Facebook Messenger Adds New Admin Privileges Amid Backlash Over Company’s Mishandling of User Data

Facebook today announced the rollout of a new feature in Messenger called “Admin Privileges.” With this toggled on, the company said that it will give specific users in a group chat “more control” over who partakes in the chat, and should help boost the app’s privacy.

If you have admin privileges you’ll be able to approve or decline new members before they join the chat, remove members already in a chat, and promote or demote any other person as an admin. The company said that the feature should help large groups who need to get in touch but may not be connected to on Facebook, like for a friend’s surprise party.

There are also new joinable links that any member can create and send out to potential new members, which an admin will then be able to approve. These admin privileges will be turned off by default:

The great thing about admin privileges in Messenger is they work in the background; if your group chat doesn’t need that level of control, it won’t get in the way of your group messaging. You’ll have the option to decide if you’d like admin approval for approving new members, but this preference is off by default in your group chat settings.

Today’s Facebook Messenger update launches at the same time that Facebook is facing immense scrutiny for its involvement with consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which itself has been tied to President Trump’s 2016 election campaign. According to recent reports, the firm improperly amassed information from 50 million Facebook users without their consent and used that data to “target messages to voters.”

In the wake of these reports, investigations have been opened into Facebook’s actions and several politicians have asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about the events. A new “#DeleteFacebook” campaign has now launched on Twitter, which WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton took part in. Facebook owns WhatsApp, but Acton left the company earlier in 2018 to start his own non-profit organization.

A Facebook spokesperson mentioned that the company was “deceived” by Cambridge Analytica and didn’t know about its actions. One Facebook shareholder, Fan Yuan, has filed a lawsuit against the company alleging it had some knowledge of Cambridge Analytica’s data siphoning and made “materially false and/or misleading” claims regarding the company’s handling of user data.

“The entire company is outraged we were deceived,” the statement continued. “We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people’s information and will take whatever steps are required to see that this happens.”

As the scandal continues to grow, the Federal Trade Commission has also begun looking into whether Facebook potentially “violated an agreement with the agency.” Zuckerberg has yet to comment on the issue.

Back in January, Facebook announced a series of privacy-focused updates, which were planned for a rollout ahead of a May 25 deadline for compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU. At the time, Facebook also revealed a new overhaul for the news feed that would favor friends and family posts over publishers. Zuckerberg said that this update would lessen the time its users spend on Facebook, but cause the time to “be more valuable.”

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.

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Pepper’s next gig is at Pizza Hut, but the robot won’t be tossing any dough

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Pepper is a friendly robotic fella who can interact with humans and even be your best buddy, if you like.

SoftBank, which created the cute humanoid robot in collaboration with French robotics company Aldabaran SAS, had high hopes for Pepper when the first one rolled off the production line in 2015.

Since then, Pepper has been turning up in all manner of places, from train stations to hospitals to departments stores, mostly to entertain shoppers rather than take on any particularly demanding tasks.

We’ve now learned that Pepper’s latest gig is at a Pizza Hut in Singapore, where the 120-cm-tall robot will make menu recommendations and take orders from hungry customers.

The initiative is being run in collaboration with Mastercard, which hopes the robot will help it to highlight its secure Masterpass digital payments system. To get started, a customer first needs to ensure they have the Pizza Hut app on their phone before signing in with Masterpass.

To prepare Pepper for what Mastercard is calling “conversational commerce,” the credit card company worked with robotics and artificial intelligence firm Teksbotics to create voice-based, interface technologies for Pepper, which connect with Mastercard’s own secure payment services.

Mastercard describes the resulting process as a “safe and easy voice-assisted commerce experience with the potential to be adopted across various environments — from retail to restaurants like Pizza Hut and beyond.”

But a video (below) shot by local media showing a Mastercard executive putting Pepper through its paces at Pizza Hut reveals the ordering process to be somewhat on the slow side. To be fair, Pepper performs pretty well in the interaction, offering choices that are shown on its torso-based tablet and responding in a chatty manner, but it takes nearly three minutes to order a single pepperoni pizza.

