Two Democratic US senators Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate privacy problems related to Internet-connected televisions.
“Many Internet-connected smart TVs are equipped with sophisticated technologies that can track the content users are watching and then use that information to tailor and deliver targeted advertisements to consumers,” Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote in a letter yesterday to FTC Chairman Joseph Simons.
It would be up to Congress to pass new laws for smart TVs. But the FTC can punish companies for unfair and deceptive business practices. Action was taken against smart TV manufacturer Vizio last year.
There may be enough Democratic votes in Senate—but the House is a another story.
Today Senate Democrats filed a long-promised petition to prevent the repeal of net neutrality rules in a move that will force a vote of the full Senate by a deadline of June 12.
The Senate will have to vote on a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution of disapproval, which would nullify the Federal Communications Commission’s December 2017 vote to repeal the nation’s net neutrality rules. The CRA was filed in February, and Democrats today filed the discharge petition that will force the full Senate to vote on it.
This is the same mechanism that Congressional Republicans used to eliminate broadband privacy rules last year.
If successful, the Democrats’ resolution would prevent the deregulation of the broadband industry and maintain rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.
“The CRA resolution would fully restore the rules that ensure Americans aren’t subject to higher prices, slower Internet traffic, and even blocked websites because the big Internet service providers want to pump up their profits,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said at a press conference today. “By passing this resolution, we can send a clear message that this Congress won’t fall to the special interest agenda of President Trump and his broadband baron allies but will rather do right by the people who sent us here.”
The Internet Association said it is weighing its legal options for “a lawsuit against today’s Order” but would also accept a strong net neutrality law imposed by Congress.
Plenty of organizations might appeal, said consumer advocate Gigi Sohn, who was a top counselor to then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler when the commission imposed its rules.
Two executives from Best Buy described the work they’ve done over the last three and a half years rethinking employee training by investing in support for customer and product interaction — as opposed to clunky, corporate technology — by using dedicated resources from a retail user experience and a change management perspective.
They believe it’s super important for their employees to feel like they have a place in the future of where we’re going.” These efforts have helped drop employee turnover by “well into the double digits.
Employee turnover is still problematic. The average turnover rate is north of 60%, according to the National Retail Federation, and retailers collectively lose over 230 million productive days and $19 billion in new staff costs as a result.
Last year, newfound investment in employee training became a priority for the National Retail Federation as well as 21 major retailers like Walmart, Target and Macy’s, which together launched the RISE Up (Retail Industry Skills and Education) program.
Although Best Buy is not a part of the program, the retailer has spent the last few years tackling the problem by conducting “hundreds and hundreds” of one-on-one interviews with employees across the country to ask about usability problems when it comes to applications and technology, and other pain points of the job.
“Through redesigning systems and bringing new technology into the stores they were able to cut their POS transaction time in half. This allows their associates to spend less time typing on keyboards or holding tablets and reinvest that time to connect with the customer experiences so they don’t end up cutting labor or anything similar.
The New York Police Department is moving away from Windows Phones after two years with the platform and replacing some 36,000 Windows phones with iPhones, which are now being rolled out to police officers…
The Officers get to choose between an iPhone 7 and an iPhone 7 Plus. Currently, officers in Manhattan are taking part in the transition, but once that is complete, the rollout moves to Brooklyn and then Queens.
The iPhones also improve functionality that smartphones bring to officers in general. For instance, smartphone use by police officers can respond to scenes much quicker than relying on the traditional radio:
The New York Daily News reports that the NYPD has been rolling out about 600 phones per day to its officers, who get to choose between an iPhone 7 and an iPhone 7 Plus. Currently, officers in Manhattan are taking part in the transition, but once that is complete, the rollout moves to Brooklyn and then Queens.
The move to iPhone is already being heralded as a major success by some officers. “I truly feel like it’s the ultimate tool to have as a patrol cop,” said Police Officer Christopher Clampitt.
