stuck inside, whos hating Facebook now? - Akron Beacon Journal

Facebook has rolled out a new safety feature in India that will enable users to easily lock their account so that people they are not friends with on the platform cannot view their posts and zoom into and download their profile picture and cover photo.

The feature is especially aimed at women to give them more control over their Facebook experience, the company said. We are deeply aware of the concerns people in India, particularly women, have about protecting their online profile, said Ankhi Das, Public Policy director at Facebook India, in a statement.

Locking the profile applies multiple existing privacy settings and several new measures to a users Facebook profile in a few taps, the company said. Once a user has locked their account, people they are not friends with will no longer be able to see photos and posts both historic and new and zoom into, share and download profile pictures and cover photos.

We have often heard from young girls that they are hesitant to share about themselves online and are intimidated by the idea of someone misusing their information. I am very happy to see that Facebook is making efforts to learn about their concerns and building products that can give them the experience they want. This new safety feature will give women, especially young girls a chance to express themselves freely, said Ranjana Kumari, director at New Delhi-based women advocacy group Centre for Social Research, in a statement.

A user can lock the account by tapping on More under their name, then tapping the Lock Profile button and the confirmation button that prompts afterward.

Prior to Thursdays announcement, this feature was available to users in Bangladesh, a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.

The new feature appears to be an extension of a similar effort Facebook made in 2017 in India to combat catfishing. That feature, called Profile Picture Guard, allowed users to protect their profile picture from being zoomed into and shared by their friends and those not in the friend list.

See original here:

Facebook rolls out feature to help women in India easily lock their accounts - TechCrunch

Welcome back to This Weekin Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

The app industry is as hot as ever, witha record204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are nowspending three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps arent just a way to pass idle hours theyre a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined$544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.

This week were continuing to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of mobile applications. Notably, we saw the launch of the Apple/Google exposure-notification API with the latest version of iOS out this week. The pandemic is also inspiring other new apps and features, including upcoming additions to Apples Schoolwork, which focus on distance learning, as well as Facebooks new Shops feature designed to help small business shift their operations online in the wake of physical retail closures.

Tinder, meanwhile, seems to be toying with the idea of pivoting to a global friend finder and online hangout in the wake of social distancing, with its test of a feature that allows users to match with others worldwide meaning, with no intention of in-person dating.

Apple this week released the latest version of iOS/iPadOS with two new features related to the pandemic. The first is an update to Face ID which will now be able to tell when the user is wearing a mask. In those cases, Face ID will instead switch to the Passcode field so you can type in your code to unlock your phone, or authenticate with apps like the App Store, Apple Books, Apple Pay, iTunes and others.

The other new feature is the launch of the exposure-notification API jointly developed by Apple and Google. The API allows for the development of apps from public health organizations and governments that can help determine if someone has been exposed by COVID-19. The apps that support the API have yet to launch, but some 22 countries have requested API access.

Read more:

This Week in Apps: Facebook takes on Shopify, Tinder considers its future, contact-tracing tech goes live - TechCrunch

The fortunes of US billionaires rose 15 percent in the two months since the coronavirus pandemic hit, a study found, with Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg seeing massive gains.

The more than 600 billionaires in the United States became even richer as tech stocks rose during virus lockdowns, an analysis of data by two think-tanks published Thursday said.

Between March 18 and May 19, their total net worth increased by $434 billion while the coronavirus pandemic caused job losses and economic agony for tens of millions of Americans.

Bezos wealth grew over 30 percent to $147.6 billion, while Zuckerbergs fortune leapt by more than 45 percent to $80 billion, according to the research by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies Program for Inequality. The analysis was based on data from Forbes billionaires list.

Microsofts Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaways Warren Buffett saw comparatively paltry gains of 8.2 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively, according to the report.

Amazon and Facebook stocks have surged following new program announcements that pushed their businesses ahead at a time when many consumers are stuck at home.

Job losses in the US have passed 36.8 million since business shutdowns began in mid-March to stop the spread of the deadly new disease.

Other data have shown a collapse in housing sales and a decline in manufacturing, as officials debate what additional steps will be needed to rescue the beleaguered economy.

COVID-19 has killed at least 94,700 people in the US where more than 1.5 million infections have been confirmed, according to an AFP tally.

More here:

Facebooks Zuckerberg wealth increased by 45% to $80 billion amid pandemic - Hindustan Times

Facebook will begin reopening its offices worldwide on July 6th with stringent safety measures in place, according to a new report from Bloomberg published on Wednesday. The reopening plan is part of a multistep process the social network has in place to begin restoring some of its in-person operations, which are crucial to its data center management and the development of hardware like the Portal video chatting device and its Oculus line of virtual reality headsets and accessories.

