YCLOAK

Facebook is slowly acknowledging the outsized — if unintended 0151— role it played in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

 

Bowing to pressure from lawmakers and the public, the company said it will provide the contents of 3,000 ads bought by a Russian agency to congressional investigators, while also pledging to make political advertising on its platform more “transparent.”

 

“I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook video and wrote in an accompanying post . “That’s not what we stand for.”

The moves Thursday come amid growing pressure on the social network from members of Congress, who pushed Facebook to release the ads after the company disclosed their existence in early September. Facebook has already handed over the ads to the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

 

Facebook’s reluctance to be more forthcoming with information that could shed light on possible election interference has prompted the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee to call for the company to testify in its election-meddling probe.

 

A More Transparent Facebook

 

In one of the first steps Facebook has ever taken to open up its secretive advertising system to observation, the company will now require political ads to disclose both who is paying for them and all ad campaigns those individuals or groups are running on Facebook.

 

That’s a key step that will allow outsiders to see how many different variants of a given ad are being targeted to various groups of individuals, a tactic designed to improve their effectiveness. At the moment, there’s no way for anyone but Facebook to track these political ads, or for recipients to tell who is sponsoring such messages.

 

Since average users “don’t know if you’re seeing the same messages as everyone else,” Zuckerberg said, Facebook will “make it so you can visit an advertiser’s page and see the ads they’re currently running to any audience on Facebook.”

 

The company will hire 250 more people in the next year to work on “election integrity,” Zuckerberg said.

The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel would go farther. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner is writing a bill that would require social media companies to disclose who funded political ads, similar to rules on television broadcasters. In an interview with The Associated Press, Warner said he hoped to work with social-media companies on the bill.

 

And Yet Still Secretive

 

Zuckerberg suggested that the company may not provide much information publicly, saying that the ongoing federal investigation will limit what he can reveal.

 

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee have sought to bring Facebook executives before their committee for the past couple of weeks. But critics say Facebook should go further. They say the company should tell its users how they might have been influenced by outside meddlers.

 

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, for instance, stressed again on Thursday that the company should make the ads public, “so that everyone can see the nature and extent of the use of Facebook accounts by Russia.”

 

Zuckerberg also warned that Facebook can’t catch all undesirable material before it hits its social network.

 

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you we’re going to catch all bad content in our system. We don’t check what people say before they say it, and frankly, I don’t think our society should want us to,” Zuckerberg said. But those who break the law or Facebook’s policies, he added, “are going to face consequences afterwards.”

 

Facebook won’t catch everyone immediately, he added, but it can “make it harder to try to interfere.”

 

Twitter Also Heads to Capitol Hill

 

Zuckerberg’s move came a day after Twitter confirmed that it will meet next week with staff of the Senate intelligence committee, which has been scrutinizing the spread of false news stories and propaganda on social media during the election.

Warner said the committee wanted to hear from Twitter to learn more about the use of fake accounts and bot networks to spread misinformation.

 

“Twitter deeply respects the integrity of the election process, a cornerstone of all democracies, and will continue to strengthen our platform against bots and other forms of manipulation that violate our Terms of Service,” the company said in a statement.
…

It might seem odd to review the new Apple TV streaming device — one specifically designed to display super-sharp video known as 4K — without actually owning a 4K TV.

But in a way, that’s the point.

Most people still don’t have 4K TVs, so the new Apple TV model doesn’t offer them much. But if you’re an Apple fan and already have 4K, the choice is clear. The new Apple TV 4K is out Friday starting at $179, or $30 more than the regular model. It’s a small difference compared with the price of your TV.

It’s worth noting that alternatives to Apple TV are cheaper and equally capable at a basic level. All of the devices connect to a TV so you can stream most major video services on a big screen. Roku and Amazon have 4K models for less than $100 and non-4K versions for even less. Both are even ahead of Apple TV in being able to stream Amazon video now; it’s coming soon to Apple TV.

But none of the rivals will play movies or shows purchased from Apple’s iTunes, at least without clunky workarounds. To watch those on a big screen directly, you need an Apple TV. And Apple has just sweetened the deal on that front.

The future has arrived

Apple’s embrace of 4K is significant, despite the fact that Roku, Amazon and other rivals beat Apple to that milestone. Apple often waits until there’s broad enough appeal for new technologies. That time is now, given growth in sales of 4K TV and more movies and TV shows released in 4K formats.

Parallel to that is the rise of high-dynamic range technology in television sets. HDR increases color range and produces brighter whites and darker blacks. Better contrast means details in bright scenes aren’t washed out. Apple TV 4K supports HDR, too.

Path to upgrades

4K is coming, just as high definition earlier replaced standard definition. The consulting company Futuresource says a third of TVs sold worldwide this year will be 4K capable, up from 25 percent last year. But people tend to keep TVs for many years, unlike high-turnover phones.

In demos with tech companies and visits to Best Buy, I find superior picture quality in 4K. Your couch needs to close enough to the screen to see the difference. My next TV will likely have 4K, but my 4-year-old Vizio HD TV still works fine (though I’m sure I just jinxed it).

Upgrades to iTunes video – and yours

Many Hollywood blockbusters now have 4K versions of home video releases. Netflix and Amazon are also trying to make their original shows available in 4K. But many indie and older titles remain in HD; even older shows like “The Wonder Years” are still stuck in standard definition.

