Google Removes Some Apps From Google Play Because of Malware

 Digital Trends says you should your phone in safe or airplane mode before visiting the app settings menu to uninstall the app. After that, users should install malware protection and check to see that any other apps aren’t known to be utilizing malware. 

Luxury Cars SUV Traffic
Car Driving Simulator
Extreme Car Driving Racing
Moto Cross Extreme Racing
SUV City Climb Parking
Extreme Car Driving City
City Traffic Moto Racing
Extreme Sport Car Driving
Hyper Car Driving Simulator
Truck Cargo Simulator
SUV 4×4 Driving Simulator
Firefighter – Fire Truck Simulator
Luxury Car Parking

Image

Artificial Intelligence & Jail Time

 ProPublica found that algorithms tend to reinforce racial bias in law enforcement data. Algorithmic assessments tend to falsely flag black defendants as future criminals at almost twice the rate as white defendants. What is more, the judges who relied on these risk-assessments typically did not understand how the scores were computed.

This is problematic, because machine learning models are only as reliable as the data they’re trained on. If the underlying data is biased in any form, there is a risk that structural inequalities and unfair biases are not just replicated, but also amplified. So, AI engineers must be especially wary of their blind spots and implicit assumptions; it is not just the choice of machine learning techniques that matters, but also all the small decisions about finding, organizing and labeling training data for AI models.

In order to guard against unfair bias, all subjects should have an equal chance of being represented in the data. Sometimes this means that underrepresented populations need to be thoughtfully added to any training datasets.

Shameful!

Chinese medical documents posted online this month said (here and here), a team at the Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzhen, has been recruiting couples in an effort to create the first gene-edited babies. They planned to eliminate a gene called CCR5 in hopes of rendering the offspring resistant to HIV, smallpox, and cholera.

Millennials & the Work force

Millennials receive a lot of flack for the massive transformations occurring in business today. To baby boomers and older generations, the workforce is almost unrecognizable. The shift has been from a customer-centric to employee-centric experience and has redefined business strategies from the ground up.

Employers once was able to hook the best candidates with an attractive compensation package and upgrade in title. Today, the priorities have changed to focus more on development, transparency and work-life balance. Many companies are struggling to adapt and are facing a loss in top talent.

The barriers from the hierarchical cultures are being demolished and used as the foundation for the flat organizations’ that new generations crave . This isn’t the only change businesses are facing.

Soft skills have been slow to gain momentum in business as hard skills are easier to measure and identify. In recent years, businesses are refocusing their priorities from a “leave your personal life at home” mentality to understanding how to become more self-aware of their own emotions as well as their employees.

When employees feel valued and cared for, their motivation and job performance increases and retention decreases. If employers neglect the soft skills and only focus on the hard skills, it creates barriers in the relationship and risks tarnishing the morale of the company. Companies such as Google have this down pat. Their mindfulness training course helps teach employees skills that improve their emotional intelligence, decrease their stress and increase their communication.

Working from home is no longer a luxury but instead a requirement. While traditional 401K benefits are still popular, they’re not preferred. Instead, millennials want flexibility and the option for remote work. Employers like Yahoo implemented a remote work policy early on giving their employees the flexibility to be closer to their kids, ditch the commute and work from the comfort of their home.

A study last year revealed that an average of 41% of American workers don’t take a single vacation day.

Gen Z & the Workforce

Gen Z is entering the workforce at a rapid pace, with the eldest of them now 23. A far larger group than their millennial counterparts, youth and young adults born between the mid-1990s and late 2000s have aptly been named Gen Z. Employers should be excited as a flood of talent will be joining the workforce soon — comprising 36 percent of the workforce by 2020 — but be aware, they have short attention spans, even shorter than millennials, and expect a lot from their employers.

According to a Deloitte study, Gen Z values employment that allows them to live a balanced lifestyle even more so than Millennials, with a greater emphasis on physical, mental and social well-being. They want flexibility and control within their schedules. For example, they want to be able to go to an afternoon doctor’s appointment without feeling like it reflects poorly on their work ethic. Employers must investigate providing flexible work hours, the ability to work from home when possible, and progressive benefit plans that include a Wellness Spending Account. Shopify, for example, offers a WSA that includes eligible spending categories such as gym memberships, financial planners and house cleaning.