The company will begin by operating at 25 percent capacity, meaning only one-fourth of its standard workforce will ever be working in the same building at the same time. Those who do will be required to wear face masks and undergo temperature checks to monitor for virus symptoms consistent with COVID-19, Bloomberg reports. Although the July date is in place largely for Facebooks US and European offices, the report states that some Asian offices may reopen sooner, dependent on the specific country or citys containment of the novel coronavirus.

This plan does not change Facebooks pledge to allow all of its employees who can perform remote work to do so through the end of 2020. The company told its employees of the new policy earlier this month, and its likely that a vast majority of Facebooks nonessential staff meaning those workers who can perform most, if not all, of their job responsibilities remotely will continue to do so through the end of the year.

In addition to hardware, operations, and network management staff that have on-site responsibilities, Facebook also employs scores of service workers that will need to resume work come July. That includes shuttle bus operators, cafeteria and dining staff, security personnel, and other members of the social networks workforce that maintain and oversee its offices and those buildings standard daily operations. Facebook has been paying these workers throughout the pandemic, but some will now be required to come back into work.

According to Bloomberg, Facebook is looking into how to enforce social distancing guidelines on its shuttle buses. Its also unclear how the company will run its various dining facilities, many of which offer buffet-style meals and constitute a major perk to on-site work at Facebook and other big tech companies.

Facebook is just one of many large tech companies juggling the new reality of remote work with building and executing a plan for reopening as lockdowns begin to ease in the US and around the globe. Google has similarly announced a work-from-home policy for a majority of its staff through 2020 and a phased reopening process starting this summer. Google CEO Sundar Pichai outlined the plans in more detail in an interview with The Verge this week:

I expect by the end of the year, well be at 20 to 30 percent capacity. Which may still mean we are able to get 60 percent of our employees in once a week, or something like that. And so thats what we mean, where a vast majority of employees we think will likely work from home through the end of the year. But its a very fluid situation. If things, of course, look better, we will adapt to it. We want to be flexible. Trying to really understand what works, what doesnt work in this.

Neither Amazon nor Microsoft have specific reopening dates for their offices in Seattle, Washington, but both companies have extended work-from-home policies to October. Apple is planning on reopening its offices this summer at reduced capacity and with many of the same safety precautions as Facebook and Google. The iPhone maker is also slowly reopening its retail network, starting first overseas and eventually culminating with the reopening of most of its US retail stores starting this month.

Both Square and Twitter, however, have taken a more radical approach both are run by CEO Jack Dorsey, who said this month that employees of his companies will be allowed to work from home permanently if they so choose. Its currently unclear what Dorsey plans to do with his companies pricey office spaces; Twitters headquarters has been a hallmark of the mid-Market section of downtown San Francisco for years.

Excerpt from:

Facebook will reopen offices at 25 percent capacity starting in July - The Verge

Some time ago, we tried to debunk some myths about the 5G network being the cause of many health challenges, including the current pandemic. But we did not address the benefits to the increasing emergence of digitalized experiences, or the tech space as a whole.

Huaweis Vice President of Corporate Strategy, Bill Genovese, in an interview, explained that the digital evolution of business models worldwide and other emerging technologies would drive the 5G adoption.

Undoubtedly, the digital evolution of industries globally is unceasing, especially in the financial services sector. The traditional banking model, which has changed forever, has been driven by new and innovative technologies, new digitally-led businesses entering the sector, and the ever-evolving needs as consumers.

According to Genovese, we are already entrenched in the next generation of financial services, an environment in which banking has shifted from a product-driven ethos to being about building a lifestyle, and we absolutely agree with this.

READ ALSO: Survey indicates bots are the next big thing Nigerian Businesses

Fintech and the 5G network

Genovese explained how the conditions that led to market evolution, such as mobile and new technology solutions in line with shifting consumer expectations, could place fintech at the top of the 5G revolution.

(READ MORE: 7 female executives under 40 in FinTech)

5G can provide faster, cheaper, and better services for more people, but its possible only through the adoption of mobile and digital next-generation financial services that will apply emerging technologies.

Fintech is going to drive 5G, not the other way around. 5G will enable network downloads as fast as 20 gigabits, also accelerating the ability of machines to share data. Ultimately, this means that every device in a specific urban area can be connected.