Fortunately, Apple isn’t making you choose now. If you buy something in HD through iTunes, you’ll automatically get the 4K version when it’s out. And if a 4K version is available now, it will cost the same as its HD counterpart. It’s never been clear why HD video is more expensive than SD when actors, directors and others behind the movies were paid the same.

Lots of people were peeved at how the music industry tried to get them to repurchase the same songs on cassette tapes, CDs and then digital files. I have a collection of DVDs and don’t feel like paying again for higher-quality Blu-ray or digital versions.

So Apple’s decision to treat 4K and HD the same is a good one. That only applies to iTunes, though. Netflix is charging extra for a plan that includes 4K, even when viewed on Apple TVs.

A word of caution: While the new iPhone 8 and iPad Pros unveiled this past June will support HDR, they won’t display 4K. Even the upcoming iPhone X falls short in that respect.

Beyond video

The new Apple TV gets a faster processor, which should make high-end games better to play. A new remote offers more precise motion control and a raised menu button to make it easier to orient yourself without looking. These features alone aren’t enough to justify an Apple TV 4K unless you’re a gamer. The non-4K version is getting the new remote, too. Picture quality is the same for both versions on regular HD sets like mine.

In any case, Apple TV — with or without 4K — will be most useful if you’re already tied into Apple’s system with iDevices and iTunes. Given that rival devices are cheaper, what you’re buying isn’t the device, but an experience — integration and syncing with all your other Apple gadgets. For instance, 4K video taken on an iPhone will play easily on an Apple TV 4K.

If you’re in that camp and are thinking of buying a new TV in the next few years, there’s a good chance it will be 4K, so you might as well choose the 4K version of Apple TV now. But if it’s longer, a better Apple TV will likely be out by then. The non-4K version will do just fine for now.
…

A ‘passive polygraph,’ developed by SilvertLogic Labs in Seattle, Washington, is a high-tech version of the lie-detector test. Faith Lapidus explains how it works.
…

Google is biting off a big piece of device manufacturer HTC for $1.1 billion to expand its efforts to build phones, speakers and other gadgets equipped with its arsenal of digital services.

The deal announced Thursday underscores how serious Google is becoming about designing its own family of devices to compete against Apple and Amazon in a high-stakes battle to become the technological hub of people’s lives.

Over the past decade, Google had focused on giving away its Android operating system to an array of device makers, including Taiwan’s HTC, to ensure people would keep using its ubiquitous search engine, email, maps, YouTube video service and other software on smartphones and other pieces of hardware.

But that changed last year when Google stamped its brand on a smartphone and internet-connected speaker. HTC manufactured the Pixel phones that Google designed last year, perhaps paving the way for this deal to unfold.

Although Android powers about four out of every five smartphones and other mobile devices in the world, the software can be altered in ways that result in Google’s services being de-emphasized or left out completely from the pre-installed set of apps.

That fragmentation threatens to undercut Google’s ability to increase the ad sales that bring in most of the revenue to its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., as people spend more and more time on smartphones and other devices instead of personal computers.

Apple’s iPhone and other hardware products are also particularly popular among affluent consumers prized by advertisers, giving Google another incentive to develop its own high-priced phone as a mobile platform for its products and ads.

Google also wants to build more internet-connected devices designed primarily for home usage, such as its voice-controlled speaker that’s trying to catch up with Amazon’s Echo. The Home speaker includes a digital concierge, called Google Assistant, that answers questions and helps manage people’s lives, much like the Alexa in Amazon’s Echo.

The purchase is a gamble on several fronts for Google and Alphabet.

Google’s previous forays into hardware haven’t panned out to be big winners so far. It paid $12.5 billion for smartphone maker Motorola Mobility five years ago only to sell it to Lenovo Group for less than $3 billion after struggling to make a dent in the market. And in 2014, Google paid more than $3 billion for home device maker Nest Labs, which is still struggling to make money under Alphabet’s ownership.

Expanding into hardware also threatens to alienate Samsung Electronics, Huawei and other device makers that Google relies on to distribute its Android software.
…

Scientists at a Nevada earthquake lab Wednesday tested new bridge designs with connectors they say are innovative and created to better withstand violent temblors and speed reconstruction efforts after major quake damage.

University of Nevada, Reno engineers performed the experiments on a giant “shake table” to simulate violent motions of an earthquake to rattle a 100-ton (91-metric ton), 70 foot (21-meter) bridge model to determine how well it would hold up.

The tests, conducted a day after a big quake struck Mexico, shook large concrete columns and beams back and forth for about 30 seconds at a time, displacing some nearly a foot before returning largely to their original spot.

Graduate students measured and marked indications of tiny fractures but no major structural damage was observed in the initial review of the experiments.

“The bridge has done better than we expected,” said Saiid Saiidi, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who served as the project leader. He’s done related research for more than 30 years.

Bridges are already designed not to collapse in earthquakes but often are unsafe for travel after big quakes. He said the designs that were tested employed special types of connectors to link prefabricated bridge parts, including ultra-high performance concrete.

“Earthquakes by themselves don’t kill people, it’s the structures,” Saiidi said.

The elements have been tested on their own but never before combined in a bridge model subjected to realistic earthquake motions, like the 1994 Northridge, California quake. Wednesday’s test inside the University of Nevada’s Earthquake Engineering Laboratory simulated activity of a quake as large as magnitude 7.5.

Some design work by the engineers has been incorporated into a highway off-ramp under construction in Seattle. It’s the first bridge in the world that uses flexible columns and reinforcement bars made out of a metal alloy with titanium that bends and then springs back into shape when quakes hit.

