Facebook will add an ‘unsend’ feature to Messenger in the coming months

Facebook’s way of saying sorry for secretly deleting its execs’ messages.

Facebook’s found itself in an ocean of hot water lately. Following scandals with Cambridge Analytica and being discovered of storing call and text logs for Android users of its Messenger app, it was reported that Facebook was secretly deleting Messenger messages sent by Mark Zuckerberg and other executives at the company.

This news didn’t sit all that well with a lot of users, and to make good, TechCrunch reports that Facebook will roll out an “unsend” feature to Messenger at some point this year.

We don’t know how this will work just yet, but it’s likely you’ll be given x amount of time to revoke a message that you send so it disappears from you and your recipient’s eyes.

Facebook already offers something similar with its Secret Message feature for encrypted chats, as this allows you to set messages to automatically expire after a certain amount of time. Facebook says it’s “discussed this feature several times” and that —

We will now be making a broader delete message feature available. This may take some time. And until this feature is ready, we will no longer be deleting any executives’ messages. We should have done this sooner — and we’re sorry that we did not.”

TechCrunch notes that the feature will be available in “several months”, so we’ll be sure to keep an eye out for when it eventually drops.

Messenger — Text and Video Chat for Free

Pick up a pair of Aukey headphones for $5 or less today

These headphone deals are too good to last for long.

For a limited time, you can grab a pair of Aukey’s Arcs In-Ear Headphones for only $3.92 when you enter promo code 948A726B at checkout. They regularly sell for $14 which means this deal saves you over 70%.

The Arcs feature noise-isolation along with a built-in microphone and in-line remote. They also come with various sized ear tips and a 2-year warranty. Over 80 Amazon customers rated them with 4 out of 5 stars which is pretty decent even if you were to buy these at regular price.

Those headphones feature an over-ear arched design; if you want something a bit more standard, you can pick up a different pair of Aukey In-Ear Headphones with a carbon fiber housing for only $4.86 with code I5VZ5B45. That pair sells for $15 on average and also includes a two-year warranty.

Both of these options are wired however. You can make the leap to Bluetooth headphones for only $5 more – Spigen has a pair that’s available for only $9.99 right now which is a stellar deal too.

See at Amazon

With Squadbox, friends moderate harassing messages in your email

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a tool aimed at fighting harassment online. It’s called Squadbox and the idea behind it is to have your friends or coworkers moderate your incoming messages for you. The research team interviewed a number of people who had experienced online harassment in the past and then designed Squadbox’s features based on those conversations.

Currently, Squadbox is only designed to work with email, but the team says they’re looking to expand its use to other messaging and social media platforms. Squadbox owners can set up filters, which will trigger certain emails to be sent to their moderators. Moderators can then decide whether to send that email back to the owner, or reject it based on what the owner has declared they don’t want to see. Email senders can also be white- and blacklisted to automate whether their messages are approved or rejected. Squads can also be deactivated when there’s a lull in harassing messages and reactivated when moderation is needed again.

The team demoed the system and tested it out with a handful of individuals. Those observing the demo expressed interest in Squadbox with one calling it a “very strong pragmatic tool.” However, some issues arose during the field test. Moderators became less quick to respond to emails over time and started to feel less confident in their abilities. One moderator noted how much work it was. Owners also began to feel guilty about having their friends moderate their email. The researchers said ultimately, the system “presents challenges for relationship maintenance.”

Squadbox is still in development, but friendsourced moderation is an interesting strategy for combating harassing messages. The researchers are presenting a paper on their work at the Association for Computing Machinery’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems this month.

Image: Amy Zhang / MIT CSAIL

Source: MIT (1), (2)

Twitter changes may bring major issues for third-party apps (updated)

If you use a third-party Twitter app like Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Talon or Tweetings, you might lose a couple of key features when Twitter replaces developer access to User and Site streams with a new Account Activity API this coming June. The folks who created the apps mentioned above have created a new website to explain that, as a result, push notifications will no longer work and timelines won’t refresh automatically.

