Facebook tweaks the feed to bury fake news and clickbait

Just how much fake news trending all over Facebook actually influenced the election is still up for debate, but the question pushed the social media company into crackdown mode. In the last few months, it cut off ad funding for dubious posts and added a button to let users flag questionable content for review by third-party fact-checkers. To more actively combat shady stories, the social media giant is tweaking its News Feed algorithm to promote more legitimate and viral content.

In a blog post, Facebook noted that users considered stories “authentic” when they were “genuine and not misleading, sensational or spammy.” The tweaks to individuals’ News Feeds will reflect that preference — not just by burying fake news, but also by lowering the visibility of clickbait stories and Pages that urge folks to like, share and subscribe. To train their system to cull non-authentic posts, Facebook identified Pages that begged for engagement and/or that users had manually hidden, then fed that activity into a computer model to detect similarly low-quality content as it’s posted.

The new tweaks will also boost viral stories. Individual Pages posts or topics across Facebook getting lots of engagement will be pushed higher in users’ personal News Feeds, at least temporarily. Both adjustments are more about presenting more relevant and resonant content than expressly combating fake news, but refining the News Feed’s algorithms will hopefully improve the quality of posts churning in front of users’ eyes.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Facebook newsroom

Got $20 in your pocket? 2016 W-2 tax forms can now be bought on the dark web

Why it matters to you

This is an example of how companies handling private and financial data need to crack down on internal security to keep hackers out.

Security researcher Brian Krebs reports that hackers are now selling W-2 tax forms on the dark web, a collection of websites that requires special software or authorization to access and can’t be found using Google or Bing. It’s an online world where pirated software can be obtained and cybercriminal shops can thrive, selling goods like PayPal account credentials, stolen credit cards, and now apparently last year’s tax forms.

According to Krebs, the W-2 tax form data was up for sale on an unnamed dark web shop under the “other” category. The data stemmed from more than 3,600 residents from Florida and included their employer’s name, employer ID, and employer address. The info also included the taxpayer’s personal information such as address, social security number, 2016 wage information, and the taxes withheld.

More: Gotta catch all the hackers: Thousands of players banned from ‘Pokémon Sun,’ ‘Moon’

The stolen W-2 records required Bitcoins to purchase and their cost depended on the wage made by the taxpayer, ranging between $4 and $20 each. Thus, the higher the wage, the more money thieves could possibly land if they are successful in tricking the Internal Revenue Service with a fraudulent tax form filed using the purchased taxpayer information.

The tax information may have stemmed from a Florida-based firm called The Payroll Professionals. Krebs figured this out after a source purchased two of the listed W-2 forms stemming from Kirai Restaurant Group LLC. Krebs contacted the restaurant company who said it outsources employee tax forms to The Payroll Professionals.

A representative of The Payroll Professionals confirmed with Krebs that the company was aware of a “potential hacking” and was currently informing customers of the potential problem. Krebs found additional W-2 tax forms on the dark web storefront stemming from companies that use The Payroll Professionals to handle their payroll.

How The Payroll Professionals was hacked is unknown. In a typical scenario, scammers would spoof a bogus email to resemble a high-ranking official in a company and send it to human resources and the payroll department. The email would demand a copy of all employee W-2 data to be returned immediately.

Just days ago, a hacker impersonated Sunrun CEO Lynn Jurich in an email sent to the company’s payroll department and received employee W-2 forms for 2016. The hacker got away with “a substantial portion” of the company’s current and former employee personal and financial information. Luckily, Sunrun’s customer database was not affected by the phishing scam.

“Sunrun recognized the issue within one hour of the scam and immediately began working with the proper authorities,” the company said Friday. “We are committed to the safety and security of our employees’ information and will continue to work diligently to increase the security of our systems and implement tighter controls.”

Taxpayers worried about hackers filing fraudulent claims on behalf of their information can use file form 14039 (pdf) if they believe they are victims of identity theft. Taxpayers can also request a six-digit Identity Protection PIN to help combat fraudulent tax returns.

Office Insiders get Outlook collaboration in January 2017 Slow Ring update

Why it matters to you

If you’re a heavy Microsoft Office user, then you can join the Office Insider program for early access to new features like those released in the January 2017 update.

Microsoft works extra hard to make its latest software available for testing days or weeks before making its way into production environments. The Windows Insider program is the mechanism to make Windows 10 the best it can be, and the Office Insider program does the same for Microsoft’s productivity suite.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced the availability of the January 2017 update for Office Insiders in the Slow Ring, meaning those people who are brave enough to try the latest bits but not so brave as to live on the real bleeding edge. Update version 7766.2039 isn’t terribly significant, but it does add in a couple of smaller updates to go with one nice collaboration update for Outlook 2016.

