FTC complaint blasts Disney, Google over child influencer videos
It’s sketchy enough when companies send free products to YouTube stars in return for positive coverage, but it’s worse when those videos are explicitly aimed at kids. How is a young child supposed to tell the difference between genuine enthusiasm and someone compelled to say good things in return for gifts? That’s what a handful of consumer watchdog groups plan to solve. Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Center for Digital Democracy and Public Citizen have filed a complaint asking the FTC to stop the practice of aiming influencer videos at kids. Companies like Disney and DreamWorks (via Maker Studios and AwesomenessTV) are allegedly being “unfair and deceptive” by targeting these pseudo-ads at the preteen crowd. Google, meanwhile, purportedly “encourages and benefits” from distributing these videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids.
Many of these clips have no disclosures, the CCFC says. Moreover, they’re often intermingled with ordinary videos on YouTube. The group likens the current state of affairs to children’s television before regulators stepped in — remember how many ’80s and ’90s cartoons were just glorified toy ads? The watchdogs argue that explicit disclosures aren’t enough, as they wouldn’t eliminate the “inherent deceptiveness” of targeting videos at susceptible young minds.
YouTube’s response is mixed. The company tells us that the absence of disclosures violates both the law and YouTube’s policy, and those videos that do include disclosure are “restricted” from the YouTube Kids app. You can read the full statement below. The problem, as you might guess, is that children don’t always watch on YouTube Kids. No, Google doesn’t treat its regular YouTube website or apps as child-safe places, but that doesn’t stop kids from using them all the same.
It’s not clear how the FTC will react to the complaint. It won’t be surprising if the Commission does more than improve its enforcement of existing disclosure rules, mind you. Although this isn’t the first time that advocacy groups have asked the FTC to curb child-oriented video ads, it has lately made a point of cracking down on sponsored internet content. Given that many little viewers don’t even know what disclosure is, the FTC might have no choice but to ban kid-focused influencer videos if it’s going to meet its goals.
“YouTube believes that creators should be transparent with their audiences if their content includes paid promotion of any kind. As our long-standing policy makes clear, anyone uploading videos to YouTube has a legal obligation to disclose to YouTube and their viewers if a video contains paid promotion. Any videos that have disclosed paid product placement or endorsements are restricted from the YouTube Kids app.”
Via: TechCrunch
Source: CCFC
Trump campaign launches streaming Facebook show
We’ve seen Donald Trump alternatively use social media to issue everything from an “apology” to an almost unfathomable number of insults, and now it’s an avenue for video broadcasts. After a debate night livestream that some considered a pilot for a potential Trump TV video offering, the presidential candidate’s Facebook page is now hosting a nightly video show. Hosted by Trump advisers and supportive commentators, the campaign tells Wired it will go live at 6:30PM ET every day. Similar to the apology, using Facebook allows direct access to potential voters without any questions or interference, although I’m already expecting to hear about how the stats are rigged when its viewer numbers fail to surpass those of Chewbacca Mom.
Source: Wired, Donald Trump (Facebook)
Get a look at the lost Super NES ‘Rayman’ game
When he isn’t busy cryptically teasing Beyond Good & Evil 2, game developer Michel Ancel laments (above) past projects lost to the sands of time. Like the Super NES version of Rayman that was scrapped in favor of the disc-based iterations for the Atari Jaguar and original PlayStation. As noticed by Motherboard, Ancel managed to find an old prototype cartridge and fired it up.
“It’s working !!! 4 people in the world have seen this . We thought it was lost , but somewhere in the cold electronic circuit, something was still alive . and running at full 60fps !!! should do a Switch version of this 😔
Considering that Ancel and his team are already working on the upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive Wild and the aforementioned Beyond Good & Evil sequel, maybe don’t expect to play this on Nintendo’s new console anytime soon. For starters, it isn’t clear if Ancel still has the original code to work from or would have to start over again from scratch. But since we’re still a ways off from Nintendo releasing the Switch, anything’s possible at this point if you dream hard enough.
