Facebook and Twitter hold anti-extremism alliance summit

The quartet of web giants that make up the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) are holding their inaugural meeting today. Formed in June by Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and Google, the initiative aims to leverage technology — such as the shared industry hash database and machine vision-based detection — to stamp out extremist imagery online. In attendance will be UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd and the US Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke, along with EU and UN representatives.

As calls for a crackdown on violent and hateful material grow louder, the four companies will set out their collaborative goals. These include blocking terrorists’ use of social media and the web to spread propaganda, and to exploit real-world events.

To a certain extent, it seems their long-running individual plans are already working. At the outset of the year, the European Commission confirmed that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft had improved their efforts to review hate speech on their respective platforms. But that announcement was drowned out by the tough talk levelled at the tech titans by the UK and French governments in June.

Facing the threat of fines and legal penalties, the GIFCT is outlining more measures for the near future. Over the next few months, the forum will add five more companies to the industry hash-sharing database for violent terrorist imagery. Two out of the proposed five new members have already joined, among them Snapchat developer Snap Inc. and Justpaste.it. The forum will also work on knowledge-sharing with 50 companies as part of ICT4Peace and the UN’s Tech Against Terrorism project. Additional meetings will be held around the world later this year.

Source: Twitter (blog)

BT Sport will air Gfinity esports, just like BBC Three

Gfinity is on a roll. The British esports organiser has partnered with BT Sport to broadcast its Elite Series tournament in the UK. The company inked a near-identical deal with BBC Three last week, ensuring the high-stakes competition — which spans Street Fighter V, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Rocket League — is shown live on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. BT will be covering the action on BT Sport 3, starting at 9:30pm tonight (August 1st). The partnership runs until September 3rd, when the finals wrap up at Gfinity’s glitzy esports arena in London.

The Elite Series is unusual because it spans multiple games. Most esports competitions, like Dota’s The International, focus on a single title with a fervent following. But Gfinity has always strived to be different — it’s one of the few companies with a permanent, physical venue after all — and wants to promote UK teams and talent. The Elite series, therefore, combines established pros with amateurs who have risen up through its free, online “Challenger” tournaments. The hope is that Gfinity will find the next superstar, or at least give you an underdog to root for in the finals.

The partnership with BT Sport should raise Gfinity’s profile in the UK. Unlike BBC Three, which is online-only, BT Sport 3 is a traditional TV channel, albeit one that requires a subscription. That means there’s a better chance someone with no prior knowledge of esports will stumble across the coverage while aimlessly channel-flipping. Online, you typically have to seek out the stream unless someone shares a link on your Facebook News Feed or Twitter timeline. Of course, the bulk of esports viewership happens on Twitch, but live TV is an important and oftentimes underrated way for tournament organisers and game developers to find new fans.

Via: MCV

‘Real People’ Don’t Need Encrypted Messaging Services, Claims U.K. Home Secretary

The U.K. home secretary Amber Rudd has argued that “real people” do not want secure end-to-end encryption on messaging platforms and are more concerned with usability and features than unbreakable security (via Yahoo News).

Rudd made her case in a newspaper article, published ahead of a meeting today with technology companies in San Francisco, where she will warn tech giants that their services are being misused by terrorists. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Rudd said:

“Who uses WhatsApp because it is end-to-end encrypted, rather than because it is an incredibly user-friendly and cheap way of staying in touch with friends and family?

“So this is not about asking the companies to break encryption or create so-called ‘back doors’.

“Companies are constantly making trade-offs between security and ‘usability’, and it is here where our experts believe opportunities may lie.

“Real people often prefer ease of use and a multitude of features to perfect, unbreakable security.”

Rudd’s comments were immediately criticized by privacy campaigners, with civil liberties organization Big Brother Watch calling her viewpoint “at best naïve, at worst dangerous”.

“Suggesting that people don’t really want security from their online services is frankly insulting,” said Renate Samson, chief executive of BBW. “What of those in society who are in dangerous or vulnerable situations, let alone those of us who simply want to protect our communications from breach, hack or cybercrime.”

“Once again the government are attempting to undermine the security of all in response to the actions of a few. We are all digital citizens, we all deserve security in the digital space.”

