EU details its taxes on tech companies’ revenue

The European Union has vowed to counter tech companies’ tax maneuvers by targeting their revenue, and it’s now clearer just what that will involve. In an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the EU would unveil plans to tax tech firms’ revenue at a rate between “2 percent and 6 percent,” most likely skewing closer to 2 percent. That may not seem like much, but Le Maire portrayed it as a “starting point.” It’s better to get a policy you can implement quickly than deal with “interminable negotiations,” he said, adding that it can be improved later.

The official EU directive would be unveiled in the “coming weeks,” according to the minister.

Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and other tech giants have been accused of using legal tricks to avoid paying taxes in European countries, such as routing profit through Ireland or even the British island of Jersey. A tax on revenue theoretically closes that loophole by collecting money where it’s earned (i.e. from the customers), rather than where it’s kept.

It’s doubtful that tech companies will accept any revenue tax without a fight, as they’ve maintained that their current financial arrangements are legal. Ireland has also objected to EU tax claims, to no one’s surprise — it directly benefits from companies doing business on its soil through those incentives. However, a relatively low tax rate could reduce objections within the EU nations themselves and make it more a matter of how much companies pay than whether they pay something at all.

Via: Reuters

Source: Le Journal du Dimanche (translated)

Medics may slow biological time to save soldiers’ lives

Battlefield medics frequently only have a brief window of opportunity to treat an injury before it’s fatal or causes permanent disabilities, and it’s frequently so fleeting that there’s not much they can do. DARPA is exploring an unusual solution to that problem: slow the biological processes to give medics more room to breathe. Its new Biostasis research program aims to bring cell activity to a near halt by using biochemicals that control energetics at the protein level. If animals like tardigrades and wood frogs can stabilize their cells to survive freezing and dehydration, similar techniques might offer more time to medics who want to treat wounds before a victim’s vital systems break down.

DARPA knows this won’t be easy. The trick is to slow down every cellular process at roughly the same rate — you can’t just pause a few while others run at full speed. You’d also have to minimize any damage when the cells return to their normal function.

The Biostasis program is still very young (its first day for answering proposers’ questions is March 20th), and DARPA isn’t expecting too much even from complete projects: it’s initially focusing on “benchtop” proofs of concept and will focus on real-world uses as the program nears its 5-year end. If it has any success, though, the program could prove to be a breakthrough for the medical field as a whole, not just in combat. Paramedics could buy themselves enough time to get a patient to hospital, and doctors could focus less on basic survival and more on full recoveries.

Source: DARPA

Can you really trust app store ratings? We asked the experts

As smartphones have soared in popularity, app development has exploded. There are currently more than 3.5 million Android apps and games in Google’s Play Store, and more than 2 million apps and games in Apple’s App Store, according to App Annie. With such a feast of choice, people need a little help separating the wheat from the chaff.

App stores offer a review rating system for precisely this purpose. After you download and install an app, you can rate it out of five stars and write up a review detailing your thoughts. Review scores are aggregated and used to determine an overall score for the app. The higher the score an app gets, the more people liked it, at least in theory. In practice, a lot of reviews are less than useful for prospective installers and there’s a thriving trade in fake reviews. One star, one-line reviews complaining that an app didn’t work on this or that device, or that there was some billing issue, aren’t always a good indication of whether the app will meet your needs. But what about multiple five-star ratings with repetitive, unnatural-sounding reviews?

Gaming the system

Good review scores are vital if you want a coveted place in the app store charts. They boost your chances of appearing on curated lists and recommendations, and the bottom line is they can persuade people to install your app. Little wonder then, that some developers are willing to bend, or even break, app store rules to get closer to five stars.

The fact that many developers game the system has been an open secret in the industry for years.

“While we haven’t performed any specific analysis to quantify the scale of the problem, fake reviews do exist and have been shown to materially affect app review scores,” Paul Barnes, regional director at App Annie, told Digital Trends.

The fact that many developers game the system has been an open secret in the industry for years. A brief web search for “paid app reviews” or similar terms reveals several services selling app reviews and installations to artificially boost the standing of apps in the main app stores. While a small number of app reviews might cost $2 to $3 each, developers buying in bulk can secure discounts, with reviews costing below a mere 50 cents.

There’s no gray area here – this practice violates the Google Play Developer Program Policies and Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines. It can result in the removal of suspect reviews, the removal of the app, or even the expulsion of the developer from the program.

“Both Apple and Google have demonstrated they take the issue extremely seriously, and they continuously monitor reviews left on their respective stores,” Barnes said.

The problem is that determining what constitutes a fake review is easier said than done. Many of these services employ real users who download and install the apps and then post glowing reviews. While developers used to buy reviews in big chunks and post suspiciously similar write ups, things have gotten more sophisticated.

