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Amazon introduces an AWS graph database service called Amazon Neptune http://ift.tt/2AizOLj Amazon is in the middle of its AWS Re:invent keynote right now, and the company just announced a brand new database service. Amazon Neptune has been specifically designed for relationship graphs. So if you’re thinking about building a social network feature, Neptune can help you. The issue with traditional relational databases is that they’re not made for complex social graphs with complicated lists of friends and followers. By default, you have to run complicated database query to list the friends you have in common for instance. So you can either throw more coal into the engine or you can optimize your database. Amazon Neptune has been optimized to handle billions of relationships and run queries within milliseconds. Neptune supports fast-failover, point-in-time recovery and Multi-AZ deployments. And you can also encrypt data at rest. Amazon is trying to use existing technologies to interact with Neptune. The database service supports graph models Property Graph and W3C’s RDF and their query languages Apache TinkerPop Gremlin and SPARQL. Graph databases can be useful beyond social networks and dating apps. You can use a graph database for recommendation engines, logistics, genomic sequencing and more. Let’s see if big clients are going to switch to Amazon Neptune in the coming months. More details here. Featured Image: Hoxton/Tom Merton/Getty ImagesDigital Trends via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com November 29, 2017 at 11:17AM
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The White House wants to ban cellphones, citing security risk http://ift.tt/2zA3FLL The Donald can’t seem to keep his hands off the phone while in the White House but the same rules may not apply to his staff in the near future. The White House is mulling a personal cellphone ban for employees and possibly visitors, citing cybersecurity concerns. A handful of administration officials have been chatting with the press about the ban in the last couple of days, including White House chief of staff John Kelly, who’s smartphone was reportedly hacked by foreign operatives. Kelly noticed his phone wasn’t working properly and handed it over to White House tech support, only for them to find it had been “externally breached,” according to a segment in October where Rachel Maddow detailed the incident. All mobile devices have since been banned in the West Wing. The new ban is just a proposal for now, according to Yahoo News and it’s not clear when or if it would be imposed. However, if it does go into effect, it would apply to the personal mobile devices of all White House staffers. The ban would also mean no one would be able to send texts out from the White House as official White House issued mobile devices are not capable of sending texts. While that might cut down on some of the leaks coming from inside, which Trump has been vocally upset about since taking office, it would also place a hardship on staffers needing to communicate with family members. Some have also expressed concerns the ban would have “unintended consequences” or they could be accused of wasting government resources for placing outside calls on staff-issued phones, according to sources to Yahoo News. Also note that any calls, personal or otherwise, on a White House mobile phone are required to be kept as a government record and would eventually be archived and made public. Opponents of the ban have raised concerns over violations of their personal privacy. However, national security concerns may win out in the end. We’ll just have to see if the White House goes through with the ban. Featured Image: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / Staff/Getty ImagesDigital Trends via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com November 28, 2017 at 02:13PM
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Earth’s Heaviest Organism Could Be Eaten to Death…By Deer http://ift.tt/2AG1lqw Think of the heaviest living organism on Earth, and an image of a blue whale might come to mind. In fact, the honor goes to a single massive cluster of quaking aspen stems in Utah—but maybe not for long. The Pando aspen grove, a 106-acre colony composed solely of quaking aspens, is a clone; it started out as a single male tree thousands of years ago. Quaking aspens reproduce using a process called suckering: A single tree sends out long, shallow roots. New stems, and new shoots, or “suckers,” then grow out of these roots. These suckers, under the right conditions, grow into what looks like entirely separate aspen trees, creating a vast, interconnected grove. Advertisement But if new suckers don’t make it—if they’re eaten too quickly by animals, for instance—the future of the grove is put in jeopardy. That’s what’s happening to Pando, Paul Rogers, a professor at Utah State University’s Ecology Center and director of the Western Aspen Alliance, told Earther. Over the last 20 years, Rogers and other scientists started noticing that the vast Pando grove was sending out new shoots, but those shoots weren’t surviving. Scientists did clear-cutting in parts of the aspen grove in the late 80s—a method that is sometimes used by natural resource managers to stimulate growth in short-lived species such as aspen—but the trees never grew back. “To this day, there’s no forest at all there,” Rogers said of the clear-cut areas. For the most part, the herbivores Rogers is talking about are mule deer, though cattle herds in the region also play a role. The deer love the new aspen sprouts, which contain a lot of nutrients and are highly desirable in the late summer, when there aren’t a lot of other nutrient-dense plants left. They have few predators left in the