At this stage, there’s no serious plan for Pizza Hut to replace human staff with Pepper robots. The robot doesn’t appear ready for complex tasks, but it could certainly make a routine visit to the restaurant a little more fun for customers.

Let’s just hope this particular Pepper performs better than another one that recently started work at a grocery store in Scotland. While it could offer simple advice on the location of different items within the store, its overall performance fell short of expectations, prompting the manager to fire poor Pepper.

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This printer can create an image directly onto beer foam

There was a time when being able to print using toner or ink on paper seemed like we were living in the future. Nowadays, we’re a lot more jaded. In an age in which it’s even possible to print using living cells, it takes a lot more to impress us. Fortunately, the makers of a new printer have won us over with their latest innovation: The ability to print edible ink directly onto the foam on a frosty glass of beer. Suddenly a pint of Guinness with a simply rendered clover on top just doesn’t cut it!

“Beer Ripples is a revolutionary device that prints beautiful, high-resolution images and messages at the touch of a button, using Ripples’ malt-based ink,” Ripples CEO Yossi Meshulam told Digital Trends. “No special training is needed to operate the device. The Wi-Fi connected, counter-top sized device features a highly intuitive touchscreen system, making Ripples a highly convenient and versatile way to transform a simple drink into a one-of-a-kind experience that keeps customers coming back for more.”

Meshulam said that the Ripple Maker can print any high-resolution image or design. It’s even possible to send a photo, personal image, or message directly to the Beer Ripples device using a mobile app. Perfect for an original proposal method to a would-be spouse — or, perhaps more realistically, for trolling a buddy.

The device will set you back $3,000, plus an annual $1,500 subscription, which comes with enough malt-based ink for 6,000 prints. While that’s not exactly cheap, it’s important to note that it’s aimed at bars and other businesses, as opposed to something everyday consumers are going to have in their homes. When you factor in the kind of great marketing opportunity that it could represent, suddenly that money doesn’t sound so pricey. If you’re not into beer, the company’s technology also makes it possible to print onto frothy lattes, too.

“Companies such as Twitter, Match.com, Mars, Facebook, Google, and IBM have used Ripples to offer an unforgettable, personalized experience at events, where they might share branded images and text to generate a massive, real-time buzz both at the event and on social media,” Meshulam continued.

Let the age of personalized drinks commence!

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Board 350 passengers in 20 minutes? Facial recognition passes testing at LAX

Lufthansa

Boarding a flight at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) may no longer require digging out that boarding pass and passport — all you need is your face. On Monday, March 19, the Lufthansa Group airline announced the launch of biometric boarding at LAX. The announcement comes after the airline successfully tested the tool and boarded about 350 passengers on an A380 in only 20 minutes.

The self-boarding gates use cameras with facial recognition to photograph each passenger’s face. The image is then compared to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) database in real time. Once the system has a match, the computer lists the passenger as boarded, without requiring a boarding pass or passport. The whole process, Lufthansa says, takes only a matter of seconds.

The technology was developed through a partnership with Amadeus, along with collaborating with the CBP, LAX Authority, and Vision-Box. Because the program uses CBP data, the airline doesn’t have to develop their own biometric database.

“CBP is excited to work with air travel industry partners like Lufthansa to demonstrate how facial biometrics can provide a range of traveler benefits for a secure and seamless passenger experience,” John Wagner, Deputy Executive Assistant Commissioner, Office of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said in a statement.

As air travel continues to grow, airlines are looking for ways to speed up the often tedious process of boarding a plane. Lufthansa approached the problem looking at speeding up the boarding process, but the airline isn’t the only company looking at facial recognition as a security tool. Delta Airlines began testing a face-ID bag check at Minneapolis-St. Paul last summer. In Dubai, passengers walk through an 80-camera virtual tunnel with facial recognition to speed up the security process.

Lufthansa plans to expand the self-boarding gates to additional airports in the U.S.

“Biometric boarding has enormous potential to make the travel experience easier and less stressful,” Amadeus’ Guido Haarmann, managing director for airlines in central Europe, said. “Last year, over 1.6 billion passengers boarded planes using Amadeus Altéa technology. Amadeus’ mission is to develop technology that creates better journeys for travelers worldwide, and it is a pleasure to be working with our established partner Lufthansa to bring this innovative technology to market.”