With this massive influx of new talent, the workplace is once again going to experience significant change.

Growing up with the Internet, teens are used to getting real-time feedback—and lots of it. Their education and co-curricular activities have also made them used to receiving constructive criticism and acting upon it to improve their chances of success.

“The big thing for employers to consider is that Gen Z actually wants to be mentored and managed,” says Tom Turpin, president of employment agency Randstad. “Gen Z places a tremendous amount of value on an employer’s ability to mentor and teach them.”

Gen Z, people born in 1995 and later, are protesters, social-justice marchers, and spendthrifts just like their hippie aunts, uncles, parents and even grandparents.

Demographers may debate the exact dates, but Baby Boomers were typically born between 1946 and 1964. Their parents grew up during the Depression and the nightly news brought into their living rooms images of a war fought in Southeast Asia.

Compare that with Generation Z. Some of the first Gen Zers were teens and adolescents during the Great Recession of 2008. They saw their parents or the parents of their friends struggle with foreclosures and joblessness. Meanwhile, the country was waging a War on Terror against a nationless enemy.

 

Traditional marketing doesn’t work for Gen Z. Marketers need to embrace technology and new ways of storytelling. According to an infographic from Upfront Analytics, Gen Z customers respond to edgy and visual marketing tactics. Videos—especially short ones like those created via the social network Vine—work particularly well with young customers.

The study revealed that 80 percent of Gen Z say finding themselves creatively is important. Over 25 percent post original video on a weekly basis, while 65 percent enjoy creating and sharing content on social media.

 

Hackers On The Prowl During Black Friday

Last November, Cyber Monday was the largest online sales day ever, with people spending six billion dollars according to Adobe. Black Friday brought in more than $5 billion in sales.

Hackers are looking for a quick payday from unsuspecting shoppers, whether it’s through attacking retailers or tricking people directly.

“Black Friday and Cyber Monday are great days for getting deals while shopping online, but it’s also a time when hackers are on the prowl.

Magecart, which comprises multiple hacker groups, has been targeting thousands of websites and stealing financial information from unsuspecting customers. The thieves have hit British Airways, Ticketmaster UK and NewEgg in the last five months.

If you’re going to shop online, especially looking for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, security experts recommend watching out for scams and fake websites.

The NCSA recommends avoiding deals coming in via email, and suggests heading to the store’s website directly. Fake deals will often have typos and suspicious email addresses, Schrader said.

NIT Study Reveals That Artificial Intelligence Is Racist & Sexist

An MIT study has revealed the way artificial intelligence system collect data often makes them racist and sexist.

Researchers looked at a host of systems, and found many of them exhibited a outrageous bias.

The team then developed system to help researchers make sure their systems are less biased.

Computer scientists are often quick to say that the way to make these systems less biased is to simply design better algorithms,’ said lead author Irene Chen, a PhD student who wrote the paper with MIT professor David Sontag and postdoctoral associate Fredrik D. Johansson.

‘But algorithms are only as good as the data they’re using, and our research shows that you can often make a bigger difference with better data.’

In one example, the team looked at an income-prediction system and found that it was twice as likely to misclassify female employees as low-income and male employees as high-income. 

They found that if they had increased the dataset by a factor of 10, those mistakes would happen 40 percent less often.

In another dataset, the researchers found that a system’s ability to predict intensive care unit (ICU) mortality was less accurate for Asian patients. 

However, the researchers warned existing approaches for reducing discrimination would make the non-Asian predictions less accurate 

Chen says that one of the biggest misconceptions is that more data is always better. Instead, researchers should get more data from those under-represented groups.

‘We view this as a toolbox for helping machine learning engineers figure out what questions to ask of their data in order to diagnose why their systems may be making unfair predictions,’ says Sontag.

The team will present the paper in December at the annual conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) in Montreal. 

