Google says its Safe Browsing tools now protect more than 3 billion devices

Why it matters to you

If you use any Google services — or a host of other popular web browsers and apps — Safe Browsing has been shielding you from malicious content for years.

This year, Google’s Safe Browsing tools celebrate their tenth anniversary, according to a blog post published earlier today. Since 2007, some iteration of the technology has been shielding users from potentially harmful sites — and as of 2017, the company claims that some 3 billion devices benefit from its protection.

In its simplest form, Safe Browsing is the warning you get when you try to access a potentially dangerous site. It might be offered up when your destination is suspected of carrying out phishing attacks, or distributing malware to visitors.

As well as the more visible components of Safe Browsing, there’s plenty more going on behind the scenes, so users are receiving the benefits of its protection even if they don’t see a red warning label. Many different systems are working in sync constantly in an attempt to identify all the different threats that are present on the web.

This expansive list of dangerous domains is used by many services offered by Google; it makes sure search results don’t lead users astray, it helps weed out any inappropriate ads, and it’s a part of the process that prevents malicious emails from hitting your Gmail inbox. But Google shares its Safe Browsing tools with others, too.

Apple and Mozilla both utilize Google’s research into the dark corners of the internet to protect people who surf with their Safari and Firefox browsers. A host of other web and app developers all benefit — for example, Snapchat uses it to vet links that are shared between users.

The scope of Safe Browsing has gotten bigger over the years, but its protection has improved in other ways, too. The rise of mobile devices has prompted Google to streamline the amount of data that actually needs to be beamed out, tailoring the information to the user’s needs, and making sure it’s as tightly compressed as possible.

Google has no plans to stop making improvements to Safe Browsing. Machine learning has long since helped the service scope out malicious content from the masses of sites and services that comprise the internet, and these techniques are growing more sophisticated all the time. The company sees artificial intelligence as having as much of an impact on how we browse the internet as the advent of the smartphone did, so it’s committed to making sure that Safe Browsing moves with the times.

Sprint-Vivint partnership lets consumers get smart home devices in stores

Why it matters to you

This is another textbook case of collaboration between bricks-and-mortar storefronts and online services.

The budding smart home industry has prompted some of the biggest names in tech to either develop their own products or partner up with other companies in the field. As the fourth largest cell phone carrier in the country, Kansas-based Sprint is lagging in cell phone subscribers, and so to help boost profits, it is turning its attention to non-core products, namely smart home devices. Sprint’s move involves partnering with smart home company Vivint to sell Vivint’s devices in Sprint’s brick-and-mortar stores, according to a Wave7 Research report.

The Sprint-Vivint partnership initially calls for Sprint to begin selling Vivint products at 16 stores in Missouri, Utah, Arizona, and Ohio. By the end of the year, Vivint products will be in 80 stores nationwide, allowing the carrier to combine Vivint smart home devices with Sprint phones. As for what kinds of devices are involved, Vivint sells everything from smart security cameras to thermostats and garage door controllers.

“From time to time, Sprint will run trials in a limited number of markets on different rate plans, products and/or services to see how customers respond,” said Kathleen Dunleavy, Sprint manager of corporate communications. “Currently, Sprint is conducting such a trial and selling Vivint smart home services in a handful of retail stores across the country. As with all trials, once it is over, we will analyze the results and determine next steps.”

The basic bundle of smart home devices from Vivint will set you back $40, including cameras, motion sensors, and more. Expanding the service to include security products such as doorbell cameras will cost $50. The company has been around since 1999, but it wasn’t until Vivint was sold to Blackstone in 2012 for $2 billion that its products began gaining traction.

The Wave7 report indicated that the partnership will expose Sprint’s services to a wider array of consumers as door-to-door Vivint representatives will attempt to sell the carrier’s plans along with its products.

“In addition to a wide array of smart home gear (cameras, motion sensors, etc.), the offering provides two MRC (monthly recurring charge) options,” Wave7 wrote.

This isn’t Vivint’s first partnership of this type. The smart home company teamed up with retail giant Best Buy earlier this year to sell smart home consultations to customers. That initiative launched over the summer.

