Microsoft will Launch Disc-Less Xbox One for Under $200 in 2019

Microsoft may launch a disc-less Xbox One in 2019 according to sources familiar with the company's plans. In addition to forsaking physical media, it also plans to allow Xbox One owners to trade in their existing games on disc for digital downloads. The reason for such a drastic move is to get the price of the Xbox One lower and ensuring its under $200 (around Rs. 14,000).
br />"Currently, it costs about $299 to buy into the Xbox One family of devices," writes Xbox insider Brad Sams. "Microsoft is looking to lower that price by possibly as much as $100; the new console price point is expected to be $200 or less."

If you're in the market for a new Xbox One that can play games without having to go online or worry about Microsoft's servers being unavailable, you're in luck. There will be another Xbox One S variant that ships with a disc drive. Sams states that "Microsoft is moving forward very carefully with this product as it knows that a sizeable portion of its users do prefer to buy physical games and not download them." Though if this was really the case, it wouldn't be exploring a disc-free Xbox One to begin with.

And while the company may allow Xbox One owners to trade their games on discs for digital downloads, it's not entirely new. Sony had a similar program for its PSP users in Japan during the launch of the PS Vita though it never saw the light of day outside of that country.

Previously Sams stated that Microsoft had two Xbox One streaming devices in the works. The first will be built along the lines of the Chromecast and priced at around $100. The other will be "like the Apple TV", possibly integrating with Windows 10 apps and supporting lightweight games. It could be priced between $150 and $175. These will help Microsoft target and hopefully win back the living room. It appears that these plans have been put on the back burner as it focusses on simply removing the disc drive from the Xbox One, which we hope doesn't come to fruition given that accessing your library of content depends on Microsoft's servers being online and having a super fast Internet connection is mandatory.

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Let us allow e-voting despite hack fears said by US JUDGE:

A judge in the US state of Georgia has approved the use of electronic voting machines - despite being "gravely concerned" that they could be hacked.

There wasn't enough time before November's mid-term elections to switch to a secure paper-based alternative, said District Judge Amy Totenberg.

Fears that e-voting machines could be hacked have caused some to warn against their adoption in some countries.

The judgement was a "significant" one, according to one e-voting expert.

A lawsuit was filed in May last year against Georgia's Secretary of State over the Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines.

There are now less than two months until the US mid-term elections in November, when many new members of the US Senate and House of Representatives will be elected.

Judge Totenberg said in her judgement the lawsuit had taken place at the "eleventh hour" and that switching to a paper-based voting system now could "just as readily jeopardize the upcoming elections, voter turnout and the orderly administration of the election".

However, she also acknowledged the seriousness of the threat posed by hackers, and rebuked state officials for not dealing with the problem sooner.
'Heads in sand'

"The court is gravely concerned about the state's pace in responding to the serious vulnerabilities of its voting system - which were raised as early as 2016 - while ageing software arrangements, hardware and other deficiencies were evident still earlier," she said.

Later, she concluded, "The state's posture in this litigation - and some of the testimony and evidence presented - indicated that the defendants and state election officials had buried their heads in the sand."

There are 14 US states which use machines to record votes. No paper record of the voting is made in the process.

"I think that judgement is really significant," said e-voting expert Prof Steve Schneider at the University of Surrey.

"The judge is asking for it to be addressed… saying that the 2020 elections are around the corner."

Prof Schneider told the luckycoders that there was a risk people using the machines would begin to distrust the democratic process if security researchers' concerns weren't taken seriously.

"I would hope that the authorities would take whatever steps they could to regain that trust while they're still using these machines," he told the luckycoders.

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New iPhones can read NFC tags in the background

The New iPhones can read NFC tags in the background, no app needed whatsoever

The new iPhone Xs and Xs Max, as well as a colorful family of the new iPhone Xr handsets, include advancements in near-field communication (NFC) technology that allow the handsets to automatically read nearby NDEF (NFC Data Exchange Format) tags and send any collected assets to appropriate apps without needing to open any specific app beforehand.

Before this change, users were required start an NFC reader session from an app.

Introducing Background Tag Reading:

As highlighted in the “What’s New in Core NFC” video available on Apple’s developer site, the Core NFC framework has introduced a brand-new feature, called Background Tag Reading.

A developer document explains how the feature works:


On iPhones that support Background Tag Reading, the system scans for and reads NFC data without requiring users to scan tags using an app. The system displays a pop-up notification each time it reads a new tag. After the user taps the notification, the system delivers the tag data to the appropriate app. If iPhone is locked, the system prompts the user to unlock the phone before providing the tag data to the app.

Background Tag Reading can read NDEF-formatted tags of type 1 to 5.

To prevent potential security issues stemming from background tag reading, explicit user action is required before the system passes any collected NFC data to an app. Specifically, the user must tap the NFC notification in order to avoid performing an action accidentally.