The iPhones also improve functionality that smartphones bring to officers in general. For instance, smartphone use by police officers can respond to scenes much quicker than relying on the traditional radio:
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) data released a report last week revealing 4.5 million consumers complaints about robocalls in 2017, way up from 2016’s 3.4 million. For every single month of the year, robocalls topped the list of “Do Not Call” violations, and they came in six common forms:
In addition to all the complaints, use of the “Do Not Call” registry has exploded since it was started in 2003. 10 million numbers were registered in the first four days after launch, and the registry now hosts 226 million active registrations.
India has a severe shortage of psychiatrists and as a result, mental illness in rural areas remain undiagnosed or does not get the proper treatment. Indian researchers have developed a virtual tool to help address this problem. It has been found that it can be used by non-psychiatrists and is as effective as a diagnosis by specialists. The expert system is called clinical decision support system (CDSS) for diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders was developed at the Department of Psychiatry of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh.
The tool covers 18 common mental disorders-delirium, dementia, mania, depression, dysthymia, psychosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobias, reaction to severe stress and adjustment disorder, somatoform disorder, dissociative disorder, neurasthenia, sexual dysfunctions, alcohol dependence, substance dependence and mental retardation.
Mental health care is mostly unavailable or inaccessible in most parts of India. About 90 percent patients in need of psychiatric treatment do not get it due to lack of psychiatrists. That gap is filled by creating a virtual psychiatrist. The expert system can assist a non-medical person to interview a patient with mental disorders leading to an automated diagnosis. The ICT technology is very simple to use, just a computer, broadband internet, Skype and a telephone line. Telepsychiatry holds the potential to solve the massive and intertwined problems of underdiagnosing and undertreating persons with mental illness and the lack of trained workforce at the grassroots level.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, has stepped forward with one of the first legal challenges to the commission’s controversial vote. In a open letter to the FCC
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wrote that his office pursued an investigated the incident, but that the FCC basically ignored all of its requests for cooperation. Schneiderman declared his office’s intention to sue to “stop the FCC’s illegal rollback of net neutrality”.
By 2030 up to 30% of the hours worked globally could be automated. According to a new report by the McKinsey Global Institute researchers estimate that between 400 million and 800 million people could find themselves displaced by automation and in need of new jobs, depending on how quickly new technologies are adopted. Of this group, as many as 375 million people—about 14% of the global workforce—may need to completely switch occupational categories and learn a new set of skills to find work.
Klemens Schillinger’s Substitute Phones are made of high-quality, heavy-duty plastic designed to mimic the look and feel of a traditional smartphone. The devices feature stone beads which are designed to simulate the various gestures one would make on their smartphone. They’re like phone-shaped fidget spinners. The same tactile urge to touch and swipe like your actual smartphone does, is fulfilled, but will give you a break from the constant text messages and notifications.The calming limitation can also offer help for smartphone addicts to cope with withdrawal symptoms.
The Justice Department sued to block the company’s AT&T’s $85.4 billion bid to buy Time Warner Inc.
A judge will determine whether the combination of AT&T and Time Warner would give the new entity too much power in the fast-changing media landscape.
The first major antitrust enforcement action to be brought by the Trump administration — dealt a blow to a tie-up that appeared to be sailing toward approval as recently as a month ago. That was before Makan Delrahim, was appointed to head the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
Delrahim contents that the merger would harm American consumers enormously. Resulting in higher monthly television bills and fewer of the new, emerging innovative options that consumers are beginning to enjoy.
The White House has traditionally stayed at arm’s length from merger reviews. Trump told reporters during his recent trip to Asia that the deal might be challenged in court.
Time Warner and AT&T combined, could use its control over programming like CNN and HBO to harm rivals by forcing them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more per year for the right to distribute the content, according to the 23-page complaint. The deal also would enable AT&T to impede competition from online video distributors, which would reduce choices for consumers, according to the complaint.
The government is open to dropping the lawsuit if the companies offer a proposal to fix the competitive harm from the deal, a Justice Department official said.
Currently there have been accusations that the Justice Department, driven by political meddling from the Trump White House, is pursuing a risky case that it’s bound to lose.
