Cambridge Analytica Shutting Down After Facebook Data Scandal

United Kingdom-based data firm Cambridge Analytica is shutting down operations following the ongoing Facebook data scandal, in which the firm improperly amassed sensitive Facebook user data to target messages to voters during the previous U.S. presidential election. Cambridge Analytica affiliates SCL Group and SCL Elections will also shut down in the U.S. and U.K.

In a statement on the closure, the company said that “parallel bankruptcy proceedings” will begin for Cambridge Analytica and “certain of the company’s U.S. affiliates.” The decision to end its business came after it began losing clients and facing “mounting legal fees” from the Facebook investigation, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

In its statement, Cambridge Analytica remained adamant that many of the accusations against the data firm have been “unfounded.”

“Over the past several months, Cambridge Analytica has been the subject of numerous unfounded accusations,” the statement said. “The siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the company’s customers and suppliers. As a result, it has been determined that it is no longer viable to continue operating the business.”

Cambridge Analytica has denied wrongdoing in the Facebook incident. The company said in the Wednesday statement that despite the efforts to correct the record, it “has been vilified for activities that are not only legal, but also widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the political and commercial arenas.”

Despite the closures, leaders at Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group are said to be “involved in a variety of other entities,” which could lead to the companies rebranding their data firm operations under a different name. The New York Times suggests this could be a new Britain-based firm called Emerdata, with one SCL Group executive, Nigel Oakes, publicly describing Emerdata as a way of rolling up the two companies under one new banner.

In the weeks following the news of the data controversy, Facebook shared numerous blog posts about policy changes and updates that launched on the social network to enhance its users’ privacy. When asked what he would do if he was Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook in March said: “I wouldn’t be in this situation” and called for stronger data privacy regulations.

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.

Tag: Facebook
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Apple Pay Promo Takes $15 Off 1-800-Flowers Gift Orders for Mother’s Day

Apple Pay’s new promotion offers savings on 1-800-Flowers just in time for Mother’s Day on May 13. With the promo, if you use Apple Pay to shop the Gift Collection in the 1-800-Flowers iOS app [Direct Link] or on 1800Flowers.com, you can get $15 off your order.

The discount will be applied automatically in the checkout process, and will last through May 13, 2018 at 11:59 p.m. EST. The flower shop’s Gift Collection includes floral collections, popcorn tins, tea and fruit baskets, and more bundles ranging in price from $25 to over $100. Many of the arrangements support same-day delivery by local florists.

The Mother’s Day promotion encourages customers to shop for their moms at retail stores like Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, and Lululemon, where Apple Pay is supported. Within apps, Apple says that Etsy, Soothe, and Print Studio make it “even easier to show Mom you love her” with unique gift options.

Apple has been consistently launching promos for Apple Pay users this year, last week focusing on furniture savings with Hayneedle. Prior to that, partners included McDonald’s, Adidas, Hotwire, Fanatics, Grubhub, Seamless, TouchTunes, Fandango, and more.

Related Roundup: Apple PayTag: Apple Pay promo
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Harmonix is reviving Rock Band Network in ‘Rock Band 4’

During a livestream on Tuesday, Harmonix announced that after a few years away, the Rock Band Network is coming back. Originally announced in 2009 near the height of plastic guitar controller mania, it allowed content creators to import their own tracks for play (and most importantly, for sale) within the Rock Band series of games.

Now the network will reopen its doors inside Rock Band 4 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (crowdfunding for a PC version never materialized) however, there is some bad news for fans still sticking with the games — apparently due to royalty agreements, purchases made on older systems won’t carry over. Harmonix is apparently prioritizing songs that had been the most popular before on RBN, but it is still taking requests via an online form.

Via: Game Informer

Source: Harmonix (Twitch)

Nest’s $39 Room Temperature Sensors Now Available to Order

Nest’s new Temperature Sensor, which works with the company’s latest Learning Thermostat and the Thermostat E, is available to buy online from today.

The battery-powered, inch-wide sensors are designed to be placed in different rooms around the house where they silently monitor how warm or cold it is.