Robo Calls & Neighbor Spoofing

Neighbor spoofing is one way scammers use to get you to answer the phone. They alter area codes and prefixes on the caller ID to make calls appear to be from a local number. The scammers bank on us being more likely to answer calls we think are coming from a neighbor or our kids’ school.

A new call-blocking technology called STIR / SHAKEN is well underway and should roll out over the next year.

Here’s how it works: the caller’s network attaches a digital token confirming the call is from its real phone number.

“As that call transits through, it gets passed through one network to the next and that token gets passed to each successive carrier.

If your network cannot verify that token, you don’t get the call

Robo Call Index

Competitive Book Sorters

Teamwork and speed. Courtesy Jonathan Blanc/The New York Public Library

Formerly the NYPD captain in charge of Brooklyn’s major crimes investigations, Magaddino glides around the machine, with one hand gesturing to its component parts and the other clutching a styrofoam cup of coffee. Wearing a checked suit, he gloats in consummate Brooklynese about the remarkable operation this beast enables. Sorting items that move every day from the tip of the Bronx to the lip of Staten Island, his team tallied nearly 7.5 million successful deliveries last year.

Read More on the competition

Warning AI Is Watching When Tempted to divert Expenses To A Work Dinner

• 

One employee traveling for work checked his pooch into a kennel and billed it to his boss as a hotel expense. Another charged yoga classes to the corporate credit card as client entertainment. A third, after racking up a small fortune at a strip club, submitted the expense as a steakhouse business dinner.

These bogus or phony expenses, which occurred recently at major U.S. companies, have one thing in common: All were exposed by artificial intelligence algorithms that can in a matter of seconds sniff out fraudulent claims and forged receipts that are often undetectable to human auditors—certainly not without hours of tedious labor.

A company an 18-month-old AI accounting startup, named AppZen, has already signed up several big companies, including Amazon.com Inc., International Business Machine Corp., Salesforce.com Inc. and Comcast Corp. and claims to have saved its clients $40 million in fraudulent expenses. AppZen and traditional firms like Oversight Systems say their technology isn’t ousting  jobs —so far—but rather freeing up auditors to dig deeper into dubious claims and educate employees about travel and expense policies.

A report released in April, by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners analyzed 2,700 fraud cases from January 2016 to October 2017 that resulted in losses of $7 billion.

The world’s largest anti-fraud organization found travel and expense embezzlement typically accounts for about 14 percent of employee fraud. It has become easier to fool finance departments thanks to websites such as fakereceipts.us that make it easy to create a bogus paper trail.

The algorithms have already exposed some creative—and costly—frauds: employees tacking on bottles of vodka to their “work lunch” bill, buying $3,000 worth of Starbucks gift cards and claiming it as “coffee with a contact.” One employee expensed her $900 office farewell party and submitted a claim that contained an animated photograph of her face instead of any receipts—demonstrating how seriously she took the auditors.

Guido van Drunen, a principal in KPMG’s Forensic Advisory Services, believes some lower-level jobs will disappear as more and more companies adopt the technology in the coming years. But he says there’s no way AI can spot all the sneaky ways employees try to defraud their employers.

Info obtained from Accounting Today

Heavy Hitter Video Games Coming Your Way

The three heavy-hitter exclusive games for Sony’s PlayStation 4, Microsoft’s Xbox One, and Nintendo’s Switch console this holiday season.

1. “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” on the Nintendo Switch

The biggest Nintendo game of the year is’nt here yet. “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” is expected to launch on December 7 for the Nintendo Switch — the biggest entry yet in the decades-old “Super Smash Bros.” fighting game franchise.

“Forza Horizon 4” on the Xbox One/Xbox One X

U.S. Panel Warns Against Purchasing Tech From China

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission gave a warning of dangers to the US government and private sector from a reliance on global supply chains linked to China, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of information technology equipment. 

It appears that China’s aggressive push to dominate the high-tech industry by 2025 already is a sore point with Washington and a contributing factor in trade tensions that have seen the world’s two largest economies slap billions of dollars in punitive tariffs on each other’s products this year. 

The US also has had long-running concerns about state-backed cyber theft of corporate secrets, something that China agreed to stop in 2015. But the bipartisan commission highlights the potential security risks to the United States by China’s pre-eminence in the so-called Internet of Things, or IoT.