You can now dictate the wording of reviews, decide on post frequency, and stir in some four-star reviews alongside the five-star reviews to make it look more natural. Some of these paid app review services also guarantee they will replace any reviews that are deleted.

“We want ratings and reviews to be authentic and a true reflection of comments from the users.”

“We want ratings and reviews to be authentic and a true reflection of comments from the users,” Andrew Ahn, product manager at Google Play, told Digital Trends. “Spammy reviews, such as off-topic comments, solicitation, content with profanity, are just some of the categories we filter out. We also prohibit fake or incentivized reviews.”

Interestingly, the practice of buying reviews isn’t just about securing positive feedback for your own app — it can also be used to knock the competition down.

“There are two types of issues with incentivized reviews,” Ahn said. “One is buying good reviews to better promote your own app, and the other is buying negative reviews to harm competing apps. We cover both cases to keep the ecosystem clean and fair.”

Meteoric success, like what happened with the game Flappy Bird, immediately raises questions, as does a sudden drop in ratings, like with CNN’s iOS app.

In July 2017, CNN’s iOS app was “review bombed,” meaning the app store was flooded with malicious reviews over the course of a single week. It went from receiving around 30 reviews a day total, to receiving thousands of negative reviews between July 5 and July 11.

“It’s unclear if this was caused by automated bots or a coordinated approach from a politically-motivated group that opposes the network,” Barnes said.

Even when suspicious reviews are flagged, it seems that developer expulsions and app takedowns are relatively rare. If the manipulation isn’t blatant, it’s easy to imagine how difficult it might be to prove wrong doing on the part of a developer.

“We are able to filter out most incentivized reviews, so it does not impact the placement or presentation of an app in a meaningful way,” Ahn said. “In some egregious cases, we may take down the app for violating the Google Play Developer Program Policies.”

If you’re having trouble trusting app store ratings, we don’t blame you.

Quietly removing suspect reviews and giving developers a slap on the wrist is an understandable approach; Google and Apple don’t want to alienate app developers or deal with them too harshly.

The saga of an app called Dash and its removal from the App Store is an interesting, and rare example of an ejection that turned into a public argument. It’s tough to know the truth of the matter in a case like that. Apple claimed the developer paid for reviews, and the developer stated it was his relative’s account that was tied to his credit card, which in turn was also tied to his own account. Other apps, like One Night Stand: Adult Hook up, which is discussed in greater detail on Reddit and is still available in the App Store with a rating of 4.9 out of 5, seem to be clearly breaking the rules with impunity.

While developers buying fake reviews can be difficult to detect, there is a much clearer incentivization strategy we’ve seen in a few apps and games over the years. Sometimes you’ll be offered a free in-app purchase or some in-game currency in return for a positive review. If the developer explicitly asks for a five-star review, then this breaks the same guidelines as buying fake reviews, but there’s some wiggle room here.

It’s common for apps and games to ask for reviews via a pop-up after you’ve been using the app or playing the game for a while. These pop-ups may repeat every so often until you go ahead and leave a review. Someone came up with the bright idea of sending users who gave a positive score to the normal app store review page but diverting users who gave a low score — often anything less than five stars – to their own website to leave feedback. This is a loophole that doesn’t seem to be breaking any rules right now, but we know it’s on Google’s radar.

There are no statistics on how many apps are removed from app stores because of incentivized reviews, but Google removed more than 700,000 “bad apps” last year alone. The majority were copycats, contained inappropriate content, or were considered potentially harmful malware, but the fake review issue is also being treated seriously.

Android developers looking to challenge suspicious reviews can do it from the Play Console. This will bring the attention of a specialist, who will decide whether the review violates posting policy and needs to be removed or not. The rest of us can use this form to report Play Store reviews as inappropriate or spam, or you can go to the review, tap the three-dot icon, and hit Spam. You can also go to the very bottom of the app listing and hit Flag as inappropriate if you notice fake reviews.

For anyone that uses Amazon’s Appstore, there’s another tool at your disposal. It may only have around 600,000 apps and games to choose from, but because Amazon has had issues with fake reviews on other kinds of products for years now, there’s an independently-developed review analyzer tool called ReviewMeta that also works for apps. Paste the link into the tool and it provides a simple pass or fail by analyzing the public data to look for things like repetitive phrases or suspicious one review accounts with unverified purchases. It’s not perfect, but it’s interesting to try out and see a clear methodology for rooting out fake reviews.

For Apple’s App Store, the best way to report fake reviews is to contact iTunes support.

If you’re having trouble trusting app store ratings, we don’t blame you. We would like to see all the major players take more action to combat fake reviews. Luckily, there are plenty of trustworthy websites out there that review apps and games, and you can always dig into our curated lists of the best Android apps, best iOS apps, and our weekly App Attack column.