Among other things, the innovative connectors allow for prefabricated concrete and other materials to be attached to an existing bridge foundation so as to speed repair and reconstruction.

Part of the research centers on a so-called “pipe pin” connection developed by the California Department of Transportation’s bridge designers for use in connecting certain beam interfaces in bridge construction.

The pin consists of a steel pipe that is anchored in the column and extended into a steel can embedded in the beam. A gap between the steel pipe and the can enables the extended segment to freely rotate inside the steel can and prevents bending of the protruded segment inside the can.

The University of Nevada’s Earthquake Engineering Lab is the largest of its kind in the United States.

The latest project is funded by the California Department of Transportation, which currently is developing plans for 10 pilot projects based on the developing bridge connector technology.

“This study today is going to allow them to make observations of those designs,” Saiidi said.
…

Removing extremist content from the internet within a few hours of it appearing poses “an enormous technological and scientific challenge,” Google’s general counsel will say later Wednesday to European leaders who want it taken down quicker.

Kent Walker, general counsel for Alphabet’s Google, will speak on behalf of technology companies Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube at an event on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

The leaders of France, Britain and Italy want to push social media companies to remove “terrorist content” from the internet within one to two hours of it appearing because they say that is the period when most material is spread.

“We are making significant progress, but removing all of this content within a few hours — or, indeed, stopping it from appearing on the internet in the first place — poses an enormous technological and scientific challenge,” Walker will say in a speech on behalf of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a working group formed by the four companies to combine their efforts to remove extremist content.

Tech firms have come under increasing pressure from governments in the United States and Europe to do more to keep extremist content off their platforms after a spate of militant attacks, and the European Union is mulling legislation on the issue.

“There is no silver bullet when it comes to finding and removing this content, but we’re getting much better,” Walker will say.

“Of course, finding problematic material in the first place often requires not just thousands of human hours but, more fundamentally, continuing advances in engineering and computer science research. The haystacks are unimaginably large and the needles are both very small and constantly changing.”

Walker will say the companies need human reviewers to help distinguish legitimate material such as news coverage from the problematic material and train machine-learning tools against “ever-changing examples.”

The companies last year decided to set up a joint database to share unique digital fingerprints they automatically assign to videos or photos of extremist content, known as “hashes,” to help each other detect and remove similar content.

Facebook used a hash that contained a link to bomb-making instructions to find and remove almost 100 copies of that content.

Twitter said Tuesday that it had removed 299,649 accounts in the first half of this year for the “promotion of terrorism,” while Facebook has ramped up its use of artificial intelligence to map out pages and posts with terrorist material.
…

A chief gripe with Apple Watch is that it requires you to keep an iPhone with you for most tasks. The inclusion of GPS last year helped on runs and bike rides, but you’re still missing calls and messages without the phone nearby.

A new model with its own cellular-network connection is Apple’s next step toward an untethered world. Now you can make and receive calls and messages on the watch while leaving your phone at home.

But the watch still needs regular contact with an iPhone, and for most tasks, the phone needs to be on and connected, even if it’s nowhere nearby. So, you can’t get away with ditching the iPhone altogether. (Android users have their own wristwear options, including Samsung Gear and Android Wear watches, some of which can already manage their own network connections.)

The new Apple Watch Series 3, distinguished by a red crown, comes out Friday starting at about $400. You can forgo cellular, and the red crown, for $70 less. Or get a first-generation model, without GPS, for about $250.

Where it helps

You might not want to bring your phone on a short jog; the watch can still keep you in touch. Or you can leave the phone home while walking the dog or performing a quick errand.

You need a data add-on from the same wireless provider as your phone. It typically costs $5 or $10 a month and uses the phone’s data allotment.

While the watch technically has its own phone number, the major carriers have worked out number syncing. Calls to your phone will go to the watch, and calls from the watch will appear on caller ID with your regular number. Same goes for texts and iMessage chats.

Calls use the watch’s speaker and microphone, or wireless earphones. Colleagues say call quality was fine. It came in handy for sneaking in runs during conference calls (though if you’re my boss, just kidding! Now, about that raise …).

Phone calls and iMessage chats work on the watch even if your phone is off, as do turn-by-turn maps and queries to the Siri voice assistant. For texts, the phone needs to be on — somewhere. With the phone on, you can perform a variety of other tasks, including checking weather apps, Yelp recommendations and notifications that go to the phone.

Coming soon: the ability to stream Apple Music, even with the phone off. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to rival music services or Apple’s podcast app.

Limitations

Because the watch screen is small, many apps offer only a sliver of information and refer you back to the phone to view more. That was little more than an annoyance when the phone was in the same room. If you’ve left the phone behind, though, you’ll be left hanging.

You can also run into trouble while roaming, particularly internationally. For one thing, engineers weren’t able to squeeze in support for cellular frequencies around the world. And outside the U.S., only a handful of carriers are supporting the cellular watch. In any case, don’t forget to switch to airplane mode on flights.

Cellular data also drains the battery quicker. Apple’s promised 18 hours of battery life includes about four hours of such use. An hour of phone calls over LTE will drain the battery completely.

I got dropped from two conference calls because the battery was low to begin with. Plan ahead. A spare watch charger at your desk helps for those days you’re dumb enough to leave your phone on the kitchen counter.

Embracing the tether

It can be handy to untether the watch at times, but it’s not always necessary. Even when tied to the phone, Series 3 offers improvement such as tracking elevation, so you get credit for climbing stairs or jogging up a hill. And you can now hear Siri responses on the watch speaker, something enabled by the new version’s faster processor.