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Guns N’ Roses alum Matt Sorum rocks beyond blockchain to fight labels, YouTube

The rock star inside of musicians like former Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum never dies — it just diversifies. His travels in the past reinforced the rocker lifestyle, like the time in Venezuela when he was pushed on stage to perform following a drug binge. Then there’s the pre-fame trip to Hawaii that infamously led to a drug smuggling mission. A trip to Brazil a few years ago, however, reflects his growth and had a much more positive result: Sorum’s involvement with a company that aims to shake up the music industry with cryptocurrency.

That trip, six year ago, connected Sorum with Pablo Martins and the team behind his latest venture. Artbit is a distributed ledger platform, similar to the blockchain platform that supports most of the cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The system allows artists and fans to share and monetize works quickly by eliminating third-party intermediaries like banks or business managers.

Sorum is aiming to shake up the music industry again, this time with the help of Artbit and cryptocurrency.

That’s made possible by smart contracts, computer protocols written into a platform’s code that can self-execute the set terms of a contract once specified conditions are met. So, if someone downloads a song an artist has placed on Artbit, a smart contract could automatically send payment to the artist, with no work necessary on the artist’s part.

Artbit is powered by Hashgraph, a newly released algorithm, which Sorum ardently proclaimed to be “250,000 times faster than Blockchain.”

His life may be more megabits than powder grams these days, but Sorum still has indelible tales of his wilder days as a member of Guns N’ Roses. The 57-year-old musician spoke to Digital Trends about Artbit from South by Southwest, as well as his upcoming autobiography about his rocker days, and the dire future of the album.

I read a little about Artbit and it seems like a very interesting platform. How does this fit into your background as an artist?

Well, you know, I have to start somewhere, right? I came to Hollywood in the late ’70s, trying to find my place. Trying to find where I fit, sleeping on couches, eating Top Ramen, and heading out to connect with people. Obviously, that’s way before we had a way to be able to connect online. There was no internet or social media to be able to find other people to connect with. We just had to do that face-to-face.

When I think about artists that are out there, and they’re all trying to do the same thing I did. [They] ask me, “Well, what do you think I should do to be successful? I want to do this for a living. I want to be able to make a living.” I saw what’s happening in the blockchain, crypto world, and I started researching the interesting correlation that could have.

I met this really interesting team out of Brazil. Pablo Martins is a visionary. We started coming up with ideas, and the team and Artbit was born. This is based on giving back to the community, artists, and how to build a network that’s going to really be … not only supportive of the artist, but supportive of the audience.

The audience deserves accolades as well — as we all know as musicians, we wouldn’t even be here without fans. Do they ever get any thanks for that? Not much. Why not? Why not include them?

Artbit [says it] will provide tools to manage the business side. You have decades of experience on the business side of the music industry. What kind of tools will Artbit give these artists?

On the business side within the Hedera platform [which is built on Hashgraph], they’re going to, with smart contracts, be able to decide everything they do or don’t want to do from the beginning. So there’s going to be a layer of brand element that’s going to come into play. …

In Artbit, you’re going
to be able to have a branded AR filter that
will enable you to have product placement if you want it.

For instance, on YouTube, you have no control of what commercials go across your video. First of all, if you have a million views, you only make about a thousand dollars. So, as these ads are streaming across your video before people are able to watch them, that’s kind of force-fed to you. You’re not allowed to say, “I don’t want this ad or I don’t want that.” As a bigger artist, you’re allowed to say what you want to be affiliated with, because you have more power. But as a young artists, you don’t. In Artbit, you’re going to be able to have a branded augmented reality filter that will enable you to have product placement if you want it.

Let’s say you don’t like beer or you don’t like meat, or you don’t like a certain kind of tennis shoe. You’re going to have the option to monetize your content by adding those prospective brands. So that’s one element. The community can do the same thing.

Now, in that smart contract, all that information will be on Hashgraph and the Hedera platform. The way the information is traded, it’s already there. So, it won’t allow certain things because the smart contract’s already been written into the platform. It doesn’t have to be a conversation, other than in the data. The data tells what is going to be allowed and doesn’t want to be allowed.

