Obama signs bill to fund ‘Moonshot’ research to cure cancer
Several months after President Obama laid out his plans to cure cancer in his last State of the Union address, he is signing legislation to do just that. Known as the 21st Century Cures Act, the bill will invest $1.8 billion in a Cancer Moonshot Task Force led by Vice President Joe Biden that aims to achieve a decade’s worth of research in just five years. In so doing, the team hopes to ramp up science and technological progress to the point where a cure for cancer can be found.
“We are bringing to reality the possibility of new breakthroughs to some of the biggest health challenges of our time,” said Obama in a ceremony today. “We’re tackling cancer, brain disease, substance abuse disorders and more, and none of this would have been possible without bipartisan cooperation from both houses of Congress.”
The overall bill plans $6.3 billion to not just tackle cancer research but also brain research, substance abuse prevention and to streamline drug and medical device approval.
Google begins releasing its secret FBI subpoenas
Back in October, Google stated that the FBI lifted a gag order, allowing them to officially disclose they’d been served one National Security Letter (NSL), a type of secret subpoena, by the FBI. This was news because every company is restricted from revealing more than a very broad range of NSLs it has received. But a 2015 Congressional act requires the government to periodically check whether each request’s non-disclosure agreement is still necessary. After several of these limits were lifted, today Google confirmed and released several NSL requests to shed light on what kind of user information the FBI requests in the name of national security.
The first batch includes eight formal requests, each paired with an FBI letter notifying Google when the agency had lifted their non-disclosure requirements. In all, these NSLs ask for subscriber information “limited to name, address and length of service” on 23 accounts — the names of which Google opted to redact for privacy reasons. Some of the requests limited their inquiry to a certain period of time while others asked for info from the account’s inception until the present day.
The earliest was sent to Google on March 1st, 2010, while the latest was September 21st, 2015. Crucially, each NSL urged Google not to change or suspend access to these accounts lest it tip off the users that their info was being shared with the FBI.
The USA Freedom Act, which Congress passed in 2015 to amend the Patriot Act, gives Google a little leeway in reporting that these requests have been made, allowing the search giant to list a loose range of NSL inquiries. It also requires the Department of Justice to regularly review which NSL’s non-disclosure limits are no longer necessary, which allowed Google to release the requests today. Curiously, the search giant could have
Unfortunately, there’s no way to know how many NSLs Google can’t (or possibly won’t; disclosure is optional) also release. According to the range they’re allowed to publish, they received “0-499” requests from January to June 2016; counting up the previous years, the search giant has received anywhere from zero to 1,000 requests for every six-month period since 2009. Even if the DOJ doesn’t lift non-disclosure restrictions on substantially more NSLs, at least we have a window in to the content and frequency of user information Google is handing over to the FBI.
Source: Google
Scientists copy climate change data in fear of a Trump crackdown
Donald Trump’s incoming presidency won’t be kind to climate change science, and that’s making both scientists and government divisions nervous — to the point where they’re taking unusually drastic actions. Researchers at multiple North American institutions, including the Universities of Pennsylvania and Toronto (as part of the Internet Archive’s Trump response), are hoping to save as much public environmental data as possible in case the Trump administration orders its removal. There’s also an independent Climate Mirror project that aims to copy public data before Trump takes office in January.
Is this irrational? Possibly — Trump’s team hasn’t explicitly stated that it would try to erase or otherwise mess with existing climate data. However, the President-elect has been picking climate change deniers for positions in relevant agencies, and has threatened to stop “politicized science” (read: any evidence of human-made climate change). The groups stashing data argue that it’s better to be prepared for a worst case scenario than to assume everything will be safe and discover otherwise. This won’t stop attempts to stifle future collection, but it could make sure that current research isn’t lost.
There are some reasons to suspect that the Trump camp may go to extremes. Most notably, the Department of Energy recently refused a request by Trump to name employees and contractors who’ve attended climate change meetings. While the Department will provide publicly available info, it’s determined to “respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence” of its staff by keeping their names and participation under wraps. In other words, it doesn’t want DoE staff to be punished for conducting ‘inconvenient’ science.
