Miscellaneous Tech News
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Facebook caught in India political storm
Facebook's India executives have been grilled by a parliamentary committee over allegations of political partisanship and hate speech.
The social media giant is accused of going easy on ruling BJP supporters who allegedly violated hate speech rules. But the BJP is also irked with Facebook - it has accused it of bias against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The company denies the allegations, but the row puts it in a precarious position in its biggest market. The app is hugely popular in India, with more than 300 million users - and so is its messaging platform, WhatsApp, which has 400 million users. The parliamentary committee's closed-door hearing lasted several hours. There were no immediate details of what had been said. -
Facebook to freeze political ads before US presidential election
Facebook has announced that it will not take on any new political ads in the seven days prior to the US election on 3 November.
However, the firm will still allow existing ads to continue to be promoted and targeted at different users. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed the measure in a Facebook post. He said that he was "worried" about divisions in the country potentially leading to civil unrest. He added that Facebook would also label posts from candidates attempting to declare victory before the votes had been counted. The social network has faced criticism for allowing political ads to be "micro-targeted" on its platform so that they are only seen by small communities rather than debated more widely in the days after they appear. -
Oracle loses $10B JEDI cloud contract appeal yet again
Oracle was never fond of the JEDI cloud contract process, that massive $10 billion, decade-long Department of Defense cloud contract that went to a single vendor. It was forever arguing to anyone who would listen that that process was faulty and favored Amazon.
Yesterday it lost another round in court when the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the database giant’s argument that the procurement process was flawed because it went to a single vendor. It also didn’t buy that there was a conflict of interest because a former Amazon employee was involved in writing the DoD’s request for proposal criteria.
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The surprising secrets hidden in a pregnancy test
A teardown of a digital pregnancy test has created a buzz after revealing it contained a standard paper test, similar to those used by GPs.
The experiment has raised questions about whether the extra cost of digital pregnancy tests is justified. Some say the electronics give women a clearer answer but others point to the e-waste created by digital test kits. The experiment also found the digital test contained a microprocessor more powerful than early home computers. But the electronics themselves did not play a role in the hormone detection. -
Android 11 system update from Google adds privacy controls
New privacy controls and a screen-recording tool are among features being added to Android phones in the latest major update to Google's mobile operating system (OS).
Android 11 also makes it easier to keep track of chat messages across multiple apps, and control smart home gadgets. Google has made efforts to encourage third-party device manufacturers to roll out its system updates more quickly than they used to. But some brands lag behind others. Nokia has also tended to be an early adopter, while Samsung, Huawei and LG typically take a little longer to adapt new features to their own user interfaces. -
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Facebook 'profits from hate' claims engineer who quit
A Facebook engineer has quit the firm, saying they "can no longer stomach" being part of an organisation "profiting off hate".
Ashok Chandwaney is the latest employee to go public with concerns about how the company deals with hate speech. The engineer added it was "choosing to be on the wrong side of history". Facebook responded by saying it had removed millions of hate-related posts. Another of its ex-engineers has also come to its defence. The thrust of the post by Ashok Chandwaney - who uses "they" and "them" as personal pronouns - is that Facebook moves quickly to solve certain problems, but when it comes to dealing with hate speech, it is more interested in PR than implementing real change. Their five and a half years tenure at the firm meant "learning about a bug in a meeting, and fixing it before the meeting is over", they write. "The contrast between that and our approach to hate on the platform is astonishing. -
@mlnews ummm duh?
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Scotland's Covid contact tracing app downloaded half a million times
More than 500,000 people have downloaded Scotland's new contact tracing app since it went live.
It became available to download free onto a smart phone from Apple's App Store or Google Play on Thursday. The Protect Scotland app lets people know if they have been in close contact with someone who later tests positive. The Scottish government has said the software will support the Test and Protect system and is "another tool in the fight against Covid-19". Up until now, contact tracing has been done manually using a method followed for years to help control the spread of infectious diseases. -
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TikTok: Oracle confirms being picked by Bytedance to be app's partner
US tech firm Oracle has confirmed that TikTok's owner has formally proposed it become a "trusted technology partner" to the video-sharing app.