Sprint has also been exploring ways to bring in more consumers, launching the 1Million Project, which will provide smartphones, laptops, and tablets to students in low-income families.

Deal: Get the Moto E4 on Verizon for only $40

The Moto E4 is available to Verizon pre-paid customers for only $40.

As smartphones become more and more commoditized, it’s become entirely possible to get a good device without spending a whole lot of money. In this context, “a whole lot of money” probably means more than $40.

Right now, Amazon has the Moto E4 — though locked to Verizon — for only $40. Daniel Bader said in his review of the phone that “at $70 on Verizon’s prepaid service, it’s an absolute steal.” At almost half the price, this means the phone is almost twice an absolute steal. Double the steals, double the fun.

The specs on the Moto E4 won’t set the world on fire, but they’ll be plenty for most people. It includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage (expandable via micro-SD), a removable 2800mAh battery, a Micro-USB port and a 5-inch 720p display.

The rear camera is 8MP while the front camera is 5MP. It won’t compete with devices like the Pixel but it does just fine in daylight. There’s also a fingerprint sensor, a rarity on devices at this price range. The phone runs Android 7.1 Nougat, with very minimal customizations on top. Motorola has not said when or if the Moto E4 will be updated to Android 8.0 oreo.

At $40 — or heck, the $45 full price on Amazon — the Moto E4 makes for a compelling backup device or a good-enough phone for companies that need to outfit employees with Verizon-compatible phones.

Are you interested in picking up the Moto E4? Let us know down below!

See at Amazon

GM might beat its competitors to driverless car production

While a large number of companies are working on self-driving cars, including Google/Waymo, Uber, Audi and Tesla, it might be General Motors that beats them all. In a blog post, GM’s CEO of Cruise Automation, Kyle Vogt, says that his team has created the “world’s first mass-producible car designed to operate without a driver.” Vogt notes that this is not just a concept, but a fully-made automobile with “airbags, crumple zones and comfortable seats” that has been produced by a high-volume plant that can make hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year. In other words, GM is ready to make self-driving cars at scale as soon as the software and regulations are up to par.

GM has been working on these autonomous automobiles for a while now, with a fleet of self-driving systems that includes a mobile ride-hailing app in place in San Francisco. According to Vogt, these new production models are actually the third generation of self-driving cars. They also meet the safety requirements the company believes are necessary to work without a driver and will be part of the San Francisco fleet in the next few weeks.

Hardware has been the hardest thing to bring to fruition, says Vogt. Starting with retrofitted Chevy Bold electric vehicles and progressing through a second generation of test cars. This generation was designed for high volume assembly lines using components and suppliers that already existed (though many sensors had to be built from scratch). GM began designing the third generation in tandem with production of the second one to vastly shorten the time involved in such an undertaking. The new vehicles — coming only 15 months after Cruise partnered with GM — have “completely new and fault-tolerant electrical, communication and actuation systems that are unique to a driverless vehicle,” writes Vogt.

GM’s Cruise team wants to see a fully autonomous car that won’t require a “safety driver” like current autonomous cars do. To do that, the company had to create new safety and redundancy systems to make sure it could guarantee the safety of riders. “Our newest self-driving car might look like a regular car on the outside,” says Voght, “but the vehicle’s core system architecture more closely resembles that of a commercial airplane or spacecraft. It’s a complex and time consuming process to design cars this way, but it’s the responsible thing to do.”

Via: ReCode

Source: Kyle Vogt/Medium

Apple adds a mail-in option to its iPhone Upgrade Program

Apple is adding a mail-in option to its iPhone Upgrade Program, making it easier to ditch your suddenly-outdated iPhone 7 Plus after tomorrow’s 10th-anniversary iPhone showcase. First spotted by techdude13 on the MacRumors forums, the page for Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program now lists mail-in trade-in kits as an option. If you decide to have a new iPhone shipped directly to your door, Apple will also send along a package with a pre-paid shipping label so you can return that old hunk of junk.

That’s right, this eliminates the need to actually visit an Apple Store to upgrade your iPhone.