The websites of US telly giant CBS’s Showtime contained JavaScript that secretly commandeered viewers’ web browsers over the weekend to mine cryptocurrency.
The flagship Showtime.com and its instant-access ShowtimeAnytime.com sibling silently pulled in code that caused browsers to blow spare processor time calculating new Monero coins – an alternative to the Bitcoin. The hidden software typically consumed as much as 60 per cent of CPU capacity on computers visiting the sites. The scripts were written by Code Hive, a legit outfit that provides JavaScript to website owners: webmasters add the code to their pages so that they can earn slivers of cash from each visitor as an alternative to serving adverts to generate revenue. Over time, money mined by the Code-Hive-hosted scripts adds up and is transferred from Coin Hive to the site’s administrators. One Monero coin, 1 XMR, is worth about $92 right now.
They say it’s extremely unlikely that a large corporation like CBS would smuggle such a piece of mining code onto its dot-coms – especially since it charges subscribers to watch the hit TV shows online – suggesting someone hacked the websites’ source code to insert the mining JavaScript and make a quick buck.
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Click to enlarge
In addition to the $10 million donation, Verizon is waiving South Texas customers’ data, talk, and text charges, and giving prepaid customers an extra 3GB from August 26th to September 15th – a one-week extension over what had previously been announced. The company is also deploying Cells on Wheels (COWs) and Cells on Light Trucks (COLTS) to supplement mobile coverage, working with government agencies to help first responders with communications services, staffing shelters with Verizon employees to assist responders and residents alike, matching employees’ donations, and offering emergency financial assistance to employees. Plus, employees will receive up to a week of paid volunteer time to volunteer for the Harvey recovery effort in the coming months.
World Health Organization predicting that by 2050, predicts that 75 percent of the people on the planet will be urban dwellers.
Various cities will have the different goals and needs when becoming a smart city. In Pittsburgh, Pa., the focus is on clean energy and air quality, but in Washington, D.C., improving public transportation is key. Whereas Chicago, is controlling the rodent population by using predictive analytics to determine which trash dumpsters are most likely to be full and attract more rats. Chicago is also working with local universities and colleges to develop technology, and providing open-source code so that developers around the globe can use what Chicago has already developed and build upon it. San Francisco & New York City has apps that allows smartphone users to find available parking spots in garages throughout the city.
GE, makes sensors that are placed within smart streetlights. These sensors can measure foot traffic, finding out how many pedestrians are on a city block at a certain time of day, which is useful information for any business that might be interested in moving to that area. The sensors also allow citizens to connect to an app to tell them the quietest path to take to get to their destination, which is convenient if someone is on a business call and doesn’t want the sound of city traffic to interfere.
Vancouver, which has the goal of becoming the greenest city on earth by 2020. Their Citizens are engaged by keeping in touch with them via a report card every six months. Companies like IBM can listen to social media and tell you what your citizen concerns are. They can tell you which side of an issue they’re on. A major concern for city leaders is how they can afford smart technology. It might not be possible to reallocate funding for a new project, and it can take months, if not years, to get approval for new funding within a municipality.
To assist cities with this need, the White House announced in late September that it would make an investment of $80 million for smart cities.
The National Science Foundation is allocating $60 million in new funding for its Smart Cities Initiative. This funding will cover a research task force seeking solutions for cities, expanding internet architecture within cities, transportation efficiency, health research, and networked computer systems.
NASA
On Aug. 21, the moon will slip between Earth and sun, casting a roughly 70-mile-wide shadow that will race across the United States from Oregon to South Carolina, Whereby millions of Americans will have a chance to enjoy — and study -spectacular event. This is the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in 99 years. It has been dubbed, aka the “Great American Eclipse.”