Full details of the tie-up have yet to be disclosed, but the aim is to avoid President Trump's threat to shut down the Chinese-owned service in the US. Trump has cited national security concerns, suggesting users' data could be accessed by Beijing under current arrangements. Current owner Bytedance denies this. It says it has taken "extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok's US user data", which is stored in the States and Singapore.Oracle is a database specialist without experience of running a social media app targeted at the general public. -
Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
Fake accounts have been undermining elections around the world, an ex-Facebook employee has claimed.
In a 6,600-word internal memo to fellow workers, data scientist Sophie Zhang said she made decisions "that affected national presidents" without oversight. "I have blood on my hands," she wrote in the memo, parts of which were published by Buzzfeed. In response, Facebook said it was working hard to stop bad actors and inauthentic behaviour. In her memo, parts of which were published by Buzzfeed without her permission, Ms Zhang said: "In the three years I've spent at Facebook, I've found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions. -
A bug in Joe Biden’s campaign app gave anyone access to millions of voter files
A privacy bug in Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s official campaign app allowed anyone to look up sensitive voter information on millions of Americans, a security researcher has found.
The campaign app, Vote Joe, allows Biden supporters to encourage friends and family members to vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election by uploading their phone’s contact lists to see if their friends and family members are registered to vote. The app uploads and matches the user’s contacts with voter data supplied from TargetSmart, a political marketing firm that claims to have files on more than 191 million Americans.
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo
Fake accounts have been undermining elections around the world, an ex-Facebook employee has claimed.
In a 6,600-word internal memo to fellow workers, data scientist Sophie Zhang said she made decisions "that affected national presidents" without oversight. "I have blood on my hands," she wrote in the memo, parts of which were published by Buzzfeed. In response, Facebook said it was working hard to stop bad actors and inauthentic behaviour. In her memo, parts of which were published by Buzzfeed without her permission, Ms Zhang said: "In the three years I've spent at Facebook, I've found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions.Not much difference, other than speed, between FB/Social Media and another form of communication for hundreds of years.
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'Unexpected' iPhone and iPad update threatens app glitches
Owners of iPhones and iPads are being warned that some apps may experience glitches because Apple only gave a day's notice of the release of a major update to its mobile operating systems.
Chief executive Tim Cook revealed on Tuesday that iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 would launch on Wednesday. Last year, Apple announced the release date more than a week in advance.
Developers have complained they do not have enough time to check for bugs and submit their products to the App Store. They include big names such as Nintendo, which has warned gamers that its Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp app will not launch after the update. -
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Twitter investigates racial bias in image previews
Twitter is investigating after users discovered its picture-cropping algorithm sometimes prefers white faces to black ones.
Users noticed when two photos - one of a black face the other of a white one - were in the same post, Twitter often showed only the white face on mobile. Twitter said it had tested for racial and gender bias during the algorithm's development. But it added: "It's clear that we've got more analysis to do." Twitter's chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal, tweeted: "We did analysis on our model when we shipped it - but [it] needs continuous improvement. "Love this public, open, and rigorous test - and eager to learn from this." -
Dark web drugs raid leads to 179 arrests
Police forces around the world have seized more than $6.5m (£5m) in cash and virtual currencies, as well as drugs and guns in a co-ordinated raid on dark web marketplaces.
Some 179 people were arrested across Europe and the US, and 500kg (1,102lb) of drugs and 64 guns confiscated. It ends the "golden age" of these underground marketplaces, Europol said. "The hidden internet is no longer hidden", said Edvardas Sileris, head of Europol's cyber-crime centre. The operation, known as DisrupTor, was a joint effort between the Department of Justice and Europol. It is believed that the criminals engaged in tens of thousands of sales of illicit goods and services across the US and Europe. Drugs seized including fentanyl, oxycodone, methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and MDMA. -