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5 emerging technologies that prove MWC is about more than just smartphones

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is naturally heavily-focused on smartphones, mobile accessories, and apps, but if you pound the halls for long enough, you’ll find lots of interesting technology that doesn’t fall cleanly into those categories. We uncovered some intriguing new gadgets and technologies at MWC 2018, so here are our favorites from the show.

Modius – Weight loss headset

Simon Hill/Digital Trends

What if you could suppress your appetite or speed up your metabolic rate by wearing a special headset that gives you small electric shocks behind the ears for an hour a day? It may sound crazy, but that’s the promise of Modius, which sends low-power electrical impulses to your vestibular nerve, to activate your hypothalamus.

We uncovered some intriguing new gadgets and technologies at MWC 2018.

We first wrote about Modius before its successful Indiegogo campaign. With 4,000 headsets shipped and mounting evidence that it works, we’re about to put it to the test ourselves in a full review, but we took the chance to try it out for a few minutes at MWC and talk to one of the highly-credible neuroscientist founders, Dr Jason McKeown MD.

It feels just like it sounds, a tingling sensation via the electrodes which are attached to the bony area behind your ears that gets stronger as you move up through the 10 levels. It also creates a feeling like you’re swaying or rocking, which wears off instantly when the Modius headset is turned off. The science behind it is sound, but the clever thing about Modius is that it achieves a known effect without the need for invasive surgery.

Weight loss is big business, so interest in a gadget like this is no surprise. We’ll need to use it for a few weeks to put it through its paces and see what the impact is, but we’re hopeful about the technology. Stay tuned for our in-depth review.

PureLiFi – Internet through light

We’re big fans of PureLiFi, in fact the Edinburgh-based company won our cool tech award at MWC last year for its internet through light technology. At MWC 2018 PureLiFi has been showing off its receiver technology integrated into a Dell laptop, and a case for the Samsung Galaxy S5.

As the spectrum crunch approaches, the ability to complement Wi-Fi networks with Li-Fi systems will become more and more essential. We streamed a video from Digital Trends onto the Galaxy S5 via an overhead strip light and it worked flawlessly. The connection is currently capable of 42Mbps up and down.

Further miniaturization and integration into smartphones is on the horizon and we hope to be connecting to the internet on a flagship phone using Li-Fi within the next three years.

Elliptic Labs – Ultrasound gestures

In the past, ultrasound pioneers Elliptic Labs showed off how ultrasound technology can replace proximity sensors in phones, turning the screen on when your hand or face is close to it. That tech made it into the Xiaomi Mi Mix handsets, enabling the manufacturer to shave bezels down. Elliptic Labs also added some other gestures for things like tweaking the volume and snapping selfies.

At MWC 2018, we caught up with the team to see their newest demo, which enables you to control a smart speaker and a light with simple gestures that work from a short distance. By double tapping with your palm you can activate Alexa, and a single palm tap can cut it off, all without having to touch the speaker or utter a word. They also had a light that you could brighten by holding your hand at one side of the speaker, or dim by holding it at the other side, something that could just as easily work with volume.

The devices they showed are just prototypes for now, but we found the ability to stop Alexa in midstream by holding up our hand really useful, so we hope to see it integrated into an actual smart speaker soon.

Energous – Wireless charging at distance

Simon Hill/Digital Trends

We’ve been excited about the prospect of truly wireless charging for a few years now – the idea that your phone might charge up in your pocket or your smartwatch while it’s still on your wrist. It would be great to be freed from cables and charging pads, but mid-field charging has remained elusive so far. After meeting with Energous at MWC we’re convinced that it’s coming, but we still don’t know when.

The demo they showed us involved a smart speaker prototype set up as a transmitter, capable of sending power via radio frequencies to a phone, a smartwatch, and a pair of wireless earbuds at a range of up to 3 feet. The top of the speaker also doubled as a near-field charging pad, much like Qi wireless chargers.

We’ve been excited about the prospect of truly wireless charging for a few years now.

Energous recently secured FCC approval, confirming that the technology is completely safe, and announced the first consumer product set to use it – which, somewhat surprisingly, turned out to be smart underwear called Skiin. Chip manufacturer Dialog is also working with Energous which could allow for much easier adoption of the technology as device makers will be able to buy a chipset that supports it.

Both Energous and Dialog were tight-lipped on partners, but you can imagine a company like Apple with an ecosystem that includes speakers to act as transmitters and phones, smartwatches, and wireless earphones that need charging would be a good fit. However, we fear it may be a couple of years yet before this goes mainstream.