area—humans hunted out most of the area’s bears, mountain lions, and wolves years ago—and Pando is located near a group of cabins, which means deer hunting in the area is limited. That means deer can hang around the Pando grove as long as they want eating as many aspen shoots as they want without fear of hunters. “There’s not this so-called enclosed landscape of fear that keeps animals moving,” Rogers said. “I think it’s sort of a refuge for mule deer there, so even if there’s not a great number, they’re not going to be threatened and they can eat at will.” Advertisement Rogers published a study earlier this year that found that, when trees were protected by fences, they successfully regenerated. In the unfenced parts of the grove, the aspen trees are elderly: aspens typically live between 50 and 150 years, so if they aren’t able to successfully regenerate, the grove can die out relatively quickly. “We have only extreme senior citizens in this forest, except where we’ve done this experimental area,” Rogers said. “So it’s not a very sustainable—and it’s a highly threatened—ecosystem because of that right now.” Pando is the largest known aspen grove. At 6,600 tons, it’s also largest known single living organism by volume and dry weight—though in terms of area, a massive fungus has it beat. But Rogers noted that it’s not unlikely that there are groves as large or larger than Pando that haven’t yet been discovered by scientists. And as for Pando’s age, Rogers said it’s nearly impossible to say. Advertisement “There’s no way to accurately age a clone,” he said. “We do know something about size, but we don’t know about age.” There are estimates that the forebears of the current grove could have taken root as long as 80,000 years ago. Quaking aspens are common across Canada and in several northeastern and western states. They generally prefer cooler climates, so aspen populations in the southwestern U.S. grow only at high latitudes in order to escape the region’s hot summers. Colorado’s San Juan National Forest and Rocky Mountain National Park are also known for their aspens. Advertisement Rogers calls aspen forests “ecosystem oases,” because they hold high levels of moisture and support a wide variety of plant, animal, and insect diversity. Aspen trees are ideal for cavity-nesting birds—such as woodpeckers and chickadees—because they have thin bark and tend to rot from the center, creating a hollow area where birds can nest. They also provide building material for beavers, which harvest aspens of all sizes. Without the Pando grove, these ecosystem services would disappear, Rogers said. Fences, like the ones Rogers tested in his experiment, are one potential management option for the grove, but Rogers said a fence surrounding the entire Pando site would cost around $60,000, would require constant monitoring, and would likely be unpopular with the public, as much of the grove right now is fully open to visitors. Still, something needs to be done. Advertisement “We’re in a triage situation here—if we don’t do something, this whole system will collapse,” he said. Another option is culling some of the region’s deer. That’s also a tough sell, Jim Lamb, a biologist at the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, told Earther. The deer that most often visit the Pando grove are does and their fawns in the summertime. Right now, hunters aren’t permitted to hunt deer in the summer, and convincing the public to allow culling does and fawns near the grove would be difficult, for obvious reasons. “People are generally opposed to shooting baby animals,” Lamb said. “If we shoot the moms, our moral obligation is to shoot the babies too. That’s not that pretty of a scenario when there is another option available.” Advertisement Lamb’s preferred option is fencing the grove. Right now, he said that his agency is working with the Forest Service as it develops management ideas for the grove, and he said the DWR would cooperate with any strategy the Forest Service comes up with. “We have the ability to build a fence and keep all the wild animals out of the clone, deer and elk both,” he said. “The cost of the fence is very inexpensive for what’s at stake.” Rogers said that, overall, the plight of the Pando grove should make humans re-examine their relationship with the planet. The deer in the region didn’t become problems for the grove by themselves—they did so because humans interfered with their natural predators. Advertisement “If this is so big and it’s been around so long, why is it falling apart on our watch, right now?” Rogers asked. “And in my mind, it really points finger to humans and how we interact with our planet.” Still, he’s hopeful the grove can be saved. The grove is getting public attention; the Forest Service is working to put up signs around the trees to educate the public; and Rogers and other researchers are continuing to gather data on the grove. “Overall, I feel like we’re building some momentum,” he said. Digital Trends via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com November 28, 2017 at 12:03PM