Rudd is due to give her speech to tech companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft, in which she will urge them to do more to remove extremist content online or face new laws forcing them to do so.

Speaking to the BBC, Rudd said she wanted to work more closely with companies on encryption so that “where there is a particular need, where there is a targeted need” the government should be given access to metadata and encrypted content.

But Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, pushed back against that argument, and warned about pushing criminals into even harder to reach parts of the internet.

“If people move off those encrypted services to go to encrypted services in countries that won’t share the metadata, the government actually has less information, not more,” she said.

Tuesday’s summit is the first gathering of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, an organization set up by the major tech companies following recent terror attacks. Organization members are likely to resist any action that would result in compromised encryption, however.

In a joint statement, the companies taking part said they were co-operating to “substantially disrupt terrorists’ ability to use the internet in furthering their causes, while also respecting human rights”.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: security, United Kingdom, Encryption
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iPhones worth $600K nabbed from a moving truck in daring highway heist

Why it matters to you

Criminals will clearly go to any lengths to steal iPhones that they hope later to sell on the black market.

Robbers intent on stealing a large consignment of iPhones have often used cars to smash through Apple Store windows, or simply hid under hoodies and walked in during opening hours to snatch available handsets. More creative efforts have involved dressing up as Apple Store staff and sneaking away with the smartphones.

But in what may be the flashiest effort to date — one that’s already been compared to action scenes from Fast and Furious flicks — a team of bandits allegedly nabbed 500,000 euros worth of iPhones (about $590,000) from a truck as it sped along a Dutch highway about 80 miles south of Amsterdam.

Cops have arrested five Romanian men in connection with the incident, which took place toward the end of July.

The daring nighttime raid reportedly involved the alleged robbers driving a modified van right up to the rear of the targeted truck as it motored along the highway. One of the suspects is believed to have climbed onto the van’s hood, which may have had an anti-slip mat stuck onto it, before forcing his way into the back of the truck. It’s thought he then handed the iPhones to his accomplices via a hole cut into the van’s roof.

Ed Kraszewski, a spokesperson for Dutch police, said that his officers had been investigating a spate of thefts from moving trucks but had had their doubts that such an audacious kind of hit could really be achieved. But following Saturday’s arrest of the five suspects — as well as the seizure of the modified van with the phones inside — their suspicions have now been confirmed.

“The truck was taking its freight from A to B and did not stop,” Kraszewski said. “Even so, [the phones] were gone. So it must have happened that way. And now we finally have the evidence, with the van and the loot.”

A video released by Romanian police in 2012 shows a criminal gang attempting to break into a moving truck in a similar way. The footage shows the gang’s van driving at high speed right up against the rear of the truck as one of the criminals prepares to climb into the back.

Sony is acquiring anime distributor Funimation

Turns out the partnership Sony and Funimation forged to create the latter’s streaming service wasn’t a one-off thing. Sony Pictures is currently in the process of buying 95 percent of Funimation for $143 million, putting the anime distributor’s value at around $150 million. Funimation’s streaming website, which launched earlier this year, has over 400 titles on offer, including Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Bebop, One Piece and Attack on Titan. While the service is new, the company itself has been selling anime DVDs and merchandise for over two decades.

Sony isn’t a newcomer in the space either — it owns the ANIMAX network, which airs anime in 23 countries around the globe, including Japan. It also owns AXN, a cable TV channel that broadcasts anime, action shows, movies and sports programs. By acquiring 95 percent of Funimation, though, it will also be in direct competition with Netflix and Hulu, which have animated offerings on top of TV shows and movies.

Sony Pictures Television President Andy Kaplan said:

“Around the world, Sony’s networks have been major players in the anime space for nearly two decades, and in more recent years we have rapidly increased our networks’ over-the-top and digital offerings to consumers. With the acquisition of Funimation, the combined IP of ANIMAX, KIDS STATION and Funimation allows us to deliver the best anime to fans across all screens and platforms.”

Source: Sony Pictures

See how NASA envisions a ‘Mars 2030’ landing in VR

Just because you can’t go with the astronauts NASA chooses for the first manned mission to Mars doesn’t mean you can’t experience the Red Planet for yourself. A NASA-approved virtual experience called Mars 2030 has just landed on the HTC Vive, the Oculus Rift and the PC through Steam. It puts you in the space shoes of an astronaut exploring 15 miles of Martian landscape, which was modeled after the planet’s real surface as captured by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera.