More: Don’t lose your email! Here’s how to export and import your Outlook inbox

First up is the latest update for Microsoft’s primary communications tool. Outlook 2016 has gained some new real-time collaborative functionality that makes it easier to work with colleagues. Now, you can upload an email attachment to OneDrive and access a simple drop-down menu to upload a revise version or save a new version.

Next, the Surface pen gets more functionality in Word 2016. Specifically, you can now use the pen’s “grab object” handles to resize, rotate, move, and perform even more actions on objects.

Visio also received some new functionality in the Add-in for Database Modeling, which assists when planning a new database or gaining insight into an existing one. You can download the Visio Add-in for Database Modeling here, and learn more about reverse-engineering an existing database here.

Finally, Microsoft has provided more value for students and teachers in Office 2016 with new templates and sample diagrams. Topics include algebra, chemistry, physics, and more.

As always, you’ll need to be enrolled in the Office Insider program, and placed in the Slow Ring, to get access to the latest update. You can go here to learn more, and if you’re already a member then you can go to File > Account > Office Updates to check your status or manually kick off the latest update.

Lexar’s latest CFast card packs a whopping 512GB of storage

Why it matters to you

The new high capacity sets a record for the CFast format, bringing workflow improvements to professional image makers.

Lexar unveiled its latest CFast 2.0 memory card Tuesday with a huge 512-gigabyte capacity. The Lexar Professional 3500x series card easily breaks through CFast 2.0’s previous 256GB barrier, while delivering read speeds up to 525 megabytes per second and write speeds of 445MB per second. The card is designed for high-bandwidth professional imaging workflows, including RAW 4K video production, high-speed continuous still photography, time-lapse imaging, and more. It also carries a price tag that will reserve it squarely for such users: $1,700. Although, like most memory products, it can be found for less (B&H currently lists it at $1,300.)

The high price really comes as no surprise, however: Canon’s $6,000 EOS 1D X Mark II is the closest thing to a consumer camera that accepts CFast cards (which allow it to churn out bursts of up to 170 RAW files at 14 frames per second). And in creating the card, Lexar worked with Arri, the cinema camera manufacturer, to optimize it for use in cameras like the Amira, which start at around $40,000.

In these professional environments, however, the move to 512GB is significant. “When shooting 200fps on a high-end, production-level camera, it’s easy to fill up an entire 256GB card with content in just 17 minutes,” said Lexar’s product marketing director, Jennifer Lee, in a statement. Larger cards therefore improve workflow efficiency, potentially cutting the number of card swaps in half.

More: Lexar explains why not all memory cards are created equal

All Lexar Professional CFast 2.0 cards come with a lifetime copy of Image Rescue software. Image Rescue allows users to recover “most photo and select video” files from the card if they’ve been accidentally erased and even if the card has been corrupted.

While it is Lexar’s 3500x series to first reach 512GB, the company said its faster 3600x CFast 2.0 cards would be available in the same capacity later this year. The 3500x series is now available 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities, while the 3600x series comes in just 128GB and 256GB for now.

New brain-computer interface breaks through locked-in syndrome

Researchers have been using brain-computer interfaces to interact with patients suffering from locked-in syndrome for a few years now. But a new system from the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Switzerland may finally allow even the most immobile patients communicate with the outside world.

There are degrees to locked-in syndrome. The lesser variety only allows those suffering from it to raise or lower their eyes and blink, they’re fully paralyzed otherwise. Fully locked-in syndrome prohibits even that degree of movement. So rather than rely on optical keyboards as previous studies have, the Wyss team developed a means of reading patient’s minds directly by measuring the flow of oxygenated blood flowing through their brains. The study was published Tuesday on the journal PLOS.

The team relied on the help of four patients who suffer from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a motor neuron disorder that progressively destroys the nervous system’s ability to control the body’s muscles. The Wyss researchers first used near-infrared spectroscopy and electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the brain’s blood oxygenation and electrical activity levels. The patients were then asked basic yes or no questions while the machines recorded changes in those metrics.

“The machine records the blood flow… and calculates how (it) changes during “yes” and during “no”, and the computer develops an idea, a pattern,” Wyss neuroscientist, Niels Birbaumer, told Reuters. “And after a while, we know what the patient is thinking, when he thinks “yes”, or when he thinks “no”, and from that we calculate the answer.”

After enough training, the system managed a 70 percent accuracy rate for standard Y/N questions like, “Is this your husband?” More interestingly, when asked “Are you happy?” all four respondents, 100 percent of the time, answered “yes”.