A photo posted by Michel Ancel (@michelancel) on Oct 23, 2016 at 1:17am PDT
Via: Motherboard
Source: Michel Ancel (Instagram) (1), (2), (3), (4)
AI-powered security cameras recognize small details faster
San Mateo-based Movidius may still be in the process of getting bought up by Intel, but the company’s latest deal will put its low-power AI and computer vision platform into more than just DJI drones and Google VR headsets. The company announced today that the Movidius Myriad 2 Video Processing Unit (VPU) will soon power a new generation of Hikvision smart surveillance cameras capable of recognizing everything from suspicious packages to distracted drivers.
While most deep-learning neural networks require a lot of cloud-based processing power, the same platform found in Movidius’ Fathom AI-on-a-stick will allow Hikvision cameras to do more on-board processing. Hikvision’s cameras have already been able to achieve around 99 percent accuracy in scenarios like identifying car models, detecting intruders, spotting suspicious baggage and even calling out drivers who don’t buckle up. The Myriad 2 VPU basically puts all these capabilities in the camera itself, allowing it to instantly process everything it sees while reducing false alarms at the same time. A presentation from Movidius claims their embedded neural networks use 10,000 times less bandwidth and decrease latency by 1,000 times.
“The ability to automatically process video in real-time to detect anomalies will have a large impact on the way cities infrastructure are being used,” Movidius CEO Remi El-Ouazzane said in a statement. But as Wired pointed out earlier this year, there are plenty of concerns that AI-powered cameras can still be fooled. And, for a more dystopian vision of what this platform can do, imagine what would happen if these cameras get instant access to America’s massive facial recognition database.
Source: Movidius
AT&T’s internet-only DirecTV service launches in November
You don’t have to sit on pins and needles wondering when AT&T will launch DirecTV Now, its flagship internet-only streaming service. As part of a discussion of the Time Warner acquisition, AT&T chief Randall Stephenson has revealed that DirecTV Now will be ready in November. It might be a bargain, too — Stephenson vows that it will carry a price “radically lower” than competing offerings. Just what that means isn’t certain (which services and tiers are included in this comparison?), but it’s promising.
The news takes on added meaning in light of the Time Warner buyout. AT&T already had HBO and Cinemax lined up for DirecTV Now, but the Time Warner deal would give the streaming service a virtually guaranteed source of popular TV without having to work hard for a license. It could theoretically keep the price low without depriving you of must-watch programming. That’s assuming that regulators approve the deal in the first place, of course — there’s a concern that AT&T could punish rivals by either charging them more for Time Warner channels or denying some channels altogether.
Source: CNBC Now (Twitter)
Android Pay is coming to hundreds of thousands more websites
Android Pay will already let you know where it works in the real world, but soon it will be available at hundreds of thousands more places online. Thanks to new partnerships with Visa and Mastercard, Android Pay users will soon be able to zip through online checkouts at any site that already accepts Visa Checkout or Masterpass.
The new deal is a big step for Google’s plan to build a universal payment system and will allow users to pay online with a quick fingerprint scan on their Android device. (Or whichever other authentication method you prefer.) In other words, you’ll be spared the need to remember multiple usernames and passwords when you’re shopping around the web. Users only need to link up their Visa Checkout or Masterpass accounts to their Android Pay account.
Unfortunately for stressed-out holiday shoppers, Google says the new integrations won’t show up in the app until “the early part of 2017,” so you’ll have to stick with Android Pay for Chrome until then.
Source: Google
‘Dishonored 2’s’ live-action trailer is all about glorious revenge
Just as we saw with Fallout 4 last year, Bethesda is hoping to amp you up for Dishonored 2 by making it seem more real with a live-action trailer. The two-minute piece is narrated by Emily, the kidnapped princess you rescued in the first game, who lays out her drive for revenge like Game of Throne’s Arya Stark. They killed her mother; took her kingdom; and framed her friend (Corvo, the bodyguard assassin who returns for another round of fun) for murder. Now she’s back to take what’s hers.
In the run-up to Bioshock Infinite, the original Dishonored was something of a surprise. It was an action game that offered plenty of choices, both in terms of how you played it (you were free to be bloodthirsty, stealthy or something in between), and how you handled major choices. Based on what we’ve seen from other videos, it looks like Dishonored 2 is doubling down on that freedom with even more ways to slaughter (or trick) your enemies, including the casual use of time travel.