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Facebook and Twitter to provide Brexit disinformation reports soon http://ift.tt/2hYBte2 A UK parliamentary committee that’s investing fake news has been told by Facebook and Twitter they will provide information relating to Russian interference during the UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum vote in the coming weeks. With election disinformation being publicly interrogated in the US, questions have increasingly been asked in the UK about whether foreign government agents also sought to use social channels to drive Brexit propaganda and sway voters. Last month Damian Collins, the chair of the digital, culture, media and sport committee, wrote to Facebook and Twitter asking them to look into whether Russian-backed accounts had been used to try to influence voters in the June 2016 in/out EU referendum. The Guardian reports that Collins has also asked senior representatives from the two companies to give evidence on the reach of fake news at the British embassy in Washington in February. Earlier this month, the UK prime minister cranked up the political pressure by publicly accused the Russian government of seeking to “weaponize information” by planting fake stories and photoshopped images to try to meddle in elections and sew discord in the West. In a letter sent to Collins on Friday, Twitter confirmed it would be divulging its own findings soon, writing: “We are currently undertaking investigations into these questions and intend to share our findings in the coming weeks.” Also responding to the committee last week, Facebook noted it had been contacted by the UK’s Electoral Commission about the the issue of possible Russian interference in the referendum, as part of enquiries it’s making into whether the use of digital ads and bots on social media broke existing political campaigning rules. “We are now considering how we can best respond to the Electoral Commission’s request for information and expect to respond to them by the second week of December. Given that your letter is about the same issue, we will share our response to the Electoral Commission with you,” Facebook writes. We understand that Google has also been asked by the Electoral Commission to provide it with information pertaining to this probe. Meanwhile, the UK’s data protection watchdog is conducting a parallel investigation into what it describes as “the data-protection risks arising from the use of data analytics, including for political purposes”. Where Brexit is concerned, it’s not yet clear how significant the impact of political disinformation amplified via social media was to the outcome of the vote. But there clearly was a disinformation campaign of sorts. And one that prefigured what appears to have been an even more major effort by Kremlin agents to deflect voters in the US presidential election, just a few months later. After downplaying the impact of ‘fake news’ on the election for months, Facebook recently admitted that Russian-backed content could have reached as many as 126 million US users over the key political period. Earlier this month it also finally admitted to finding some evidence of Brexit disinformation being spread via its platform. Though it claimed it had not found what it dubbed “significant coordination of ad buys or political misinformation targeting the Brexit vote”. Meanwhile, research conducted by a group of academics using Twitter’s API to look at how political information diffused on the platform around the Brexit vote — including looking at how bots and human users interacted — has suggested that more than 156,000 Russian accounts mentioned #Brexit. The researchers also found that Russian accounts posted almost 45,000 messages related to the EU referendum in the 48 hours around the vote (i.e. just before and just after). While another academic study reckoned to have identified 400 fake Twitter accounts being run by Kremin trolls. Twitter has claimed that external studies based on tweet data pulled via its API cannot represent the full picture of how information is diffused on its platform because the data stream does not take account of any quality filters it might also be applying, nor any controls individual users can use to shape the tweets they see. It reiterates this point in its letter to Collins, writing:
It also notes that researchers have not always correctly identified bots — flagging media reports which it claims have “recently highlighted how users named as bots in research were real people, reinforcing the risks of limited data being used to attribute activity, particularly in the absence of peer review”. Although there have also been media reports of the reverse phenomenon: i.e. Twitter users who were passing themselves off as ‘real people’ (frequently Americans), and accruing lots of retweets, yet who have since been unmasked as Kremlin-controlled disinformation accounts. Such as @SouthLoneStar. Twitter’s letter ends by seeking to play down the influence of botnets — quoting the conclusion of a City University report stating “we have not found evidence supporting the notion that bots can substantively alter campaign communication”. But again, that study would presumably have been based on the partial view of information diffusion on its platform that Twitter has otherwise complained does not represent the full picture in order to downplay other studies that have suggested bots were successfully spreading Brexit-related political disinformation. So really, it can’t have it both ways. (See also: Facebook selling ads on its platform while trying to simultaneously claim the notion that fake news can influence voters is “crazy”.) In its letter to Collins Twitter does also say it’s “engaged in dialogue with academics and think tanks around the world, including those in the UK, to discuss potential collaboration and to explore where our own efforts can be better shared without jeopardizing their effectiveness or user privacy”. And at least now we don’t have too much longer to wait for its official assessment of the role Russian agents on its platform played in Brexit. Albeit, if Twitter provided full and free access to researchers so that the opinion-influencing impact of its platform could be more robustly studied the company probably still wouldn’t like all the conclusions being drawn. And nor would it so easily be able to downplay them. Featured Image: Erik Tham/Getty Images Digital Trends via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com November 28, 2017 at 11:35AM