Its 8K resolution will help make all the tasks you can do within its virtual world as real as possible. You can roam the planet’s surface, collect samples and then analyze them under the virtual microscope in your habitat that’s designed after an actual NASA concept for the first Mars-bound spacefarers. Once you’re done analyzing the specimen, you can even beam your findings back to Earth like a real astronaut would. In addition, the displays for your suit and rover will show biometric data and life support gauges to add authenticity to the experience.

Mars 2030 will set you back $15 for those three platforms — it’s not out for the PlayStation VR yet, but it will be available for Sony’s PS4 console “soon.” We’d love to see its developers release a “Potato Planting” expansion, as well, but that’s probably just wishful thinking on our part.

Via: Fast Company

Source: Fusion Media Group

Sony’s turnaround strategy is working

When Sony nominated Kaz Hirai to lead the corporation, he laid out an ambitious strategy that he titled One Sony. Hirai identified three key markets where he wanted Sony to be a leader: digital imaging, gaming and mobile, with the trio pushed accordingly. Five years later, and Hirai’s managed to hit two out of three targets, with Sony’s most recent financial reports vindicating his plan.

The often-troubled conglomerate saw its sales and operating revenue increase by 15.2 percent year-on-year, mostly thanks to semiconductors and financial services. In the former category, is Sony’s lucrative digital image sensor business that provides the chips for pretty much every smartphone worth a damn. Bloomberg believes that Sony sensors are now found inside half the world’s phones, and given that many use dual lenses on the back and one up front, that’s a healthy bounty for Sony.

Then there’s gaming, which is now comfortably Sony’s biggest business by revenue, even if this quarter wasn’t the best. Operating income fell from 44 billion yen to 17.7 billion, mostly because there wasn’t a first-party game to juice sales of the four year old console. But the combination of affordable PlayStation hardware, PSVR and game sales through PlayStation Network all keep the cash rolling in through the door.

One of the biggest surprises is the company’s mobile division, which continues to eke out meager profits from smartphones. As usual, cost-cutting, less money spent on research and development as well as increased device sales helped the division remain in the black. But it is perhaps a sad sign of how far Sony has fallen that selling 3.4 million units is actually considered a cause for celebration.

But Sony isn’t just a consumer electronics company, and hasn’t been for quite some time with its various disparate divisions. Its movie arm, for instance, lost money this quarter, although less than it did the same time last year, although it expects Spider-Man: Homecoming to fix the issue quite soon. Music, meanwhile, saw its figures go up thanks to increased royalty payments from streaming services like Spotify.

All in all, Kaz Hirai can feel rightly smug that most of his gambles have paid off, and Sony’s in a much better position as a consequence.

Source: Sony (.PDF)

Capturing Videos from a Computer Screen on Windows 10 to Watch Later with Movavi Screen Capture Studio

When you’re watching a video but don’t have time to finish it, or even just find it useful or entertaining enough that you would want to watch it later – there are several methods that you could use to do so. Of course in most cases there won’t be an option to ‘save’ it, but instead you could record it directly from your screen then save it.

To pull that off on Windows 10 you’ll need a compatible screen recorder – which is precisely what Movavi Screen Capture Studio is. Not only will it facilitate the recording, but more importantly it is easy enough to use that you won’t have to jump through any hoops in the process – even if you’re new to screen recording in general.

To set up Movavi Screen Capture Studio to capture videos from your computer screen, just launch it and select ‘Record screen’ in the main window to enter the capture mode. As soon as you do, you can define the area of your screen that you intend to record – by drawing a frame using the mouse cursor, selecting a window, or choosing one of the presets in the list on the panel that will appear later.

If you want you can then adjust the audio source and sound levels using the icons on the recording panel and the sliders that are beside them. Within the capture menu and settings of Movavi Screen Capture Studio you will even find options that will let you control the frame rate, schedule the recording, or set it to capture keyboard and mouse actions.

In any case when you are satisfied you can begin to record and use either the on-screen controls or hotkeys to control the process. When you’re done and stop it, you can save the footage that you’ve recorded or open it in the built-in editor within Movavi Screen Capture Studio.