The Trump White House is unlikely to fire many of these workers directly due to laws preventing ideologically motivated job cuts. However, there’s a concern that anyone outed would be intentionally marginalized. Their work might not be officially recognized, for example, or they might be more likely to lose contracts that come up for renewal. Again, there’s no guarantee that the Trump administration would do anything — at the least, however, it appears to be an intimidation tactic meant to discourage DoE workers from pursuing uncomfortable truths about humanity’s effect on the planet.
Via: Washington Post
Source: University of Toronto, Climate Mirror, Washington Post
Nokia returns with a dumb phone from its new owner
It looks like we won’t have to mourn the demise of the Nokia brand for much longer. HMD Global, the new owners of the Nokia name, unveiled their first device today: the Nokia 150. But don’t get too excited yet. It’s a Series 30+ dumb phone that looks almost identical to the Nokia 216 that debuted back in September (which was notably Microsoft’s last Nokia device).
The $26 Nokia 150 sports a 2.4-inch screen, a VGA camera and an impressive 22 hours of battery life (remember when our phones could last for days without a charge?). It’ll be built by Foxconn subsidiary FIH, who bought Nokia’s feature phone business from Microsoft in May, for distribution in PAC, IMEA and Europe early next year.
HMD previously announced that it would release new Nokia-branded phones and tablets powered by Android, which was heartening news for fans of the brand. Arto Nummela, HMD’s CEO who previously served as an exec at Microsoft and Nokia, said in a recent interview with the Economic Times that those devices will appear in the first half of 2017. Judging from recent rumors, it sounds like HMD might unveil its Android smartphones at Mobile World Congress in late February.
Source: HMD
Tech workers unite against a potential US Muslim registry
Employees from large organizations across the technology industry have pledged to never help build a government database targeting individuals by race, religion or national origin, in response to extreme immigration proposals from US President-elect Donald Trump. The signatories come from companies including Google, IBM, Twitter, Mozilla and NVIDIA, though they don’t represent the organizations themselves.
“We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies,” the pledge reads. “We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable.”
The commitment, which resides at neveragain.tech, explains that tech workers are the gatekeepers of “data about people.” It recognizes technology’s role in aiding catastrophic human rights abuses in the past, specifically mentioning IBM’s work with Nazi Germany during World War II. The pledge includes a commitment to engage in whistleblowing, if necessary, and to advocate for the responsible use of data outside of the tech industry.
Trump has toyed with the idea of establishing a national database of all Muslims and said he plans to deport millions of illegal immigrants. It’s already clear that Trump’s proposed immigration policies would be detrimental for the US technology industry, but the neveragain.tech pledge looks beyond the workforce.
“We recognize that mass deportations precipitated the very atrocity the word genocide was created to describe: the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey,” the pledge reads. “We acknowledge that genocides are not merely a relic of the distant past— among others, Tutsi Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims have been victims in our lifetimes. Today we stand together to say: not on our watch, and never again.”
Source: neveragain.tech
Oppo’s first Ultra HD Blu-ray player is a tribute to physical media
Add one more Ultra HD Blu-ray player to the list, now that Oppo is ready to release its UDP-203. While the $550 deck doesn’t include any 4K streaming apps like Netflix, Amazon or Vudu, it’s all about high-end disc playback. It’s also able to play Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD, DVD Audio, Super Audio CD and CD, if you just can’t let physical media go. There are two HDMI outputs (in case your receiver isn’t able to pass through 4K/HDR video) and one input.
Beyond support for current audio codecs (including bitstreaming for Dolby Atmos and DTS: X surround sound), Oppo is promising an “early 2017” firmware update to support Dolby Vision HDR. We haven’t seen movies released in that format yet, but if/when we do, it could provide even more detail than the HDR-10 format that this and other UHD players are mandated to support.
Of course, there are other options like the now-Atmos-ready Xbox One, as well as standalone decks from Panasonic, Philips and Samsung, while Sony’s first high-end player is due next year. Oppo is also planning another version of this player called the UDP-205, with a few tweaks intended for audiophiles. The first slate of preorders for the UDP-203 are already filled up, but the company says it expects to reopen them on December 16th.