The third-party devs say that when their apps open a connection to Twitter, currently, they get a continuous stream of updates. Push notifications, they say, is done on their own servers, which generate the messages you see on your devices. Timeline updates use that stream directly on your mobile or desktop apps. The new Account Activity API is currently in beta, but developers haven’t been given access. Even if they had been, say the devs, push notifications are limited to 35 Twitter accounts at the standard level, and there’s no pricing given for Enterprise-level service. The developers say that they need to deliver notifications to “hundreds of thousands of customers.”

While Twitter hasn’t always taken to supporting third-party apps like these, it could be that the company has plans to give them useful access to the API in the near future. We’ve reached out to Twitter and will update this post when we hear back.

Update 4/6/18 4:00PM ET: This afternoon, Twitter announced it has delayed the scheduled June 19th date for switching to the new Account Activity API. “As always, we’re committed to providing ample time to migrate,” the company’s developer account explained in a series of tweets. “We will provide at least 90 days notice of deprecation date from when the Account Activity API becomes generally available to all developers. More specifics on timing to come.” Additionally, Twitter says it offers a guide for developers to migrate to the new API.

Last year we announced our plan to retire Site Streams & User Streams, and replace them with the Account Activity API (currently in beta). We are delaying the scheduled June 19th deprecation date.

— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) April 6, 2018

Via: The Verge

Source: Apps of a Feather

The experience and vision behind the Jaguar I-Pace

Typically, when an automaker announces something completely different to its lineup, it involves months — if not years — of meetings with top executives, multiple focus groups and a lot of hand wringing. For the upcoming Jaguar I-Pace, that wasn’t the case.

Announced at the Los Angeles Auto Show in 2016, the journey of the first electric vehicle from Jaguar started four years ago when CEO Ralf Speth made the decision for the British company to get into the electrified market. “It was not the process to which we are used to for generating a car,” said Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart, technical design director at the New York Auto Show.

Ziebert noted that many people probably didn’t expect a vehicle like the I-Pace from Jaguar this early in the EV game. “They probably expected it from a different company,” he said.

And while it’s almost certain at this point that nearly all automakers will be transitioning to some sort of electrified powertrain, Jaguar went all-in on its decision pretty early in the game. So much so, that it’s going after the biggest name in electric cars, Tesla.

During an I-Pace event, the automaker pitted the I-Pace against the Tesla Model X 75D in a zero to 60 race. The I-Pace beat the Model X by .4 seconds (4.5 versus 4.9 respectively)

Of course there’s the quicker 100D and P100D model Teslas, but in terms of pricing the 75D is closest in price even though it’s about $10,000 more than $69,500 Jag.

Tesla is an obvious target since it’s the biggest name in EVs. But four years ago when Jaguar’s CEO made a unilateral decision to develop an electric vehicle that would fit right into the automaker’s history of luxury and speed, it wasn’t a sure thing that electric vehicles would resonate with customers at all.

“Yes everyone knew sooner or later we would drive electrically. But when this future would actually happen, nobody knew.” Dr. Ziebart said.

Jaguar isn’t new to being at the forefront of technology. It was one of the first automakers to introduce radar-powered adaptive cruise control back in 1999. It also made disc brakes a viable option for cars after winning the 1953 Le Mans in a C-Type C outfitted with the technology.

Both of those technologies have since permeated the majority of vehicles on the road. Jaguar was able to add them both to make their cars better. There were features that made sense and not just adding tech for the sake of adding tech. The upcoming EV from the automaker is the same but on a grander scale.

During our brief drive in the I-Pace it was clear that Jaguar has leapt into the EV world with both feet. The electric SUV feels like a Jag in terms of luxury and performance. The latter we learned about during our brief time behind the wheel racing it around a parking lot. It’s a Jaguar that just happens to skip the gas pump and needs to be hooked up to the grid instead.

Today, it makes sense for the company to put out an SUV EV, but what makes sense now was a gamble four years ago. Decisions like building the pure-electric I-Pace can cripple a company if they don’t resonate with customers. The most technologically advanced cars in the world are great for research but if no one buys them when they go into production, it bad news for everyone involved.

Fortunately, for Jaguar it looks like the I-Pace gamble is paying off with the first year of car’s production already pre-ordered by customers. It’s good news for a company that’s been around for over 80 years and like most automakers has had its own share of ups and downs.