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The Facebook community has already raised over $2 million for Giving Tuesday http://ift.tt/2zwcwOj Following up on a day of Thanksgiving and a weekend of deals, November 28 is Giving Tuesday — and Facebook is encouraging donations with a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation decided to match the first $2 million in donations — a number the Facebook community reached before noon. “Today is #GivingTuesday, and Facebook and the Gates Foundation are partnering to match $2 million of funds you raise for nonprofits,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post Tuesday. “We’re also waiving all fees for donations to nonprofits so 100% of donations go to the causes you care about. Thanks to everyone in our community for giving back!” As part of the day set for donating to nonprofits, Facebook will also be skipping the 5 percent fee the platform usually reserves for powering the donation platform for any donation made to nonprofits based in the United States. Unlike the $2 million dollar match, Facebook will be waiving the fees through the end of the day with no monetary limit. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation match goes to the charities that the Facebook community chose, with matches up to $1,000 per donate button and up to $50,000 given to a single organization. After starting at 8 a.m. ET, the match limit has already been reached. While new donations will no longer have a matching donation, the nonprofit receives all of the donation through the end of the day, without the typical five percent fee that Facebook generally reserves. There are a number of different ways to give on the platform, including a “Fundraiser” section in the main menu of the mobile app where users can explore different non-profits. Organizations can also create their own campaigns with donate buttons and even the general public can add a donate button to their posts by using the hashtag #donate or creating a fundraiser. Facebook has had the integrated donate button for several years — and this isn’t the first time the company has participated in Giving Tuesday either, with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation matching $900,000 and Facebook bringing $6.79 million in donations on the same day last year. Earlier this year, Facebook pledged to match up to $1 million in donations for Hurricane Harvey Relief. Over the summer, Facebook expanded its giving tools by making it possible for users to accept donations on Facebook for their birthday, asking friends for donations instead of birthday gifts.
Digital Trends via Digital Trends http://ift.tt/2p4eJdC November 28, 2017 at 11:32AM
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The Damson S-Series lets you mix and match your way to a full Dolby Atmos setup http://ift.tt/2AESghM Dolby Atmos surround sound is one of the best upgrades you can make to your home theater room, but achieving such a setup can be both expensive and complicated. Thankfully, audio tech company Damson has announced a new modular Dolby Atmos home speaker system, the Damson S-Series, that promises both affordability and flexibility. The new collection includes the S-Atmos speaker, S-Cube wireless speaker, the S-Bar sound bar, and S-Woofer subwoofer. At the core of the system is the S-Bar soundbar, which acts as a wireless hub for the rest of the system. The S-Bar runs six 42mm drives with a claimed frequency range of 120-280Hz. It is operated with an included remote control, as well as via volume controls on the bar itself. As its name implies, the S-Atmos speaker functions as the Atmos channel. The speaker has two 42mm drivers firing at a 70-degree vertical incline toward the ceiling to bounce sound down at the listener, achieving the height channel. Each S-Cube wireless speaker has four 42mm drivers and a 78mm woofer. In each speaker is a 7,800mAh battery which Damson claims can last up to eight hours at 70 percent volume, with a total charge time of three hours. You read that right: fully wireless surround speakers with no speaker wire to run, and no power cable to plug in. That should help with hassle-free setup and flexible placement. In addition to the Damson’s JetStreamNet network connectivity — which we explain further down, the S-Cubes also sport aux-in ports and Bluetooth support so they can be used anywhere in the home to deliver wireless music. Finally, the S-Woofer, which acts as a connection hub for devices like a game console or Blu-ray player, includes two HDMI ports, a 3.5mm analog port, and Bluetooth connection. The system can decode all Dolby audio formats, including Dolby Atmos via Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD. If it seems like we’re talking up Dolby Atmos as if its a big deal, that’s because it is. Dolby Atmos is a surround sound format that uses a height channel — either directly installed over head or bounced off the ceiling like the S-Atmos does — to create a three-dimensional sound environment that allows sound elements to be positioned anywhere around you. This creates an incredibly immersive cinematic experience that can’t be replicated by normal surround sound. Thanks to Damson’s propriety wireless connection network, JetStreamNet, users can connect up to eight total speakers for a variety of setups. JetStreamNet connections have a range of up to 150 feet, which should help make the process of settling on the proper configuration for an Atmos setup in your home theater room easier. The core package includes an S-Atmos speaker, two S-Cube wireless speakers, the S-Bar, and S-Woofer for $800. That’s a whole lot cheaper than what you’ll find many other Dolby Atmos speaker systems going for. You can pre-order the series now from directly from Damson. Orders will begin shipping in early 2018.