Source: Oppo, FAQ, PR
‘Pokémon Go’ is live in India and South Asia
Pokémon Go has expanded to a new region about once a month, launching in Southeast Asia and Oceania back in August, parts of the Balkans and Central Asia in September and some of the Middle East in November. Today, the game is finally opening in India and these South Asian countries: Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
In a post announcing the expansion, Niantic specifically apologized to their Indian fanbase, citing “a few administrative challenges” that delayed the launch. Players in the country won’t just have Starbucks hotspots, either: regional LTE mobile network operator Reliance Jio has made 3,000 of their stores and partner locations into PokéStops and Gyms. This mobile provider partnership shouldn’t be a surprise, as Niantic partnered with over 10,000 Sprint stores last week to provide American users with the same hotspot action.
Source: Niantic blog
Amazon Debuts App For Shopping on the Apple TV
Amazon today introduced a new app called “Amazon App: Browse, Search, and Shop,” which is designed to let users look for and purchase items from Amazon.com.
Anyone can use Amazon’s new app to browse through and search for products using dictation, but to make a purchase, an Amazon Prime membership is required. Amazon Prime costs $99 per year and offers benefits like Amazon Video and free two-day shipping.
Amazon App includes product details, reviews, and “immersive” product images and videos, all of which can be viewed on the television screen. Purchases are made using the Apple TV remote, but users can also add items to a list to purchase later via an iPhone or computer.
Many Apple TV owners have long been hoping for an app that brings Amazon’s Prime Video offerings to Apple’s set-top box, but this is not that app. It’s limited to shopping only.
Amazon’s new app can be downloaded on fourth-generation Apple TV models for free.
Tag: Amazon
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Apple Pulls watchOS 3.1.1 Update After Bricking Complaints
Following complaints that the new watchOS 3.1.1 update is bricking some Series 2 Apple Watch models, Apple has temporarily pulled the update.
watchOS 3.1.1 is no longer available for download from the Watch app on the iPhone, with watchOS 3.1 listed as the most recent update for those who had not already downloaded and installed 3.1.1.
After installing watchOS 3.1.1, some Apple Watch Series 2 owners had their devices bricked. Affected Apple Watches are displaying a red exclamation mark on the screen that instructs them to visit http://www.apple.com/help/watch.
The site directs Apple Watch owners to perform a force restart of the Apple Watch by holding down the side button and the Digital Crown, and says that if a restart does not work to restore the device, it will need to be taken in for service.
Resetting the Apple Watch has not worked for customers who have had their watches bricked by watchOS 3.1.1, and replacement Apple Watches will be required. Apple retail locations cannot service Apple Watches in store, because access to the diagnostic port (something not done in-store) is required.
Most users who are affected by the problem own an Apple Watch Series 2, and it is not yet clear why the update failed on some devices and not on others. watchOS 3.1.1 will likely be made available again once the bug is cleared up. Customers with an Apple Watch bricked by watchOS 3.1.1 should visit an Apple retail store or contact Apple support.
(Thanks, Manolo!)
Related Roundups: Apple Watch Series 2, watchOS 3
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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Facebook’s standalone Events app arrives on Android at last
It’s taken a bit more than two months, but Facebook has finally brought its standalone Events app to Android. Having debuted in October this year, Events lets you stalk see happenings that your friends are interested in attending, as well as affairs hosted by Pages you like and updates from parties you’ve already RSVPed to. You can also look for recommendations of upcoming things to do based on time, location and your interests.
Like the iOS version, Events for Android also lets you add your phone’s calendar to see if you have any conflicts with what you’d like to attend. Unfortunately, Play Store reviews indicate that users aren’t very pleased with the app’s UI so far, saying it looks like a poor port from the version made for Apple devices. You might want to wait just a tad longer before relying on the new app to organize and suggest items for your calendar.
To be clear, you could already look up happenings from your browser or Facebook app, but this service makes it easier to find something to do that might be more relevant to your location or interests. The social network said Events already sees 450 million users worldwide, making it a very useful tool that harnesses its massive footprint to provide comprehensive listings. That utility and potentially vast audience could give Events a longer shelf life than Facebook’s other short-lived standalone offerings.
Via: 9to5Google
Source: Events from Facebook (Google Play Store)
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