Jaguar’s have been around since 1935. Dr. Ziebart has been working in the automotive industry since 1977. That’s a lot of historical knowledge for a company and it would be easy to sit back play it safe iterating on the cars it already makes. To wait and see what happens then react with your own set of expertise. But Dr Ziebart knows that the automotive industry, especially right now, is about more than just the proficiency of being able to do the same thing over and over, it’s about looking towards the future.

“If this is not a company with vision of what the future will look like, then experience is worthless.”

Facebook will label political ads and note who paid for them

Facebook vowed in October it would require electoral advertisers to identify themselves. Now they’re expanding that to include anyone who buys an ad about ‘issues’ — as in, political topics debated across the country. Anyone advertising in either of those categories must confirm who and where they are to get ‘verified’ — and their messages won’t appear until they do. Crucially, the advertisements themselves will bear the label ‘Political Ad’ in the top-left corner and disclose who paid for it, which will start rolling out in the US this spring.

Here’s how the Political Ad label and political ad archive will work for you. pic.twitter.com/m16Zg4yOta

— Facebook (@facebook) April 6, 2018

Verification will hopefully cut down on fake accounts, which Facebook has been cracking down on. Additionally, the platform will now require users running large pages to be verified, which the company hopes will mitigate misinformation. But the clock is ticking to take these steps in time for highly-anticipated upcoming elections, namely the 2018 US midterms. To do that, Facebook is in the process of hiring thousands of more people, Zuckerberg said in a personal post, reiterating his comments days ago that the 15,000 people currently manually reviewing content will be increased to 20,000 later this year.

Once dismissive of Facebook’s impact on the 2016 presidential elections, Zuckerberg sounds committed to mitigating abuse on the platform. In his post today, he’s even come out in support of pending transparency-in-advertising legislation: “Election interference is a problem that’s bigger than any one platform, and that’s why we support the Honest Ads Act. This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online.”

Source: Facebook blog, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

The uncovering of a fake Russian pundit

At this point in history, you probably wouldn’t be surprised if I told you that the guy who owned Jared and Ivanka’s Washington home was just uncovered as the ringleader behind what some believe is a Russian counterintelligence operation. But you’d still have to admit that it’s pretty weird.

In an exhaustive, thorough investigation published this week, indie journalism site Bellingcat uncovered a new twist to the many Russian propaganda soapboxes using social media to sow unrest and inflame the Russian-American conflict. Like propaganda front “Black Matters US,” it looks like wealthy, well-connected, financially shady Russian-born American neoconservative Dan K. Rapoport led the team behind the fake “Senior Pentagon Russia Analyst LTC David Jewberg.”

The fraudulent personality — with a racist slur for a surname — spoke as the expert representative of the Pentagon in Russian and Ukrainian media from 2015-2017. Rapoport’s “Jewberg” posed as an Army officer veteran, commanded a powerful sphere of influence on social media and claimed to be connected to Facebook’s inner circles to the point of conference calls and gatekeeping whitelists for “untouchable” accounts.

The social media personality used a faked ID and was well-connected online, cementing a presence that quickly positioned “Jewberg” as a voice of the Kremlin-hating American military that everyone in the Putin-Trump opposition needed to know. And yet, “Despite his rise to visibility with over 25,000 Facebook subscribers,” Bellingcat concluded, “extensive exposure in Ukrainian and Russian media, and a public “resignation” after Trump’s election, David Jewberg is not a real person.”

As part of Bellingcat’s extensive investigation, published this week, it “contacted both the State Department (where Jewberg supposedly worked while at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow) and the Department of Defense (where he supposedly was employed until late 2016 and is a U.S. Army officer)”. “Both denied ever employing someone by the name of “David Jewberg”. The State Department went as far as to say that the online activity of Jewberg was “fictitious”.”

The persona was positioned as an anti-Putin, anti-Trump figure supposedly speaking with the credibility of an Army officer and a “Senior Russian Analyst at US Department of Defense.” He even purported to rage-quit the DoD after Trump was elected. The “Jewberg” figure was widely-quoted as an expert who spoke for the Pentagon in Ukrainian and Russian media, pushing arguments that a war between Russia and NATO would be over in “10 days,” among other propaganda-tinged talking points.