Digital Trends via Digital Trends http://ift.tt/2p4eJdC November 28, 2017 at 11:32AM
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Where was I? Timeline puts your Windows desktop right back the way you left it http://ift.tt/2k5HSbQ Windows Timeline is a new feature coming to the Microsoft desktop (at last!) that should make organizing your desktop much easier. It will eventually be paired with the freshly announced Sets, a promising way to group associated items from your history so you can instantly restore any project you’re working on — the windows you were looking at, the apps you had open, the websites you forgot to bookmark, and more. Both are the culmination of two to three years’ work, and they couldn’t quite make it into the Fall Creators Update. They are logical upgrades, and exciting for Windows enthusiasts; still, Insiders may need to curb their enthusiasm. While the Timeline feature is rolling out to all Insiders in the next Fast Ring build, Sets won’t appear but for a lucky few. As part of a unique new approach to testing features like Windows Sets, Microsoft will roll Sets out to only a limited subset of Windows Insiders. Insiders are serious fanatics, folks eager for the latest and greatest build regardless of the potential problems and bugs that might crop up from freshly developed, untested developer code. They’re dying for stuff like this. Many will have to wait. Joe Belfiore told us that strategy has a purpose. “We can measure productivity and happiness between people who get it and people who don’t,” the Microsoft Corporate Vice President told Digital Trends. It makes sense, but it’s guaranteed to frustrate people. Getting in sync with TimelineTimeline is a re-think of what a computer is used for, Belfiore explained. People used to be concerned with “storage” — organizing files into folders, backing them up to specific locations, on specific devices. Today, with computing spanning laptops, tablets, phones, and game consoles, the specific storage location and folder a file sits in is far less relevant. What matters is “when” instead of “where.” As in, “last night when I was working on that new campaign, I had these windows open.” Windows Timeline lets you move back in time, regardless of which device you’re using, thanks to Cortana on Android and iOS (the virtual assistant already helps tie the platforms together for sharing reminders, and lets you see Android notifications on Windows 10 machines). “People do a lot of things with their laptops,” Belfiore said. “We think there’s an opportunity to organize it better.” If that sounds familiar, it’s because time-based features have appeared before. Windows lets you restore individual files or your entire OS to an earlier point in time if you accidentally deleted some key stuff, or mucked up your computer. So does MacOS, thanks to features like Time Machine and Continuity. Chrome, and other browsers, can automatically restore your tabs when you open a new window, and various extensions can track sessions between devices. The interface is minimalist, but logical, and tied into the Task View icon that already sits next to Cortana and the Windows menu icon in your menu bar. Click it today, and you’ll see a zoomed-out view of your workspace, where you can create virtual desktops with different active windows that you can switch between. Click it with the Timeline feature on and you’ll see a different experience. Multiple desktops still sit at the top, but the right side of the screen has a scroll bar with times and dates. Microsoft’s algorithms will even tease out six “hero” activities it thinks are the most important, based on minutes of use and other factors. These appear with thumbnails, making it easy to remember what you were up to. Sets isn’t ready, yet sounds fascinatingTimeline looks promising on its own, and is proof that traditional desktop operating systems still have room for growth and innovation. Yet Timeline isn’t the end of Microsoft’s plan. The company’s engineers want to tie its time-based groupings into an interface that makes it easy to return to a project. The company has labeled this function “Sets,” though it’s so early in development that even the name is subject to change. A Set is a group of related tasks. If you use the Timeline to re-open a Word document, Windows can automatically bring back the six browser windows you had open, the YouTube app and video you had paused in the background (you were being productive, right?), and a set of photos you were browsing. Typically, Windows will ask if you want to restore them, but machine learning algorithms will be used to detect windows you always have open at once. “We know the frequency and the intensity with which those tabs are together,” Belfiore said. “So, we don’t even ask at that point. We just give it to you — like magic.” If you don’t see what you want, you can search for a clock icon, which will let you restore a set of windows. If you having a hard time visualizing this, we don’t blame you. Sets are innovative, and there’s little they can be compared to. When you think of it, though, it makes sense. You usually use a PC for a task – it might be as simple as shopping for Christmas gifts, or it might be as complex as coding new software. Either way, these tasks often involve multiple windows, even if they’re all sessions of the same browser. Timeline will already help you track what you did the day before, so why not break down that data into smaller, connected chunks? We’re excited to see how Sets will turn out, but it’s very much a work in progress. As mentioned, it will only roll out to a small portion of Insiders initially. It also works only with UWP apps — those available from the Windows Store – to start, which limits their use. Microsoft plans to expand Sets to standard Win32 apps in early 2018. Eventually, support will come to Win32 apps with custom title bars. And much of the UI will be developed with the guidance of Windows Insiders. That’s why some folks won’t get it at all. But hey, if you don’t see it, comfort yourself by knowing it’ll be more polished when you finally give it a try.