Ossia – Wireless charging at distance

Simon Hill/Digital Trends

Another player in the mid-field wireless charging space is Ossia, and Chief Technology Officer Hatem Zeine gave us an impressive demonstration at MWC. The technology transmits power via radio frequencies at the same 2.4Ghz as Wi-Fi, but a different channel, so it doesn’t interfere. The device receiving the power sends out a signal that can bounce off surfaces like walls, tables, and windows, but is absorbed by the human body or liquids. The transmitter replicates the path of successful signals to send power back, and it checks 100 times per second, so it’s not washing you or other people in the room in power.

With two large transmitters set up at one end of the room, we saw a receiver unit light up. To prove it wasn’t just coming from the box, Hatem held another receiver in the path and then moved it around and blocked it to demonstrate the path of the power. The transmitters are big and they can send out around 10W, but the receiving device only gets around 1W. That can be boosted with multiple transmitters.

Next, Hatem plugged in a Samsung Galaxy S7 and showed it charging up, then he moved to the back of the room, showing that the phone could keep charging, even at a distance of around 10 feet or more. The charge rate does go down the further you move away, but it’s impressive to see it working at distance, and it also continued to charge when he put the receiver in his pocket.

Imagine the transmitters hidden in ceiling tiles when you walk into Starbucks, for example. Your phone or smartwatch would charge up without you having to do a thing.

There are other applications — we saw Ossia’s Forever Battery at CES. It is the same size as a standard AA battery, but can be charged wirelessly at distance and never degrades because there’s no need for a chemical reaction inside.

The hitch is that Ossia has yet to secure FCC approval, but Hatem is confident it will, and they are in talks with several manufacturers about integrating the technology into chipsets and devices. We’re looking forward to the day we no longer need cables, but it’s still impossible to predict precisely when it will come.

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Advertisers pull out of InfoWars’ YouTube channels

Brands are once again beating a hasty retreat after learning that they were running ads on objectionable YouTube channels. Several big brands (including Acer, Alibaba, Fox, Nike and Paramount) have suspended ads from InfoWars’ channels after CNN demonstrated that their commercials were streaming on the conspiracy-peddling network’s videos. The companies said they were not only unaware of the placement, but in numerous cases had set up exclusion filters to avoid displaying ads against content like this. Some also said they explicitly blacklisted InfoWars channels, but didn’t realize how many channels the company actually had.

The exposé even caught the non-profit USA for UNHCR inadvertently running ads on InfoWars, and it’s going one step further by pulling all ads from YouTube. It and other organizations are asking if they can recoup the advertising money they spent on InfoWars’ channels.

We’ve asked Google if it can comment on the findings. In a statement to CNN, a YouTube spokesperson declined to address how InfoWars slipped through the cracks of the sensitive subject filter and instead portrayed itself as striking a balance. It vows to “uphold free expression” even when it disagrees with ideas, but added that it doesn’t allow ads on videos covering “sensitive and tragic events.” InfoWars frequently promotes widely discredited conspiracies around such events, including the Parkland and Sandy Hook mass shootings.

The discovery and subsequent response highlight the ongoing challenges YouTube and some other ad-dependent services face. It’s impractical for them to require manual approval for ads, but that automation also leads to offensive material slipping through the cracks — not to mention debates over what “offensive” really means. YouTube’s recently instituted policy on objectionable content helps, but it’s clear the system still has some inconsistencies.

Via: The Verge

Source: CNN

Cuba’s ‘sonic attacks’ may have been a side-effect of spying

Remember those ‘sonic attacks’ against the American and Canadian embassies last summer, making staff queasy and raising all kinds of questions as to what happened? There might have an answer. University of Michigan researchers have theorized that the incidents were really the result of ultrasonic signals from poorly functioning surveillance equipment. While individual ultrasonic signals can’t harm people outside of extreme circumstances, multiple signals can clash with each other and produce a sound that’s just low enough to be audible.

The scientists tested their hypothesis by replicating the “chirping” from an AP video using two ultrasonic emitters that combined tones, one at 25kHz and another at 180Hz. That produced a similar-sounding 7kHz frequency with ripples of sound at an even 180Hz spacing. The team even built a device that would simulate eavesdropping by playing a song instead of the 180Hz tone.

Don’t rush to call the case closed. Researchers are quick to note that this doesn’t rule out other explanations. However, it’s certainly more plausible than some of the theories floating around the Cuba illnesses, such as poisoning. It’s no secret that Cuba wants to know what the US and Canada are doing, but it also wouldn’t gain much from inflicting nausea and headaches on embassy workers.

Source: University of Michigan

What is a sound card?

A sound card allows computers to have sound. Pretty simple, right? But let’s dig deeper. Here’s a closer look at the tech that defines a sound card, and what to know if you want to buy one.