“David Jewberg was just the kind of American many in the Russian opposition craved,” Bellingcat explained. By Fall of 2016, his online connections and faked Department of Defense credibility made him highly desirable by Russian media who sought a representation of “the warmongering, Russophobic Pentagon long promulgated by the Kremlin anti-American propaganda.”

Actual person and 23-year CIA veteran Glenn Carle told Bellingcat that it was highly unlikely “Jewberg” was anything but a foil. “If Jewberg was actually ran by an anti-Russian figure,” they wrote, “he called it a ‘crap initiative’ and thought it was more likely to be a Russian disinformation campaign than an actual anti-Russian operation.”

The Russian journalist who infiltrated and uncovered the Internet Research Agency, Lyudmila Savchuk-Borisova, said “‘Jewberg’ resembles propagandist fake accounts that a troll factory in Russia would create. A whole group of people would work on something like this.” Considering that she trained and worked with several of the 13 named in Mueller’s indictment for subverting the 2016 election and supporting Trump’s campaign, she might have some considered perspective.

Another “real names” fail

“Jewberg” had a Facebook profile stuffed with photos proving his existence — which Bellingcat discovered were actually photos stolen from the Facebook profile of a man named Steve Ferro, a man Rapoport met in college. For further proof, the “Jewberg” photographed and shared online photos of his supposed ID cards from the DoD, Army and state of Virginia. The obviously photoshopped forgeries (including an especially deformed ear, for instance) were made using photos of Ferro.

Bellingcat found that while there was a team behind the persona, “Rapoport (…) was actively propping up Jewberg credibility online. In particular,” they wrote, “Rapoport posted pictures of a man he identified as “David Jewberg” (photos of the same man were featured on Jewberg’s Facebook profile) and referred to him as a personal acquaintance of a number of years.”

Rapoport, who now lives in Ukraine, also acted as an intermediary for those who wanted to get in touch with “Jewberg,” even referring to the made-up persona as a “friend and brother” during a spat on Rapoport’s Facebook page. Once, when asked if Rapoport was a military expert, Bellingcat reported Rapoport’s reply as, “I’m actually not, but my friend and brother David Jewberg is. Do read his opinion”.

Rapoport’s “Jewberg” ran a popular Facebook page from 2015-2017 that was predominantly “somewhat Americanized” fluent Russian with a post in English now and then. Facebook was his primary social capital, lending “Jewberg” credibility along with the persona’s LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Plus profiles.

In the summer of 2016, “Jewberg” positioned himself as a target of pro-Kremlin forces on Facebook, and campaigned to get himself on Facebook’s list of “untouchables” — a supposed register of accounts that can’t be suspended. He made himself out to be a representative of Facebook’s alleged pro-Kremlin bias so he could champion an allegedly discriminated-against class (and become a gatekeeper for those he represented, via his access).

Through political maneuvering and making a lot of noise on Facebook, he supposedly found success. Maybe Rapoport just played into the self-victimizing conservatism of Facebook leadership. To which I’d have to say, nice exploit, bro. Anyway, “Per Jewberg’s posts on Facebook,” wrote Bellingcat, “in August 2016 he had a phone conference call with “Facebook Global Head of Content Policy,” the “Facebook head in Eastern Europe”, and others.”

Bellingcat added, “During the phone call, according to Jewberg, he informed Facebook of the social network’s alleged pro-Kremlin bias and was asked to submit a list of unjustly blocked accounts.” Facebook did not return Bellingcat’s requests for comment.

When reached for comment, Facebook referred us to “the transcript of Mark’s Q&A” — specifically the section about the IRA. The section we were directed to stated, perhaps ominously:

Of the IRA — I think there is going to be more content that we are going to find over time. (…) I am confident we are making progress against these adversaries. But they were very sophisticated, and it would be a mistake to assume that you can ever fully solve a problem like this, or think that they are going to give up and stop doing what they are doing.

Keep in mind that Facebook did not remove the “Jewberg” persona. All of the fraudulent social media profiles related to “David Jewberg” were removed prior to publication of the Bellingcat post.