A system like that would allow, say, metro passes to work with a simple tap and go.

The document suggests that background NFC tag reading is supported only by the new iPhone Xs, Xs Max and Xr: “iPhone X and earlier devices don’t support background tag reading.”

According to the iPhone Xs/Xs Max and iPhone Xr tech specs, the handsets support NFC with reader mode and NFC for Apple Pay, like previous models.

If an NFC tag includes an underlying Apple Universal Link URL, iOS will automatically send data to the right app without any intervention on the user’s part. Otherwise, an NFC link is simply passed to Safari. On new iPhones, these embedded links can automatically trigger actions such as starting a HomeKit setup process, preparing a text or a FaceTime call and more.

NFC security and privacy

In terms of strengthening your security and bolstering privacy, iOS is smart enough to prevent Background Tab Reading from working in the following situations:
Device has never been unlocked
Another NFC reader session is active
Camera is recording video
The Wallet app is being used
Apple Pay is being used
Airplane mode is on

In other words, Core NFC reads tags in the background only when your iPhone is in use—i.e. the Lock screen is on, the Home screen is displayed or you’re happening to use an app.

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Warning over satellite security bugs

Satellite systems used on aircraft, ships and by the military contain bugs that could let hackers take control of them, a security researcher has warned.

The worst bugs could let attackers overcharge satellite antenna to damage the equipment or harm operators.

And others could be used to betray the exact location of military forces in crisis zones, the researcher said.

IO Active, which found the bugs, said it was working with manufacturers to harden devices against attack.
Backdoor access

"The consequences of these vulnerabilities are shocking," said Ruben Santamarta, from IOActive, in a statement explaining some of his findings.

Details of the vulnerabilities will be presented later on Thursday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

The broadest group of devices vulnerable to attack were in use on commercial aircraft, Mr Santamarta told technology news site eWeek.

Some of the vulnerabilities affecting aircraft required an attacker to be on that flight, he said, but he had also found "hundreds" of vulnerable devices that could be accessed remotely via the internet.

None of the loopholes gave an attacker access to the avionics systems used to control flight, however.

Other problems had been found with satellite ground stations on ships and in US military bases, Mr Santamarta said.

On ship systems, attackers could potentially gain control over satellite receivers to aid eavesdropping or damage the antenna by pumping up its power output, he said.

Mr Santamarta had won access to the satellite communication systems via backdoors in their controlling code, he said.

The backdoors had not been inserted maliciously but had probably been added during software development.

Although, in some cases the devices being used could not be updated with secure software.

Instead, the entire device would have to be swapped for a more modern version running less hackable code.

IOActive says it delayed publishing details of its findings while manufacturers act to negate the bugs.

And the latest research builds on work done by Mr Santamarta in 2014 which first unearthed potential problems with the satellite communication systems and devices.
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Google gives Scummy Welsh' translations

It is an amazing piece of technology - put a sentence in a box and see it translated into any of 103 languages. But what impact for good or bad does Google Translate have on a minority language?

That is what we explore in Click for Cymraeg, a BBC Radio Wales programme looking into how the search giant's translation service has affected the Welsh language.

It was in August 2009 that Welsh arrived on Google Translate, relatively early in the history of a service which was launched in 2006.

"The reason was that it worked," says Macduff Hughes, the engineering director leading the project.

"Google Translate is built by finding language data on the web."

There were enough examples of Welsh translations online for Google's computers to crunch and build a machine translation service of sufficient quality.

That was the theory at least. But not everyone agreed about the quality.

Very quickly people began to spot that Google Translate was often throwing up mangled or nonsensical sentences.

And often, according to the comedian Gary Slaymaker, these were making their way into public documents and signage when companies saw an easy way of cutting the cost of translation.

"Rather than pay for a living breathing Welsh translator they'll put their translations through Google Translate and end up with word porridge," he says.

Soon the term Scymraeg, or scummy Welsh, was born and it has really caught on - it is part of Gary's stand-up routine, and examples are posted via a Twitter hashtag and in a Flickr group.

Among them, a sign reading "Blasting in Progress" was rendered as "Gweithwyr yn ffrwydro" or "workers exploding".

Ben Screen, a translator working for the NHS, says this all created "negative feelings" about the service.

"There's so much translation in the public sector," he explains.

"People were using Google Translate all the time for their documents and websites and signs in particular and they were wrong."

There was concern too about the impact on learning the language - once schoolchildren knew they could just go to a website to do their Welsh homework, wouldn't that stop them really getting an understanding of the language?


At Willows High School in Cardiff, the head of Welsh, Abi Rees, gets together half a dozen Year 10 pupils to chat about this question.


All but one of them admit they use Google Translate for their homework.



"It's a really good method of learning new languages and it's so accessible just having it in your pocket," says Isabel.