Michael Segal

Let’s say an artist is going to put this particular song up, and they’re going to offer 20 percent of my publishing, now, to the community. You now own a piece of it. You can have it in your [digital] wallet. Now, let’s say that song gets picked up for something now or monetized in a different situation. Automatically through the Hedera Hashgraph platform you will get paid. You don’t have to ask for the money. It’ll instantly be delivered to you because that’s how much information … the public ledger can hold. And that’s all done through one simple transaction, on the spot.

This is not the only thing that you’re working on these days. I know you’re working on an autobiography. You said it’s going to be the juiciest of juiciest stories we’ve ever heard.

[Laughs] That’s a good word. Juicy. Right?

[Laughs] Yeah. I asked myself, “How are these the juiciest of juicy stories? We’ve heard a lot from those days.” Can you hint toward any of the things you feel are going to be explosive that we haven’t heard about before?

Well, I think I’ve got better stories than everybody else. [Laughs]. It’s been a very cathartic experience, but at the same time, I realized I’m not a bitter guy. … Sometimes rock ‘n’ roll books come off that way. It’s always the typical, he did this, and that guy did this, and that’s why the band broke up, and I don’t look at it that way at all.

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images

Scott Dudelson/Getty Images

I look at it like it’s all part of the process. It gets people from point A to point B. We go our separate ways and everyone does different things that offer good reasons. So, as I’m writing it, I’m learning some of the reasons that things went a certain way were maybe based on a decision that I made. But most of it is intuitive. Then, I made mistakes along the way, and that’s OK, we all have. We all do, and that’s what gets us where we are now.

Do you have a release date for the autobiography? Have you had any contact with anybody to tell them to prepare for what’s to be inside of it?

[Laughs] No, not yet. [Laughs] We’re in the early stages. We’re at the first draft. So, it’s probably going to be another nine months.

What can you remember about what it was like being on that meteoric rise with Guns N’ Roses?

“I always said [being in Guns N’ Roses] was like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.”

I always said it was like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. It was like like the fast-moving roller coaster. You’re on the ride, there’s no way to really get off.  You’re on that bullet train. It was a rocket ship, and as much fun as it was, it was still scary at times. So, you were being driven, you weren’t the navigator, you know what I’m saying? [Laughing] I go, “Wow, I can’t believe I made it through that.” It really sets the tone for the rest of my life.

Talking with you, you seem like a calm and levelheaded individual. I’ve heard that drummers usually have to be the ones that are the levelheaded ones in a group. Were you ever that guy in Guns N’ Roses? The guy who calms everyone down.

I don’t know if you’ve read the research, but they’ve said it’s scientifically proven that drummers are the smartest of the bunch. [Laughs].

[Laughs] I’m going to have to look that up.

You can ask Dave Grohl, he’ll tell ya. Don Henley. Phil Collins. Lars Ulrich is the leader of his band. Larry Mullen [Jr.] runs U2. So, you know, guys with vision like that, we’ve all been in bands, and we’ve seen the mistakes.

The drummer is the foundation. He might be the foundational guy, right? You just try to keep everything together. That’s been my life. My nickname is Matt the Mediator.

Have you yourself invested in any cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or anything like that?

I’ve done okay. I’ve done okay. I dabble. I look at all of this with wide-open eyes. That’s where the concept of Artbit came. I wanted to see about how can we build a community, how can we build a network, and how can we use cryptocurrency to monetize that.

Then I saw Bjork launch her album on a platform through Blockchain, crypto. She offered her album in crypto and gave back audio coins, and gave back all of this stuff. People like Bjork have always been visionaries, in my mind. They’re always way ahead of their time. When I see people like that moving in that direction, I’m like, “OK, there’s something here. Something tangible. So, let’s go dive in and check it out.”

To dive into something so new and unregulated like cryptocurrency takes a level of fearlessness that we’ve recently found out you have a lot of. You recently spoke about your days, pre-fame, when you smuggled drugs. What made you get into it and take such a risk?