A brief history of sound cards

Today’s sound cards are hardware rectangles that plug into motherboards via PCI (or are completely integrated, a.k.a. onboard), then connect to speakers and mics, managing the sound capabilities of the computer.

The first computers did not have sound cards—they weren’t considered necessary for the basic tasks that computers were designed to perform. Instead, early devices had basic internal speakers that could produce square wave audio — those “beeps” and “boops” that everyone associates with clunky, first-wave computers.

As computers grew more complex and started entering the consumer market in the 1980s, manufacturers quickly realized that they needed better ways of creating sound, especially for advanced applications and general entertainment purposes. IBM and other manufacturers turned toward manufacturers like Adlib and Creative Labs, which just happened to be working on new sound card technology to move beyond the blips and instead replicate music, voices, and more.

By the late 1980s, computers started hitting the market with built-in sound cards. At the beginning, these sound cards focused on very specific applications. They were created for music composition, or speech synthesis, or (increasingly) specific computer games. Over time, sound cards gained more versatility, and were soon working across many different kinds of software.

Basic functions

Audio files on a computer are, like everything else, stored as code. That digital information can easily store a lot of sound waveforms, but it can’t create sound—those “analog” waves that need to spread through the air and impact our ears. The sound card translates audio from digital code to the sound waves as needed.

To do this, the card uses a DAC, or digital to analog converter. The converter’s job is to translate the audio file code into electrical impulses, which travel via the sound card’s connections to speakers. The speaker’s drivers turn the electrical impulse into physical sound waves, and the rest is up to our ears. All speakers, internal or external, must be connected to the sound card to work properly.

However, sound cards also have another very important function. They have to do the same thing in reverse. If your computer has a mic (and nearly all do these days), then it too is routed through the sound card. Here, cards use an ADC, or analog to digital converter, that translates sound waves created by your voice into code that becomes an audio file.

Sound cards can also have additional functions, such as serving as a MIDI interface for those who want to create a little electronica. Today’s sound cards are usually streamlined and highly integrated to cut down on costs (with software drivers managing extra features), but some versions still have such built-in capabilities.

Voices and channels

Sound cards have both voices and channels, and this can be a little confusing. Let’s carefully define both these features.

Voices: Voices refer to how many independent sounds from different sources a sound card can manage at the same time. When your computer is playing an login melody but also dings when a new email comes in, that’s using two voices. Manufacturers have always been able to give sound cards plenty of voices to use from both hardware and software sources, primarily because one of the first purposes of sound cards was to help create electronic music. So early sound cards typically had either 9 or 18 voices. The numbers quickly grew until the average sound card often had 64 voices, 32 available from software and 32 available from hardware. Modern sound cards pay less attention to hardware sources and focus on software that can produce as many voices as needed, so it’s less common to rate a sound card by voices these days.

Channels: Sometimes people will use the term “channels” to mean the same thing as “voices.” Technically, channels should be used in the traditional sense, which is how many audio outputs the sound card can handle. Now we are on more familiar ground. Stereo sound has two channels, 2.1 stereo allows for a subwoofer, 5.1 channels include surround sound, and 7.1 channels provide the best surround sound. Importantly, you’ll need your sound card to support at least as many channels as the audio system you pair it with.

Upgrading sound cards

A sound card can typically be replaced with a different card, which is nice for repairs and especially handy if you want to upgrade your sound card to a better version. Sound hardware integrated into a motherboard can’t be replaced, but it can be disabled, letting you switch to a better PCI sound card.

Advanced sound cards can improve audio, help add more clarity to digital sound, or use processing power of their own to help lighten the CPU load. There are also outboard sound cards that can be connected via a USB port for more active sound management. You can purchase both internal sound cards and peripheral versions, as long as you are sure they are compatible with your computer.

While sound cards can be expensive, basic models are sufficient for most people. Popular options include the Asus Xonar and Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series. It’s even possible to enhance the sound capabilities of a laptop with a USB sound card like the Creative Go! sand Creative Play! series.

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Science of the Lambs: We can now grow human cells in sheep

N-Sky/Getty Images

Strange creatures have emerged from Pablo Ross’s University of California, Davis lab. They’re neither strictly sheep nor fully human. Instead, they’re a bit of both.

In a biotech breakthrough — the second of its kind in just over a year — Ross announced at the American Association for the Advancement of Science last week that he and his colleagues have successfully grown nonhuman animal embryos that contain human cells. Previously, the host species were pigs. Now, they’re sheep.

They have the potential to revolutionize organ transplantation and help save thousands of lives.

These human-animal hybrids, or interspecies chimeras, are not just the product of bizarre experimentation done for the sake of science. They have the potential to revolutionize organ transplantation and help save thousands of lives each year in America and around the globe.

