Chrome exploit makes life easier for video pirates

Media giants insist on copy protection systems in browsers to prevent bootleggers from copying video streams, but these anti-piracy measures aren’t foolproof. Security researchers have found a flaw in Chrome (and any Chromium-based browser) that circumvents Google’s Widevine digital rights management. As the system doesn’t check to make sure that decrypted video is playing only in the browser, it’s possible to capture that video right as it’s passed to the browser’s media player. With the right software, you’d only need to hit play to start copying a Netflix movie.

The investigators aren’t saying exactly how the technique works until and unless there’s a patch. However, they describe it as relatively simple. It has likely been around ever since Google implemented Widevine in Chrome, they add.

How much Google can do about it is another matter. The company tells Wired that it’s looking closely at the exploit, but that Chromium’s open source nature means that anyone could “create their own versions” of the software that either use different copy protection or modify how it works. Also, it’s not certain that this is a Google-specific problem. Firefox and Opera use Widevine, so it’s possible that they might behave the same way. There’s no guarantee that other anti-copying systems (like those used by Apple’s Safari or Microsoft’s Edge) are safe, either. Still, Google may need to close this hole as best it can if it wants to maintain the media industry’s trust.

Via: Wired

Source: Ben-Gurion University (YouTube)

Google creates VR montage of Pride parades around the world

Google has launched a new project to bring Pride parades around the world to people who can’t physically be there. The tech titan calls the initiative #prideforeveryone and deployed employees from 25 different countries to capture their local LGBTQ communities’ festivities using a 360-degree camera. Arjan Dijk, Google’s VP of growth marketing and executive sponsor of Gayglers (a group of LGBTQ employees within the company), told USA Today that what they were “aiming to do is bring [Pride’s] sense of excitement and this sense of community to people who normally would not be able to get to do that.”

A lot of people all over the globe can’t attend Pride due to stringent anti-LGBTQ laws, while those in countries like the US don’t attend out of fear of being ostracized by friends and family. According to a Pew Research Center study in 2013, more than half of the 1,197 adult LGBTQ individuals they surveyed have never gone to one. Dijk added that after the tragedy in Orlando, the message the company is trying to impart — that people should be proud of who they are and who they love — “is even more relevant.”

You can access the Pride VR experience through a VR headset, including Google Cardboard. But if you don’t have any, the YouTube video below works just fine — simply drag the screen around to get a full 360-degree view of the scenes.

Source: Google, #prideforeveryone

Chrome OS is getting a much-needed storage manager

With Android tablet apps coming to Chromebooks, the very basic storage management in Chrome OS is going to be an issue. You can get your total free space via the Files App, but that doesn’t give you any info about how it’s being used. It can also break things down file-by-file, but that can be too much info for many folks. Luckily, Google is about to unveil a storage manager for Chromebooks that gives you just the right amount of info at a glance, according to insider François Beaufort.

As shown above, you can see your total capacity and space used, broken down into downloads and offline files, with the remainder being your available space. That gives you a pretty good idea as to what’s taken up by the system and apps, and what you’ve downloaded personally. If you then need further info, you can check the files app (or abstruse chrome://quota-internals command).

Google Play has only arrived on a few Chrome OS models, including the ASUS Chromebook Flip (above), but when it’s released in force, folks will get Android tablet apps numbering in the tens of thousands. Since those will take up space and generate their own files, storage info will become critical. If you want to test it yourself, you can download the latest dev update, then enable a flag.

Source: François Beaufort (G+)

YouTube’s mobile app will soon support live video streams

Ever since Meerkat bust onto the scene at SXSW in 2015, streaming live video footage from your smartphone has been a huge deal. Twitter’s Periscope quickly blew Meerkat out of the water, and Facebook Live has been a huge initiative for the company. Now, YouTube is throwing its hat into the ring: the company just announced that its apps will soon let anyone stream live video to their YouTube channel whenever they want.

It’s a little surprising that it’s taken YouTube so long to get into this business, as the company has supported live broadcasts on the YouTube platform for a long time now. Facebook may have a big advantage, because that’s where all of your friends are, but the many creators who have built large and dedicated YouTube followings will surely benefit from this. And it’s not hard to imagine plenty of other, less popular users giving YouTube’s live video option a shot as well. The company is rolling out the feature today for a small group of its creators, but there’s no word yet on when we’ll all get a chance to stream live YouTube broadcasts.