[Laughs] Yeah, I know. It’s part of the story, right? Then when people read that, they’re like. “Hey, I don’t know about this guy,” or whatever. When we’re young, we do crazy stuff. Yeah, I was always a risk-taker. The issue with the world, and people that say they really want to do something and they have a dream to do something, a lot of times, they won’t take the chance or risk if they have other responsibilities.

When I was coming up, I didn’t have anything to lose. I really only had one focus. That was to make it as a musician.

When I was coming up, I didn’t have anything to lose. I really only had one focus. That was to make it as a musician. Now, I look at that as like “Wow, what a blessing that I was able to believe in myself and to be able to see it to fruition.” I took other risks that could have caused me much harm. But, I look back and I go, “Would I do that now? Hell no!” I’m much older and much wiser, but I’m able to go into other areas. As we get older we all grow, and hopefully we mature and don’t make as many mistakes, and we learn from our mistakes …

With something like Artbit, it kind of falls into the lane of streaming services in the sense of disrupting the music industry. What implications do you think something like Arbit will have on record labels?

Well, they can come use us if they like. They probably will come to us just like they come to any other social network. It saves them having to get out and hit the pavement. Maybe some of them are down here at South by Southwest looking for the next thing. I think a very large percentage are sitting back in their offices and scouring the internet, getting Google alerts of what’s this and what’s that.

When we build it, they will come. I really feel that’s going to be part of our story down the line. Then, we’ll make the rules, because when you are in that position, you make the rules. It’s not the other way around. Typically, when you’re successful and people start knocking on your door, then you go, “Ah, yeah, let me think about it. OK, well, make us an offer.”

It almost seems like Artbit could help make record labels obsolete.

Well, they’ve been struggling, haven’t they? There’s still a very, very small percentage of artists that get recognized by the political aspect of what it takes to get there. What is it to get a record deal anymore? Most musicians and artists that I know just say, “Forget it … There aren’t any record deals anymore.” Yes, there are. But not like the old days. Not like when you would put a band together, and A&R guys would come out and see you, and they’d sign 20 bands that month. That’s not happening. They don’t have the money to do it. When they do sign you, they take half your merch [merchandising revenue], half your touring, and everything else that’s involved in your brand.

So they’re trying to monetize their entertainment business by taking everything you’re about while you’re out doing the real hard work, which is touring. … We never shared that kind of stuff with the labels back in the day. We never shared touring. We never shared merch. They only had rights to the album. But now, an album is only a way to a means. I’ve even heard iTunes is going to pull the download aspect soon. You won’t be able to download. It’s only going to be streaming.

Do you think that’s going to be a good future for music? It seems like there’s this battle between the album and the stream. Albums are becoming a dying art in favor of playlists. Do you think there’s a good future for the music industry should it be streaming only?

Yeah, I mean, I miss albums. I buy vinyl, because vinyl is something I love listening to. They shouldn’t allow people to buy one song at a time. Obviously, we’re going to have that at Artbit. But when I heard there were going to be no more download capabilities [on iTunes], that was really strange. I’m like, “Wow, it’s getting interesting now.” I have to wait to see what that’s going to look like.

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Stanford’s VR experience puts you in the shoes of one of California’s homeless

I’m homeless, on a bus from Palo Alto to San Jose, California. It’s late at night, and a man sitting a few rows behind me is staring in my direction. He’s creeping me out, and he’s moving gradually closer all the time. While this is going on, another person on the bus is trying to maneuver away my backpack with their foot. If I keep my eyes on my belongings, the man behind me moves closer. If I stare at him to scare him off, I risk losing my few possessions. What do I do?

This is one scene in a virtual reality experience created by members of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL). Called Becoming Homeless: A Human Experience, it’s intended to make you experience life through the eyes of one of the myriad homeless people who live in California. In the first scene, you have to sell off items in your apartment in a futile attempt to make rent after losing your job. In the next, you’re confronted by a cop after being discovered sleeping in your car. The third scene is the one described above, punctuated by spoken accounts of the struggles of homeless folks riding the bus in an effort to stay warm.

“We set out to create a VR experience that would examine whether it’s possible to use the technology to make you feel empathy for people that you perceive as being different from you,” Elise Ogle, project manager at VHIL, told Digital Trends.