The new program should be a relief for plenty of Upgrade Program customers. Previously, anyone looking to get the latest model had to schedule an appointment at an Apple Store — where stock had a habit of quickly running out.

Apple unveiled the iPhone Upgrade Program in 2015, allowing customers to purchase the latest iPhone every year directly from the mothership, without going through their individual carriers.

The iPhone turns 10 in 2017, and this week we took a trip down memory lane to dissect the specs of each model. Tomorrow, Apple is expected to reveal the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and the iPhone X.

Follow all the latest news from Apple’s iPhone event here!

Source: Apple

Monkey selfie copyright battle ends with a settlement

The battle over who owns the rights to a monkey’s selfies has raged for years, but it’s coming to a quiet end. Camera owner David Slater, PETA and Blurb have reached a settlement in the case before a federal appeals court could rule whether or not Slater or PETA (on behalf of the monkey, a crested macaque named Naruto) owned the photos. The truce doesn’t appear to alter Slater’s original court victory, but it will have him donating 25 percent of future revenue from the selfies to charities that protect the habitats of Naruto and his species.

In a statement, Slater and PETA said that the case raised “cutting-edge issues” about the rights of non-human animals, and that they both supported the idea of expanding animals’ rights.

For all intents and purposes, Slater got the upper hand. Even as the fight over the photos erupted in earnest, the US Copyright Office was drafting practices that granted ownership rights exclusively to humans — PETA was bound to face an uphill battle. However, it does serve as a reminder that ownership isn’t always easy to determine, especially in an era where artist robots can produce work without human intervention.

Via: Associated Press

Source: PETA

Venmo invites users to try physical debit cards

Venmo is inviting select users to try out new debit cards that deducts right from their account, TechCrunch reported. This is four months after rival payment service Square started trying out its own card (and two months after its public launch), so Venmo is a little late to the game, but apparently users are already getting their new payment plastic.

My @Venmo card arrived 🎉 pic.twitter.com/cEqRZExz9P

— Nick Abouzeid (@nickabouzeid) August 1, 2017

Venmo employees started testing out their own cards in July, Recode noted at the time. If you’ve been chosen to try out your own, a notification should pop up when you open the payment system’s app. The cards work just like a normal physical debit card, and reportedly cost nothing to activate, just like Square’s card.

The cards work just like the normal service, deducting from a backup source (like your personal bank) should you spend beyond your balance. The cards themselves are Visa Debit issued by Metropolitan Commercial bank by way of Shift Financial, according to TechCrunch.

It’s unclear how quickly or widely the cards will be rolled out. When reached for comment, a Venmo spokesperson said: “We have started sending a limited number of beta invitations to test a physical Venmo card to some of our users. While we’re excited to hear what people think, beta features are not guaranteed to see general release.” Further, they emphasized that the “dough card” photo (above) was an in-joke reflecting the beta, not a final design or for general release.

Source: TechCrunch

iPhone Upgrade Program Customers Able to Trade In Old Devices by Mail for iPhone X Launch

When customers who are members of the iPhone Upgrade Program to go trade in their devices this fall, they will likely be able to use a Trade-in Kit that’s delivered by mail rather than being forced to visit an Apple Store to purchase a new device and trade in the old one.

Mail-in Trade-in Kits, highlighted this afternoon on the MacRumors forums, have been available as part of the iPhone Upgrade Program at least since July, and perhaps even earlier, but they were not an option during the iPhone 7 launch.

Based on wording on the iPhone Upgrade Program website, once a customer’s new iPhone ships, Apple will send a Trade-in Kit with a prepaid shipping label to allow customers to send their current device back to Apple.

Last year, many iPhone Upgrade Program users were forced to reserve a new iPhone from a local Apple retail store due to in-store trade-in requirements, which left them with limited stock to choose from. Many customers were unhappy, perhaps prompting Apple to offer a mail-in exchange option.

With the new trade-in by mail option, iPhone Upgrade Program users may not be restricted to in-store stock this year, preventing many of the problems that surfaced last year.

Unfortunately, T-Mobile customers who are members of the iPhone Upgrade Program will still need to visit an Apple Store and will not be able to upgrade online.