Simplicity is the name of the game when going live with video like this, and YouTube’s app appears to have made things quite easy. There will be a new “capture” button in the app; after hitting that, you can shoot a photo to use as a thumbnail, add a quick description and start broadcasting. The app lets you decide whether or not you want a chat feature to be enabled, and you can also elect to notify your subscribers when you go live.

Source: YouTube

YouTube Red’s next originals are include a ‘Step Up’ spinoff

YouTube just announced its second round of original series at VidCon 2016, and the biggest new series is a bit of a surprise. That would be Step Up, which will bring a “heart-pounding, sexy, music-filled and dramatic look at dancers in a contemporary performing arts school.” Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan co-starred in the original movie (there have been five), and are among those listed as producers, and with the popularity of dance videos on YouTube it could be a good fit. Returning for second seasons are high profile originals Scare PewDiePie and Foursome, while the Smosh crew is bringing an as-yet untitled movie project.

YouTube still isn’t releasing any numbers to confirm how its Red subscriptions and series are doing, but says they have “viewership that rivals similar cable shows.” It’s also riding on the claim that YouTube Red content is leading subscribers to check out the main (free) pages for creators they hadn’t seen before, which could help attract more creators from the wider YouTuber group.

Other new shows on the way include Rhett & Link’s Buddy System; a tour documentary from comedians Dan Howell and Phil Lester; a Vlogumentary produced by Morgan Spurlock and Maker Studios that turns the lens on some of YouTube’s biggest creators; an animated series from 3BlackDot; and an educational series from Michael Stevens that seeks to explore the human mind.

Source: YouTube Blog

Google’s AI fears are adorably mundane, for now

If Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and other ultra-IQ folks fear AI, shouldn’t we? Even Google — which produces terrifying robots (for now) — sees the downsides, so its researchers have produced a paper called “Concrete Problems in AI Safety.” Put your underground bunker plans away, though, as it’s aimed at practical issues like adaptability, cheating and safe exploration. “Maybe a cleaning robot should experiment with mopping strategies, but clearly it shouldn’t try putting a wet mop in an electrical outlet,” the researchers note.

Robots will learn the same way as AI algorithms, through iteration and exploration. Unlike software, however, a robot that’s trying new things can actually kill someone. So, Google researchers came up with a list of five problems:

• Avoiding Negative Side Effects: How can we ensure that an AI system will not disturb its environment in negative ways while pursuing its goals, e.g. a cleaning robot knocking over a vase because it can clean faster by doing so?
• Avoiding Reward Hacking: How can we avoid gaming of the reward function? For example, we don’t want this cleaning robot simply covering over messes with materials it can’t see through.
• Scalable Oversight: How can we efficiently ensure that a given AI system respects aspects of the objective that are too expensive to be frequently evaluated during training? For example, if an AI system gets human feedback as it performs a task, it needs to use that feedback efficiently because asking too often would be annoying.
• Safe Exploration: How do we ensure that an AI system doesn’t make exploratory moves with very negative repercussions? For example, maybe a cleaning robot should experiment with mopping strategies, but clearly it shouldn’t try putting a wet mop in an electrical outlet.
• Robustness to Distributional Shift: How do we ensure that an AI system recognizes, and behaves robustly, when it’s in an environment very different from its training environment? For example, heuristics learned for a factory workfloor may not be safe enough for an office

To prevent negative side effects, researchers need to penalize unwanted changes to the environment, while still allowing a robot some leeway to explore and learn. For instance, if a bot is focused just on cleaning, it may “engage in major disruptions of the broader environment [like breaking a wall] if doing so provides even a tiny advantage for the task at hand.”

To solve that, it proposes solutions like simulated and constrained exploration, human oversight, and goals that heavily weigh risk. While the solutions seem like common sense, programming AI deal with the unknown is far from trivial. Going back to the cleaning bot, the researchers say that “an office might contain pets that the robot, never having seen before, attempts to wash with soap, leading to predictably bad results.”

The researchers’ main worry is not a robot revolution, but real-world problems caused by sloppy design. “With [AI] systems controlling industrial processes, health-related systems, and other mission-critical technology, small-scale accidents … could cause a justified loss of trust in automated systems,” they say. We think Musk and Hawking would agree.

Source: Google Research