If we considered emerging markets like Nigeria where in some parts, the 3G network is lacking or it is very limited or no access to bank branches, a leapfrog into 5G would mean digital banks needing virtual tellers, virtual advisors, and micro branches, all of which would require higher bandwidth and latency.

READ MORE: Why COVID-19 is linked to 5G launch

According to Genovese, 5G is not occurring in a vacuum; rather, it is a part of a converging OS factor that fintech could be at the centre of, as consumers will always be in need of service offerings in payments, credit/lending, and deposits.

However, all this is still a long way from now. Asides from the global focus on stopping the pandemic, Coronavirus, the 5G network is still hindered from going mainstream by its inability to travel long distances or even penetrate most building structures.

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Facebook takes on Zoom with its new video chat feature - Nairametrics

Internet of Yum digs into all the things that make us drool while we're checking our feeds.

Have you joined the Baba Nyonya group?

Mum stands over a four-litre pot of babi pongteh, coating heavy chunks of pork with fermented soybean spice paste. The howling rangehood almost drowns the scrape of her steel spatula as I idly poke through our snack basket.

Yeah, you added me ages ago. I pilfer a sweet pink roll of haw flakes to distract my peckish mouth. I dont really use Facebook that much anymore.

My mum has peppered the Baba Nyonya Recipe Sharing Group into nearly every conversation on cooking weve had since she found it. At over 117,000 members strong, the Facebook group is full of recipes for Peranakan, Malaysian, and Singaporean foods, a global community for cooking tips and food envy. Not all members are Baba Nyonya, also known as Peranakan or Straits Chinese, but all appreciate the cuisine. Born from Chinese settlers marrying Malay women centuries ago, the small sub-culture has more admirers than members.

You should look. A lot of good recipes there.

She pours hot water over the browned meat. Its a recipe shes made many times, long before Facebook was invented, but the Baba Nyonya group has given her kitchen new inspiration. After decades alone in Australia, preparing dishes cobbled from memories, experiments, and a few ageing recipe books, the ability to finally connect with other Peranakans is a blessing.

My parents moved from Singapore to Australia in the '80s, a time before cooking blogs and instant messaging. There were only recipes peppered with missing ingredients, often unattainable even if you knew their English names. Peranakan restaurants were unheard of, and there were no other Peranakans they might befriend. Meeting other Asians was rare enough.

Mum pulled together a diasporic diet with what she could source in small Vietnamese grocery stores and large supermarket chains, substituting and supplementing where needed. Separating a nyonya from her food is both dangerous and futile, and my mum already had a history of resilience.

There were still some dishes she couldnt reverse-engineer, flavours she couldnt recreate. Some methods also demanded time and labour my parents couldnt spare. There was little point in dwelling on it though. Some things were just lost in the move.

The drying basket on my hip is littered with bunga telang fresh from my garden. The flowers used to climb up my great-grandmothers fence in Singapore, deep blue blossoms shed pluck and dry to colour nyonya bak chang and kueh. The rice dumplings and steamed cakes technically taste the same without bright pigmentation, but colour is just as much a part of Peranakan culture as food.

The dried flowers are expensive now, one of the ethnic ingredients caught up in the Western frenzy for superfoods. My uncle tried to substitute blue food colouring once, but the hue came out all wrong.

Here. Dad wanders over with a handful of shrivelled flowers, adding them to my fresh ones. It doesn't matter that they've withered, since I'd have dried them all anyway. Dry on the plant, still can use."

Mum never tried planting bunga telang in Australia, doubtful the tropical plant could tolerate the temperate climate. Shed attempted it before with pandan, carefully nursing the potted plant in the bathroom until it seemed strong enough to survive outdoors. Unfortunately its glossy green leaves soon withered upon exposure to the elements, and we harvested only disappointment.

When I told mum I wanted to grow bunga telang, she therefore tried to discourage me. Its too cold, she warned as I stubbornly searched Google for the plants English name. Various gardening websites claimed the plant could sprout in Sydney, and I couldnt let go of the possibility.

I finally decided to try after finding a classified ad on Gumtree, Australia's Craigslist, offering a Ziploc bag of 70 seeds for A$2.50. Adding A$1.50 for postage, it was a small outlay for a potentially significant reward. Not all of my plants have survived and few have thrived, but those that have are alive and growing.

I rest my woven rattan tray on an overturned box, spreading the bold blue blossoms out to dry under the Australian sun. I dont have any plans for them yet. I didnt think Id get this far.

As a child, I didnt know the dishes my mum served were Peranakan. I knew them simply as mums cooking. It seemed obvious and natural to me that her flavours couldnt be found anywhere else.