Digital Trends via Digital Trends http://ift.tt/2p4eJdC November 28, 2017 at 11:32AM
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‘PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ is coming to mobile, but there’s a catch http://ift.tt/2iaBAqN PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is among the most popular games of 2017 even though it hasn’t “officially” released, but as of December, the game is only available on PC and Xbox One. That will soon change, however, as Chinese company Tencent will be releasing a mobile version of the game. The new mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds will be a joint production between Tencent and the original game’s development team, and it will, at least initially, only be available in China. The goal is for the mobile experience to be as close to its PC and console counterparts as possible. In the announcement, Tencent said that the game’s shooting controls and “social networking” — likely referring to in-game messaging — would be optimized for mobile devices. Tencent is no stranger to the mobile gaming space, and it’s possible that the mobile PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds could eventually make its way outside of China. The company’s Honor of Kings, which has a player count of over 200 million people, will be releasing for the Nintendo Switch in other regions as Arena of Battle. Though it would likely be too taxing on the Switch’s hardware to run the full version of Battlegrounds, it’s possible the mobile version could come to the platform. With the Switch still selling like hotcakes, it’s a user base itching to get its hands on another big-name multiplayer title after the success of games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has already sold more than 13 million copies in its early access state, and it managed to break a concurrent Steam user record with nearly 3 million people online playing at the same time — that’s more than twice the record set by Dota 2 in 2016, and more than eight times the number of concurrent Grand Theft Auto V players. It has only continued to gain, well, “steam” since then, and with its launch on the Xbox One, sales should be substantially higher. The console version of the game will offer a similar experience to its PC sibling, and Xbox One X players will be able to take advantage of HDR support. The game will launch as part of the Xbox Preview program on December 12.
Digital Trends via Digital Trends http://ift.tt/2p4eJdC November 28, 2017 at 11:32AM
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How Bots Broke the FCC's Public Comment System During the Net Neutrality Debate http://ift.tt/2BjU6Rm On a single day in late May, hundreds of thousands of public comments poured into the Federal Communications Commission regarding its plans to roll back net neutrality protections. A week and a half later, on June 3, hundreds of thousands more followed. The spikes weren't the voices of pro-net neutrality Americans, worried what will happen if the FCC allows internet service providers to block and throttle content whenever it so chooses. In fact, they weren’t really voices at all. According to multiple researchers, more than one million of the record 22 million comments the FCC received were from bots that used natural language generation to artificially amplify the call to repeal net neutrality protections. That number may only represent a fraction of the actual bot submissions. The New York Attorney General's office is currently investigating their source. But while reports so far have focused on bad actors flooding the FCC with phony content, some of those same techniques also allowed legitimate groups, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to tell their members to click a button and send an auto-generated—albeit earnest—comment to the FCC, creating a groundswell of activism among actual humans. The result: A net neutrality comment period that garnered more input from the public than all previous comment periods across all government agencies—combined. “It makes it easier for people to speak out, but much more difficult for them to be heard,” says Zach Schloss, an account manager at FiscalNote, a government relationship management company that’s been analyzing the FCC’s comments. Now, as the commission attempts to sift through this unprecedented abundance of comments, discerning the legitimate from the bots could prove an insurmountable task. Bots on Both SidesThe net neutrality comment debacle illustrates a central challenge of managing open platforms in an age of automation. Bots are overtaking the very system that’s supposed to give consumers a say in the rules that govern them, but weeding them out may jeopardize legitimate comments. It’s a conflict platforms like Facebook and Twitter also face, as they work to eradicate fake or spammy activity on their platforms. Except unlike those companies, the FCC and other government agencies are bound by law to give the public a chance to participate in the rulemaking process. They're also required to consider “the relevant matter presented” in those public comments. When bots dominate the system, they drown out those relevant comments. And as language generation tools grow more sophisticated, they become harder to weed out. For a government legally required to hear out its constituents, this confusion is a brewing crisis.