Becoming Homeless has been the subject of a large-scale study carried out by Stanford, including more than 500 participants, which Ogle said is “unheard of for VR studies.”

“When you compare virtual reality to traditional media like TV and print, VR has a greater impact on people’s empathy,” she continued. “It can connect people to a particular environment more. It’s this kind of psychological presence, where you feel like you’re actually there. Real-life experiences can have a really big impact on people in terms of their attitude change.”

While there are potentially problematic elements to the overall concept (another homeless VR experience was roundly criticized last year), the idea that technology can be used to promote empathy is nonetheless a fascinating one. Will it solve the problem on its own? Absolutely not. Could it insensitively be used to create “poverty porn” in the form of a gamified system? Yes, it could. But, designed sensitively, we see no reason tools such as this can’t help raise awareness of particular issues.

Becoming Homeless was demonstrated over the weekend as part of the Global Education and Skills Conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It’s also available to download via Steam.

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Look out, Alexa and Google Assistant — Watson Assistant is coming for you

Alexa and Google Assistant may be helping you to run your household today, but now that IBM Watson has officially joined the smart home game, it might be game over for some of these competitors. Watson, the supercomputer that has won Jeopardy!, helped Marchesa design a dress, and analyzed tennis matches at the U.S. Open, is now coming to your home — but not just your home. At IBM’s annual Think conference, the company unveiled the Watson Assistant, an intelligent helper that you could soon find not only in your house, but in your car, office, hotel, or just about anywhere else.

One of the key differentiating factors between Watson and all other smart assistants is its status as a white label product. That means that there’s no specific way in which to use Watson Assistant — there is no set wake word, nor a dedicated smart speaker in which the assistant will live. Rather, companies will be able to leverage Watson however they see best, making it easier to add actions and commands. And perhaps most importantly, every individual application of Watson Assistant will keep its data to itself, which means that large companies can’t, as The Verge notes, “pool information on users’ activities across multiple domains.”

As IBM’s vice president of Watson Internet of Things, Bret Greenstein, explained to The Verge, “If you start running the entire world through Alexa, it’s an enormous amount of data and control to give to one company.” But Watson Assistant hopes to avoid that situation.

The artificial intelligence tool is already in action across the world — for example, if you travel to Munich Airport, you can see a Watson Assistant-powered robot that will give you directions and gate information. BMW is also leveraging the technology to rate an in-car voice helper. “We looked at the market for assistants and realized there was something else needed to make it easier for companies to use,” Greenstein told CNET.

Of course, as impressive as Watson has proven itself to be, it still has quite a bit of ground to make up when it comes to incumbents in the space like Alexa and Google Assistant. But IBM notes that Watson Assistant was developed exclusively in response to customer requests for this functionality. Particularly business customer requests. Greenstein noted that companies dealing with sensitive information will likely be more attracted to Watson than existing assistants because Watson gives users more control over both customer information and the customer experience.

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Hackers could have credit card numbers of 880,000 Orbitz users

Hackers may have gained access to as many as 880,000 credit cards by hacking into the Orbitz website. On Tuesday, March 20, the travel-booking company, owned by Expedia, shared that it had found evidence of a hacker gaining access to user data. The company says they don’t yet have evidence that the information was actually taken, but the hacker access means user data could have been stolen.

The hack could include data from users that used the platform between January 1 and June 22, 2016. Partner programs using Orbitz have a much wider date range for the hack, extending to Dec. 22, 2017. Orbitz said that, along with billing information, the hack also could have exposed other personal data including names, emails, phone numbers, billing addresses and gender. The company also said that the investigation suggests that travel itineraries, passport information, and social security numbers were not part of the hack.

The hacker gained access to an older version of the website, the company said. The current booking platform is not part of that breach, Orbitz said.

Orbitz discovered the hack earlier in March and since has launched an investigation to determine what data could have been affected. After discovering the vulnerability, the company said it hired a forensic investigative firm and also involved law enforcement.

In a statement, Orbitz said, “We deeply regret the incident, and we are committed to doing everything we can to maintain the trust of our customers and partners.”