The white puck-shaped sensors continually relay this information to the companion thermostat, which responds by adjusting the central heating system to keep those rooms at the temperature level the user specified.

Nest started taking pre-orders for the Temperature Sensor in March, but is now selling them direct from the website. Each sensor costs $39, or $99 for a three-pack, and comes with wall mounting screws and up to 2 years of battery life. Up to six sensors are supported per connected thermostat, and up to 18 are supported per home.

Customers looking to pick up a Nest Learning Thermostat or Nest Thermostat E can also order the Temperature Sensor as part of a bundle pack, which gets them $20 or $10 off the standard price for a single sensor, respectively.

Nest products don’t integrate with Apple’s HomeKit setup, but are popular competing connected home solutions. See the Nest website for more details.

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HTC will reveal its next flagship on May 23rd

In an interesting twist on the clichéd device tease, HTC has preempted an iFixit-style teardown by showing the back and guts of the phone it’s about to release. It looks like the U12 (or U12+) smartphone will arrive on May 23rd, judging by the parts and shape. According to several leaks, it will sport dual rear 12- and 16-megapixel cameras, probably to allow for zooming with no detail loss, along with dual 8-megapixel front cameras.

Coming Soon. A phone that is more than the sum of its specs. pic.twitter.com/m2skJSK0qt

— HTC (@htc) May 3, 2018

You’re also likely to see a state-of-the-art Snapdragon 845 chip, 6-inch QHD+ screen, 6GB of RAM max, a 3,420 mAh battery, IP68 water resistance and the same squeeze options found on the U11 and U11+ models. Slow software updates might be a thing of the past, as HTC reportedly plans to offer Google’s Project Treble to fast-track them.

In a tweet, HTC called it “a phone that is more than the sum of its specs.” Okay, so it did lapse into cliché there, but either way, we’ll be on hand when it arrives on May 23rd to see if it lives up to the hyperbole.

AMD, Nvidia graphics could double in performance with new ‘stacked’ tech

A new technology introduced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could boost the power of graphics cards by Nvidia and AMD without making them physically larger. The technology is called wafer-on-wafer, and mimics 3D NAND memory technology used in modern solid-state drives by stacking layers vertically rather than spreading the hardware horizontally across the printed circuit board, which would require additional physical space. 

So what’s a wafer? Unlike your favorite snack, it’s a thin slice of polished semiconductor material that serves as the foundation for a crisscross of layered copper wires that convey electricity, and the transistors that are the heart of the processor. The wafer and mounted components are cut by a diamond saw into single chips and placed into the physical processor package you see when you break open the desktop. 

Right now, graphics chips produced by Nvidia and AMD rely on a single wafer. But TSMC, the largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry on the planet, discovered a way to stack two wafers in a single package. The upper wafer is flipped over onto the lower wafer, and then both are bonded together. Moreover, the upper wafer contains the in/out connection piercings (aka thru-silicon vias), thus the duo is packaged using flip-chip technology. 

According to TSMC partner Cadence, the technology could see two sets of wafers connecting to each other in a cube-shaped package using what’s called an interposer, an electrical interface that routes one connection to another. More than two wafers could be stacked vertically as well, with all but one wafer sporting the in/out thru-silicon vias connections. 

While this is a lot of tech talk, it’s basically describing how graphics chips can be scaled vertically, not horizontally, using TSMC’s technique. Not only can you cram more cores into a single graphics chip, the communication between each wafer would be extremely quick.

Thus, instead of tweaking an architecture and rebranding the product as a new family, manufacturers could potentially stack two or more current GPUs on a single card as a product refresh. The operating system would detect it as a single card, and not as a multi-GPU configuration. 

With 3D NAND, memory cells are stacked vertically and connected together via makeshift data elevators. This method enables manufacturers to provide additional storage capacity while staying within the same physical constraints. This design is faster, too, given the data travels up and down the memory tower rather than hunting down its destination using horizontal “city streets.” 