Related Roundup: iPhone X
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Senators call for credit report changes after Equifax breach

In light of the Equifax breach that exposed personal information of over 143 million US citizens, a handful of senators have reintroduced legislation that would put more power in the hands of consumers when it comes to their credit reports. Senators Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Claire McCaskill (Missouri), Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and Jeff Merkley (Oregon) have reintroduced the Stop Errors in Credit Use and Reporting (SECURE) Act.

Some of the stipulations of the proposed legislation include applying standards to credit reporting agencies, like Equifax, requiring them to do simple, obvious things like match consumers’ names, addresses and Social Security numbers, issues with which can lead to credit report errors. The act also calls for better flow of information — such as clearer credit reports, providing consumers with the same information used by lenders as well as sharing credit report disputes and resolutions — which would allow consumers to both understand their credit reports better and more easily fix errors when they arise.

Additionally, the SECURE Act requires parents to be allowed to freeze their child’s credit report to prevent identity theft that could go unnoticed for years. Under the legislation, credit reporting agencies would also have to join a national registry and the Government Accountability Office would be asked to look into the possibility of creating a national credit reporting system. Finally, consumers who sue credit reporting agencies under the Fair Credit Reporting Act would be given injunctive relief under SECURE, and agencies found to be in violation would be held accountable to the FTC.

Senator Schatz also sent a letter to Equifax CEO Richard Smith demanding the company go much further in its post-breach response including reimbursements for security freezes, unlimited free credit monitoring services and an audit of its security measures. Schatz also requested that the company respond to his letter by September 29th. You can read the full letter here.

In regards to the reintroduced act, Schatz said in a statement, “This is one of several important steps Congress can take in the wake of the Equifax cybersecurity breach. Because these credit agencies operate in the dark, they are allowed to be terribly unfair and unaccountable. Millions of Americans have bad credit because of mistakes from credit agencies, and it can ruin lives, stopping people from getting a job or owning a home or car.”

Source: Brian Schatz (1), (2), Congress

Even a disguise might not save you from next-gen facial-recognition technology

Why it matters to you

New facial-recognition technology could be used for smarter surveillance systems.

There is no question that facial-recognition technology is getting better. But what if a person tries to purposely obscure their identity by sporting a fake beard or giant sunglasses? Up until now, that has been a lot harder for even smart facial-recognition systems to deal with.

This is where new technology developed by researchers from India and the U.K. hopes to address. Engineers at India’s National Institute of Technology and Institute of Science and the U.K.’s University of Cambridge have developed a facial recognition framework that can identify even people who actively obscure their faces.

“This system can be used to identify a person even if they are disguised,” Amarjot Singh, from the University of Cambridge, told Digital Trends. “This can be used to identify criminals trying to disguise their appearance to avoid law enforcement. The problem of Disguise Face Identification (DFI) is an extremely challenging and interesting problem that is of great interest to law enforcement — as they can use this technology to identify criminals.”

The deep learning-based system works by identifying 14 key areas of the face, including 10 for the eyes, three for the lips, and one for the nose. It is capable of estimating these even when they are obscured in some way. It then compares these readings to images to find a match. In early tests, the results were 56 percent accurate at finding the right person when their face was covered with a hat or scarf — although this dropped to 43 percent when they also wear glasses. Those figures are not going to be considered evidence in a court of law anytime soon, but they could certainly help police narrow down a search.

“This, in my opinion, is the first AI-based work that solved the problem of DFI with a reasonable accuracy,” Singh continued. “The datasets developed by us were essential in solving this task. We hope that more researchers can use the proposed data set to develop strong AI models that can perform better on this task or can expand that dataset to include more disguises. Overall, this work will get the ball rolling.”

Next, he notes that the team is trying to get the technology to function in real time with less computational power. “After that, the next step would be to deploy it on cameras to see how well it performs,” he continued.

From a computer science perspective, it is impressive stuff. In terms of what it means for potentially authoritarian surveillance, we’re not convinced things are quite so clear-cut. In the meantime, a paper describing the work will be presented in October at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers International Conference on Computer Vision Workshop in Venice, Italy.