China’s role as an economic and military competitor to the United States creates enormous economic, security, supply chain, and data privacy risks for the United States,” the report says.

The commission, is warning that the potential impact of malicious cyberattacks through such systems will intensify with the adoption of ultra-fast 5G networks that could quicken data speeds by up to 100 times.  

Their report says “The lax security protections and universal connectivity of IoT devices creates numerous points of vulnerability that hackers or malicious state actors can exploit to hold US critical infrastructure, businesses, and individuals at risk,”

The United States has already restricted government procurement from Chinese tech giants Huawei and ZTE, which deny their products are used for spying by China’s authoritarian government. 

In June, the Defense Department suspended the purchase of all commercial, off-the-shelf drones until a cybersecurity risk assessment strategy was established. In 2017, US customs authorities alleged that drones produced by Chinese company DJI, which has dominated the US and Canadian drone markets, likely provided China with access to US critical infrastructure and law enforcement data. DJI denied the allegation. 

The commission is calling for Congress to push for assessments by US government agencies on their supply chain vulnerabilities.

Definition Of A Kilogram Will change This Week

 

The official definition of a kilogram is currently determined as the mass of a metal cylinder called the International Prototype of the Kilogram, but that could be about to change(Credit: Greg L)

Scientists from around the world have been debating and discussing on whether the kilogram, the mole, the ampere and the kelvin should be changed to more stable and reliable definitions. They are meeting in Paris on Friday to vote.

As it stands now, the kilogram is the only unit of measurement to still be based on a physical object – specifically, a lump of metal in a vault in France. This International Prototype of the Kilogram (IPK) has been the official standard since 1879, but it isn’t as unchanging as you might think.

Naturally, the IPK has been gathering microscopic contaminants during the past 140-odd years, meaning the official definition of a kilogram has to keep being updated to match the new mass, while the artefact itself needs to undergo regular cleaning. Complicating things further, 40 “exact” copies of the IPK were made and distributed to institutions around the world, but their own masses are also changing slowly at different rates, meaning their definitions are drifting out of sync.

If the vote is successful, going forward the kilogram will be defined by the Planck constant. This is calculated in an instrument known as a Kibble balance, which suspends a 1-kg weight using electromagnetic forces. The constant is the amount of energy it takes to balance the weight, and after years of experiments and measurements, that value has been determined to a precise degree.

If the vote goes ahead, the redefinitions are set to officially come into effect on May 20, 2019, which is World Metrology Day.

 

FCC Cracking Down On Robo Calls

Click Here

 

China’s World’s First AI News Anchor

China’s Xinhua News Agency has debuted an artificial intelligence (AI) news anchor on Wednesday as the state-run media organization seeks to bring a “brand new” news experience to the world.

A report posted on YouTube by New China TV features a life-like, English-speaking “AI anchor” modeled after one of Xinhua’s actual presenters named Qiu Hao.

Explaining he is programmed to read texts typed into his system, the digital presenter said he would deliver the news without interruption.

“I will work tirelessly to keep you informed as texts will be typed into my system uninterrupted,” it said.

According to the South China Morning Post, Xinhua said its new AI anchors have officially become members of the Xinhua News Agency reporting team and will work with other anchors to bring authoritative, timely and accurate news information in both Chinese and English.

It was also hinted that AI anchors may one day “challenge” their human counterparts because of their ability to work 24 hours a day provided human editors keep inputting text into the system.

 

Uber Eats Has Grown From Experiment To Serving Much Of U.S. & Cities Worldwide

Its been three years, and the Uber Eats restaurant food delivery service has grown from an experiment to serving much of the US and major cities worldwide. By end of the year, the ride-hailing company says it will cover 70% of the US population and be in 243 metro areas, mainly by expanding into smaller cities.

It’s already in over 300 cities in 36 countries with many international deliveries done by bicycle. Jason Droege, an Uber vice president who leads Uber Everything, the unit that explores how to build new businesses off the Uber network, says Eats is growing as fast as the ride-hailing service did in its early days.