New York
| Time | Phase | Direction | Altitude |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1:23 pm Mon, Aug 21 | Partial Eclipse begins The Moon touches the Sun’s edge. |  192° |
60.7° |
| 2:44 pm Mon, Aug 21 | Maximum Eclipse Moon is closest to the center of the Sun. | 226° |
53.0° |
| 4:00 pm Mon, Aug 21 | Partial Eclipse ends The Moon leaves the Sun’s edge. | 247° |
40.9° |
According to NASA, the following materials should never be used to view a solar eclipse:
Disney will be launching a new, stand-alone ESPN streaming service in 2018. This is wonderful news to those who have left cable behind but still yearn to watch sports. It is also big for ESPN, which has had a rough couple of years. The sports media empire lost 12 million subscribers since its peak in 2011, and the company fired a number of high-profile employees in 2017, including NBA reporters Marc Stein and Chad Ford. Former ESPN writer Bill Simmons claimed that the company was too slow to recognize the importance of digital infrastructure.
The new ESPN service will offer “approximately 10,000 live regional, national, and international games and events a year, including Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, Grand Slam tennis, and college sports. Individual sport packages will also be available for purchase, including MLB.TV, NHL.TV and MLS Live.”
JPMorgan launched a partnership with PayPal, bolstering both companies’ digital payment networks.
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL), two global payments leaders, have announced a partnership that will make it easy to add Chase cards via Chase Pay to PayPal accounts, and will soon offer customers the option of paying with Ultimate Rewards points when linked through Chase Pay at PayPal’s millions of online merchants.
In addition, PayPal will have the ability to process payments on ChaseNet, a unique, closed-loop payment netwo
The most recent round of bank earnings provides a window into the shift to mobile services. Bank of America and JPMorgan both expanded their mobile customer bases by double-digit percentages versus a year ago.
There’s unsurety as to what the Government is doing with the images. They say, Facial-recognition systems may indeed speed up the boarding process, however, the real reason they are cropping up in U.S. airports is that the government wants to keep better track of who is leaving the country, by scanning travelers’ faces and verifying those scans against photos it already has on file. The idea is that this will catch fake passports and make sure people aren’t overstaying their visas. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has partnered with airlines including JetBlue and Delta to introduce such recognition systems at New York’s JFK International Airport, Washington’s Dulles International, and airports in Atlanta, Boston, and Houston, among others. It plans to add more this summer.
“As It Searches for Suspects, the FBI May Be Looking at You”). Privacy advocates also point out that research has shown the technology to be less accurate with older photos and with images of women, African-Americans, and children (see “Is Facial Recognition Accurate? Depends on Your Race”).
Johnnatan Messias at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil and a few pals began the study began by filtering the Twitter stream during the three months to September 2016. In total, they collected 341,457,982 tweets posted by 50,270,310 users.
They filtered this by time zone, geolocation, and those with a profile picture to leave them with 1.6 million users based in the U.S. They then fed the pictures through a state-of-the-art face recognition application called Face++, which reports the sex and race (black, white, or Asian) of each user. The overall makeup of the group revealed that 53 percent were women and 47 percent men. It also revealed the race breakdown, which was 18 percent Asian, 14 percent black, and 68 percent white. Messias and co began by looking at the ratios of men and women who had the most followers on Twitter. Of the top 1 percent of Twitter users with the most followers, 57 percent were male and 43 percent female. Researchers say inequalities surfaced when the group studied the distribution of races among the most popular Twitter users. “At the highest levels of [Twitter] visibility, users perceived to be White come out on top position.”
The most privileged group turns out to be white males, who are overrepresented by 20 percent among popular Twitter users. White females are also more privileged albeit to much lesser extent, just 3 percent. The most underprivileged groups are Asian females and black females, who are underrepresented by 31 percent.
Moreover, The study reveals that there are significant biases in the way genders and races link to each other. This is an effect known as “homophily”—the tendency of people to seek out others like themselves. White people tend to follow more white people than expected by a margin of 16 percent. Black people tend to follow more black people than expected by a very significant margin of over 200 percent. However, Asian people tend to follow fewer Asian people than expected by a margin of 10 percent.
Western New York police department has purchased a drone for $9,994.99.
It will be flying the skies of West Seneca to help officers solve crimes and keep the community safe. The grant was secured by State Senator Patrick Gallivan.
West Seneca Police have been training for eight months on how to use this new technology, which officers say will assist in many different police missions including search and rescues, creek levels during flooding and crime scene analysis.
