Revamped Twitch app streams live from your phone

As useful as the Twitch mobile app can be, it still falls short of what you’re used to on the desktop, especially if you’re a broadcaster. Would you believe that you have to switch apps just to stream live? Thankfully, it’s shrinking that gap today. It’s starting to roll out a Twitch app overhaul that adds some of the features you take for granted while refining the interface. For creators, the biggest deal is simply direct mobile streaming — you can livestream to your channel without any go-between software. While phone-based broadcasting was certainly possible before, this could easily lead to more IRL streams from your favorite streamers.

Of course, there are plenty of updates for those content to sit back and watch. The Pulse discovery feed and the notification center finally made it to mobile, for starters. The interface should also make it easier to find those features, including navigation bars that promise easier access to mainstay features as well as swipe-based controls for picking videos or going back to a previous stream. You’ll also see a dark mode for those nighttime viewing sessions, and instant playlists that you can access just by swiping down.

You might not see all these features right away, as Twitch doesn’t expect everyone to get the new app until early July. When it arrives, though, it could shake up your expectations for Twitch. You’ll have more reason to watch on your phone instead of waiting until you get home, but it’ll also help Twitch in its quest to expand beyond game streams. It’s also good news for broadcasters who’d rather not be chained to their computers — they can go on a PC-free vacation without losing touch.

Source: Twitch

US hit by cyberattack that targeted Ukraine and Russia

Yesterday, a number of Ukrainian and Russian companies and state agencies reported being hit by a cyberattack, the results of which ranged from flight delays at Boryspil airport to a shutdown of Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s automatic radiation monitoring system. And while those two countries took the brunt of it, the virus at the root of the attack quickly spread throughout Europe and to Asia, Australia and the US.

Among those affected in the US were hospitals, the pharmaceutical company Merck, Nabisco and Oreo. A major Los Angeles port was forced to stop operations yesterday because of the attack and was still closed as of this morning. FedEx also experienced disruptions in its TNT Express delivery service. A US nuclear power plant was the victim of a cyberattack as well, but it’s not as of yet clear whether it was connected to the others.

The virus being spread is thought to be a version of the “Petya” ransomware and like the WannaCry virus that wreaked international havoc in May, it appears to take advantage of a Microsoft Windows flaw uncovered by the NSA and published online by hackers. This virus, however, seems to only be able to spread between directly connected networks, which is believed to be the reason the attack seemed to slow throughout the day Tuesday.

It’s still unclear as of now who is behind the attack.

Source: ABC

DNC hires ex-Uber engineer as its chief technology officer

The Democratic National Committee has selected ex-Twitter VP Raffi Krikorian as its chief technology officer. Krikorian was until recently the senior director of engineering at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center, but left the company in February.

The DNC had plenty of cyber troubles during the election — most notably an email hack, information from which was subsequently posted by WikiLeaks. And boosting the DNC’s cyber defenses will clearly be one of Krikorian’s priorities. However, DNC Chair Tom Perez told Politico in January that he wanted an in-house cybersecurity officer to also work with state partners, not just the DNC. Pennsylvania Democrats were hit with ransomware in March and last year, the FBI suspected a number of Democrat officials’ cellphones had been hacked.

Some of Krikorian’s other roles might include some much-needed updates to the DNC’s use of technology in their campaigns. In the job posting for the CTO, the DNC made it clear they were looking for someone who could spur some innovation in how the party uses tech. The DNC hasn’t yet announced when Krikorian will start his new position.

Source: Recode

Artistic AI paints portraits of people who aren’t really there

Mike Tyka paints the portraits of people who don’t exist. The subjects of his ephemeral artwork are not born from any brush. Rather, they are sculpted — roughly — from the digital imagination of his computer’s neural network.

Faces are “interesting and we humans react strongly to them, we tend to read a lot into them,” Tyka explained over email. “I find I connect with them when I work with them, I’m curious about who they might be, if they existed.”