Though this breakthrough brings us one step closer to growing transplant organs inside host animals, it also comes with some ethical baggage. Bioethicists and animal advocates alike question whether human-animal hybrid studies are worth the potential cost of animal welfare or the risk of creating nonhuman animals with humanlike qualities.

Why chimeras?

There’s an organ shortage in America that sees approximately twenty people die while waiting for a transplant every day, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Minus the roughly 16,000 suitable donors and 33,600 transplants in 2015, nearly patients 120,000 remained on the waiting list. In the simplest terms, there isn’t enough organ supply to satisfy demand.

A pig embryo injected with human stem cells that grew to be four weeks old.(Salk Institute)

“Organ transplantation has been extremely successful and saves a lot of lives,” Ross, a UC Davis animal scientist, told Digital Trends. “The problem is there are those that get the organs and those that don’t, because there are not enough organs for transplant.”

But, if scientists were able to grow human organs inside host animals, they could potentially generate enough organs to eliminate the shortage all together, saving thousands of lives annually in the U.S. alone.

Prior chimera studies, including one in which scientists grew a rat pancreas inside a mouse, give evidence for this approach. But human organs are much bigger than rats’, so Ross and his colleagues have had to focus on larger livestock.

“If we want to grow a human organ we’ll have to go to an animal larger than a mouse or a rat,” he said. “Pigs and sheep have some important characteristics that would make them a good host species for growing the human organ.”

“If we want to grow a human organ we’ll have to go to an animal larger than a mouse or a rat.”

For one thing, pig and sheep organs are similar in size and shape to an adult human’s. And, since they grow relatively quickly, certain organs can be essentially grown to order. Recent advances in genetic engineering make scientists optimistic that they can even genetically tailor organs to be more compatible with their human recipients.

“This is a first step in a long series of stages to eventually get to an actual complete human organ that will develop in a live born sheep,” Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist from Case Western Reserve University who was not involved in the study, told Digital Trends. “It would then hopefully make it all the way to adulthood and make it large enough for transplantation.”

How it’s done

Human-animal hybrids may have a long mythical history, but scientifically they’re pretty new. Just last year, Ross and his colleagues made a splash when they published a report in the journal Cell that showed they’d successfully developed a pig embryo with human cells. The host embryos didn’t have many human cells — just about one in 100,000 — but the survival of even just a few made for groundbreaking research. DNA analysis suggested that the recent sheep embryos reached a ratio of about one human cell in 10,000 cells, according to Ross, which is progress but still not efficient enough to successfully grow transplantable organs.

Here’s how the recent research worked.

To begin, scientists injected human stem cells into an early-stage sheep embryo. At about a week old, they then implanted that chimeric embryo into a female sheep and let it develop for 28 days. After those four weeks, the researchers euthanized the sheep and ran DNA analyses on the chimeric embryos to see how well the human stem cells developed.

Thanks to advances in genetic engineering, scientists can use gene editing tools like CRISPR to create host animals that develop without a specific organ. This way, the injected human stem cells fill the void of the missing organ, and develop into the desired organ as the embryo matures.

“We don’t know which type of human stem cells could have this property of making a chimera.”

“What we’ll need at that location at that specific time are human cells that have to be precisely there to respond to that need for pancreas formation,” Ross said. “And those human cells won’t have competition from the pig or sheep cells. You need the cells at precisely that moment which means you’ll need the cells kind of randomly across the whole body because we cannot yet direct the cells to only be there and nowhere else.”

One of the big questions now is which human stem cells are the most successfully adaptive.

“We don’t know which type of human stem cells could have this property of making a chimera, specifically an interspecies chimera,” Ross said.

Facing controversy

Human-animal chimera studies are controversial but they’re gaining favor. In 2016, the National Institute of Health (NIH) announced plans to lift its moratorium on such research.

Still, animal welfare advocates worry that these studies infringe on the well-being of the test subjects. Bioethicists also worry that these experiments could lead to the development of unusually human-like creatures.

Statistic Brain Research Institute (2017)

An important consideration, as Hyun stated, is “whether or not you are creating large animals that are more or less biologically human in important respects or may have a status that is a little higher morally than a normal sheep.

“There’s the concern that these types of experiments create morally ambiguous beings,” he added. “We know what sheep are and we know what people are, but what about sheep that have large contributions of human cells or an entire human organ? That’s a new thing, where does it fall on the spectrum?”

Hyun said his personal concerns center around animal welfare, that the subjects are living comfortably and being treated humanely.

“The concerns about the personhood of an animal, [as long as] we’re staying away from the brain, is not yet an issue to worry about,” he said.

“I don’t have the statistic for the number of animals slaughtered for bacon everyday but it’s significantly more.”

Ross recognized the importance of these concerns and stressed that all of their research is performed under biomedical research oversight and regulation. However, when it comes to the concern about creating animals that are more or less biologically human, Ross pointed to previous research that suggested host species still grow their species-specific organ, irrespective of the introduced stem cells.