Software update

For owners of past models, a software update out this week, watchOS 4, will bring easier access to music playback controls when exercising — just swipe left. There are more prompts when reaching or nearing daily goals, and options for multiple sports in a single workout.

A new heart rate app now shows heart rate at rest and averages when walking or recovering from exercise. These can help you gauge your overall fitness.

And if your heart rate is high without any signs of exercise, you’ll get an alert. You enable this when you first open the heart rate app. It can signal health problems, though Apple is stopping short of telling you to see a doctor or visit the emergency room, as the watch isn’t marketed — or certified — as a medical device.
…

A private U.S.-based security firm is linking an Iranian government-sponsored hacking group to cyber-attacks targeted at organizations across the world.

The security firm FireEye said Wednesday the Iranian hackers used malware to attack aerospace and petrochemical firms in the United States, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

The hacking group, dubbed APT33 (advanced persistent threat) by the FireEye researchers, used phishing emails and fake domain names to gain access to computer systems of the targeted companies.

The report suggests the hackers target the companies in an effort to “enhance Iran’s domestic aviation capabilities or to support Iran’s military and strategic decision making vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia.”

“We believe the targeting of the Saudi organization may have been an attempt to gain insight into regional rivals, while the targeting of South Korean companies may be due to South Korea’s recent partnerships with Iran’s petrochemical industry as well as South Korea’s relationships with Saudi petrochemical companies,” the report reads.

The FireEye report says the hackers retained access to the companies’ computers for between four and six months at a time, during which the hackers were able to steal data and drop off malware that could potentially be used to destroy the infected computers.

It is difficult to accurately attribute cyber-attacks, but FireEye says it linked the hackers to Iran in part by tracking an online handle, “xman_1365_x,” that was accidentally left in the malware coding.

The report also notes references to the Farsi language in the malware code and that the hackers’ workdays appear to correspond with the Iranian time zone, and the Saturday to Wednesday workweek used in the country.
…

Amazon is attempting to develop glasses that pair with Alexa and would allow users to access the voice-activated assistant outside the home, according to a newspaper report.

The Financial Times, citing anonymous sources, says the glasses could be released before the end of the year.

 

Amazon.com Inc., based in Seattle, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

 

Wearable technology, glasses specifically, is already in limited use. Snapchat sells $130 glasses that take a short video and post it on the social media app. And Alphabet Inc. sells Google Glass to employers, so that doctors or factory workers can search information or talk to co-workers hands free.  
…

A cardiac arrest happens when the heart stops beating regularly, due to mixed up electrical signals. According to the American Heart Association, when cardiac arrest occurs, every minute that passes before help arrives lowers a person’s chance of surviving by seven to 10 percent. However, as we hear from VOA’s Kevin Enochs, in a crisis when every minute counts, drones may be able to quickly get help to people who live in rural areas.
…

A mobile phone app is the latest tool for campaigners seeking to end child marriage in India’s Bihar state, where nearly two-thirds of girls in some of its rural areas are married before the legal age of 18.

The app, Bandhan Tod, was developed by Gender Alliance — a collective of more than 270 charities in Bihar focused on gender rights — and launched this week by Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi. It is backed by the U.N. Population Fund.

India ranks among countries with the highest rates of child marriage in the world, accounting for a third of the global total of more than 700 million women, according to UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency.

Bandhan Tod — meaning “break the binds” — includes classes on child marriage and dowries and their ill effects. It also has an SOS button that notifies the team when activated.

“The app is a big part of our efforts to end child marriage in the state,” said Prashanti Tiwary, head of Gender Alliance.

“Education is good, but when a young girl wants help because she is being forced to marry before the legal age, the app can be her way out,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Despite a law banning girls from marrying before they turn 18, the practice is deeply rooted in tradition and widely accepted in Indian society. It is rarely reported as a crime and officials are often reluctant to prosecute offenders.

While boys also marry before the legal age of 21, girls are disproportionately affected.

Risks of abuse, death rise

Early marriage makes it more likely that girls will drop out of school, and campaigners say it also increases risks of sexual violence, domestic abuse and death in childbirth.

Legal efforts have failed to break the stranglehold of tradition and culture that continues to support child marriage, charity ActionAid India said in a report this year.

When the SOS on Bandhan Tod is activated, the nearest small NGO will attempt to resolve the issue. If the family resists, then the police will be notified, said Tiwary.

A similar app in West Bengal state to report child marriage and trafficking of women and children has helped prevent several such instances, according to Child in Need Institute, which launched the app in 2015.

Other efforts include a cash incentive, where the state transfers a sum of money to the girl’s bank account if she remains in school and unwed at age 18.

Suppliers of wedding tents in Rajasthan state have stopped dozens of child marriages by alerting officials.

“It will take a change in mindset and behavior to end child marriage,” said Tiwary, who is lobbying the government to raise the marriage age for women to 21, so they have the same opportunities as men.

“But technology provides a practical and accessible way to help prevent it on the ground,” she said.
…

Twitter said that its internal controls were allowing it to weed out accounts being used for “promotion of terrorism” earlier rather than responding to government requests to close them down.

U.S. and European governments have been pressuring social media companies including Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google to fight harder against online radicalization, particularly by violent Islamist groups.

Twitter said it had removed 299,649 accounts in the first half of this year for the “promotion of terrorism,” a 20 percent decline from the previous six months. Three-quarters of those accounts were suspended before posting their first tweet.