As such, Tyka has spent the past nine months or so developing the Portraits of Imaginary People project, which follows his earlier works, Inceptionism and The Groovik’s Cube. For Imaginary People, Tyka sought to use generative neural networks to create original portraits, much like the one Alexander Reben used to mimic Bob Ross’ speaking style.

To do so, Tyka turned to a machine learning technique known as a generative adversarial network (GAN). “I started experimenting with GANs for this installation I did with Refik Anadol, where we used the technique to generate imaginary historical documents from a large archive,” Tyka wrote. “After we finished that project (it opened in April in Istanbul), I started looking at faces again using the same techniques.”

If you want a generative model like a GAN to, say, draw you a picture of a cat, you’ll first have to get a huge data set of cat pictures and then train the model to create a picture of a cat with all the requisite features like ears, whiskers and a tail. In this case, Tyka utilized roughly 20,000 high-resolution portraits from Flickr as his base training data set.

That’s a good first step, but let’s say you want a realistic picture of a cat, not a digital doodle. To do that, you need to set up a second (adversarial) neural network, known as a discriminator, for your GAN. So while the first network (the generator) creates pictures of cats, the discriminator’s job is to compare those generated images against real-world samples (e.g., actual pictures of cats) and figure out if they’re fake or not. Based on each result, the system then goes back and tweaks the generator network’s parameters to make the output image appear more and more realistic.

If you’re only using a single, unconditioned GAN, the output image is typically only going to be in the 128×128 to 256×256 pixel range, Tyka explained. So to increase the size of these machine-generated images, he stacked multiple, separately trained GANs on top of one another. “The second stage is a superres GAN which [sic] is conditioned on the output of the former,” Tyka said. “I.e. in addition to the discriminator loss (which tries to make it look ‘real’) there is an additional term that makes sure the output is a plausible high-res version of the respective low-res input.” This second stage effectively increases the image resolution to 768×768 or 1024×1024 pixels.

By training the second-level (or even third-level) GAN on higher-resolution images of specific facial details like eye, hair and skin texture, it can act as an upscaler for the GANs stacked below it. Eventually Tyka wants to generate 4K-quality pictures, though he’s currently having difficulty finding a sufficiently robust data set for training such a system.

Getting the results you see here are easier said than done, however. There was plenty of work to complete before the first simulation ever ran. “GANs are hard to train and hard to control,” Tyka explained. “Grooming the input data is important, making sure all images are high-res, don’t have artifacts and are not drawings but real photos is time consuming.”

What’s more, keeping the adversarial networks in sync requires a fair amount of trial and error. “GANs are annoying because there isn’t a global objective function. The two networks are each other’s objective functions so to speak, so the goalposts are moving,” Tyka explained. “It’s hard to compare different runs with different parameters because there isn’t a good, stable metric for how well a particular net is doing.”

Still, Tyka’s desired end result for this project does not revolve around accuracy or fidelity. “The goal, like with many art projects, is to make compelling artwork which [sic] inspires or moves or makes you think,” he concluded. “That’s hard to quantify so I just follow my gut.”

Canada says court order to pull Google results applies worldwide

In 2012, Canadian manufacturer Equustek asked Google to remove search results relating to a court case against Datalink, a distributor of the former company’s network devices. While Google complied with the request, it only did so in Canada itself. The Supreme Court then ordered Google to remove search results pertaining to the issue in all countries Google operated in. Google appealed the decision, arguing that the order went against its own freedom of expression. The court has now rejected the company’s argument. The majority decision says that Canadian courts may in fact grant injunctions that compel compliance anywhere in the world.

“The internet has no borders – its natural habitat is global,” the Supreme Court wrote in its judgment. “The only way to ensure that the interlocutory injunction attained its objective was to have it apply where Google operates – globally.”

This isn’t the first time a country has told Google to comply globally. EU courts told Google to allow user requests to pull outdated or irrelevant information, while a court in France ruled that the company must extend the so-called “right to be forgotten” rule to global, not just regional, search results.