Zach Schloss, FiscalNote “The current state of the art in natural language generation is fairly robust and genuine-sounding,” says Vlad Eidelman, FiscalNote’s vice president of research. The company analyzes the entire history of public comments to help business clients predict new changes to government regulation. “You could generate a lot of comments that would seem legitimate, feel legitimate, and come from legitimate email addresses, but would not be representative of the public voice.” FiscalNote analyzed all 22 million net neutrality comments, and found a number of suspicious patterns emerge among them. For starters, there was the historic volume. There was also the fact that so many comments came in on just two days: May 23 and June 3. Those abnormalities alone weren't enough to conclude that the comments were fake. To determine that, FiscalNote’s researchers used natural language processing techniques to cluster the comments into groups. They divided them by sentiment—whether they were for or against net neutrality. They separated out comments that were identical or nearly identical, judging them to be form letters, which advocacy groups often prompt their members to submit. They also analyzed comments that touched on the same themes without duplicating the text exactly, to find similarities in their structure and word usage. What they found were hundreds of thousands of comments with identical sentence and paragraph structure that used different words to communicate the same message. Think of it as a Mad Libs guide to influencing the regulatory environment. Every comment could be produced by picking a word or phrase from a couple dozen options, and stringing them all together to create a paragraph. For instance: Swap the word “regulate” for “control” in this sentence, and you’ve got two unique sentences. I advocate Ajit Pai to rescind The previous administration's plan to control the web. I advocate Ajit Pai to rescind The previous administration's plan to regulate the web. Swap out “the web” for “the Internet,” and you’ve got another. I advocate Ajit Pai to rescind The previous administration's plan to control the Internet. The bots behind the comment assault bundled together these sentence variations to form short comments. Each one was distinct, but they all included 35 phrases arranged in the same order, with up to 25 synonymous words and phrases filling in each blank. FiscalNote found hundreds of thousands of comments that fit this pattern, but there are 4.5 septillion possible combinations of words and phrases that the bot could have chosen from to draft those comments. And that's just one of the patterns FiscalNote detected. The researchers found another series of pro-net neutrality comments that followed similar patterns. This time, though, they were connected with the group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which created a website called dearfcc.org. It asked people to submit a comment opposing the repeal to the FCC, and auto-generated a message for them. Those auto-populated comments varied user-to-user. For instance, just one paragraph from that comment contained the following possible options, according to FiscalNote's research: The FCC should [reject|throw out] Chairman Ajit Pai’s [plan|proposal] to [give|hand] the government-subsidized [telecom giants|ISP monopolies] like [Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon|AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon|Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T|AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast|Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast|Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T] [free rein|the authority to|the legal cover to] [engage in data discrimination|throttle whatever they please|create Internet fast lanes] stripping [consumers|users|Internet users] of the [necessary|meaningful|vital] [access and privacy|privacy and access] [protections|rules|safeguards] we [fought for|demanded|worked for] and [won just two years ago|just recently won|so recently won]. In the EFF's case, automated tools helped real people get their messages across more efficiently. “People have been pointing out the illegal or nefarious use of bots to spam the FCC,” says Eidelman. “But automation cuts both ways.” Starting From ScratchThat’s what makes this such a dicey issue for the FCC—and all the other government agencies required to take public comments. It’s a relatively new one, too. Back in 2015, when the FCC passed its net neutrality protections and opened its electronic comment filing system, the biggest concern was managing capacity, says Gigi Sohn, a former advisor to former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. According to Sohn, there were some “back office conversations” about whether the FCC ought to delineate what is and is not a legitimate comment, but, she says, “It never got moved forward.” She acknowledges, however, that fixing the problem isn’t as easy as a system upgrade. “Having seen it from the inside, I think they have to start from square one,” Sohn says. That could mean the FCC institutes some kind of two-step authentication system, to ensure commenters are