Senate votes to extend NSA’s warrantless surveillance program

Last week, the US House of Representatives voted to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law that lets the National Security Agency monitor communications of non-US citizens living outside of the US. Today, the Senate has also voted in favor of renewing the law for another six years.

Section 702 is contentious, largely because it’s so wide-reaching and doesn’t require government agencies to get a warrant before conducting surveillance or searching through already collected communications. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU have spoken out about the law and many have called for more oversight as well as protections for US citizens whose communications might fall under the law’s scope. Last year, groups of senators, both Republican and Democrat, attempted to introduce reforms to Section 702 and Senator Rand Paul said at the time, “The American people deserve better from their own government than to have their internet activity swept up in warrantless, unlimited searches that ignore the Fourth Amendment.”

The bill renewing Section 702 will now head to the president who is expected to sign it into law by the end of the week.

Via: Reuters

First human CRISPR study in the US could begin soon

In mid-2016, A federal panel had greenlit the University of Pennsylvania to pursue the first trials using CRISPR gene-editing in the US. It seems the institution has quietly gotten the ball rolling and could theoretically start the study at any time: A posting was found on a directory of trials describing a yet-to-be-scheduled UPenn survey using CRISPR techniques to treat cancer patients.

The study will collect up to 18 patients with multiple myeloma, melanoma and/or two types of sarcoma. Penn scientists will use CRISPR to delete two particular genes in patients’ T cells: The first, PD-1, can be manipulated by cancer cells to impede the immune system, while the second is an alarm-sounding receptor that will be removed and replaced with one engineered to alert the body to specific tumors.

The Penn scientists won’t be injecting CRISPR directly into patients’ bloodstreams; Instead, they’ll use a method called ex vivo gene therapy, extracting blood and editing it with CRISPR before re-inserting it into subjects. This may bypass certain immune reactions that reject the former method. Last week, scientists published a study that found between 65 and 79 percent of human subjects produced antibodies fighting proteins made by two variants of the CRISPR Cas9 technique.

Penn scientists haven’t announced a start date for their record-setting CRISPR study: “We are in the final steps of preparing for the trial, but cannot provide a specific projected start date,” a Penn Medicine spokesperson told MIT Technology Review.

Via: MIT Technology Review

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov

‘Science Fair’ shows the challenges teens face in Intel’s competition

Intel’s science fairs are pressure cookers: imagine pitting some of the world’s brightest students against each other while they’re already grappling with teenage anxiety. And now, there’s a documentary that illustrates just how rough it can be. Muck Media has released the first trailer for Science Fair, a doc that follows nine high schoolers as they strive for glory at Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair. The students aren’t just worrying about their technical accomplishments, although those are notable by themselves (such as calculator that generates Shakespearean insults) — they also have to deal with their confidence, socio-economic hardships, rivalries and raging hormones.

The feature comes from Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster, veteran documentary producers who’ve worked together on projects like The Naked Truth: Death by Fentanyl.

The documentary premieres at the Sundance Film Festival, which starts today (January 18th). There’s no word on a release date or distribution, although that likely hinges on its critical reception. If it’s enough of a hit and becomes widely available, it could easily be worth watching. Most people have little experience with science fairs beyond the one in their school gym. This might provide greater appreciation of what the competitors go through, and might inspire teens who hadn’t considered entering before.

Source: Deadline

Xfinity Mobile now works with your unlocked iPhone

Until now, Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile service has meant buying one of its locked devices. But what if you already have a phone and want to switch? You now have that choice… if you’re firmly in Apple’s camp. Xfinity Mobile has enabled an in-store Bring Your Own Device option, but only for “select” unlocked iPhone models. Other manufacturers’ phones will have to wait until later in 2018. You can receive a gift card if you trade in a phone that doesn’t qualify, although that means settling for a locked handset (and likely getting less than your handset is worth).

There probably won’t be a surge of people signing up — historically, Americans have tended to buy locked phones on contract. However, this could certainly help if Xfinity Mobile’s bundled discounts and by-the-gig rates make sense for you. It could also help fuel the service’s reported success by making it easier for people to switch from rival networks. Xfinity is unlikely to topple the wireless giants since it’s intended mainly for the Comcast faithful, but this certainly won’t hurt.

Source: Comcast

Oculus Story Studio alum return with a new cinematic VR company

Last year, Oculus shut down its award-winning Story Studio, which was dedicated to creating bold new cinematic VR experiences. Rather than drifting apart, though, members of the team stuck together, and today they’re announcing their new outfit, Fable Studio. It’ll be making its debut at the Sundance Film Festival tomorrow with a VR adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Wolves in the Walls. The studio has four additional projects in the works, but even more importantly, it’s hoping to do something new with cinematic VR: Break even.

Fable Studio plans to charge people $1 for every 10 minutes of its content. The company sees it as being a bit more fairly priced than existing VR experiences, which can range from $3 to $15 for relatively short experiences. (Call it the early adopter tax.) There are also a slew of free VR content on the market, but that’s not sustainable in the long term. Edward Saatchi, Fable’s co-creator and a former co-founder of Oculus Story Studios, tells us that the company is aiming to legitimize VR experiences by making them something worth paying for.