As reported by Reuters, the current Canadian ruling is opposed by civil liberties groups since it sets a precedent for internet censorship. “There is great risk that governments and commercial entities will see this ruling as justifying censorship requests that could result in perfectly legal and legitimate content disappearing off the web because of a court order in the opposite corner of the globe,” said David Christopher, a spokesperson for OpenMedia, a Canadian group that campaigns against censorship. Google cannot appeal the Supreme Court’s decision, but may apply for an alteration to the order when it has evidence that complying would violate other countries’ laws, according to Reuters.

Source: Reuters

Google Photos’ AI-powered sharing is now available

Google is making good on its promise of AI-assisted photo sharing. A Google Photos upgrade arriving this week uses machine learning to suggest pictures based on both your own sharing habits, the people in the photos, and whether or not they’re part of a “meaningful moment,” such as a party or a wedding. You might not have to remember to share photos of your best friend when you get home from a big weekend shindig. You can customize who receives the photos, of course, and fellow Google Photos users can get reminders to add their photos to the relevant album.

The update is also a big deal if you always want to share snapshots. There’s now an option to share your photo library, whether it’s the whole thing or snippets based on specific criteria. You can limit Photos to sharing pictures that include your partner, for example, or only those photos taken from a certain date onward.

Neither feature is flawless. What if your significant other has their back turned to the camera in an otherwise important shot? And while your friends won’t need Google Photos to receive suggested shares, the shared library clearly depends on everyone signing up. Still, this might be one of the more practical examples of how AI technology can help in everyday life. You won’t always have to remember to share photos when you get home — a machine will do much of the work for you.

Source: Google

Fox Sports brings its ‘virtual suite’ to Gold Cup VR broadcasts

Fox Sports is no stranger to VR. The network broadcasted Super Bowl 51 via a virtual suite of sorts, for instance. Now Fox is taking that further with the CONCACAF Gold Cup soccer championship. The footie action starts July 8th with the USA vs. Panama match at 4:30 PM Eastern, and will continue with two as-of-yet unannounced games thereafter. Basically, it’s combining that social space from American football with its previous work of broadcasting what everyone else around the world calls football, in VR.

The suite sounds a lot like what Fox had on offer for the Super Bowl earlier this year: multiple camera angles to choose from, there will be several 360-degree pre-show videos and replay features, too. The differences this time are that it’s sponsored by Buffalo Wild Wings and you can link up to watch with friends. So you should probably expect to see the corporate sports bar’s familiar black and yellow logo wherever you look.

If there’s a catch, it’s that you need a Facebook account to login and join your friends so you can watch from the social lounge together. No friends? No problem: the app will pair you with randoms too. Hanging out with strangers in VR was on your bucket list anyway, right?

Telegram will register with Russia but won’t share secure data

A few days ago, we reported that Russia’s communications regulator demanded that messaging app Telegram hand over information, including decrypted user messages, or risk being banned from the country. Now, Reuters reports that Telegram has agreed to register with the Russian government but will not hand over any user data or messages.

Russia claims it needs information from Telegram to put the app on a list of information distributors that officially operate within the country. While Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, says that the company is happy to register, he refuses to comply with any requests that violate Telegram’s confidentiality policy.

The reason behind Russia’s demands? It says that terrorists have been using the Telegram app to plan attacks, including a suicide bombing in April. While Telegram has been shutting down known terrorist channels on the network, it’s easy for them to create new ones.

This is just the latest conflict in the ongoing struggle between the need to protect users’ privacy and a desire to crack down on terrorist communication. For now, though, it appears as though users’ Telegram data is safe: Durov has been vehemently arguing in favor of privacy protection on Twitter and has made it clear the service won’t compromise on this issue.