Less than 1 percent of account suspensions were due to government requests, the company said, while 95 percent were thanks to Twitter’s internal efforts to combat extremist content with “proprietary tools,” up from 74 percent in the last transparency report.

Twitter defines “promotion of terrorism” as actively inciting or promoting violence “associated with internationally recognized terrorist organizations.”

The vast majority of notices from governments concerned “abusive behavior,” which includes violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct and impersonation.
…

The difference between Apple’s new iPhone models is a bit like flying first class compared with coach. We envy first class, but coach gets us there without breaking the budget.

The iPhone 8 will do just fine for $300 less than the glitzy iPhone X , even though it won’t make your friends and colleagues jealous. It’s also available much sooner – this Friday – starting at almost $700. The X (read as the numeral 10) won’t be out until November.

 

Still, the iPhone 8 remains a fairly straightforward update of the iPhone 7 , which itself was a fairly straightforward update of the iPhone 6S. Then again, no one expects much different from a coach seat.

 

What you’re not getting

 

It’s hard to talk about the iPhone 8 without comparing it to my 15 minutes with the iPhone X last Tuesday.

 

The X wowed with a fancy new display that flows to the edges of the phone. The phone is compact, yet features a screen slightly larger than the one on the supersized iPhone 8 Plus. The X also features facial recognition that lets you unlock the phone with a glance; you can also create animated emojis that match your facial expressions.

 

The 8 has none of that, although it does share other new goodies the X is getting, including wireless charging. The 8 and the X both have faster processors and sensors to enhance graphics in augmented reality, a blending of the virtual and physical worlds, though older iPhones will also run AR apps with a software update Tuesday.

Wireless charging

 

Apple is embraces wireless-charging technology that Android phones have had for years. It’s a rare case in which Apple isn’t going its own way; instead, it’s adopting an existing standard called Qi (pronounced chee). That means the iPhone gets all the technical advancements from the consortium behind Qi _ and can take immediate advantage of a slew of public wireless-charging stations.

 

It worked perfectly for me while waiting for a connecting flight in Los Angeles – no need to rummage through my backpack for a charging cord.

 

Apple says the wireless system should charge as quickly as the wall adapter included with iPhones. But I found wireless slower in testing, using a Belkin charger with the same power output as the iPhone charger.

 

Wireless charging is largely about convenience; it’s terrific if you can just drop your phone on a charging pad overnight or during the day at your desk. Apple says it will boost wireless-charging power by 50 percent in coming months, which will speed things up further. But those in a rush should consider a wall charger that comes with the iPad, which will still be even faster.

 

In a way, wireless charging makes up for Apple’s earlier decision to ditch the headphone jack in the iPhone 7, which made people share the Lightning port with both charging cords and wired headphones. You can now charge and use wired headphones at the same time.

 

Display

 

Colors on the 8’s screen adapt to lighting in the room. It’s noticeable in my apartment at night, as artificial lighting tends to be warmer and more yellowish. The screen adapts by making whites more like beige and yellow even yellower. It’s softer on the eyes and mimics how light glows on white paper, though it can make images appear less natural. You can turn this feature off.

 

Resolution isn’t as sharp as what the X and many rival Android phones offer. The Plus offers enough pixels for high-definition video at the highest quality, 1080p, while the regular model is comparable to the lesser 720p.

 

Camera

 

New color filters produce truer and richer colors without looking fake, while a new flash technique tries to light the foreground and background more evenly. You have to know to look, as the iPhone 7 already had a great camera. Differences in test shots taken while sightseeing in Poland were subtle, but noticeable – more so on the iPhone 8 screen than on last year’s Mac.

 

The iPhone 8 also offers additional video options, including recording of ultra-high definition, or 4K, at 60 frames per second, twice the previous rate. (The phone’s display, though, isn’t sharp enough for 4K.)

 

A second lens in the 7 Plus and 8 Plus models lets the camera gauge depth and blur backgrounds in portrait shots, something once limited to full-featured SLR cameras. Samsung adopted that feature in this year’s Note 8 .

 

Coming to the 8 Plus are filters to mimic studio and other lighting conditions. My favorite, stage light, highlights the subject’s face and darkens the background. Some of these filters make images look fake – Apple has slapped a “beta” test tag to signal it’s not flawless. You can try them out and undo any changes you don’t like.

 

Design

 

To make wireless charging work, the 8 features a glass back, something last seen in the iPhone 4S in 2011. Aesthetic considerations aside, this gives you another sheet of glass to break.

 

Apple says custom glass from Corning makes the phone stronger. Even so, consider a service plan and get a case. Wireless charging works with most cases, as long as there’s no metal or magnets. I found the phone charged just as fast with the case on.

 

About the price tag

 

The iPhone 8 is about $50 more than what the iPhone 7 cost at launch. Samsung has similarly increased the prices of its flagship Galaxy phones, and the S8 still outsold last year’s S7. Consumers seem willing to pay.

 

You do get double the storage – 64 gigabytes – at that price, a value considering that iPhone storage boosts typically cost $100. You’ll need that extra storage for video, apps and fancy features such as AR and animated photos.