Should you opt to do the latter, you can then tweak and improve your footage in a variety of different ways. The features in Movavi Screen Capture Studio’s editor will let you cut and join video segments, enhance the video quality, apply special effects, add audio tracks, insert transitions, include captions, and much more.

In short Movavi Screen Capture Studio will act as not only a screen recorder for Windows 10, but also an editor. Due to its powerful features, you will be able to save videos in exactly the shape and form that you wish, and may even create content of your own if you so choose. Although it has such advanced features, it remains intuitive and easy to use – which is something you can experience for yourself if you give it a try.

RoboCup’s ambition to beat a pro soccer team by 2050 looks a little optimistic

Why it matters to you

The annual RoboCup soccer contest is a good measure of how robot technology in general is improving.

Judging by some of the footage coming out of this year’s RoboCup soccer challenge in Japan, the organizer’s stated ambition to build a team of autonomous robot players good enough to beat a team of professional human players by 2050 seems a little, shall we say … optimistic?

Take this game (above) played the other day between two teams vying for glory at the annual event, which brings together more than 3,500 dedicated developers from some 40 countries.

As you can see, the humanoid robots seem rather better at falling over than kicking the ball. Perhaps they’ve been programmed with the mind of the legendary Dutch striker Arjen Robben, a player well known for his love of diving in a devious bid to gain advantage via a free-kick or penalty kick. But these particular bots appear to be going down for the heck of it, though their ability to quickly get back on their feet is, it has to be said, very impressive.

Pretty much for the entirety of the video, the diminutive robots hit the deck seemingly at random. If they were human, the crowd would assume they’d been out on the sauce the night before and were yet to fully recover. But these are robots. Robots that have a serious problem staying on their feet.

The ability to remain upright is mighty important when it comes to winning a soccer match, so some serious software and hardware advancements will have to be made before programmers and engineers have any hope of meeting the bold 2050 deadline. At this rate, the likes of Ronaldo and Messi could probably be brought out retirement at that time and still beat the team of hopeful robot players.

The good thing is that despite the robots’ current clumsiness, some of them are scoring goals — another important factor for winning a game. So there is hope. And with every stumble, tumble, and trip, the developers building the bots will have more data to analyze to help them hone their designs.

Indeed, this year’s RoboCup contest has reportedly seen significant improvements in the way the robots’ kick the ball and also how they plan moves. So with 33 years to go, maybe — just maybe — the robots will have a fighting chance of taking on a team of skillful human players. Be sure to check back in 2050 to find out.

HP made a VR backpack for on-the-job training

To date, VR backpack PCs have been aimed at gamers who just don’t want to trip over cords while they’re fending off baddies. But what about pros who want to collaborate, or soldiers who want to train on a virtual battlefield? HP thinks it has a fix. It’s launching the Z VR Backpack, a spin on the Omen backpack concept that targets the pro crowd. It’s not as ostentatious as the Omen, for a start, but the big deal is its suitability to the rigors of work. The backpack is rugged enough to meet military-grade drop, dust and water resistance standards, and it uses business-class hardware that includes a vPro-enabled quad Core i7 and Quadro P5200 graphics with a hefty 16GB of video memory.

The wearable computer has tight integration with the HTC Vive Business Edition, but HP stresses that you’re not obligated to use it — it’ll work just fine with an Oculus Rift or whatever else your company prefers. The pro parts do hike the price, though, as you’ll be spending at least $3,299 on the Z VR Backpack when it arrives in September. Not that cost is necessarily as much of an issue here — that money might be trivial compared to the cost of a design studio or a training environment.

There’s even a project in the works to showcase what’s possible. HP is partnering with a slew of companies (Autodesk, Epic Games, Fusion, HTC, Launch Forth and Technicolor) on a Mars Home Planet project that uses VR for around-the-world collaboration. Teams will use Autodesk tools to create infrastructure for a million-strong simulated Mars colony, ranging from whole buildings to pieces of clothing. The hope is that VR will give you a better sense of what it’d be like to live on Mars, and help test concepts more effectively than you would staring at a screen. You can sign up for the first phase of the project today.

Source: HP (1), (2)