The drone is equipped to drop items to those in need, such as a during a hostage situation. They can put a cell phone in it for delivery to someone in need, during a hostage situation which will help our hostage negotiators maintain communication with them.The drone can travel up to 400 feet high, with a speed up to 50 miles per hour, with a rotating camera that captures video from all angles.
The drone also can give the investigators an indicator of where a fire started,” according to Lt. McNamara. “Accident investigation, that can be used to show the weather conditions at the time of an accident.”
The department is ready to start flying, but is waiting for final approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to use the drone at night.
Thirteen years after launching and less than five years after hitting 1 billion, Facebook now has 2 billion monthly active users. Facebook is currently, the largest social app in terms of logged-in users, above YouTube’s 1.5 billion, WeChat’s 889 million, Twitter’s 328 million and Snapchat’s estimated 255 million (extrapolated from its December 2015 ratio when it had 110 million daily and 170 million monthly users). Beyond YouTube, only Facebook’s other apps have more than 1 billion, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, with 1.2 billion each. Instagram might soon join that club as it recently rocketed past 700 million.
Some say facebook can impact people lives. It appears that the ramifications of a near ubiquitous social network can propel internet addiction that alienates people, and facilitate the filter bubbles that polarize society by reinforcing opinions. Facebook has largely conquered its competitors, giving it the slack to finally address the modern sociological challenges that stem from its popularity.
Atlanta, like other metro centers, is striving to become a “smart city” via the latest technological innovations. However, with some of the city’s infrastructure over 100 years old, it faces challenges that planners hope to resolve through an integrated technology approach. To date, Atlanta has implemented numerous newer and emerging technologies as part of its smart initiative. These include environmental sensors, video analytics, artificial intelligence, data analytics, real-time situational awareness tools, big data management, traffic management tools, smart lighting, and smart waste management. The city has planned deployments of technologies including radar detection, dedicated short-range communications, autonomous vehicles, and connected vehicle systems.
WannaCry ransomware that claimed hundreds of thousands of victims across 150 countries has hit speed and intersection cameras in Victoria Austrailia, Radio 3AW has reported.
According to the radio station, 55 cameras in the state belonging to vehicle monitoring and enforcement service Redflex were infected with the ransomware after a rogue USB was inserted by someone performing maintenance on the now-infected cameras.
It is understood that the infection came as a result of “human error” rather than a targeted attack aimed at holding the Australian state to ransom.
The cameras are not connected to the internet, however, which means the ransomware has not been spread throughout the field, 3AW told its listeners on Thursday.
President Donald Trump plans to nominate Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel for another term on the Federal Communications Commission.
Rosenworcel had to leave the commission at the end of 2016 when the Republican-led US Senate refused to reconfirm her for a second five-year term. The departure of Rosenworcel and former Chairman Tom Wheeler left the FCC with just three out of the typical five members, with Republicans holding a 2-1 majority. Republican senators didn’t want Rosenworcel to stay on the FCC at the time because it would have resulted in a 2-2 deadlock. Commissioners are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But no party can have more than a one-vote majority, so Trump has to nominate a Democrat and a Republican to fill the empty seats. When a president needs to nominate a commissioner from the opposing party, he takes suggestions from the opposing party’s leadership. Senate Democrats backed Rosenworcel for a return to the FCC, so Trump appears to be following longstanding tradition by nominating her.
The new “textalyzer” technology is modeled after the Breathalyzer, and would determine if you had been using your phone illegally on the road. Lawmakers in New York and a handful of other cities and states are considering allowing police to use the device to crack into phones because, they say, too many people get away with texting and driving and causing crashes.
“Phone records — as I found out the hard way — they’re tough to get [and]
In the next month, New York state lawmakers are expected to vote on a bill that allows police to check a driver’s cellphone with a “textalyzer,” which can tell whether a driver swiped or tapped the phone in the run-up to a crash.
Five years ago, YouTube allowed anyone to sign up for the service, start uploading videos, and immediately begin making money. This model helped YouTube grow into the web’s biggest video platform, but it has also led to some problems. People were creating accounts that uploaded content owned by other people, sometimes big record labels or movie studios, sometimes other popular YouTube creators.
