As COVID-19 forces people to partake in social distancing, the popularity of the video conferencing app Zoom has skyrocketed, with the number of new monthly active users in February of 2020, at 2.22 million, already being more than the total number of added monthly active users in 2019, 1.99 million. As such, it has gone…

DoH should make DNS searches more secure and more private. (Wikimedia Commons)   On February 25, Firefox became the first web browser to set a new encryption method called DNS over HTTPS (DoH) as a default privacy setting for its users. Before DoH was created, anything that was searched up on the web went through a…

AI Dungeon, a silly text adventure generator, is perhaps the most well known application of GPT-2. (James Cao’20/Tech editor) Back in February 2019, a research lab called OpenAI announced it had created a powerful machine learning, text-generating system called Generative Pre-trained Transformer-2 (GPT-2). Fearing of misuse, OpenAI didn’t release its full version to the public…

The accelerated speed of facial recognition AI is cause for worry. (Wikimedia Commons) Around January 17, a leaked white paper draft from the European Commission contained a three-to-five year ban on the use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology in public areas. Multiple reasons for the ban are obvious, one being for privacy and security…

The FTC has pressured YouTube into making some controversial changes. (Wikimedia Commons) Back in September of 2019, the popular social media platform YouTube was fined $170 million by the Federal Trades Commission (FTC) for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). As a result, YouTube announced that it would make changes to the platform…

The new/old keyboard design should overall improve user comfort. (Apple) Apple released a new 16-inch MacBook Pro on November 13, fully replacing the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Compared to its previous generation, the new MacBook Pro naturally has multiple basic upgrades. The 16” Pro comes with MacOS Catalina and all of its features, including improved security,…

The limited edition “Oh So Orange” color. (Google)   Officially announced on October 15, Google’s new generation of Pixels, the Pixel 4 and 4 XL, were released to the public on October 24.  The Pixel 4 boasts dual rear cameras, one 12.2 megapixel wide camera, and one 16 megapixel telephoto camera, making it excellent for…

The new MacOS Catalina default wallpaper. (Apple) Announced at WWDC 2019, MacOS Catalina was released to the public on October 7. Although Catalina doesn’t bring many system-wide overhauls, a number of native apps has been revised and updated, and the connections between Apple devices have been improved. One of the new features brought by Catalina…

Russell Ahmed’22 lands a 76 and 75 for the Vikes Third State Title. (Courtesy/Imtiaz Ahmed) On Friday, October 11, and Saturday, October 12, our boys golf squad stormed the D-II State Tournament at Northstar Golf Club, nabbing its third consecutive state title. With a total score of 615, our boys won by a landslide, with…

Boys Golf wins 3rd district title. (Courtesy/Imtiaz Ahmed) The past week our Viking golf squads competed at districts, with our girls season unfortunately coming to an end but our boys advancing to states. At Darby Creek on Monday, September 30, freshman Grace Luo placed 8th out of 36 players at districts with an outstanding score…