Source: Reuters

Lawsuit claims Uber discriminates against people with disabilities

Uber launched a couple of new programs back in 2014 to serve people who use wheelchairs. UberAssist is a way to hail an UberX driver trained in accessibility and whose car can accommodate a folding wheelchair. UberWAV will send you an actual accessible vehicle with a rear-entry ramp and safety features for riders with accessibility needs. These programs are only available in a handful of larger markets like New York Washington DC or Portland, unfortunately. In addition, Uber may not have provided these services in equal ways to riders who need them even in cities where these programs exist. The Washington, DC-based Equal Rights Center (ERC) is suing Uber for denying that equal access to people with disabilities, claiming that the company is in violation of Title 3 of the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as the DC Human Rights Act.

The organization conducted an investigation that compared the experience of customers with and without disabilities. The ERC claims that Uber makes people in wheelchairs wait an average of eight times longer for an accessible solution to arrive and had to pay twice as much in fares. Further, it alleges that none of the more than 30,000 Uber cars in DC is capable of serving individuals who can’t use a folding wheelchair.

“Uber had the power to design and implement services in the District that connect wheelchair users to employment and educational opportunities, support services and cultural events,” said Michal Allen, a partner at the firm representing the ERC. “It just chose not to do so. By flouting federal and local accessibility laws, Uber deprives wheelchair users of the life-changing benefits of the convenient, affordable, on-demand services that Uber delivers to its customers who don’t use wheelchairs.”

This isn’t the first lawsuit Uber’s faced over accessibility, either. A couple of wheelchair users from Mississippi filed a suit last May, which alleged that Uber had no accessible options in the city of Jackson. A Chicago disability group also sued Uber for violating wheelchair accessibility laws last October. We’ve reached out to Uber for comment, and will update this post with their reply.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Equal Rights Center

New Charging Sound Discovered in iOS 11, Perhaps for iPhone 8 Inductive Wireless Charging Functionality

Buried in iOS 11, there seems to be a new sound file that could potentially be implemented when the rumored “iPhone 8” is released with inductive wireless charging capabilities. Highlighted on YouTube, the sound file is called “engage_power.caf,” and it is distinct from the existing “connect_power.caf” sound file that’s used whenever an iPhone is connected to a Lightning cable.

In the video below, the unused charging sound is compared to the existing charging sound in iOS 11. The new audio file provides a longer, more distinct sound that could perhaps be used to assure iPhone users that their devices are properly charging should the iPhone 8 indeed include an inductive-based wireless charging function as has been rumored.

While both the name of the file and the sound seem to indicate that it is related to some kind of charging purpose, there’s no way to confirm why the sound has been added, so this is all pure speculation at this point.

In fact, there are several other sound files in iOS 10 and 11 that are unused and do not have a purpose, so it’s not entirely clear if the new charging sound will actually be added to the iOS 11 operating system or what it will be used for. The hidden sound file in iOS 11 is not accessible on a device running iOS 11 and must be accessed using a computer.

Wireless charging is expected to be included in the radically redesigned “iPhone 8” coming in the fall of 2017, and perhaps its two companion devices (presumably the iPhone 7s and the iPhone 7s Plus), but there’s still some question about the form the wireless charging functionality will take.

Early 2017 iPhone rumors suggested Apple was aiming to implement long-range wireless charging, perhaps through a partnership with a company like Energous, but that technology may not be advanced enough to be used in the iPhone. Long-range wireless charging continues to suffer from problems like object interference and much slower charging rates as the distance between the receiver and the transmitter increases.

Apple is no doubt working on long-range wireless charging, but recent information suggests a simpler solution will be added to the iPhone 8 – inductive charging. An inductive charging solution, which is what’s used for the Apple Watch, would require the iPhone to attach to some kind of charging puck, mat, dock, or other device. It would perhaps be simpler than a Lightning port, but it isn’t a full wire-free contactless solution.

Regardless of how wireless charging is implemented, there’s overwhelming evidence that this is a technology Apple is aggressively pursuing. Apple joined the Wireless Power Consortium in February, hired dozens of employees with expertise in wireless charging, and has sourced wireless charging components from a range of manufacturers including Lite-On Semiconductor, MediaTek, and Luxshare.

Related Roundups: iPhone 8, iOS 11
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