Dishonored 2 hits stores on November 11th.
Scientists map the Milky Way Galaxy in exceptional detail
There have been detailed maps of the Milky Way before, but none quite so ornate as this. Researchers in the HI4PI sky survey have created a fine-grained map of our home galaxy using its most common material: neutral atomic hydrogen. Such studies have taken place before, as you might guess. However, the use of 10 billion data points from large radio telescopes (the Parkes Observatory and Effelsberg 100m) and noise-filtering algorithms have produced an image with twice the sensitivity as the previous best, and four times the angular resolution. The result? A view of the Milky Way so comprehensive that you can finally see the finer details of cloud structures in between stars — they were too blurry before.
The info isn’t just useful for visualizing humanity’s cosmic neighborhood, of course. Those structures likely helped form stars in the Milky Way for billions of years, so they could offer insight into the galaxy’s development. It could help us understand the rest of the universe, as well. As everything we can observe passes through that hydrogen, knowing its concentrations will help scientists correct their findings. It’s like cleaning a window, the study’s Dr. Benjamin Winkel says. The map and its data will be freely available to researchers around the world, so you could see a wave of discoveries that were previously held back by limited maps.
Via: CNN
Source: ICRAR
Samsung’s Galaxy Tab A grows a bit, gains a pen
With the Galaxy Note 7 still making headlines, Samsung is ready to divert some of America’s attention to another big screen with a pen: the 10.1″ Galaxy Tab A will be available stateside starting October 28th. Samsung’s latest tablet to hit American shores comes with a slightly larger, slightly higher definition screen than last year’s model, and the company’s S Pen stylus now comes standard.
Powering the new 1920×1200 WUXGA screen is an Octa-core Exynos 7870 processor with 3 GB of RAM and 16 GB of on-board storage, with support for up to 256 GB more in the microSD slot. There’s an 8 megapixel camera for photos, plus a 2 megapixel front-facing camera for selfies and video calls. Weighing in at 1.22 pounds, Samsung claims you’ll get around 14 hours of internet time out of the 7,300mAh battery — or about an hour less if you’re binge-watching video. For connectivity, the Tab A gets all the standard WiFi protocols, Bluetooth 4.2 LE and USB 2.0 for charging, but there doesn’t appear to be an LTE version available just yet. Finally, for excited Android Nougat adopters, the Tab A ships with 6.0 Marshmallow so you’ll have to wait for the update from Samsung at some point in the future.
The Tab A comes in two colors – your standard black and white – and will retail for $349.99 starting this Friday at Samsung.com and select shops.
Uranus might have two more moonsÂ
NASA launched its two Voyager probes almost 40 years ago, sending the first on a more direct route out of the solar system. Voyager 2 took a longer route to survey Neptune and Uranus in 1986, becoming the first and only spacecraft to fly by the ice giants. Scientists continue to comb over that data, and they might have just made a discovery from the 30-year-old recordings: Two additional moons orbiting Uranus, bringing its total to 29.
Cornell researchers were surveying Uranus’ rings when they found that the amount of material in its alpha ring varied periodically; He found the same when examining its beta ring. That asymmetry could be as-yet undiscovered moons within the rings, which Chancia and his partner estimate to be 2-9 miles in diameter, which are about the size of Saturn’s moons.
Voyager 2 measured the rings by firing radio signals through them back to earth as well as measuring light shined by background stars onto the orbiting matter, which helps reveal how much material is present. The potential satellites popping up in Uranus’ data are similar to quasi-moon structures in Saturn’s rings called moonlet wakes.
The ice giant’s rings are notably more narrow than Saturn’s, but the new structures might explain that by acting as “shepherd” moons that keep the circular material from spreading out. Two of Uranus’ 27 known satellites, Ophelia and Cordelia, do this for the planet’s epsilon ring.
The researchers didn’t actually find the rings, just the data supporting their likely existence. Further study and visual confirmation awaits other scientists, as the Cornell team remains committed to studying Uranus’ ring phenomena and whatever they reveal about their home planet.
Via: Phys.org
Source: Cornell University Library
AIVAnet 