 

Nonetheless, I would have preferred the option of a cheaper, lower-storage version. For that, you need an older model , such as the $549 iPhone 7 and the $449 6S. There’s also the smaller iPhone SE for $349.
…

While car manufacturers are racing to get self-driving cars on the road, researchers are well ahead in developing self-driving vessels that could soon start ferrying passengers and cargo in busy ports. VOA’s George Putic has more.
…

Amblyopia or Lazy Eye, as it is called, is a vision problem in which the brain doesn’t receive or process signals from the affected eye. It can be caused by any number of physical issues, but the real problem is that it can’t be fixed with glasses. But it can be fixed, through therapy, and that therapy is now getting a high tech makeover using VR technology. Kevin Enochs reports
…

Alphabet unit Google has offered to display rival comparison shopping sites via an auction as part of an EU compliance order following a landmark fine for favoring its own service, four people familiar with

the matter said on Monday.

The proposal, submitted to the European Commission on August 29 following a record 2.4-billion-euro ($2.87 billion) penalty, would allow competitors to bid for any spot in its shopping section known as Product Listing Ads, the people said.

Three years ago, the world’s most popular internet search engine made a similar offer in an attempt to settle a long-running investigation by the European Commission and stave off a fine. The offer was ultimately rejected following negative feedback from rivals and discord within the EU executive.

Under this earlier proposal, Google had reserved the first two places for its own ads. The new offer would also see Google set a floor price with its own bids minus operating costs. The company has sought feedback from competitors.

The offer does not address the issues set out by EU competition regulators, the people said. The Commission had ordered Google to treat rivals and its own service equally.

“This is worse than the commitments,” one of the people said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Commission was not immediately available for comment.

Google did not respond to a request for comment. Google has until September 28 to stop its anti-competitive practices or its parent company Alphabet could be fined up to 5 percent of its average daily worldwide turnover.
…

With air drones now being a fixture in nearly every army’s arsenal, defense industries are hard at work developing ground and underwater robotic vehicles, trying not to fall behind others. Most of the technology has already been developed for industrial robots, and the rapidly expanding self-driving vehicle segment of the automotive industry. VOA’s George Putic looks at the state of warfare robots.
…

The hurricanes that brought howling winds and destructive floods to the Houston area and much of Florida are now swamping insurance companies with a multi-billion dollar wave of claims. Some insurance firms are using aerial photography to gather facts to help settle claims. Aerospace firm Airbus is offering free access to one of the world’s largest libraries of satellite images to speed the claims process — and build its business. As VOA’s Jim Randle reports, speed can save money.
…

Stuck in a refugee camp on the Greek island of Chios with poor internet and little credit, Abrar Hassan, like many others, was unaware that the tech world had been falling all over itself to help him.

More importantly, he was unaware of his rights and how best to prepare for the asylum interviews that would determine whether the 19-year-old, who fled a murderous family feud in Pakistan, had a future in Europe.

There has been an explosion of digital software applications, hackathons and websites since the refugee crisis filtered into Western public consciousness, with the tech world offering a range of solutions, whether to issues like Hassan’s, navigating the sea or job hunting.

Time has revealed the limits of such solutions when applied with little knowledge of the situation on the ground. Some tech tools, however, are bridging the gap.

No internet, no problem

Hundreds of micro SD memory cards that can be used in mobile phones have been given out in Chios. The memory cards are packed with information to help educate people about crucial details of the asylum process, such as the right to replace an inadequate translator during the asylum interview.

“When I came here I didn’t know anything about the Greek asylum system,” said Hassan, who passed his asylum interview and has remained on the island, helping to distribute SD cards to more refugees.

“This is the first time things have been clearly explained.”

The micro SD cards do not need an internet connection for people to access the text, audio and visual help offered in the Arabic, Farsi and Urdu languages.

They are the brainchild of Sharon Silvey, founder of RefuComm, a volunteer group working with refugees.

 

Silvey said that many tech products are often designed with little awareness of the audience they target.

“I’ve met thousands of refugees and I’ve not met one who said that they needed an app — it’s as simple as that. I’m not sure if refugees are involved at all [in development],” she said.

Steep learning curve

That criticism is partly acknowledged by some of those who have tracked the explosion of tech-focused assistance since fall 2015.

Ben Mason of Betterplace Lab, a Berlin-based nonprofit organization focused on what he calls “tech for good,” told VOA that the initial surge provided an “inspiring moment with people wanting to help and some good projects.”

“But there was quite a lot of misspent energy on ‘solutionism’ — the idea you can take a complex social problem and find a simple tech solution,” Mason added.

To avoid duplication of services, Techfugees — the most prominent tech network to emerge, with more than 15,000 members — called on users to consolidate their efforts and engage more with refugees themselves, many of whom rely on their own online social networks to get advice.

Tracking the success of this wave of tech support is difficult. Many projects have genuinely helped, such as Kiron Open Higher Education, which offers refugees access to higher education.

In the “fail fast, try again” ethos of the tech industry, meanwhile, other services proved useless or quickly disappeared, and some became notorious.

iSea, a highly hyped, award-winning app, was taken offline after it emerged that rather than live satellite images, it showed a single static image of the sea, rendering it useless for its purported role of helping crowdsource rescue operations.

Stuck in silos

Mason, who recently wrote a report on Germany’s tech response to the refugees crisis, argues that while it had “yet to deliver at scale,” the scene is “maturing,” with a small but emerging number of tech solutions created by refugees themselves.

Meghan Benton, a senior policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, said there have been successes, but for tech to truly impact efforts to help refugees, it will have to be about “a connection to mainstream services — rather than a parallel world, which serves small pockets, and might die from one week to the next.”

Not that such a solution is simple.