Though, as recent Russian counterintelligence operations on Facebook seem to go, this one isn’t too far out there. But it is less obvious than ones we’ve only recently learned about. As we’re still finding out, despite Facebook’s best efforts to the contrary, the Internet Research Agency ran multiple pages made to look like part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Most famous were “Blacktivist” and “Black Matters US” (which included ads), both of which targeted African-Americans in order to stoke hatred against Hillary Clinton, build trust between Americans and the fake organizations, and — especially — to ignite racial tensions in the US.

As Wired put it, Russia’s fraudulent online personas and movements are more than “fake news.” They wrote, “Indeed, the Blacktivist case is all the more fascinating for where it sowed discord: not within but without. Spread across its web of sham accounts, Internet Research Agency targeted issues that had become fiery, schismatic national talking points during the presidential election and have remained so at dinner tables across America.” Turning us against each other has always been the point. That the current state of racial and class inequality, and acute corruption within our systems of authority and governance, was already at a breaking point was what made it easy.

And so it’s no coincidence, I’ll wager, that Rapoport — or his team — chose a racial slur for a very uncommon last name to the fake persona. This is part of the neoconservative playbook, taking on childishly racist, crudely simplistic handles as suggested in the Daily Stormer’s guide for assimilation.

It’s American racism as an aesthetic: it’s not a description of the way one kind of people debase and invalidate the very humanity of more than half the planet, it’s a dark funhouse mirror exaggeration for a totalitarian, insecure Russian racist’s imagination of that.

A hodgepodge of maliciousness, with intent.

Images: Getty Images / iStockPhoto (Pentagon); Dado Ruvic / Reuters (Facebook logo, Russian flag)

Spotify might be working on an in-car music player

Rumors have been circulating that Spotify is working on some sort of hardware, possibly an in-car controller or a standalone player. As The Verge reports, a number of Reddit users have claimed to have received offers for the device, with plan price points ranging from $12.99 to $14.99 per month, but when they clicked the offer that appeared in the Spotify app, they were directed to an error page. Some have also reported that their offers noted that the device had 4G built in.

The player has also been brought up in Spotify support forums, with administrators saying it was a test or that they didn’t have any news on such a product. According to screenshots of the offers, it appears that the device would also support voice control. Relatedly, Spotify began testing in-app voice search last month. Spotify declined to comment.

The fact that multiple people have received offers for this device suggests it’s an actual product, though there’s no telling when it might come out. There is a Spotify event scheduled for April 24th and the company says it will be making “a news announcement,” but it hasn’t given any hints as to what that might be.

Spotify officially went public this week with an unconventional IPO that was largely deemed a success.

Update 4/6/18 4:40PM ET: This post has been updated to include Spotify’s response to our request for comment.

Via: The Verge

Google is making it easier to use emoji in Chrome

Google is making it easier to access emoji while you’re using Chrome. The latest version of Chrome Canary (67.0.3389.0 on Mac, according to 9to5 Google) features a shortcut that gives access to the colorful characters. From the right-click menu, “emoji” should be the first in the list. The rub is that it’s only available in Canary, the developer-focused test-channel version of the browser. Should the feature prove stable, we could see it roll out to a future version of Chrome in a month or so. Regardless of when it’s added, it already sounds a lot easier than macOS’ keyboard shortcut — Command + Control + Spacebar — or opening up iMessage, hitting the emoji button and copying the output 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻.

Source: 9to5 Google

MSNBC’s interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook airs tonight at 8PM ET

Last week, details from Tim Cook’s interview with MSNBC and Recode’s Kara Swisher emerged ahead of its airing, and boy, did he have some choice words for Facebook. When asked about the social network’s mess with Cambridge Analytica, the Apple CEO said: “We’ve never believed that these detailed profiles of people, that have incredibly deep personal information that is patched together from several sources, should exist.” The cable news network will broadcast the full talk tonight at 8PM ET.

Cook will talk about more than Cambridge Analytica, of course — the conversation will also cover the Apple CEO’s ambitions to help the next generation of students and workers to learn crucial code skills and get jobs. Folks with a cable subscription can watch online by logging with their details on NBC’s website.

Technology is rapidly changing our world — and our classrooms. @Apple CEO @Tim_Cook says he believes teachers and technology are key to unlocking America’s potential. Watch “Revolution: Apple Changing the World” TONIGHT at 8 pm ET on MSNBC. pic.twitter.com/cGU2g2P3tw

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 6, 2018