The team hopes to leverage this data into future research in hopes that people paralyzed by disease or injury can lead fuller lives.

Via: Reuters

Source: PLOS

Game developers take a stand against Trump’s immigration ban

The opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration ban has spread far and wide. Video game developers are joining the chorus against what some see as an unconstitutional policy put forth with no thought or consideration of the outcome. For a number of studios, that means making donations to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the non-profit organization that successfully challenged the ban in court over this past weekend.

iNK Stories, the studio behind one of our favorite games from last year, 1979 Revolution, has announced it will donate sales sales proceeds to the ACLU. That’s for purchases made between February 1st and the 10th.

“While it’s easy to be immobilized by hurt and hopelessness, I believe that now more than ever we are confronted with an obligation, where we must dig in, resist and unite,” 1979 creator Navid Khonsari said in a statement.

As Mashable points out, Khonsari isn’t alone. On Saturay, developer Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail (Ridiculous Fishing, Super Crate Box) tweeted that for 24 hours, all revenue would be donated to the ACLU. In an op-ed for The Guardian, Ismail wrote that thanks to this executive order, many Muslims who spent years of their savings to make the trip to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco would no longer be able to attend.

“Even if they’d be allowed into the US, many are afraid of anti-Muslim sentiment from a population that can elect a president like Donald Trump, especially in the country with the highest homicide rate with guns in the Western world,” he said.

.@dots is taking a stand. We are showing this to all of our players. 3-4 million people will see this soon #MuslimBan (thx @karaswisher) pic.twitter.com/5qwrVkuNF1

— Paul Murphy (@paulbz) January 29, 2017

Dain Saint of developer Cipher Prime (Duet, Auditorium) penned a blog post on Medium advising people to be selfish — but in a way that benefits others. For America, Saint said to make the country’s future “the brightest it can be by stealing the best and brightest from every country on the planet.” He further said to steal the best minds from other nations. “Lure them in with the promise of freedom, and keep them here with high-paying jobs.”

The folks behind mobile puzzlers Dots, Two Dots and Dots and Co. temporarily changed the splash screen of their games to include the following message:

“Everyone welcome. We welcome players from all over the world.

As an American company, we value the diversity of our team and players. We believe America should be a welcoming place, particularly for those most in need, wherever they come from and whatever their religion.

Please join us in standing up for civil rights.”

Below that was a link to the ACCU’s donation page.

CNN reported that as of Monday, January 30th that the ACLU racked up $24.1 million in donations over the weekend — some 600 percent more than the organization gets in an average year. It’s important to note that actors and musicians were also imploring their social media followings to donate to the ACLU as well.

Over the weekend, there was also a “NerdWalk” from the PAX South convention to the offices of Texas Senator John Cornyn, Ars Technica reported. Of the two reasons for the march, one was the immigration ban. The other was the dismantling of the Affordable Care Act. The organizer, Cards Against Humanity’s self-described “businesswoman,” Trin Garritano, said that storming the office to have the senator sign a bill wasn’t the goal.

“That was never the idea, it was just to show solidarity,” she said.

We at @insomniacgames are standing up for what we believe is right: https://t.co/e82dCgZqat

— Ted Price (@igTedPrice) January 31, 2017

Over the weekend, Insomniac Games’ CEO Ted Price joined the masses of tech companies railing against the immigration ban. The Entertainment Software Association (the governing body responsible for the Electronics Entertainment Expo, or E3 for short) also spoke out, asking the White House to “exercise caution with regard to vital immigration and foreign worker programs.”

Source: Ars Technica, Mashable

Prince’s Music Reportedly Coming to Apple Music February 12

Prince’s catalog of songs is headed to Apple Music and other streaming services, like Spotify, Pandora, Google Play and more, on February 12, reports the New York Post. Currently, Prince’s songs are only available to stream on Tidal.

It would be the first time in 19 months the singer’s music would be available on that many streaming networks. Prince pulled his music from all streaming services except for Tidal 9 months before his death. Since his death, Prince’s estate has been working on deals with various services to make his music available for streaming again.

The music will go live on streaming services during the Grammys on February 12. The award show will feature a tribute to Prince featuring music artists Rihanna, Bruno Mars and The Weeknd. While the music that will become available on streaming services falls under the late artist’s Warner Music contract, the Post says music from his secretive “vault” is also being negotiated.

Tags: Apple Music, Prince
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Facebook is reportedly building a streaming TV app

Facebook hasn’t been shy about its recent push into video. The social network has been rolling out new video ad products and going so far as to reward longer and more engaging videos with better distribution on its platform. Now, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is going all-in on TV and developing its own app for streaming TV boxes.