Somewhat to my surprise, Ms Rees is also enthusiastic.

"Personally I think it's a good thing because it gives pupils the confidence to complete their work," she says.

"As long as they're using it as a means of support, and not relying on it for long pieces of text."

But she then takes the pupils through an exercise that illustrates the limits of the technology.

They are given Welsh words with double meanings - "ysgol" for instance can mean school or ladder, and Google Translate ends up telling them "the school is in the shed".

Ms Rees says she spots these kind of errors popping up in homework but still thinks Google Translate is "a really good tool" to support pupils.

"But I don't think any translators around the world need to be worried about their jobs," she adds.
'Life or death matters'

It is clear that this technology has been advancing rapidly since Google decided to include Welsh on the service, with a leap forward in the last two years as a technique called deep learning produced much more accurate translations.

But Google's Mr Hughes, who has Welsh forebears and took a course in the language a few years back, urges caution with how the service is used.

"You should use it when you need to communicate and understand and you have reasonable tolerance for mistakes," he says.

As an example he explains how he used it successfully in Japan on a hunt for some shoelaces. But he says: "I would not use it for high stakes things today without review - legal contracts, life or death matters."

And even professional translators like Mr Screen are coming round to the idea that Google Translate can be a useful tool.

"The way we'd use it is you'd use a source text for English and put it through Google first - Google would give you something," he explains.

"More often than not it will need to be corrected but correcting is easier cognitively - most of it has been done for you ."

Surely though as the technology gets ever better and is integrated more smoothly into phone apps and earbuds, the day when we can dispense with a human translator is not far away?

Mr Hughes does not believe that will happen any time soon - instead he thinks that the technology will make translators' lives more creative.

"I think it will move their work up to higher value and more interesting kinds of work because really basic routine work will be done by machines."

And he has a message for those wanting the language and its translators to thrive in the machine age - it "depends on the Welsh community continuing to care about and embrace the Welsh language".

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Twitter users told to change passwords after internal leak

Twitter's 330 million users are being urged to change their passwords after some were exposed in plain text on its internal network.

An error in the way the passwords were handled meant some were stored in easily readable form, said Twitter.
The passwords should have been put through a procedure called "hashing" making them very difficult to read.
Security experts said the way Twitter handled the potential breach was "encouraging".

Substantial exposure

The bug caused the passwords to be stored on an internal computer log before the hashing process was completed.


In a blog, the social network said once the mistake was uncovered it carried out an internal investigation which found no indication passwords were stolen or misused by insiders.
However, it still urged all users to consider changing their passwords "out of an abundance of caution".

Twitter did not say how many passwords were affected but it is understood the number was "substantial" and that they were exposed for "several months".
Twitter discovered the bug a few weeks ago and has reported it to some regulators, an insider told Reuters.

Chief executive Jack Dorsey tweeted to say the "bug" had been fixed.
Skip Twitter post by @jack



 

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The Milky Way Galaxy May Have Several Wandering

In a new study, a team of astronomers from Yale Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics, the University of Washington, Institut d Astrophysique de Paris, and University College London predicts that galaxies with a mass similar to our Milky Way Galaxy should host several supermassive black holes.
Typically, a supermassive black hole exists at the core of a massive galaxy.



But sometimes they may wander throughout their host galaxy, remaining far from the center in regions such as the stellar halo, a nearly spherical area of stars and gas that surrounds the main section of the galaxy.

Astronomers theorize that this phenomenon often occurs as a result of mergers between galaxies in an expanding Universe.

A smaller galaxy will join with a larger, main galaxy, depositing its own, central supermassive black hole onto a wide orbit within the new host.

In the new study, Dr. Michael Tremmel, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, and co-authors predict that galaxies with a mass similar to the Milky Way should host several supermassive black holes.

The researchers used a new, state-of-the-art cosmological simulation, Romulus, to predict the dynamics of supermassive black holes within galaxies with better accuracy than previous simulation programs.

It is extremely unlikely that any wandering supermassive black hole will come close enough to our Sun to have any impact on our Solar System, Dr. Tremmel said.

We estimate that a close approach of one of these wanderers that is able to affect the Solar System should occur every 100 billion years or so, or nearly 10 times the age of the Universe.

Since wandering supermassive black holes are predicted to exist far from the centers of galaxies and outside of galactic disks, they are unlikely to accrete more gas — making them effectively invisible, he added.

We are currently working to better quantify how we might be able to infer their presence indirectly.

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Samsung Accused Of Colluding With DRAM Suppliers To Jack Up Prices

If there is a reason for governments to be concerned about companies becoming monopolies is because as a monopoly, customers have no choice but to buy from you, which in turn means companies could charge an arm and a leg to take advantage of their position. Unfortunately that seems to be a position that Samsung has found themselves in.