It appears that Millennials are attracted to Uber Eats while older folks still prefer restaurants.

Facebook’s App For Teens-LASSO

Facebook has released an app called Lasso that lets users create fun, short videos designed to compete with TikTok, the viral 15-second video app that recently merged with Musical.ly. In 2018, only half of teens say they still use Facebook, compared to in 2014, when 71 percent of them said they did.

White Librarianship In Blackface

Read About It here

AI Has the Potential Of Being More Accurate Than MD’s

Jörg Goldhahn, MD, MAS, deputy head of the Institute for Translational Medicine at ETH Zurich, Switzerland says that artificial intelligence systems simulate human intelligence by learning, reasoning, and self correction. This technology has the potential to be more accurate than doctors at making diagnoses and performing surgical interventions. It has a “near unlimited capacity” for data processing and subsequent learning, and can do this at a speed that humans cannot match.Increasing amounts of health data, from apps, personal monitoring devices, electronic medical records, and social media platforms are being brought together to give machines as much information as possible about people and their diseases. At the same time machines are “reading” and taking account of the rapidly expanding scientific literature.”The notion that today’s physicians could approximate this knowledge by keeping abreast of current medical research while maintaining close contacts with their patients is an illusion not least because of the sheer volume of data,” says Goldhahn.Machine learning is also not subject to the same level of potential bias seen in human learning that reflects cultural influences and links with particular institutions, for example.

“Computers aren’t able to care for patients in the sense of showing devotion or concern for the other as a person, because they are not people and do not care about anything. Sophisticated robots might show empathy as a matter of form, just as humans might behave nicely in social situations yet remain emotionally disengaged because they are only performing a social role.”

“Patients need to be cared for by people, especially when we are ill and at our most vulnerable. A machine will never be able to show us true comfort,” they say.

They’re Using Bus Service Like Uber Service In Canada

The city of Belleville in Canada is piloting an on-demand, Uber-inspired system for its public buses. As a ‘transit desert’, Belleville has low population density – making it difficult to offer reliable, convenient public transport. Uber’s ubiquity has also contributed to this issue. Previously, the city’s dial-a-bus system required users to book at least 12 hours in advance. Under the new system this is reduced to 30 minutes. The city reported that the trial on a late night bus route has seen the number of riders doubled.

 

 

Black Girl Whose White Classmates Put Rope Around Her Neck Awarded Only $68,000

The family of a Black girl who claims her white classmates violently put a rope around her neck has been awarded $68,000. A jury in Austin, Texas has ordered the private school where she attended to pay damages for their failure to properly and immediately address the apparent bullying the girl had long experienced.

 

According to the lawsuit, the incident happened when the girl was standing near a swing that was hanging from a tree which has a separate rope used to pull it higher. K.P. claimed thrhttps://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/414506-school-ordered-to-pay-68000-to-black-girl-after-classmates-allegedlyee of her classmates, who often bullied her, used the separate rope to pull around her neck and violently jerked her to the ground.

More Here

 

The girl, who is now 15 years old, is being home-schooled.

Some Getting paid For Those Annoying Robo Calls

 

There is a way you can make up to $1,500 for certain robocalls you get on your cell phone. You’re entitled to that money under federal law.

more here

7-Eleven is making more moves to go cashierless — or at least give customers the option to. Starting Monday, 14 stores in Dallas will have scan-and-go technology built in the company’s mobile app, so customers can scan and pay for items on their phones.

When shopping, customers scan barcodes of items and pay directly through their phones, either with a card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, applying any rewards to their purchases. Upon leaving these stores, customers scan a QR code in the store to confirm they paid.

It’s the latest big retailer to enable its own scan-and-go mobile capabilities, while giant companies like Amazon and Walmart-owned Sam’s Club go cashierless, where customers no longer even have the option to wait in line. Amazon is building out its line of AmazonGo stores and Sam’s Club opened its first cashierless store last week. As of now, cashiers are still present at 7-Elevens and still have to handle hot food items and items like alcohol that require ID to purchase.