The problem with stacking processor wafers may be in the overall manufacturing yields. One of two wafers could pass, but because the other wafer is bad, both would be discarded. This method could prove to be too costly on low-yield products and would need to be used on production nodes with high manufacturing yields, like TSMC’s 16nm process technology. 

TSMC introduced its wafer-on-wafer technique during its symposium in Santa Clara, California. The company also revealed a partnership with Cadence for 5nm and 7nm+ process technology for high-performance and advanced mobile computing. 

Editors’ Recommendations

• The best graphics cards
• How to overclock your GPU
• Look out AMD and Nvidia, Intel could get into the graphics card game by 2020
• Intel finally dishes out stick-shaped Optane storage SSDs for mainstream PCs
• Support for external graphics on MacOS finally arrives, but on select devices

Everything you need to know about the Windows 10 April 2018 Update

The latest feature update for Windows 10 is available now, bringing the platform up to version 1803. Officially labeled as Windows 10 April 2018 Update, it drops the “creators” branding and focuses on improving general productivity. Two of the biggest new features do just that, while the third main ingredient provides better means of sharing content to nearby devices.

Windows 10 April 2018 Update also delivers a huge lineup of enhancements and improvements to Cortana, Microsoft Edge, Windows Ink, Windows Mixed Reality, and more. 

So, how can you get Windows 10 April 2018 Update? You can head here to download and use Microsoft’s upgrade tool or navigate to Settings > Windows Update to see if the feature update is available for your PC. Given Microsoft’s history with update roll-outs, you could receive Windows 10 April 2018 Update right now or a month after launch. 

Focus Assist

There’s nothing more annoying than attempting to get something done, only to be bothered by notifications popping up on the screen. The “new” Focus Assist feature is essentially another name for Quiet Hours, which lets you block notifications, sounds, alerts, and other distracting elements while you’re trying to focus on work. You can either right-click on the taskbar’s Action Center icon and toggle on or off Focus Assist or open the Action Center and click the quick action button. 

Outside the name change, you can actually manually set your quiet hours with this update. Previously Microsoft set those hours between 12:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. with no means of changing those times without modifying the registry. But now you can right-click on the display and navigate to Settings > Focus Assist to access a host of new settings to tweak Focus Assist as needed.

For example, you can choose to hide all notifications except for alarms — or see notifications only from apps and people established on your “Priority List.” For instance, if you’re not allowed to ignore notifications from your significant other during working hours, you’d be wise to add that demanding loved one under the Priority List’s “People” section. You can manually add apps too (Xbox is listed by default), and toggle on/off notifications tossed over by Cortana installed on your mobile device. 

In addition to the Priority List, the new Focus Assist feature provides an automatic rules section where you can set the times when Focus Assist automatically kicks in. Three other options target specific activities, such as when you’re playing a game, when you’re at home, and when duplicating a display. All four options have a “focus level” consisting of “alarms only” and “priority only.” 

Nearby Sharing

This is a neat way to share a file between two Windows 10 PCs with the April 2018 Update installed. To share a file, simply click on the share charm in an appropriate Windows 10 app, or right-click to access the app’s menu and select “Share.” Files can be a video, photo, document, or a webpage currently loaded in Microsoft Edge.  

Once you choose to share a file, the Nearby Sharing component will determine the best connection: Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. If using the Bluetooth method, you can actually see a list of the potential recipient devices for your shared file. The recipient can then choose to accept or reject your file. 

Timeline

To access this new feature, click on Task View on the taskbar or type Windows logo key + Tab. Timeline stores your “events” by up to 30 days using tiles and provides an option to view these tiles by the day — or by the hour. If you choose the “day” mode, simply scroll down to a specific day, and then select “see all activities” next to the date. You’ll then see tiles of every “event” that happened on that day, listed vertically by the hour. 

To search for a specific event, select the Search icon and then type a keyword that best represents that specific event, such as “resort” when you were hunting down vacation resorts using Microsoft Edge. But you can find other events too, such as a document you wrote and emailed two weeks ago, a picture you downloaded from OneDrive, and so on. 