According to a lawsuit filed against the company, it seems that Samsung is being accused of leveraging its position in the market and colluding with other DRAM suppliers to hike up the prices of the component. The lawsuit is seeking class-action status on behalf of all US consumers of smartphones and computing products from companies such as Samsung, Hynix, and Micron, where they claim that these three companies collectively control 96% of the worldwide supply of DRAM components.


Steve Berman, a managing partner of Hagens Berman said, “What we’ve uncovered in the DRAM market is a classic antitrust, price-fixing scheme in which a small number of kingpin corporations hold the lion’s share of the market. Instead of playing by the rules, Samsung, Micron and Hynix chose to put consumers in a chokehold, wringing the market for more profit.”

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Google's SMS replacement ready to launch

Google's SMS replacement ready to launch
Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat messaging service, which is designed to replace SMS text messages on Android phones.


Chat has features such as group texts, videos, typing indicators and read receipts, which are not available when sending SMS texts.

Chat will be integrated with the default messages app on Android phones.

However, it will be up to mobile operators to enable the service and it does not offer encrypted messages.
The new system has been in development for several years, but is now beginning to appear on Android phones.
Android's messaging mess

SMS - the short message service - was widely adopted in the 1990s. It lets mobile phones exchange basic 160-character text messages over the mobile network.

Modern messaging apps offer much more advanced features and send messages over the internet rather than using SMS.

However, the default messaging app on Android smartphones - Messages - is still a comparatively basic SMS client.

Google has tried several times to launch its own feature-rich mobile messaging app, but its attempts have failed to win over a large audience.

On Thursday, the company said it was "pausing" development of its latest effort - Allo - which was launched in 2016.


Advanced rivals
Google's rivals such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp support advanced features such as typing indicators and high-resolution pictures. Apple's iPhones have the similarly feature-rich iMessage service built-in.
This time, rather than try to launch yet another messaging app, Google has been working to integrate a new messaging standard with its Android operating system.

Mobile operators, phone manufacturers and app-makers will be able to use the new technology to develop messaging apps that are compatible with one another.

The standard is known as the Universal Profile for Rich Communication Services (RCS) - but it will be given the more consumer-friendly name of Chat when it is rolled out to Android devices.

To develop Chat, Google has worked with more than 50 mobile networks including Vodafone, T-Mobile and Verizon and manufacturers such as Samsung, LG and Huawei.
Compatibility

Once Chat rolls out worldwide, Android users will be able to take advantage of the advanced features when messaging other Android users.

As with Apple's iMessage system, if the intended recipient does not have a Chat-compatible device, messages will be sent via the old SMS system instead.

Google has stressed that Chat is not a new Google app. Since RCS is a communications standard, it is up to individual mobile networks and phone-makers to switch on the functionality.

Since messages are sent over the internet, they will not use up a customer's SMS text message allowance. However, a mobile operator could in theory charge customers a separate fee to use Chat.

US mobile giant Sprint is already providing Chat functionality, while Rogers in Canada has also switched on the service.


Microsoft is one of the companies that has supported RCS but it has not confirmed whether it will add Chat functionality to Windows 10. Apple has not signed up to the project.

Samsung, which already replaces Android's default messaging app on its devices, will integrate RCS with its own software.

Security experts have warned that Chat does not offer encrypted communication. As with SMS, Chat messages are not scrambled as they travel across the mobile network.

Google's Anil Sabharwal told technology news site The Verge that "RCS continues to be a carrier-owned service", which means that messages can still be legally intercepted.

The company said it expected the functionality to be widely available on Android phones within two years.

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Apple Warns Employees To Stop Leaking Information:

Apple Warns Employees To Stop Leaking Information; 12 Leakers Arrested:

According to the latest reports, the tech giant Apple strives to end the practice of leaking information to the press, but it seems that is not doing very well. This time, a memo distributed to employees to warn them about leaks.

Apple Warns Employees To Stop Leaking Information; 12 Leakers Arrested

The tech giant Apple strives to end the practice of leaking information to the press, but it seems that is not doing very well. This time, a memo distributed to employees to restrain leaks eventually leaked.

The document was obtained by Bloomberg and indicates that 12 Apple employees were arrested in the last year because of this practice. They were accused of informing reporters about future plans of the company.


In all, the tech giant Apple was able to identify 29 people, including employees and partners from other companies. The document seems to appeal to the fear of officials to at least make the practice less frequent.

“Leakers not only lose their jobs at Apple,” the memo says. “In some cases, they are arrested and carry heavy fines for network intrusion and theft of trade secrets, both classified as federal crimes.”

To curb the leak of information, the company says journalists and media outlets are not friends of employees. “While it may seem flattering to be addressed, it is important to remember that you are being manipulated,” the document said.

According to the Cupertino firm, leaks can cause sales to drop, and allow competitors to offer something like that in less time. “We want the chance to tell customers why our product is great, instead of being shoddy by someone else,” summarizes Greg Joswiak, the tech giant Apple’s marketing executive, in the memo.