The ever-shifting nature of the refugee presence in Europe presents its own issues. For example, the U.N.’s refugee agency in Greece told VOA that as refugees moved from camps into urban settings, helping provide internet services would become even more difficult.

Meanwhile, the slow adaption of many European states to harnessing this tech talent and enthusiasm — for example, in its slow, bureaucratic funding methods — may, to varying extents, be influenced by the politics of the refugee crisis.

A distant prospect

Thousands still languish on the islands and face deportation until their asylum interviews are held.

When it comes to the asylum process, Greek authorities are perceived as more of an obstacle to the fair treatment of refugees than a partner to work with, RefuComm’s Silvey said.

For her, the idea of integrating her services remains a distant prospect.

Silvey said she would not be discouraged, though, and is now hunting for funds to roll out her idea further, and aims to launch it in Italy.

And with a team made up mostly of refugees as volunteers, RefuComm doesn’t lack the contact with beneficiaries that has plagued other tech solutions.

“Millennials are creating all these high-tech solutions, and then some old grandma comes up with a low-tech solution that works,” quips Silvey, 56.
…

Iceland is often called the land of ice and fire. It has plenty of ice and glaciers, but is also a geothermal hotspot of bubbling hot water cauldrons, geysers and volcanos. Harnessing all that energy is something Icelanders have been doing for generations, but they’re about to take that concept one step further. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

The United Nations reports world hunger is rising because conflicts and problems related to climate change are multiplying. The report finds about 815 million people globally did not have enough to eat in 2016 — 38 million more than the previous year.

The statistics in this report are particularly grim. They show that global hunger is on the rise again after more than a decade of steady decline. The report, a joint product by five leading U.N. agencies warns that malnutrition is threatening the health of and compromising the future of millions of people world-wide.

The report says 155 million children under age five suffer from stunting of their bodies and often their brains, thereby dimming prospects for the rest of their lives. It notes 52 million, or eight percent, of the world’s children suffer from wasting or low weight for their height.

Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund, Anthony Lake, says the lives and futures of countless children are blighted because of food insecurity. And those trapped by conflict are most at risk.

“Millions of children across northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere; innocent victims of a deadly combination of protracted, irresponsible conflicts; of drought, poverty and climate change… If unreached, a generation of children, more likely someday as adults, will replicate the hatred and conflicts of today,” Lake said.

The report also explores the problems of anemia among women and growing obesity among adults and children as well. This study does not present a favorable outlook for the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

Authors of the report say governments must set goals and invest in measures to bring down malnutrition and to promote healthy eating for healthy living.
…

It was a Friday in June, a short workday before a public holiday weekend in Ukraine, and cybersecurity expert Victor Zhora had left the capital, Kyiv, and was in the western city of Lviv when he got the first in a torrent of phone calls from frantic clients.

His clients’ networks were being crippled by ransomware known as Petya, a malicious software that locks up infected computers and data. But this ransomware was a variant of an older one and wasn’t designed to extort money — the goal of the virus’ designers was massive disruption to Ukraine’s economy.

“I decided not to switch on my computer and just used my phone and iPad as a precaution,” he said. “I didn’t want my laptop to be contaminated by the virus and to lose my data,” he said.

​Virus spread like wildfire

The Petya virus, targeting Microsoft Windows-based systems, spread like wildfire across Europe and, to a lesser extent, America, affecting hundreds of large and small firms in France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Britain.

While many Europeans saw the June cyberattack as just another wild disruption caused by anonymous hackers, it was identified quickly by experts, like the 37-year-old Zhora, as another targeted assault on Ukraine. Most likely launched by Russia, it was timed to infect the country’s networks on the eve of Ukraine’s Constitution Day.

The cyberattack started through a software update for an accounting program that businesses use when working with Ukrainian government agencies, according to the head of Ukraine’s cyberpolice, Sergey Demedyuk. In an interview with VOA in his office in the western suburbs of Kyiv, Demedyuk said, “every year cyberattacks are growing in number.”

“Sometimes when targeting a particular government agency or official, they mount complex attacks, first using some disguising action, like a denial-of-service attack, and only then launch their main attack aiming, for example, at capturing data,” he said.

Ukraine’s 360-member cyberpolice department was formed in 2015. The department is stretched, having not only to investigate cybercrime by nonstate actors but also, along with a counterpart unit in the state security agency, defend the country from cyberattacks by state actors. Demedyuk admits it is a cat-and-mouse game searching for viruses and Trojan horses that might have been planted months ago.

​Cybersecurity summit

On Wednesday, the director of U.S. National Intelligence, Dan Coats, told a cybersecurity summit in Washington that digital threats are mounting against the West, and he singled out Russia as a major culprit, saying Moscow “has clearly assumed an ever more aggressive cyber posture.”

“We have not experienced — yet — a catastrophic attack. But I think everyone in this room is aware of the ever-growing threat to our national security,” Coats added.

And many of the digital weapons the West may face are being refined and developed by Russian-directed hackers in the cyberwar being waged against Ukraine, said Zhora and other cybersecurity experts.

“They are using Ukraine as a testing laboratory,” said Zhora, a director of InfoSafe, a cybersecurity company that advises private sector clients and Ukrainian government agencies.

​Eye of the digital storm

Since the 2014 ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine has been in the eye of a sustained and systematic digital storm of big and small cyberattacks with practically every sector of the country impacted, including media, finance, transportation, military, politics and energy. Sometimes, the intrusions are highly tailored; other times, more indiscriminate attacks like Petya are launched at Ukraine.