Although the report is short on specifics for the new app, the Journal notes that it would prioritize video content rather than simply act as a big-screen portal into your news feed. Facebook is also reportedly in talks with media companies to license a variety of long-form, TV-style content ranging from scripted shows to sports and entertainment. Naturally, the app would be a platform to distribute this new content alongside TV-style advertisements that can fetch a higher asking price than display ads on the news feed.

It’s currently unclear how user generated video will factor in to the TV platform, but according to the Journal’s sources, a Facebook TV app has been in development in some form or another for years. The latest incarnation got a boost when Facebook execs renewed their video efforts in 2016 and while there’s no word yet on which streaming boxes Facebook will be coming to, the Apple TV was named as the obvious starting point.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Hard disks from Toshiba and HGST make it through 2016 without a drive failure

Why it matters to you

Hard disks aren’t as popular as they once were, but results like these suggest they are more reliable and cheaper than ever.

Cloud storage provider Backblaze released its drive reliability numbers for the last quarter of 2016, illustrating that two hard drive manufacturers just might produce the most reliable drives on the market. So, who are the lucky hardware manufacturers?

That honor goes to a few server pods using Toshiba and HGST hard disks. Specifically, Toshiba-brand and HGST-brand industrial sized 4TB and 8TB hard disks which Backblaze uses in custom-built pods — essentially massive stacks of hard disks used to store your cloud data.

According to Ars Technica, each pod is comprised of 45 to 60 identical hard disks and the pods which used the Toshiba and HGST hard disks (three pods running 4TB Toshiba hard disks, and one 45-disk pod running 8TB HGST drives), managed to make it through an entire year of heavy usage without a single drive spindle failing.

More: Samsung Cloud could be coming to the PC sometime this year

Altogether, the Toshiba drives managed 1.2 million hours of aggregate usage in 2016, all without a single drive spindle failure. That failure rate eclipses even Toshiba’s most optimistic manufacturer estimates, which suggest that you should see at least one failure per million hours of aggregate usage.

Backblaze’s findings for 2016 show an overall failure rate — including all of their hard disks — just under 1.95 percent, which is the lowest the cloud storage provider has ever seen. So what does that mean for you? Well, there are two takeaways here.

More: Plex media server gets its news fix, acquires WatchUp streaming service

One, hard disks — despite the supremacy of solid-state drives — are getting more and more reliable as manufacturers gear their highest-storage options toward the needs of cloud service providers like Backblaze. Secondly, cloud storage providers are becoming more reliable as their hardware and storage methodologies improve.

Not to mention hard disks are getting massive. Backblaze employs a number of hard disk pods which employ 8TB hard disks from Seagate and HGST, the storage space equivalent of a jumbo-jet hangar.

Revisit ‘Stranger Things’ with Atari-inspired game from Netflix Hack Day

Why it matters to you

Netflix has actively encouraged fans and enthusiasts to hack their products and try to improve them with events like the Winter Hack Day. The resulting creations could end up serving as a proving ground for new features.

Everyone loves Stranger Things, right? Well, in case you’re tired of binge watching the first season over and over while waiting for season two, Netflix has a little surprise for you. First unveiled during the Netflix Hack Day on January 30, a Stranger Things-themed retro-browser game from creator Joey Cato is now available.

The game allows players to revisit scenes from Stranger Things and play Atari-style versions of Frogger and Pac-Man that have been revamped to feature characters from the popular Netflix series. For instance, you can dodge vans as Eleven, or try to rescue kids from the Upside Down without being caught by the Demogorgon.

More: The Godzilla sequel just added a monster-fighting Stranger Things star

Because you play the games on TV screens placed in screen grabs from the show itself, it’s a bit of a rough experience. Some screens are awkwardly placed, and make for a very difficult playing experience. Still, it’s worth checking out, particularly if you have a couple minutes on hand and you want to experience a period-accurate game based on one of the hottest shows of 2016.

The Netflix Hack Day also featured another Stranger Things-themed project, a lighting system built into a Christmas sweater. The sweater imitates the famous Christmas-light alphabet wall from the series that was used as a way to communicate with the displaced Will Byers.

Similarly, the hack day featured other Netflix-inspired projects like a mind-controlled interface, and a picture-in-picture prototype that allows you to see which friends are watching the same shows. Another project shown off at the hack day was a plugin that would allow you to donate to relevant causes after watching a socially conscious movie, like a documentary film, or TV series.

Stranger Things made a splash in early 2016, capitalizing on ’80s nostalgia by sending up and subverting some popular film tropes from that era. Rather than simply imitate sci-fi and kids-in-peril films, Stranger Things creators, the Duffer Brothers, created a modern story using familiar components that felt fresh and familiar all at once.