The problem with Timeline is that if you’re sharing the PC with other people, their activities will appear in your timeline. To de-clutter your timeline, navigate to Settings > Privacy > Activity history > Show activities from accounts and toggle off all accounts to hide their activities from your timeline. Here you can also clear your activity history, but there appears to be no tool to block your activities from other timelines on the PC. 

One of the main selling points with Timeline is that it keeps track of your activities beyond the PC. For instance, if you’re browsing with Microsoft Edge on an Android phone, that activity falls on your timeline. This applies to all Microsoft-related apps for PC and phone, but you can easily toggle off this component in two ways: Disable “let Windows collect my activities from this PC,” and/or “let Windows sync my activities from this PC to the cloud.” 

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft’s built in browser now provides an audio icon on tabs so you can mute annoying audio playing on pages you’re not even viewing. Edge also now “securely” stores your address, credit card, and other information that’s automatically filled on web payment forms provided by Amazon, Walmart, and other top retail sites you frequently shop. Meanwhile, the new clutter-free-printing option simplifies the print dialog for a cleaner experience. 

For customers who read digital books, PDFs, and take advantage of the Reading View mode, Microsoft fine-tuned the full-screen experience by removing all visual distractions. The browser now also supports custom narration and ambient sounds in EPUB books while new grammar tools for EPUB books and Reading View can highlight a noun or verb in a sentence, break words into syllables, and more. 

Cortana

Microsoft’s built-in assistant can now play your favorite music and playlists on Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio using voice commands. To enable this feature, launch Cortana and select the Notebook icon on her menu. After that, click on the “Manage Skills” tab and then the “Music” category. From here you connect Cortana to your Spotify, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio accounts. 

But that’s not all. Cortana is compatible with connected homes too, supporting smart thermostats manufactured by ecobee, Honeywell, Nest, and more. To connect Cortana to your smart thermostat, open the assistant, and click on the Notebook icon on her menu bar. After that, click on the “Manage Skills” tab, select the Connected Home panel, toggle on the feature, and sign in to your Microsoft account. 

From there you’ll see a list of manufacturers. In our case, we chose Nest and signed into our Nest account. Unfortunately, we ran into an “object doesn’t support property or method ‘includes’” error after logging into the account, so we couldn’t test Cortana with our new third-generation Nest Learning Thermostat. According to Nest technical support agents, Nest products currently don’t work with Cortana despite the feature roll-out. When will support arrive? We couldn’t get a confirmation. 

“As of right now, Nest has not announced that as of yet,” a Nest representative told us. “At this time, Nest has not announce anything of that nature.”

That said, not all advertised “smart” thermostats may be on board with Cortana at this present time. The idea is to control your thermostat using voice commands through Cortana much like you can using Google Assistant. With the latter, you can adjust the temperature, switch between cooling and heating, get the current inside temperature, turn off the thermostat, and so on using voice commands. Eventually, Cortana will enable the same control. 

Miscellaneous Updates

There are obviously a ton of minor changes to the breadth of Microsoft’s software offerings, ranging from productivity to gaming. While there are plenty of small software updates within features such as the Start Menu or the Action Center, there are also performance improvements in stylus support, dictation accuracy, and multilingual touch keyboard prediction. In fact, Microsoft says it’s improved digital pen latency by up to 50 percent.

A couple of other highlights worthy of mention include HDR support for a longer list of compatible devices, as well as a new locked, “S Mode” for enhanced security and control available in Windows 10 Home edition.

Check out Microsoft’s full page of updates to see the detailed list of all that’s been changed.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Windows 10 April 2018 Update lands next week packing Timeline, Cortana updates
• How to use Windows Timeline
• How to get Microsoft’s April 2018 Update today and experience the new Timeline
• The dull Windows 10 April 2018 Update is everything a patch should be
• The 5 best features of the Windows 10 April 2018 Update

Google’s first-ever VR Doodle pays homage to pioneer of movie special effects

Google Doodles, the one-off alterations of the logo on Google’s homepage, have been delighting users since way back in 1998. But there’s never been a Google Doodle like the current one: Google’s first-ever virtual reality, 360-degree interactive Doodle. Appropriately enough, the charming Doodle pays tribute to Georges Méliès, the pioneering filmmaker and special effects artist behind memorable early films such as 1902’s A Trip to the Moon. What better way to pay homage to one of cinema’s greatest pioneers than by using a modern technology he would have undoubtedly appreciated?