YouTube has announced a change to its partner program to try and alleviate some of the bad stuff. From now on, creators won’t be able to turn on monetization until they hit 10,000 lifetime views on their channel. YouTube believes that this threshold will give them a chance to gather enough information on a channel to know if it’s legit.
In a party-line 50-48 vote Thursday, senators approved a resolution to undo sweeping privacy rules adopted by the Obama-era Federal Communications Commission. If it becomes law, it would also prevent the FCC from setting similar rules again.
The rules have not gone into effect, however ISPs must tell consumers what information is being collected and how it is being used or shared. The rules require ISPs in some cases to get users’ explicit consent, for example to sell information such as geo location or browsing history for advertising.
Republicans in Congress and at the FCC have objected to these rules, passed by the Democratic majority at the FCC in October. They have argued with major cable and telcom companies,that the rules put ISPs on unequal footing with other major data-collecting companies like Google or Facebook, which are overseen instead by the Federal Trade Commission.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has released the latest designs for the Union Square Tech Hub, a $250 million project that aims to “create a central convening point for technology training and networking” as the Big Apple tumbles into the increasingly digital future. Some say the 14th street’s new tech tower looks like what would happen if you asked Ikea to build a white-collar prison.
According to the mayor’s office, the hub—also known as 14th @ Irving (its cross streets)—“will generate 600 good paying jobs, and serve as a new home for Civic Hall that will include a digital job training facility for all New Yorkers.
The tech Hub aka broken Rubik’s cube will be erected in the heart of New York City’s Union Square, which in recent years has become home to Best Buy, Whole Foods, Forever 21, and Sephora.
The Tech Hub is seen as a symbol of the direction that New York has been heading in for a long time.
A German watchdog is warning parents about the possible breach of their child’s privacy for those who play with the Wi-Fi-connected smart doll, My Friend Cayla.
They advise parents to destroy the doll
The Federal Network Agency, an official telecommunications watchdog in Germany known as Bundesnetzagentur, issued a warning on Friday about the smart doll, revealing that hackers can listen in and even talk to the child through the toy’s insecure Bluetooth connection.
The Cayla doll has been removed from the market and banned, marked as an illegal “concealed transmitting espionage device.” The doll had to be pulled from shelves because according to German law, it is illegal to sell a banned surveillance device.
The same law says also makes it illegal to possess a surveillance device, with those breaking this law risking serving up to two years in jail.
But households who purchased the doll won’t be penalized for having the now illegal device. Instead, the German watchdog is advising parents to destroy it.
Manufactured by Genesis Toys, My Friend Cayla is the interactive toy that can talk and play games with the child. The Wi-Fi-enabled doll connects to the Internet via Bluetooth to be able to answer question asked by the child, responding via microphone.
The California-based TV manufacturer agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle the charges and disclose when and how it collects user information. Since February 2014, software installed on the televisions allowed Vizio to continuously collect customer’s viewing history through software called “ACR,” or automated content recognition. This software captures a selection of pixels displayed on Vizio smart TV screens and sends that data to the company’s servers, where those pixels are compared to a database of different TV shows, movies, and commercials. ACR can also collect information like your Wi-Fi signal strength, nearby Wi-Fi access points, and IP addresses.
The complaint alleges that over 100 billion data points per day (information like what content you’re watching and how long you’re watching it) from more than 10 million Vizio televisions have been collected, and the company planned to store this data on their servers indefinitely. A stipulated federal court order requires that Vizio delete all data collected before March 1, 2016. An anonymized version of the data omitting customers’ name or contact information was sold to third parties for advertising and audience measurement purposes.
FTC’s complaint said Vizio did not make it clear to customers that they intended to collect their TV viewing history, and the collection was turned on by default, which did not give customers a chance to opt out. A key part of the complaint is that Vizio promised customers recommendations based on the data collected, but never provided them to owners of older Vizio TVs
If you own a Vizio TV, you can disable data collection by going to your TV’s Menu > Settings > Smart Interactivity, or any option with Automated Content Recognition, and turning it off.