Wolves in the Walls, which has been in the works for over two years by director Pete Billington (also a Fable co-founder), will unfold over three chapters. You play as an imaginary friend to a young girl named Lucy, a VR character who you can interact with realistically. She’ll remember things you’ve done in the past, and she can get annoyed if you interrupt her during the film. Saatchi sees her as an example of where interactive VR (and AR) is really headed: Creating truly believably characters.

Fable Studio’s other upcoming projects include Derailed, which involves two people moving through a story together; the interactive illustrated documentary 10; Magic River Boat Ride, an animated VR experience; and Origin, which will experiment with episodic storytelling. They also embody another key philosophy for the studio: They’re all made in VR using tools like Quill, which was created during the development of Dear Angelica.

Microsoft AI can draw objects based on detailed text descriptions

Google may have taught an AI how to doodle, but drawing something more complex is tough for a computer. Imagine asking a computer to draw a “yellow bird with black wings and a short beak;” it sounds a little tricky. Researchers at Microsoft, though, have been developing an AI-based technology to do just that. It generates images from text descriptions with a surprising amount of accuracy, according to the most recent paper posted by the team.

The system doesn’t find an existing image based on your input, but creates real drawing. “If you go to Bing and you search for a bird, you get a bird picture. But here, the pictures are created by the computer, pixel by pixel, from scratch,” said principal researcher Xiaodong He in a statement. “These birds may not exist in the real world — they are just an aspect of our computer’s imagination of birds.”

While the current form of this drawing technology isn’t perfect, it’s not hard to imagine a future where it could function as a sketch assistant for painters and interior designers or a tool to refine photos based on voice input. Farther out, researcher He imagines animated movies generated from a written script.

The team began its research into computer vision and natural language processing with the CaptionBot, an AI system that automatically writes captions for photos, then created a system to answer questions people ask about images called SeeingAI, which can be extra helpful if you’re blind. The current technology consists of two parts: one that generates images known as a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) and one that judges the quality of the images generated, known as a discriminator. The drawing bot was trained on pairs of images and captions, which teach the AI to learn what words go with which images. The team also created a mathematical representation of human attention, which is what we all use when we draw pictures from complex descriptions: a red wing, a sharp beak, a yellow wing. “Attention is a human concept; we use math to make attention computational,” said He.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Microsoft

Lebanese hackers stole a ton of data then left it on an open server

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and mobile security company Lookout released a report today detailing a major hacking campaign — dubbed Dark Caracal — that’s believed to have originated from Lebanon’s General Directorate of General Security (GDGS), one of the country’s intelligence agencies. The companies found information gathered from thousands of victims from over 20 countries through espionage efforts extending back to 2012. Targets included military personnel, journalists, activists, financial institutions and manufacturing companies and some of the stolen data included documents, call records, texts, contact information and photos. Michael Flossman, a Lookout security researcher, told the Associated Press, “It was everything. Literally everything.”

The hackers used malicious apps that resembled legitimate communication platforms like Signal and WhatsApp to steal the trove of data, loading up the fake versions with malware that allowed them to tap into users’ conversations. “One of the interesting things about this ongoing attack is that it doesn’t require a sophisticated or expensive exploit,” EFF Staff Technologist Cooper Quintin said in a statement. “Instead, all Dark Caracal needed was application permissions that users themselves granted when they downloaded the apps, not realizing that they contained malware.” However, the hackers’ storage of the stolen info also wasn’t terribly sophisticated, as it was all left exposed online on an unprotected server. “It’s almost like thieves robbed the bank and forgot to lock the door where they stashed the money,” Mike Murray, Lookout’s head of intelligence, told the AP.

The EFF and Lookout were able to link the data to a WiFi network coinciding with the location of Lebanon’s GDGS. “Based on the available evidence, it is likely that the GDGS is associated with or directly supporting the actors behind Dark Caracal,” noted the report. EFF Director of Cybersecurity Eva Galperin said that pinpointing the campaign to such a precise location was remarkable, telling the AP, “We were able to take advantage of extraordinarily poor operational security.”

Via: Associated Press

Source: Lookout

Oculus Start aims to lessen the burden on aspiring VR developers

Virtual reality is still a relatively new format, and as such there’s a huge need for compelling content to drive adoption. As such, Oculus today is announcing its new developer-focused program called Start. Oculus Start a free program that’s meant to make it easier and more cost-efficient to get VR apps built and distributed to customers. For starters, the company is highlight three different facets of Start: access, support and savings.

Perhaps the most important aspects of the program is “access,” which providers registered developers development kits for “new and existing hardware,” as well as early beta access to new tools and services. Specifically, developers can request a Rift or Oculus Go when they apply, and they’ll be able to pick the wireless Santa Cruz kit when it is ready to go.

Oculus did a survey of its developers and found that 50 percent are self-funded, so any access to hardware development kits for those will certainly be appreciated. It sounds like members of the Oculus Start program will also gain access to the company’s industry events like Oculus Connect, as well.