Russian officials deny they are waging cyber warfare against Ukraine. Zhora, like many cybersecurity experts, acknowledges it is difficult, if not impossible most times, to trace cyberattacks back to their source.

“Attribution is the most difficult thing. When you are dealing with professional hackers it is hard to track and to find real evidence of where it has come from,” he said. “But we know only one country is the likely culprit. We only really have one enemy that wants to destroy Ukrainian democracy and independence,” he added.

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, has been less restrained in pointing the finger of blame. Last December, he said there had been 6,500 cyberattacks on 36 Ukrainian targets in the previous two months alone. Investigations, he said, point to the “direct or indirect involvement of [the] secret services of Russia, which have unleashed a cyberwar against our country.”

Ukraine’s cyberpolice head agrees. Demedyuk says his officers have been able to track attacks, especially denial-of-service intrusions, back to “Russian special services, tracking them to their own facilities and their own IP addresses.” But the original source of more complex intrusions, he said, are much harder to identify, with the hackers disguising themselves by using servers around the world, including in Asia and China.

​Digital weapons refined

Digital intrusions have seen data deleted and networks crippled with real life consequences. And digital weapons are being refined often with the knowledge gained from each intrusion.

Zhora cites as an example of this evolution the difference between two large cyberattacks on the country’s electricity grid, the first in December 2015 and the second at the end of last year, which cut off energy to hundreds of thousands of people for several hours.

With the first attack the hackers used malware to gain access to the networks and then shut the system down manually. 

“They sent an email and when someone opened it, the payload was downloaded and later it spread across the network and they used the path created for the hackers to get to the administrator’s work station and then in a live session switched off the subsystems overseeing electricity distribution,” he said.

But with the 2016 attack no live session was necessary.

“They used a malware which opened the doors automatically by decoding specific protocols and there was no human interaction. I think they got a lot of information in the first attack about the utility companies’ networks and they used the knowledge to write the malware for the second intrusion,” he said.

Digital threats to US

In his speech midweek in Washington, Coats specifically cited possible digital threats to America’s critical infrastructure, including electrical grids and other utilities, saying it is of rising concern. 

“It doesn’t take much effort to imagine the consequences of an attack that knocks out power in Boston in February or power in Phoenix in July,” he said.

After the second cyberattack on Ukraine’s electrical grid, a group of American government and private sector energy officials was dispatched to Kyiv, where they spent a month exploring what happened, according to Ukrainian officials.

One lesson the visitors drew was that it would be much harder in the U.S. to switch the grid back on after an intrusion. The Ukrainians were able to get the electricity moving again by visiting each substation and turning the system on again manually, an option apparently more challenging in the U.S., where grid systems are even more automated.

“Virtual attacks are every bit as dangerous as military ones — we are living on a battlefield,” Zhora said.
…

Mention quantum computing and people generally think, “what the heck is quantum computing?” Quantum computing uses the “weirdness” of the quantum world to create a new way for computers to do their thinking. It leaves the fastest computers in the dust. Australian researchers may have taken a huge step toward making quantum computers cheap and accessible. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

Equifax announced late Friday that its chief information officer and chief security officer would leave the company immediately, following the enormous breach of 143 million Americans’ personal information.

It also presented a litany of security efforts it made after noticing suspicious network traffic in July.

The credit data company said that Susan Mauldin, who had been the top security officer, and David Webb, the chief technology officer, are retiring from Equifax. Mauldin, a college music major, had come under media scrutiny for her qualifications in security. Equifax did not say in its statement what retirement packages the executives would receive.

Mauldin is being replaced by Russ Ayers, an information technology executive inside Equifax. Webb is being replaced by Mark Rohrwasser, who most recently was in charge of Equifax’s international technology operations.

Equifax has been under intense public pressure since it disclosed last week that hackers accessed or stole the millions of Social Security numbers, birthdates and other information.

On Friday it gave its most detailed timeline of the breach yet, saying it noticed suspicious network traffic on July 29 associated with its U.S. online dispute portal web application. Equifax said it believes the access occurred from May 13 through July 30.

Equifax had said earlier that it identified a weakness in an open-source software package called Apache Struts as the technological crack that allowed hackers to heist the data from the massive database maintained primarily for lenders. That disclosure, made late Wednesday, cast the company’s damaging security lapse in an even harsher light. The software problem was detected in March and a recommended software patch was released shortly afterward.

Equifax said its security officials were “aware of this vulnerability at that time, and took efforts to identify and to patch any vulnerable systems in the company’s IT infrastructure.”

The company said it hired Mandiant, a business often brought in to deal with major technology security problems at big companies, to do a forensic review.

Equifax has been castigated for how it has handled the breach, which it did not disclose publicly for weeks after discovering it.

Consumers calling the number Equifax set up initially complained of jammed phone lines and uninformed representatives, and initial responses from the website gave inconsistent responses. The company says it has addressed many of those problems. Equifax also said Friday it would continue to allow people to place credit freezes on their reports without a fee through November 21. Originally the company offered fee-free credit freezes for 30 days after the incident.

Equifax is facing a myriad of investigations and class-action lawsuits for this breach, including Congressional investigations, queries by the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as several state attorneys general. The company’s CEO Richard Smith is scheduled to testify in front of Congress in early October.

Three Equifax executives — not the ones who are departing — sold shares worth a combined $1.8 million just a few days after the company discovered the breach, according to documents filed with securities regulators.

Equifax shares have lost a third of their value since it announced the breach.
…