Twitter is expanding its awards show broadcasts as part of an expanded partnership with Dick Clark Productions (DCP).
The deal will live-stream the official red carpet pre-shows for several events including the Academy of Country Music Awards (CMAs) on April 2, the Billboard Music Awards (BBMAs) on May 21, and the American Music Awards (AMAs) in November. Twitter will also broadcast live the entirety of the 7th Annual Streamy Awards in partnership with DCP and Tubefilter, which will air in the fall.
“Book by Cadillac” is a subscription service that gives users access to short-term rentals of different vehicles for a flat monthly fee via app. Similar to the Audi On Demand and Audi At Home services that is already available in certain markets, Book by Cadillac aims to give subscribers the flexibility to choose whatever vehicle they want at the moment, without the so-called hassles like lease or finance payments, insurance, fuel, and maintenance.
After his smartphone was stolen, a film student allowed his smartphone to get stolen again. This time it was filled with spyware to keep tabs on the thief.
An iPhone was not used to lure the thief. You can’t run spyware apps on the iPhone, and you don’t have the same level of control you do with Android.
The filmmaker used an HTC One preloaded with a special type of app that would give him total remote control of the phone. He could also use it to spy on everything the thief did, provided there was an active internet connection at the time. He could take photos and record videos, enable the microphone of the device to snoop in on conversations, collect all location data, read all the text messages, access call history, check contacts, and see all the contents of the phone.
It all happened thanks to a spyware app installed on the device that the thief didn’t even know was there. van der Meer also blocked the phone’s ability to receive Android updates in order to make sure his malware app wasn’t wiped out by a knowledgeable thief.
Donald Trump met with Japanese tech billionaire Masayoshi Son on Tuesday . Son says he will invest $50 billion in new startups in the United States, committing to creating 50,000 new jobs over an unspecified time period.
Son is the founder and chief executive of SoftBank, one of Japan’s largest technology outfits, which owns the U.S. mobile carrier Sprint. Sprint shares initially spiked after the announcement. Son left Trump Tower after being escorted down the elevator by the president-elect, who touted the pledge before waiting investors.
The Following survivalist Apps are said to get you out of serious situations. These are the apps you should keep installed in case of emergency.
You hit the panic button and a message goes out to the emergency contacts you’ve specified in advance, together with a link to your current location. The paid upgrade also enables emergency services calling capability.
Red Panic Button (freemium) for Android and iOS
This First Aid app can help, giving detailed guidance for all kinds of problems, from asthma to a heart attack, and you can also call up the address of the closest medical center from inside the app itself.You can call 911 from inside the app as well and access various other handy resources.
You hold down the blue button if you feel vulnerable, then let go and enter a PIN when you’ve reached safety. If the PIN isn’t entered when the software button is released, then the app sends out an alert.The alert is sent to the local police who will be on their way using the location info provided by your phone—you don’t need to do anything else. The only downside is there’s a monthly subscription fee of $2.99 (or $29.99/year), but you can try it for free for 30 days.
SafeTrek ($2.99/month) for Android and iOS
There’s a Panic Alert feature built into the app that will take care of messaging the friends and family you choose via voicemail, email and notifications if you should get into trouble. The people you alert will also be able to see your last known location on a map.
Life360 Family Locator (free) for Android and iOS
No matter what life throws at you, this app can help. Adapted from the book written by a British SAS instructor, it covers just about every scenario imaginable when it comes to survival, from the berries you can eat to the knots you need to tie to the dangers to look out for.
SAS Survival Guide ($5.99) for Android and iOS
October 2016, AT&T announced that they had reached a deal to buy Time Warner for $85.4 million, a move that could create one of the most powerful media companies in the world. This would mean that AT&T (a telecommunications provider) would merge with a content provider in Time Warner, and creating the possibility for conflict to net neutrality if AT&T were to provide faster than normal access to Time Warner content. The merger would represent another step towards mass media consolidation over the past few decades
(Image Source: WSJ.com)
2016 has brought with it a number of media consolidations and acquisitions that have included Comcast’s (CMCSA) acquisition of DreamWorks Animation (DWA) for $3.8 billion, and AT&T’s 4-year deal with DirecTV.