Oculus is also offering developers more support — they’ll get five support instances from the company every year, and Oculus says it’ll also let members meet with VR staffers one-on-one at various local events. Finally, the “savings” part of the program gives registered members a free one-year Unity Plus license or a royalty-free Unreal license, whichever platform they prefer.

Developers will have to meet a few guidelines to get into the program. They’ll need to have published something that shows a commitment and intent to build for the platform, be it a full app or something like a quick demo on Steam. Aside from that, companies can only have two developers from the same team applying, and they can’t have raised more than $10,000 in funding or crowdsourcing — it’s truly for new players to the scene.

Instagram Adds New Feature Showing When You Were Last Active

Instagram was today updated with a new feature that displays when you were last active, with the new activity indicator accessible via the direct messages section of the app.

In Direct, under a person’s name, you’ll now see when they last opened up the Instagram app with a message like “Active Now” or “Active 2h ago.” This is similar to how other apps like Facebook Messenger work, letting people you’ve previously interacted with know when you’re online.

The activity indicator is enabled by default and appears to be limited to people you’ve chatted with via direct messages. According to The Verge, your online status is visible to people you follow or have previously DM’d, with the info not accessible to general followers.

If you would prefer not to have your online status available on Instagram, you can turn it off in the Settings app under a new option called “Show Activity Status.” If you disable the feature, no one will be able to see when you’re online, but you also won’t be able to see the online status of your friends.

The activity indicator appears to be a feature that’s been quietly rolled out to all iOS and Android users.

In related news, Instagram is currently testing another new feature called “Type,” which is designed to allow users to share text-only posts via Instagram Stories. The text-only feature appears to be similar in design to the Facebook feature that lets you accentuate text-only posts with large fonts and colorful backgrounds, as seen in this video shared by The Next Web.

Type is not available to all users at this time, but those who have access can use it when sharing a story. The Type button is available next to other Instagram Stories camera options like Boomerang and Rewind, with several fonts and backgrounds available.

Tag: Instagram
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Deals: Free Four Month Apple Music Subscription, $4 Movie Tickets for T-Mobile Users, VAVA Dash Cam, and More

LivingSocial has brought back a deal centering on Apple Music, which last appeared in November. With the offer, you can get a four month subscription to Apple’s streaming music service for free, adding one extra month onto the existing three month free trial and saving you $9.99.

Like the previous offer, LivingSocial’s deal is only available for new subscribers who sign up for individual membership plans on Apple Music.

In other deals from this week, T-Mobile recently announced a partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Film that will allow T-Mobile customers to get discounted tickets to five select movies in 2018. Starting on January 23, users will be able to purchase $4 movie tickets for Maze Runner: The Death Cure, and then later in the year for Red Sparrow, Deadpool 2, Alita: Battle Angel, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. The promotion will be housed in the T-Mobile Tuesdays iOS and Android apps, and once the $4 tickets are claimed there, customers can redeem them through the Atom Tickets app [Direct Link].

Additionally, Amazon has a connected dashboard camera — called the VAVA Dash Cam — discounted for $99.99 with promo code VADASH01, down from $149.99. The camera captures 1080p 60fps videos in daytime and nighttime, includes 360-degree swivel coverage, can record in-car audio, and a connected steering wheel remote button lets you take instant snapshots and videos of events as they happen.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

The device is particularly aimed at unexpected accidents, with an iOS app able to save pictures and videos from the VAVA cam and make it easier to share with an insurance company. VAVA’s Amazon promo code will expire on January 20 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

If you’re looking for a slightly cheaper model, well-known brand Aukey has the Aukey Dash Cam for $64.99, although it lacks certain features like 360-degree view coverage. Aukey’s model also includes a 2-inch LCD screen so you can replay captured videos directly on the device, since it doesn’t support smartphone connectivity.

Finally, at Best Buy four models of the Apple Watch Series 2 have been marked down, focusing on the higher-end stainless steel cases with the Milanese Loop. Apple Watch Series 2 deals began appearing more often following the launch of the Series 3, but the best discounts mostly hit aluminum models. Now, Best Buy’s latest stainless steel sale prices are matching the discounts previously seen during a sale from October 2017.

• 38mm Stainless Steel Case + Milanese Loop Band – $479.00, down from $599.00

• 38mm Space Black Stainless Steel Case + Space Black Milanese Loop Band – $529.00, down from $649.00

• 42mm Space Black Stainless Steel Case + Space Black Milanese Loop Band – $579.00, down from $699.00

• Apple Watch Edition 38mm White Ceramic Case White Sport Band – $1,099.00, down from $1,149.00

The retailer also has a special offer for those thinking about trading in their MacBook, with select working models earning up to $450, received in the form of a Best Buy gift card and available in-store only. Coupled with a discount of $150 to $200 off the latest MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models, there is potential for significant discounts on one of Apple’s latest laptops.

For a longer list of this week’s sales and discounts, head over to our full Deals Roundup.

Related Roundup: Apple Deals
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