real people, for example. FiscalNote, meanwhile, is working on a tool that would score each comment based on how likely it is that the FCC would take it into serious consideration. Called a "gravitas score," it's based on the company's analysis of decades of public comments. FiscalNote looked into what it takes for a public comment to get a shout out in the FCC's final rule, and found that often, only comments that include a serious legal argument or are affiliated with some known entity like a big business or academic institution, make their way in. By that measure, a comment's gravitas score would be higher if, say, it was written by Verizon's general counsel. "Our hypothesis is that agencies pay attention to those comments much much more than any individual submitter," Eidelman says. Creating some kind of hierarchy would at least help the agency sift through the 22 million comments—a number that makes it impossible for the FCC to actually vet each one. Of course, such a system would present its own problems. For starters, it would be easy enough for bad actors to game, once they understand what it takes to catch the FCC's attention. But there's a more fundamental issue at play. It may be true that the FCC weighs lengthy comments submitted by lawyers and businesses more heavily than it does short comments written by the public, that's not how the system is supposed to work, says Sohn. "So, if it’s not written by expensive lawyers, it’s not worth a damn?" she says. "Just because something’s short doesn't meant it doesn't have value." Not only does this approach limit the impact that ordinary citizens can have, but because the government is obligated to consider all "relevant matter," Sohn says, it puts the Chairman Pai on shaky legal footing as he moves forward with rule-making. "Ignoring the short comments entirely makes his case in court more vulnerable," she says. "There are real questions about the integrity of the docket that can and will be used against him in court." When the Administrative Procedure Act became law in 1946, requiring government agencies to accept public comments, a world in which bots wreaked havoc on the rule of law was the stuff of science fiction. Today, it's a reality that the FCC can no longer ignore. Digital Trends via Feed: All Latest http://ift.tt/2uc60ci November 28, 2017 at 11:27AM
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Japanese bitcoin exchange bitFlyer is coming to the U.S http://ift.tt/2BjUkIc Japansese cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer announced today it’s expanding to the U.S, with approval to operate in 41 states starting today. This includes regulatory approval in New York via the state’s Department of Financial Services’ “BitLicense”, which only three other cryptocurrency companies currently have. For comparison, Coinbase has approval to operate in 38 states (including Washington, D.C) and Gemini is operating in 46 states (including Washington, D.C). The exchange is by far the biggest in Japan, trading about $180M worth of bitcoin per day. In terms of traditional exchange volume this ranks as the 14th largest exchange worldwide, but when you add margin volume to the calculation the exchange is actually the largest in the world in terms of total exchange volume. Founded in 2014, bitFlyer has raised a total of $36M in venture funding. At launch bitFlyer’s U.S exchange will only support bitcoin/USD pairs, but “plans to expand its cryptocurrencies to include altcoins such as Litecoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin Cash and more”. Right now the exchange only supports deposit and withdraw via bitcoin and USD wire transfer, which means early users will likely be institutional or high net worth investors. Eventually the exchange wants to add additional forms of fund inflow and outflow like ACH transfer, making it easier for the average consumer to deposit or withdraw cash. Like most exchanges bitFlyer will have tiered verification levels. The first level asks for personal information like your name and address and email and cell phone verification, and in return you can deposit and withdraw up to $2,000 in bitcoin per day and trade up to $3,000 in bitcoin per day. The second tier asks for additional information like bank account verification and proof of identity via photo ID, and allows users to deposit and withdraw up to $50,000 in bitcoin per day and trade an unlimited amount of the cryptocurrency. With Bitcoin spiking 1,200% over the past year, there’s a ton of demand to trade the cryptocurrency and not a lot of places to do it. While there are dozens of established exchanges around the world only a few operate legally in the United States, with the two main ones being Gemini and Coinbase. And even these exchanges get flack for slow customer service response times, an almost unavoidable byproduct of the insane spike in customers they are seeing. If bitFlyer can provide a solid trading and customer service experience, there’s a lot of room for them to establish themselves in the U.S market. Digital Trends via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com November 28, 2017 at 11:22AM |
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