This deal has gained opposition from all sides of the political spectrum, from the far left and the alt right. Bernie Sanders has come out in opposition to the deal, warning, in a letter to the Justice Department, that the deal could lead to “gross concentration of power” in news media, and that preventing the deal would help “preserve our democratic discourse and open competitive markets for speech and commerce”.
From the right, President Elect Donald Trump is highly critical of the deal.
AT&T declared that it would create a “new company with complementary strengths to lead the next wave of innovation in converging media and communications industry“.
These huge content and service providing monoliths are a serious fear for those who value the idea of net neutrality; the more consolidation there is between content and provider the more the lines will become blurred, and net neutrality will be the victim.
Fake or sensationally biased news sources now has escalated. The central focus of the concern is Facebook, which has grown beyond a social platform and is now a key information distributor from which 44 percent of Americans get their news.
Detecting fake news-The Verge talked to Professor Nicole A. Cooke of the University of Illinois. Professor Cooke works in the University’s top-ranked School of Information Sciences, focusing on human information behavior, information literacy, and diversity in librarianship. She says ” Information literacy is just trying to get people to be savvy consumers of information, and getting them to be able to really interrogate the information that is available to them, to see what is quality, to evaluate sources, et cetera.” Her rule of thumb for identifying fake news “If you see something on Facebook or Twitter, a lot of people get caught up with just forwarding information without actually reading the article or examining the site. When you see a very salacious headline or something that’s challenging, sometimes the inclination is to forward it without checking. You have to ask: does this appear in multiple places or did you only see it on Facebook? This misinformation is perpetuated because people aren’t taking the time to evaluate sources before they accept it as truth and / or pass it on to others.”
My Tips On Spotting Fake News
Check Domain Name
Verify with Snopes is a great one. Factcheck.org and PolitiFact TinEye http://www.hoax-slayer.com/
The combination of AT&T and Time Warner will create a media-telecommunications firm that is much larger than Comcast, the giant cable TV distributor that purchased NBC Universal five years ago. It also makes AT&T a major media power player after its acquisition last year of DirecTV for $48.5 billion.
Teen hacker using the alias “Fear” hacked hundreds of FTP servers owned by the U.S. government. The hacker first gained access to one server, but then discovered that it listed the access credentials to all FTP servers residing on the .us and .gov domains. The .us servers include public data, private data, program source code, and more sensitive data, while the hacker wouldn’t say what’s loaded on the .gov sites. The teen hacker managed to grab credit card numbers from the First Bank of Ohio because the government has access to that particular bank. In turn, the bank stores the sensitive numbers across several SQL tables, which is a form of Excel-like data storage within a database. Moreover, one FTP server located within Florida wasn’t even password protected. It reportedly serves up one file with 267 million records, one file with 76 million records, another one with 400 million records, and more. Since then, that specific FTP server has now become password protected (even though that may be a case of closing the barn door after the data-rich cow has gotten out). the teen managed to collect credit card numbers by the thousands, and social security numbers by the millions. He managed to get the details of state employees including their telephone numbers, names, addresses, and government positions. Apparently, the FTP sites owned by the U.S. government depend on passwords with only five characters. Soon after the federal government shut down the main .us FTP server.
Even after the recall due to the risk of explosion, consumers are still using their Samsung Galaxy Note 7 anyway.
More about that here https://www.apteligent.com/2016/09/samsung-galaxy-note-7-impact-battery-explosions-adoption
The initial recall on September 2nd Samsung would “voluntarily replace [users’] current device with a new one over the coming weeks,” but didn’t mention whether it was safe to continue using the device. A week later owners were advised not only to exchange their device “now,” but to also power it off completely.
Def Con is an annual four-day hacker event just wrapped up in Las Vegas.
Ongoing Information & Trends: A Weblog 
Written
on September 2, 2016