For those potential 880,000 users that could have compromised data, the company is offering a year of credit and identity monitoring at no charge. The company is notifying users that could have been affected by the breach but travelers that booked within those dates can also call 1-855-828-3959 in the U.S. or 1-512-201-2214 outside the U.S. for additional information.

The breach isn’t the first time hackers have targeted travel platforms. Sabre announced a hack last year on the hotel booking platform. In 2011, a TripAdvisor hack compromised user emails, but the booking platform didn’t collect payment information from users.

Orbitz is owned by Expedia Inc. and offers online booking for flights, accommodations, rental cars as well as options like cruises and complete travel packages.

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An A.I. distinguishes between biological males and females based on a smile

A new artificial intelligence system has found an accurate way of distinguishing between images of biological males and females — and all it needs to do is to take a quick look at their smile!

Developed by researchers at the U.K.’s University of Bradford, the system is based on a previously discovered insight that the facial muscles move differently when men and women flash a grin. By incorporating this into an image recognition system, the researchers were able to create an A.I. that is 86 percent accurate in distinguishing between the sexes.

“We have studied extensively how people smile, from video clips and with the help of the computer,” lead researcher Professor Hassan Ugail told Digital Trends. “From such detailed analysis, we are able to confirm that the smile of women and men are distinctly different. For example, females tend to have broader or wider smiles and their smiles tend to last longer.”

The algorithm works by analyzing 49 distinguishing features of the face, such as the way that the mouth, cheeks, and areas surrounding the eyes move when a person smiles. Once developed, it was tested on video footage of 109 people smiling to test efficacy.

“The technology can be used as part of a toolkit for person identification,” Ugail continued. “For example, police might want to identify a person from a blurry CCTV footage where the person in question is physically unrecognizable — say, from the facial features, color or the shape — but the facial emotions, such as the smile, may be somewhat clear. In such cases, knowing the person’s gender would immensely help the police to narrow down their search.”

Potentially far more useful than that is the suggestion that smiles may not just break down into male or female categories, but could actually be a unique biometric identity. If it turns out to be correct that each and every one of us smile slightly differently, it might be incorporated into a future Face ID-style biometrics security system which asks users to flash a quick grin in order to unlock their phone or other mobile device.

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal The Visual Computer.

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An A.I. distinguishes between biological males and females based on a smile

A new artificial intelligence system has found an accurate way of distinguishing between images of biological males and females — and all it needs to do is to take a quick look at their smile!

Developed by researchers at the U.K.’s University of Bradford, the system is based on a previously discovered insight that the facial muscles move differently when men and women flash a grin. By incorporating this into an image recognition system, the researchers were able to create an A.I. that is 86 percent accurate in distinguishing between the sexes.

“We have studied extensively how people smile, from video clips and with the help of the computer,” lead researcher Professor Hassan Ugail told Digital Trends. “From such detailed analysis, we are able to confirm that the smile of women and men are distinctly different. For example, females tend to have broader or wider smiles and their smiles tend to last longer.”

The algorithm works by analyzing 49 distinguishing features of the face, such as the way that the mouth, cheeks, and areas surrounding the eyes move when a person smiles. Once developed, it was tested on video footage of 109 people smiling to test efficacy.

“The technology can be used as part of a toolkit for person identification,” Ugail continued. “For example, police might want to identify a person from a blurry CCTV footage where the person in question is physically unrecognizable — say, from the facial features, color or the shape — but the facial emotions, such as the smile, may be somewhat clear. In such cases, knowing the person’s gender would immensely help the police to narrow down their search.”

Potentially far more useful than that is the suggestion that smiles may not just break down into male or female categories, but could actually be a unique biometric identity. If it turns out to be correct that each and every one of us smile slightly differently, it might be incorporated into a future Face ID-style biometrics security system which asks users to flash a quick grin in order to unlock their phone or other mobile device.

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal The Visual Computer.

Editors’ Recommendations

• How Instagram’s being used to make the outdoors more inclusive and diverse
• Controller? What controller? You fly this drone with your facial expressions
• Editor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary on what makes her a supreme icon
• Deep learning vs. machine learning: what’s the difference between the two?
• Tokyo 2020 Olympics could deploy facial-recognition tech on a huge scale