Sydney still doesnt have a large Peranakan community, or even a particularly close one. Restaurants remain scarce, with ones that can withstand a nyonyas scrutiny even rarer. The last time my mum ate a Peranakan dish she hadnt prepared herself was at my uncle's home in Kuala Lumpur.

It was years before I saw mums food outside our home. Seeing them presented by strangers on the internet was odd yet retrospectively obvious, like seeing the ocean when Id never cast my mind beyond my kitchen sink.

"This is one of my favourite dishes to eat in Singapore," says Sheena from Chasing a Plate, a YouTube channel about food and travel, as the camera lingers on a wok of fried prawn Hokkien mee. My parents stand around the television, watching a hawker toss in crisp bean sprouts with the same rapt attention others give football.

My parents stand around the television, watching a hawker toss in crisp bean sprouts with the same rapt attention others give football.

I want! mum exclaims as Sheena squeezes fresh lime juice over her noodles.

Weve been watching food vloggers these past few Saturday mornings, flicking through YouTube to find their impressions of Singapore. Id been pushing for mum to revisit the country with me for a while, but shed been reluctant to put herself through the ordeal of a plane ride. Now shes started a list of hawkers to visit when we go.

Aiya why so bad, why they never give address? she asks, pen and paper at the ready.

Its probably in the description, I reply. Like them, my eyes remain fixed on Sheenas red chopsticks. Ill have a look later.

Peranakan food hasnt historically been available in hawker centres, but hawker food is close to our hearts in a different way. Having these flavours easily available is comforting and familiar, evocative of a lifestyle left behind. Singapore's unique culinary culture fosters an immediate connection between those who have been a part of it a shared, communal love of these foods.

We've been displaced from this community for a long time. Mum doesn't know which hawkers are the best anymore, only reminiscing about stalls from decades ago. She'd like to find out again, though.

Kueh tair is usually eaten during the Lunar New Year, but my family keeps baking the sweet coin-sized tarts for weeks after. We didnt have them when I was younger, unable to find the treat in Sydney shops. Now that we can make them, depriving ourselves of this tiny luxury seems arbitrarily cruel.

When I was a kid, wah! says mum as she spoons pineapple jam atop the biscuits, recalling how she'd gorge herself on the tarts. Just gasak shiok shiok, dont think about the work that goes into it.

I grin. Chiak ka seow! My Hokkien is practically nonexistent, but "eat until crazy" is a phrase I know well.

We form an after-dinner production line, dad cutting the dough into biscuits while I decorate the jam with tiny flower-shaped cutouts. My great-grandmother used to make the tarts with fresh pineapples lugged from the market, skinning, grating, and cooking everything from scratch. The advent of tinned pineapples has made the whole endeavour much less laborious.

Now mum proudly photographs our neat little tarts to show old classmates on WhatsApp.

The recipe we've put together with the Baba Nyonya group's advice is a vast improvement to our first attempt at making kueh tair. While it had tasted fine, the cream cheese-based dough turned out a sticky mess.

Now mum proudly photographs our neat little tarts to show old classmates on WhatsApp. She also keeps a whole trayload of tinned pineapple in the appliance cupboard, bought in bulk from Aldi.

My sister has recently been seeking cooking tips from mum, messaging, is there a way can make babi pong teh in slow cooker? She types in Singaporean staccato, dropping articles and pronouns in the familiar rhythm we learned from our parents. and if yes can you pls talk me through recipe

Shes introducing her girlfriend to our diet, running experimental tweaks by mum in our familys Messenger chat. Babi pongteh has been her favourite since we were children, a frequently requested dinner. Its almost dangerous that she can now make it herself.

Can try although meat will be Noah. Make on stovetop better, mum replies, wary of mushy, tasteless pork. Nwah, stupid autocorrect

Ive been helping mum add recipes to our family Google Drive, though in typical ethnic parent fashion she prefers to agak-agak her ingredients. Nyonyas measure with their eyes and cook by instinct, adding everything to taste. Even when teaching her Westernised daughters, mum struggles to quantify her cooking in millilitres and grams.

Just watch, she says. Then you'll know.

There is a lot more to watch now with Facebook and YouTube, and much to know. Even for my mum, whose language has faded after years with only my dad fully understanding her. Sharing recipes with other Peranakans has polished up the bright colours of her memories, renewing them in her present and granting them new relevance.

I have much further to go, but there are more hands to help me now, more knowledge to absorb. I'm still trying to shake off my stickling adherence to measurements though. I'll never cook like a proper nyonya until I do.