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Google has pulled the Pixel and Pixel XL from their online storefront

Google has pulled the Pixel and Pixel XL from their online storefront

Google's first major break into the smartphone market arguably came in the form of their Pixel and Pixel XL devices. While the company's line of Nexus phones existed long before that, they never gained quite as much traction with the public as their newer devices have despite their lower price points.

The Pixel and Pixel XL launched back in 2016 to a mostly-positive reception from critics and tech reviewers (our own Tim Schiesser gave the XL a 90/100) and it wasn't difficult to see why - the Pixel line boasted a unique, minimalist design, solid cameras and a "pure" version of Android with much less "bloatware" than you might see on other devices running Android.

If you were a fan of Google's first Pixel devices, you may be disappointed to hear the company appears to have stopped selling them entirely, as spotted by Ars Technica. The smartphones have been pulled from Google's own storefront and their Project Fi program.

To be clear, this product removal only applies to the Pixel and Pixel XL. Google's Pixel 2 smartphones are still available for purchase - this will likely continue to be the case until the company releases the rumored Pixel 3. It's also worth noting the original Pixel and Pixel XL still appear to be available through third-party retailers like Amazon.


It's unclear exactly why Google decided to pull their first Pixel devices from their storefront but it's possible low overall sales led to the decision, as Ars notes. Regardless, we've reached out to Google for comment.

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Facebook suspends AIQ data firm used by Vote Leave in Brexit campaign

Facebook has suspended a Canadian data firm that played a key role in the campaign for the UK to leave the EU. 

The social media giant said AggregateIQ (AIQ) may have improperly received users' data.

It cites reported links with the parent company of Cambridge Analytica (CA), the consultancy accused of improperly accessing the data of millions.

AIQ denies ever being part of CA, its parent company SCL or accessing improperly obtained Facebook data.

The Vote Leave campaign paid AIQ £2.7m ($3.8m) ahead of the 2016 EU referendum.

An ex-volunteer with the campaign has also claimed Vote Leave donated £625,000 to another group to get around campaign spending limits, with most of the money going to AIQ. Vote Leave has denied any wrongdoing.

AIQ's website once quoted Vote Leave chief Dominic Cummings saying: "Without a doubt, the Vote Leave campaign owes a great deal of its success to the work of AggregateIQ. We couldn't have done it without them." The quote has since been removed. 

In total, AIQ was given £3.5m by groups campaigning for Brexit, including Vote Leave, the Democratic Unionist Party and Veterans for Britain. The UK's Electoral Commission reopened an investigation into Vote Leave's campaign spending in November.

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Google is making it easier to use emoji in Chrome

 Google is making it easier to use emoji in Chrome

Here is the  option on the right-click menu is currently in testing

Google is making it easier to access emoji while you're using Chrome. The latest version of Chrome Canary (67.0.3389.0 on Mac, according to 9to5 Google) features a shortcut that gives access to the colorful characters. From the right-click menu, "emoji" should be the first in the list. 

The rub is that it's only available in Canary, the developer-focused test-channel version of the browser. Should the feature prove stable, we could see it roll out to a future version of Chrome in a month or so. Regardless of when it's added, it already sounds a lot easier than macOS' keyboard shortcut -- Command + Control + Spacebar -- or opening up iMessage, hitting the emoji button and copying the output.

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Facebook to verify major page owners

Facebook will verify the identity of people running popular pages, as part of its continued efforts to stem fake news and propaganda. 

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said all “large” pages would be audited - any which did not clear the process would be prevented from posting.

The move is designed to prevent users who run pages using fake accounts from hiding their true identity. 

 

Mr Zuckerberg said he backed proposed political ads regulation.

It would require technology companies to collect more data on the source of those advertisements.

"Election interference is a problem that's bigger than any one platform," he wrote. 

"And that's why we support the Honest Ads Act. This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online."

Also announced today, Facebook will add more transparency over the funding of "issue-based" political ads.

"These steps by themselves won't stop all people trying to game the system," Mr Zuckerberg said.

"But they will make it a lot harder for anyone to do what the Russians did during the 2016 election and use fake accounts and pages to run ads."

Russian manipulation

The firm will ask those placing political ads for a US government-issued ID and a physical mailing address. A unique code will be sent to the address - and will need to be inputted before the advertising is allowed to run. 

The measures are to counter some of the tactics apparently used by the Internet Research Agency, the Russian “troll farm” said to have manipulated Facebook in order to target American voters. 

One of the group’s most effective techniques was to set up pages that appeared to be run by passionate US-based campaigners. In some cases, these pages successfully encouraged people to take to the streets and engage in protests. 

A spokeswoman told the luckycoders news reporter that Facebook had not finalized what would qualify as a large page, but that it would include other indicators as well as simply the number of followers a page has. 