“The Doodle team aims to highlight people, places, things, and events that have shaped culture and/or have had a positive impact on the world,” Doodler and project art lead Hélène Leroux told Digital Trends. “Given that Méliès pushed the boundaries of technology in film during his time, the Doodle team felt a fitting homage to his work should use the latest technology and medium we have available today — VR! Our goal was to create an original, entertaining story which explored all the wonderful tricks and visual effects Méliès came up with, as well as showcased his own personality.”

To produce their VR story, the Doodle team collaborated with both the Google Spotlight Stories team and the London-based production studio Nexus. Working together, they created multiple Doodles to be seen and enjoyed by users, regardless of which platform they view it on. While there’s a classic linear version available, there’s also a YouTube 360-degree video, and a fully interactive VR experience for anyone with a VR headset such as Google Cardboard. This is viewable using Google’s Spotlight Stories app.

“Méliès was a magician, filmmaker, poet, and creator,” Leroux saidd. “When he discovered the invention of the camera, and the first projections of films in the late 19th century, he realized he could push the medium to create magical stories audiences could immerse themselves in. Thanks to our partnership with Google Arts & Culture, we had access to the Cinémathèque Française, which houses the world’s largest collection of assets and sketches of Méliès’ films. [We also had access to] the world’s expert on the subject, Laurent Mannoni, who offered insight about Méliès’ work and legacy to our team as we developed the project.”

As to whether there will be other virtual reality Google Doodles in the future, Leroux is keeping quiet: “The Doodle team likes to keep all future plans top secret. But folks should stay tuned to the homepage moving forward to see!”

Editors’ Recommendations

• Google may be looking to snap up VR camera company Lytro
• ‘Ready Player One’ virtual reality extravaganza debuts at SXSW
• ‘Ready Player One’ review
• Google Arts & Culture explores remote world heritage sites in virtual reality
• Chrome’s desktop browser now supports web-based VR on the Oculus Rift

Steam beta adds support for Nintendo’s Switch Pro Controller

Steam already works with a bunch of gamepads, including PS4’s and Xbox 360’s/One’s, thanks to the Valve controller’s software component. But if you’d rather use Nintendo Switch’s, then you’ll have to be willing to take Steam’s beta client for a spin. The platform’s beta version has added support for the Nintendo Switch Pro controller, so you can use its d-pad to your advantage in fighting games and platformers or just generally play better if your hands are more used to it.

After you update or install Steam beta, you can activate Switch Pro in the controller settings page, so the client can recognize and calibrate your device. That’ll give you access to its configuration, where you can personalize what its buttons can do, though you can also change them on the fly by summoning the controller overlay through the Home button. Hopefully, that can make things less confusing if you switch (heh) between several gamepads depending on your mood.

Source: Steam

Nest’s Temperature Sensor is now available for $39

Don’t worry if you missed out on pre-ordering Nest’s Temperature Sensor last month — it’s now available for purchase, and you can even get it straight from the company’s website or from the Google Store. The puck-shaped device works in tandem with Nest’s latest Learning Thermostat or its simpler and more affordable Thermostat E. In fact, you can get one bundled with either temperature regulator to save $20 or $10, respectively, if you don’t have the company’s thermostats yet.

The Temperature Sensor works by monitoring how cold or how hot a specific location in your house is. Its thermostat companion can then make sure that room stays at the temperature you specified — like say, if you want your bedroom colder than the baby’s room or your living room a bit warmer than everywhere else — for max comfort. It sounds especially useful if you have a big house, which is most likely why Nest is offering a 3-pack bundle price for $99. You can still get just one sensor for $39, though, if you’d still like to make sure you don’t get too hot or too cold in your apartment.

Via: Slashgear, Android Police

Source: Nest