 

AI & Your Job

 

Facebook Planning A Camera Device That You Attach to Your TV

Facebook’s next attempt at hardware will reportedly come in the form of a device that can be attached to a TV and provide the user with access to some video content. While this in principle sounds like what an Amazon Fire TV Stick or Roku Stick does, the difference will be Facebook’s option is expected to come equipped with a camera and will be a unit that needs to be attached to the top of the TV, instead of hidden behind the TV like most media devices these days. Though not confirmed by the company, who have reportedly declined to comment, the information on this new product comes courtesy of a new report out of Cheddar, which in turn credits “people familiar with the matter” for the details.

Facebook plans to hold out until Spring, 2019 before officially announcing the new TV-based device, although this is only a tentative date at the moment with one of the sources expressing the launch date could change, or be pushed back due to the device still being in the development stage.

White Nationalism Message Spreading To Campuses

It’s OK to Be White” messages has periodically appeared on campus posters over the past two years, typically placed unknown people or organizations who haven’t taken credit for doing so, and who are believed to be from off-campus groups.

Pro-white propaganda of various types has been appearing on campuses in increasing frequency in the last two years. Last week has seen a surge in such postings.

The “OK to be white” message turned up in Vermont, at the University of Vermont and Champlain College.

Since then the posters have appeared at American River College, Duke University, North Carolina State University, Tufts University, the University of Delaware, the University of Denver and the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota.

The trend is not only in the United States. One Canadian institution, the University of Manitoba, also had the posters turn up. In Australia, the use of the phrase by some politicians has set off a major political debate (and appearance of the posters), but in that case, the focus is not in higher education.

Also last week, white nationalist posters turned up at California State University at San Marcos.

The campuses seeing the posters do not seem to fit any pattern. They include public and private institutions, two-year and four-year, institutions where white people make up a minority of students and institutions where they are the overwhelming majority.

Colleges have generally removed the posters as soon as they are discovered. Colleges generally require those putting up posters to identify themselves and/or get permission to place them. That hasn’t happened in these cases. So while college leaders have condemned the message behind the posters, they have not faced free speech challenges because those putting up the posters have violated college rules.

The surge in these posters on campus has come at a challenging time for many institutions, as students respond to a divisive midterm election and recent killings of black people in Kentucky and Jewish people in Pittsburgh.

For the last two years, the Anti-Defamation League has been documenting an increase in white supremacist activity (including posters) on college campuses. There were 292 cases of white supremacist propaganda reported on campuses during the 2017-18 academic year, compared to 165 in 2016-17.

Tesla Owner Avoids Parking Tickets

Tesla is planning a significant update to their “Summon” feature on its cars that will let you drive your Tesla around like a colossal R/C car.

Got a tight spot?

Essentially, the current version of Summon lets you move the car up to 39 feet, forwards or backwards.

 

View Here

 

Parents Worry About the Addictive Nature Of Mobile Devices

Technology executives say they enjoy their work but, they also are concerned about the addictive nature of mobile devices and social media.

The Pew Research Center released a study in August about what parents think about technology in the lives of their children. The study found that about 66 percent of U.S. parents worry that their teenage children spend too much time with computers or mobile devices. Seventy-two percent of parents said they thought their teenagers were sometimes distracted by their phones when talking with them.

However, 86 percent of parents said they are very or somewhat sure they permit the right amount of phone or computer time for their children. The study said 36 percent of parents admit to spending too much time on phones themselves.

Apple is trying to assist with some of the problems it helped create when it first released the iPhone in 2007. The company is offering alternative ways for parents to observe and control how much time they and their kids spend on the devices.

New tools are available to keep children from using applications like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram completely or just at certain times of the day. Google included similar controls in its latest version of the Android operating system, which most of the world’s smartphones use.

 

 

Google Employees Walking Out Today To Protest Handling Of Sexual Misconduct

Google Walkout (Twitter)

Employees are walking out of Google offices worldwide in protest today as a storm around the company’s handling of sexual harassment cases continues to gather strength. Organizers of the Google Walkout for Real Change tell The New York Times that more than 1,500 employees, mostly women, are planning to walk out from more than 60 percent of Google’s offices at 11:10AM as timezones roll around the world.

The Walkout