More deliciousness from Internet of Yum:

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Lost recipes resurface on Facebook, and now were eating like crazy - Mashable

Facebook has long believed in the promise of virtual and augmented reality extending well beyond entertainment, and were now getting a clearer glimpse at what that future might look like now that the current pandemic is reshaping how companies everywhere think about remote work.

According to Andrew Boz Bosworth, Facebooks head of of AR and VR, the company is already investing in supercharging remote work and productivity using those technologies. He even shared a video of what that might look like, featuring real footage of an experimental test using prototype Facebook hardware and software.

Its not much the video is just eight seconds long. But it does show off an idea that Facebook execs like Bosworth think might be the future of work. We see a few floating displays, which are quickly resized and rearranged by the user with a form of touch gesture that looks like a pinch, drag, and zoom.

Of course, these displays are virtual, but the world around the user is real thats thanks to passthrough. Oculus uses the term to refer to utilizing the outward-facing cameras on a Rift or Quest VR headset to see the room around you. Passthrough is used to create the virtual mesh barrier that confines Oculus software within a certain area you draw yourself using the Touch controller. The feature is also useful if youre simply curious where you are in a room or how close you might be to, say, a wall or a piece of furniture.

But here in this demo, Bosworth says Facebook imagines a mix of AR and VR what the tech industry calls mixed reality that uses passthrough to show you your keyboard while you type. That way, you can have the tangible effect of using a physical keyboard while not having to worry about the space youd require for a proper three-monitor setup. Theres also a little menu bar that appears to float at the bottom of the users field of view that looks like it contains shortcuts and other quick productivity-related features you might access with a tap of the finger.

In the future, we could create a super-powered augmented workspace with multiple customizable screens in VR, unbounded from the limits of physical monitors. It would leverage technologies like Passthrough to create a mixed reality productivity experience that allows people to switch between real and virtual worlds at any time, improving spatial awareness while offering the flexibility were accustomed to with laptops and other common devices, reads a blog post Facebook published today. By combining the flexibility of new inputs like hand tracking with the familiarity of everyday input devices like a keyboard and mouse, we could give people the best of both worlds.

This isnt entirely novel stuff. Weve seen demos like this on Microsofts HoloLens and the Magic Leap One headset. Facebook and Oculus have also shown off similar capabilities in the context of demoing Oculus hand tracking and other features that would be integral when youre actually wearing something on your face while you do meaningful work, such as typing and reading what we can only hope will be legible text on a virtual screen. (The demo Bosworth shared is captured from the headset itself, so its hard to tell what it actually looks like from the user end.)

But its noteworthy that Facebook is now accelerating its work in mixed reality during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company already has an enterprise unit for Oculus dedicated to selling headsets to companies. Facebook and Oculus joint work on hand tracking, more realistic avatars, spatial audio, and more powerful wireless technology illustrate how seriously the company is committed to the idea of virtual presence and making it as powerful as possible.

But perhaps the biggest signal from Facebook about its ambitions to try and transform remote work came earlier today, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a massive shift in how he plans to operate his company by allowing workers to request permanent remote status and to open up new roles at the company to remote workers, too. While other tech firms have done the same, including Square and Twitter, Facebook is the first major company of its size to make the leap.

Were going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with The Verge. We need to do this in a way thats thoughtful and responsible, so were going to do this in a measured way. But I think that its possible that over the next five to 10 years maybe closer to 10 than five, but somewhere in that range I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently.

Zuckerberg specifically brought up AR and VR as options that could, in the long term, make remote work more viable by giving remote employees a sense of presence during meetings and other collaborative efforts. VR and AR is all about giving people remote presence, Zuckerberg said. So if youre youre long on VR and AR and on video chat, you have to believe in some capacity that youre helping people be able to do whatever they want from wherever they are. So I think that that suggests a worldview that would lead to allowing people to work more remotely over time.

Zuckerberg says the COVID-19 pandemic and his companys moves to respond to the changes its forcing on society will help us advance some of the future technology were working on around remote presence, because were just going to be using it constantly ourselves.

He mentions how products like the Facebook Workplace platform and Portal video chat devices are changing how his company works today. Down the line, that will inevitably include AR and VR , too. Right now, VR and AR is a large group within the company, but its still somewhat disconnected from the work that most employees are doing on a day-to-day basis. And I think that this could change that sooner, he added. So thats something that Im particularly excited about.

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Facebook teases a vision of remote work using augmented and virtual reality - The Verge