It will also make it clear if the page has changed its name. It is understood Russian trolls used innocuous titles to attract followers to a page, only to then switch the page into promoting a political view.

Facebook already verifies the identity of celebrities and other public figures, and the system for verifying page owners will likely work a similar way, the spokeswoman said.

Crunch hearings

The changes have been announced ahead of a critical week for Facebook. On Tuesday, Mr Zuckerberg will begin a round of Congressional hearings into Facebook’s handling of data and other issues. 

It will be the first time the 33-year-old has personally appeared to represent the social network he founded, and comes following intense pressure to do so. Likely on the minds of senators and representatives will be the extent to which Facebook is able to prevent attempts to manipulate voters in the future. 

In October 2017, the company began forcing those placing ads to support specific candidates to make it clear who was funding that promotion. 

“We're extending that requirement to anyone that wants to show 'issue ads’ - like political topics that are being debated across the country,” the company said. 

"We are working with third parties to develop a list of key issues, which we will refine over time. To get authorised by Facebook, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location. 

"Advertisers will be prohibited from running political ads - electoral or issue-based - until they are authorised." 

Perhaps foreshadowing Mr Zuckerberg’s response to politicians next week, the statement admitted this system would not solve the problem entirely. 

"We know we were slow to pick-up foreign interference in the 2016 US elections.

"Today's updates are designed to prevent future abuse in elections - and to help ensure you have the information that you need to assess political and issue ads, as well as content on pages.

"By increasing transparency around ads and pages on Facebook, we can increase accountability for advertisers — improving our service for everyone." 

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The active shooter situation” of youtube brings police to HQ:

Police have been responding to an active shooter at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, it’s been confirmed this afternoon.

News of the incident began on social media, with YouTube employees posting on Twitter and elsewhere that they had heard gunshots, and were being evacuated from the building.

Footage shared on Snapchat from a nearby building showed members of YouTube staff leaving the office.
Others, meanwhile, reported being barricaded in rooms within the building as they waited for more information. Product manager Vadim Lavrusik was among the first to tweet out news of the incident. 

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The Microsoft gambles on a quantum leap in computing

In a laboratory in Copenhagen, scientists believe they are on the verge of a breakthrough that could transform computing

A team combining Microsoft researchers and Niels Bohr Institute academics is confident that it has found the key to creating a quantum computer.

If they are right, then Microsoft will leap to the front of a race that has a tremendous prize - the power to solve problems that are beyond conventional computers.

In the lab are a series of white cylinders, which are fridges, cooled almost to absolute zero as part of the process of creating a qubit, the building block of a quantum computer.

"This is colder than deep space, it may be the coldest place in the universe," Prof Charlie Marcus tells me.

The team he leads is working in collaboration with other labs in the Netherlands, Australia and the United States in Microsoft's quantum research programme.

Right now, they are behind in the race - the likes of Google, IBM and a Silicon Valley start-up called Rigetti have already shown they can build systems with as many as 50 qubits. Microsoft has yet to demonstrate - in public at least - that it can build one.

But these scientists are going down a different route from their rivals, trying to create qubits using a subatomic particle, whose existence was first suggested back in the 1930s by an Italian physicist Ettore Majorana.

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Self-taught rocket-maker shoots himself 1,875 feet to prove Earth is flat

A self-taught rocket scientist who believes the Earth is flat and wants to run for California governor shot himself up about 1,875 feet in the air in his homemade rocket on Saturday.

“Mad” Mike Hughes, a 61-year-old limo driver, promised last year to propel himself up in the air and snap a photo proving that astronauts conspired to fabricate the shape of the planet. The stunt was supposed to be the first phase of the flat-Earth space program and receiving backing from flat-Earth groups.

Relieved,” the daredevil said after a landing that left him with minor injuries. “I’m tired of people saying I chickened out and didn’t build a rocket. I’m tired of that stuff. I manned up and did it.”

The rocket launch near Amboy, California – about 200 miles east of Los Angeles – was first scheduled last year, but it was postponed multiple times amid mechanical problems and logistical issues with the Bureau of Land Management.

Despite having some minor technical issues on Saturday, Hughes went ahead and shot himself in the air, reaching around 350 mph before pulling his parachute. He had to deploy a second parachute because he was dropping too fast.

Footage shot shortly after the landing appears to show Hughes disorientated, but conscious. Paramedics shortly got him out of the cockpit and examined him.

“Am I glad I did it? Yeah. I guess. I’ll feel it in the morning. I won’t be able to get out of bed. At least I can go home and have dinner and see my cats tonight,” Hughes said after the stunt.

The daredevil, who said he wants to run for the governorship of California, claims he built the steam-powered rocket out of scrap metal parts in his garage. The project cost around $20,000.

Many mocked Hughes for his plans.