“But at the same time, because we’re scientists, we’re not just going to go with what we believe or expect to happen,” he said “We want to measure that. We want to produce scientific information to inform whether this is something acceptable or not.”

As for animal welfare concerns, Ross stressed that the animals in these cases would be treated humanely and would provide a tremendous benefit to society that, for many, may outweigh the downside.

“If this [research] becomes successful, there is a concern about using animals for human benefit,” he said. “But you have to consider that we use large animals for food, work, clothing, and emotional comfort. I don’t have the statistic for the number of animals slaughtered for bacon everyday but it’s significantly more [than those that would be used for organ transplant]. Several orders of magnitude more. That’s a choice the public will have to make.”

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Making a Spectacle: Snap may release two new versions of its smart glasses

Despite a glut of unsold Spectacles last year, Snap Inc. is bringing back not one, but two new versions of its smart specs. A report from Cheddar reveals that this year, Snap will be releasing a follow up to the Spectacles that were initially released in late 2016. A more high-end pair of glasses sporting two cameras will ship next year. According to “people familiar with the matter,” Spectacles 2.0 should be out by fall.

Cheddar reports that its sources did not want their identities revealed.

The first wave of new specs are being incrementally updated, with new colors, water resistance, and improvements to performance.

It wasn’t long ago that Snap reported a $40 million dollar loss as a result of its Spectacles’ poor market performance, so you wonder why the company would have a second (and third) go at it. Is it possible that news of Apple, Amazon, Streye, and others releasing their own smart eyewear can at least partially be credited for Snap’s resurgence in the wearable market?

The third-gen Spectacles will get a complete overhaul, GPS, and two new cameras to view videos with 3D depth. An aluminium frame, leather case, and more circular lens frames are also reportedly in the works. This pair will cost you $300 — compare this to the $130 price tag for the current Spectacles.

Snap’s hardware arm, Snap Lab, did not fare so well since the original Spectacles debut. A deal to buy Chinese drone maker Zero Zero fell flat the following year, adding more injury. Layoffs and trouble with the company brass followed.

Snap also sought to license its cameras to be placed in glasses from other companies, such as Luxottica and Warby Parker. Cheddar reported that it did not hear back from either of these companies.

Augmented reality has been a hot topic for some time now, and it is being implemented in various forms by Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Google, and numerous other companies. Snapchat itself has its own AR Lenses. Newer Spectacles may support these lenses in addition to Snapchat’s Bitmoji avatars.

Snap has the experience of going through a major setback with its first Spectacles release, and we can only watch and wait to see if it takes those lessons to heart the next time (and the next time) around.

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Can an algorithm be racist? Spotting systemic oppression in the age of Google

Can a bridge be racist?

It sounds ridiculous, but that’s exactly the argument sociologist Langdon Winner makes in “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” — a classic essay in which he examines several bridges built over roadways in Long Island, New York.

Many of these bridges were extremely low, with just nine feet of clearance from the curb. Most people would be unlikely to attach any special meaning to their design, yet Winner suggested that they were actually an embodiment of the social and racist prejudices of designer Robert Moses, a man who was responsible for building many of the roads, parks, bridges, and other public works in New York between the 1920s and 1970s.

With the low bridges, Winner wrote that Moses’ intention was to allow only whites of “upper” and “comfortable middle” classes access to the public park, since these were largely the only demographics able to afford cars at the time. Because poorer individuals (which included many people of color) relied on taller public buses, they were denied access to the park, as these buses were unable to handle the low overpasses and were therefore forced to find alternative routes.

As New York town planner Lee Koppleman later recalled, “The old son of a gun … made sure that buses would never be able to use his goddamned parkways.”

Jump forward the best part of 40 years and Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble, part of the faculty at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School of Communication, has written a book that updates Langdon Winner’s critique for the digital age.

Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression makes the argument that many of the algorithms driving today’s digital revolution (she focuses particularly on those created by Google) are helping to marginalize minorities through the way that they structure and encode the world around us. They are, quite literally, a part of systemic racism.

Discriminatory patterns

Before she earned her PhD, Noble was in the advertising industry where, she told Digital Trends, one of the big discussions was about “how to game Google for our clients, because we knew that if we could get content about our clients on the first page, that’s what mattered.”

A few years later, she glimpsed this world of search engine optimization and prioritization from another angle when a friend mentioned the search results presented when a person looks for the term “black girls.”

Dr. Safiya U. Noble, Author of Algorithms of Oppression

“The first page was almost exclusively pornography or highly sexualized content,” she said. “I thought maybe it was a fluke, but over the next year I did the same for other identities, such as Asian girls and Latinas.”