He told a flat-Earth group last year that the project will “shut the doors on this ball Earth,” but has since backtracked on the claims that his mission will prove the Earth is flat.

“Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is,” he said on social media. “Do I know for sure? No. That’s why I want to go up in space.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Nimbus’ mammoth 100TB SSD is now ............

A new SSD from Nimbus Data has taken the crown for being the largest solid state hard drive in the world with a massive 100TB capacity. 

The new drive, named the ExaDrive DC100, is unlikely to ever make it to the consumer market. This is a server drive through and through, but that doesn’t make its the prospect of its 100TB of 3D NAND flash memory any less salivating.

Nevertheless, if even some of the technology behind this massive drive trickles down into consumer products, we can surely hope that some much bigger SSDs are just around the corner.

It’s a good time too, as the shift from physical to online game sales mean that the size of most installations is skyrocketing.

The recently released Final Fantasy XV PC port required a massive 155GB of storage, while other PC ports such as Destiny 2 routinely now top 50GB. You might not need your entire music library stored on your PC these days, but your games library is more than happy to pick up the slack.

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Facebook and Cambridge Analytical accused of misleading MPs over data breach

The head of the parliamentary committee investigating fake news has accused Cambridge Analytica and Facebook of misleading MPs in testimony, after the Observer revealed details of a vast data breach affecting tens of millions of people.

After a whistleblower detailed the harvesting of more than 50 million Facebook profiles for Cambridge Analytica, Damian Collins, the chair of the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said he would be calling on the Facebook boss, Mark Zuckerberg, to testify before the committee.  

He said the company appeared to have previously sent executives able to avoid difficult questions who had “claimed not to know the answers”.

Collins also said he would be recalling the Cambridge Analytica CEO, Alexander Nix, to give further testimony. “Nix denied to the committee last month that his company had received any data from [his firm] GSR,” he said. “We will be contacting Alexander Nix next week asking him to explain his comments.”

The whistleblower Chris Wylie’s claim that the 50m, mostly American, profiles were harvested in one of Facebook’s biggest data breaches caused outrage on both sides of the Atlantic, with lawmakers in both the UK and America, and a state attorney general calling for greater accountability and regulation.

Wylie said the personal information was used to build a system to influence voters.

 “We need to hear from people who can speak about Facebook from a position of authority that requires them to know the truth,” Collins said. “Someone has to take responsibility for this. It’s time for Mark Zuckerberg to stop hiding behind his Facebook page.”

Shortly before the story broke, Facebook’s external lawyers warned the Observer that it was making “false and defamatory” allegations and reserved Facebook’s legal position. Facebook denies the harvesting of tens of millions of profiles by Cambridge Analytica, working with Cambridge academic Aleksandr Kogan and his firm GSR, was a data breach.

The tech giant also suspended the whistleblower Chris Wylie from the platform “pending further information” over misuse of data, along with his former employer Cambridge Analytica and its affiliates, and the academic they worked with, Aleksandr Kogan.

The public attack on Wylie came after he had approached the tech giant about the data breach, offering to help investigate. He described it as a chilling attack on someone acting in the public interest.

“They acknowledged my offer but then turned around and shot the messenger. I’m trying to make amends for my mistakes and so should Facebook,” he told the Guardian.

“Facebook has known about this for at least two years and did almost nothing to fix it. This is not new. And it’s only by coming forward that Facebook is now taking action. People need to know this kind of profiling is happening.”

Last month, both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix told the parliamentary inquiry into fake news that the company did not have or use private Facebook data, or any data from Kogan’s firm, Global Science Research (GSR).

But in its statement on Friday night, explaining why it had suspended Cambridge Analytica and Wylie, Facebook said it had known in 2015 that profiles were passed to Nix’s company.

“In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our platform policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica,” the statement said.

Collins attacked Facebook for appearing to have been “deliberately avoiding answering straight questions” in testimony to the committee.

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The Health workers scramble to contain deadly rat-borne fever in Nigeria

By early January, it was clear something “really, really extraordinary” was going on in Nigeria, says Lorenzo Pomarico of the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA). Cases of Lassa fever, a rare viral hemorrhagic disease, were skyrocketing across the country more were recorded in the first 2 months of this year than in all of 2017.

Unprepared for a disease that has no vaccines or drugs for treatment and kills 20% to 30% of those it sickens, eight health care workers were infected early on and three died. “Something was going very wrong with the outbreak,” Pomarico says.

Since then, the situation has only gotten worse. The rodent-borne disease is endemic in Nigeria and several other West African countries, fluctuating with the seasons and usually causing “a trickle” of cases a year, says Chikwe Ihekweazu, who heads the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control in Abuja.

But as of 4 March, 353 cases had been confirmed across 18 states, with about 700 suspected cases, and 110 deaths. Ihekweazu says the record-setting figures are sure to be underestimates, because the disease is maddeningly hard to diagnose, and many cases go unreported. 