The same thing held true: frequent pornographic results, even when the search terms didn’t include suffixes like “sex” or “porn.” “That’s when I started taking seriously that this wasn’t just happening in a random way, and thought that it was time for a more systemized study.”

“…I started taking seriously that this wasn’t just happening in a random way.”

Noble isn’t the first person to spot worrying discrimination embedded into tools that many of us still believe are objective. Several years ago, the African-American Harvard University PhD Latanya Sweeney noticed that her search results were accompanied by ads asking, “Have you ever been arrested?” These ads did not appear for her white colleagues.

Sweeney began a study ultimately demonstrating that the machine-learning tools behind Google’s search were inadvertently racist, linking names more commonly given to black people to ads relating to arrest records.

It’s not just racial discrimination, either. Google Play’s automated recommender system has been found to suggest that those who download Grindr, a location-based social-networking tool for gay men, also download a sex offender location-tracking app.

In both cases, the issue wasn’t necessarily that there was a racist programmer responsible for the algorithm, but rather that the algorithms were picking up on frequent discriminatory cultural associations between black people and criminal behavior and homosexuality and predatory behavior.

Who has the responsibility?

Noble makes the point in her book that companies like Google are now so influential that they can help shape public attitudes, as well as reflect them.

“We are increasingly being acculturated to the notion that digital technologies, particularly search engines, can give us better information than other human beings can,” she said.

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Malarie Gokey/Digital Trends

David McNew/Getty Images

“The idea is that they are vetting the most important information, and provide us with [objective answers] better than other knowledge spheres. People will often take complex questions to the web and do a Google search rather than going to the library or taking a class on the subject. The idea is that an answer can be found in 0.3 seconds to questions that have been debated for thousands of years.”

To Noble, the answer is that tech giants need to be held accountable for the results that they provide — and the harm they might cause.

“If your platform allows this kind of content to flourish, then you’re also responsible.” 

“Tech companies have really invested in lobbying in the U.S. that they are simply intermediaries,” she continued. “They [claim that they] are tech companies and not media companies; they’ve designed a platform but they are not responsible for the content that flows through it. In the U.S. they do that because it means they are held to be harmless for trafficking in [things like] anti-semitism, Nazi propaganda, white supremacist literature, child pornography, and all the most hideous dimensions of the things which are out there on the web.”

She has little patience for the suggestion that tech companies like Google are simply reflecting what users search for. This is an argument Google itself made several years ago when it was taken to court in Germany for allegedly defamatory autocomplete results, linking the name Bettina Wulff, wife of the former German president Christian Wulff, with a rumor about prostitution and escorts.

“We believe that Google should not be held liable for terms that appear in autocomplete as these are predicted by computer algorithms based on searches from previous users, not by Google itself,” Google said at the time.

“If your platform has been designed in such a way as to allow this kind of content to flourish, then you’re also responsible for the way that you’ve designed your platform,” Noble said. “You cannot absolve your company from that.”

Asking the right questions

She also argues that tech companies are not as far removed from other, more traditional companies as they might like.

“When we’re talking about corporations and their impact on society,” she said. “I don’t think there are many industries that we can trace specific actions to one individual. What typically happens is that a CEO or a board of directors are held accountable if there is harm that hits communities. The tech industry doesn’t have to be different; it’s not really that different from fossil fuels or other industries that might cause harm through a particular product that’s been developed.”

Finally, she calls for better training of those developing the algorithms that dictate which information is shown to us.

“If you are going to design technology for society, you should have a deep education on societal issues.”

“One of the things that is particularly frightening to me is that many of the people who are designing these technologies, and embedding their own values and world views and best judgment into them, have very limited education around the liberal arts, humanities, or the social sciences,” Noble said. “They typically come into engineering curriculums where they are hyper-focused on theoretical or applied math … A lot of them are operating on twelfth-grade level humanities instruction … If you are going to design technology for society, you should have a deep education on societal issues.”

The arguments she makes in Algorithms of Oppression are incisive and provocative. While Google and other tech companies have taken steps to solve some of the most egregiously high profile issues (my top search for “black girls” leads to Black Girls Code, a San Francisco tech training initiative for underrepresented youth), problems such as this will happen with greater frequency as platforms such as Google, Facebook, and others play an increasing role in our lives, with ever more information to parse.

There are no easy solutions. How much do search results influence public opinion? Are tech companies qualified to make value judgements about what is and isn’t acceptable? Should search engines display answers that are purely based on what gets clicks, even when these results are offensive or even harmful? Will making companies responsible for their content mean that they err on the side of censorship, even when the material doesn’t warrant it? These are conundrums that companies like Google will face as they grow ever larger.

Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble doesn’t have all the answers. But she’s asking the right questions.

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