Already, Nigeria’s fragile health care system is overwhelmed. The one dedicated Lassa fever ward in the country at Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital has just 24 beds. Without access to proper training, health care workers continue to become infected—by now 16 cases have been reported, with one additional death.

As the government and its international partners scramble to set up isolation wards to stem the outbreak and deliver protective gear to health workers, researchers on three continents are racing to figure out what is driving the unprecedented outbreak. Is it simply better disease surveillance in the wake of Ebola, the similar but more deadly disease that began its rampage across West Africa in 2014? Has the virus changed in some way, are there more of the rats that carry it, or is a higher proportion of them infected? Or is another rodent capable of spreading the virus as well?

“There are lots of possible explanations,” says Stephan Günther of the Bernhard Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, whose team has worked in Nigeria for years. Considering how lethal Lassa fever is, shockingly little is known about it, he says. “We don’t know why people die. We don’t know about the pathophysiology of the disease. We don’t know the point of no return.”

That could be beginning to change. In February, the World Health Organization added Lassa fever to its list of priority pathogens of epidemic potential, calling for more research. And last week, the recently created Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations awarded its first grant for development of a Lassa fever vaccine to Themis Bioscience, a biotech in Vienna.

Lassa fever was discovered in 1969, when two missionary nurses died of a mysterious disease in the remote town of Lassa in Borno state in northeastern Nigeria. When a third nurse fell ill, she was evacuated to a hospital in New York City—along with a thermos full of blood and other samples from all three nurses bound for Yale University’s then-new Arbovirus Research Unit. There, a team led by Jordi Casals-Ariet isolated a novel virus from the samples. (He, too, almost died in the process, saved only by an infusion of antibody-rich plasma from the third nurse, who recovered.)

The cause is now known to be an arenavirus, one of a class of rodent-borne pathogens, and its natural reservoir is a multimammate rat, so-called for its rows of mammary glands, that is ubiquitous across West Africa. Cases peak in the dry season, when farmers burn the bushes in preparation for spring planting and rats scurry into houses in search of food. The rodents shed the virus in their urine and droppings, and people contract it by touching contaminated surfaces, inhaling viral particles, or eating contaminated food (including the rats themselves). Like Ebola, the virus can also be spread through contact with bodily fluids of an infected person. Such human-to-human transmission is thought to be rare for Lassa, unlike Ebola, except in hospital settings without proper infection control. But “the real rate of human-to-human transmission is unknown,” says Augustin Augier, secretary general of ALIMA in Paris, which has just launched a Lassa fever research program with the French medical institution INSERM.

No one knows the true incidence of the disease. “Most cases we have found are in places where there are hospitals and labs,” Günther says. “There is good reason to assume there are cases that are being overlooked.” And because the rat vector lives across a broad swath of the continent, the disease might also be endemic, but unrecognized, outside of West Africa, where it could be responsible for undiagnosed fevers.

Initial symptoms are easily mistaken for malaria or typhoid fever—body aches, sore throat, fever, nausea, diarrhea—before the disease progresses to organ failure, shock, and sometimes internal hemorrhaging. By the time doctors suspect Lassa fever, it’s often too late to save the patient. There is no rapid test; accurately diagnosing the disease requires a real-time polymerase chain reaction technique, but only three labs in Nigeria have that capability.

For now, the only treatment is a nonspecific antiviral drug, ribavirin. If it’s administered during the first 6 days of the illness, it seems to improve a patient’s prognosis, but “no one arrives before day 7,” Augier says. Nor is everyone convinced that ribavirin works in Lassa fever, as the only data come from the 1980s, Augier says.

Several potential drugs are on the horizon, in addition to the vaccine. Christian Happi at Redeemer’s University in Ede, Nigeria, and the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital is developing a rapid diagnostic test with colleagues at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana; the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Zalgen, a company in Germantown, Maryland. Happi’s group and its international partners are also sequencing the virus “around the clock,” he says, and trying to figure out whether the genetic changes they have seen in the virus could have made it more transmissible or virulent.

For Happi, who diagnosed the first case of Ebola in Sierra Leone, the new attention to Lassa hasn’t come a moment too soon. “I used to scream and scream that Lassa is important, but no one listened,” he says. “I wrote so many grants” that were turned down. “Lassa fever is a disease of the poor … it is confined to a part of West Africa, and it is not viewed as a global threat.”

Meanwhile, the government and its partners are focusing on training health care workers and providing the basics needed for infection control, as well as educating a frightened public.

ALIMA’s Pomarico, who is leading ALIMA’s emergency response to the outbreak in the two hardest hit states of Edo and Ondo, hopes cases will subside with the rains and cooler weather, as they usually do. “But this year is different. “We are bracing for worst and preparing for the worst.”

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