Total Pageviews

Tuesday, 25 February 2020

Star Wars: The High Republic is Disney's new Star Wars saga - CNET

It mixes novels, comics and children's books, and is set 200 years before The Phantom Menace.

from CNET https://ift.tt/2SWAHBO
via IFTTT

UK mobile radiation tests top out at 1.5% of safe levels

Unlikely to make a dent with the truther crowd who believe it is cumulative exposure that does the bad things.

from Latest news https://ift.tt/2SV8wmu
via IFTTT

Huawei P40 Pro rumors: Release date, specs, 5G support, colors and 10x optical zoom - CNET

Huawei's hype is real: the P40 Pro just might be the first phone on the planet with 10x optical zoom.

from CNET https://ift.tt/2VjxWMd
via IFTTT

Samsung begins mass production of 16GB mobile DRAM

The South Korean tech giant continues to pack more memory into smartphones.

from Latest news https://ift.tt/3c5lLc1
via IFTTT

HTC opens pre-orders for its $899 Vive Cosmos Elite VR headset


via Engadget RSS Feed https://ift.tt/2TfXrvt

Galaxy Z Flip vs. Galaxy Fold specs: Comparing Samsung's two foldable phones - CNET

See how Samsung's two foldable phones stack up against one another, spec by spec.

from CNET https://ift.tt/39ZxfvM
via IFTTT

Xbox Series X gets updated specs and neat features video - CNET

Bonus: PlayStation 5 speculation!

from CNET https://ift.tt/2Pj8N0j
via IFTTT

Facebook confirms it's investigating pro-Bernie Sanders post - CNET

But the social media platform says it's unable to validate a researcher's claim.

from CNET https://ift.tt/2SWxlyH
via IFTTT

500-year-old manners book advises kids to 'pyke notte thy nostrellys' - CNET

No nose-picking! A new British Library site surfaces some treasures online, include the Lytille Childrenes Lytil Boke, which tells kids what not to do in polite company.

from CNET https://ift.tt/2HVYOtK
via IFTTT

ASIO: Relentless advance of technology was outstripping our capabilities

But the encryption legislation is helping, Director-General of Security Mike Burgess has said.

from Latest news https://ift.tt/2w0LySc
via IFTTT

Kyle MacLachlan reprises Agent Cooper on TikTok for Twin Peaks Day - CNET

In a funny new video, the actor re-creates the opening scene with hand-drawn car window and trees.

from CNET https://ift.tt/2w0GBc4
via IFTTT

Why did Apple drop support for the Magic Mouse 2 on the iPad?

Once upon a time, and not very long ago at that, you could use a Magic Mouse 2 with an iPad so long as you were running iPadOS 13. It worked well enough—for a while, anyway. But lately Macworld readers have been telling me that their Magic Mouse 2 no longer works on Apple’s tablet, and some of them have singled out January’s iPadOS 13.3 as the culprit. The most frustrated users are those who never had a chance to see the mouse work at all, so they’re convinced they’re doing it wrong. Surely, they think, Apple wouldn’t pull support for one of its own products—and who could blame them?

Apparently, it did. I’ve confirmed this with my own iPad Pro that’s running iPadOS 13.3.1, and nada—nothing works. (That’s true of my iPhone, too.) I’ve tried the backdoor route described in my how-to. I’ve tried multiple methods of hooking up devices through Bluetooth. If I hook up the Magic Mouse 2 with a wired connection, I can at least get the AssistiveTouch feature that powers the iPad’s mouse control to recognize that a mouse is attached, but I can’t actually move the pointer. Of course, it’s not like I could actually use the Magic Mouse 2 with a wired connection anyway, thanks to this infamous design flaw:

To read this article in full, please click here



from Macworld https://ift.tt/2HQHTcb
via IFTTT

Revolut raises $500 million at a $5.5 billion valuation

Fintech startup Revolut is raising a large Series D round of funding. TCV is leading the $500 million round, valuing the company at $5.5 billion. Over the past few years, Revolut has raised $836 million in total.

Some existing investors are also participating in today’s funding round, but Revolut isn’t sharing names. Previous investors include DST Global, Index Ventures, Balderton Capital and many others.

If you’re not familiar with Revolut, the company is building a financial service to replace traditional bank accounts. You can open an account from an app in just a few minutes. You can then receive, send and spend money from the app or using a debit card.

On top of that, Revolut has added a ton of features that it has built in-house or through partnerships. You can insure your phone, get a travel medical insurance package, buy cryptocurrencies, buy shares, donate to charities, save money and more.

Revolut currently has more than 10 million customers, mostly in Europe and the U.K. The company doesn’t share specific numbers when it comes to transaction volume and monthly active customers, but here are some percentage-based metrics:

  • The total number of users has grown by 169% in 2019.
  • Daily active customers grew by 380% in 2019.
  • Revenue grew by 354% in 2018 (yes, 2018).
  • Revenue from premium subscription plans (Revolut Premium and Revolut Metal) have grown by 154% in 2019.

With the new influx of cash, the company says that it’ll focus on improving its product for existing users as well as revenue. It’s all about making Revolut more useful and stickier going forward.

In particular, you can expect new lending services for both retail customers as well as companies using Revolut for Business. While Revolut provides a ton of services in the U.K., customers in other markets don’t have the same feature set. For instance, Revolut recently launched savings vaults in the U.K. — customers in other markets will be able to open savings sub-accounts in the future, as well.

Other than that, Revolut wants to double down on the core features. The company will improve its two subscription tiers (Premium and Metal) and improve banking operations across Europe — you can expect full bank accounts in Europe in the future.

There are currently 2,000 people working for Revolut. “We’re on a mission to build a global financial platform — a single app where our customers can manage all of their daily finances, and this investment demonstrates investor confidence in our business model. Going forward, our focus is on rolling-out banking operations in Europe, increasing the number of people who use Revolut as their daily account, and striving towards profitability,” Revolut co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky said in the release.

Revolut is currently live in the U.K., Europe, Singapore and Australia (in beta). While the company has announced plans to expand to a handful of countries, the main focus is on launching in the U.S. and Japan in the coming months.



via Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/32osyJc

TurboTax maker Intuit buys Credit Karma to corner personal financial data


via Engadget RSS Feed https://ift.tt/39Zr8HQ

VC firm Oxx says SaaS startups should avoid high-risk growth models

Oxx, a European venture capital firm co-founded by Richard Anton and Mikael Johnsson, this month announced the closing of its debut fund of $133 million to back “Europe’s most promising SaaS companies” at Series A and beyond.

Launched in 2017 and headquartered in London and Stockholm, Oxx pitches itself as one of only a few European funds focused solely on SaaS, and says it will invest broadly across software applications and infrastructure, highlighting five key themes: “data convergence & refinery,” “future of work,” “financial services infrastructure,” “user empowerment” and “sustainable business.”

However, its standout USP is that the firm says it wants to be a more patient form of capital than investors who have a rigid Silicon Valley SaaS mindset, which, it says, often places growth ahead of building long-lasting businesses.

I caught up with Oxx’s co-founders to dig deeper into their thinking, both with regards to the firm’s remit and investment thesis, and to learn more about the pair’s criticism of the prevailing venture capital model they say often pushes SaaS companies to prioritize “grow at all costs.”

TechCrunch: Oxx is described as a B2B software investor investing in SaaS companies across Europe from Series A and beyond. Can you be more specific regarding the size of check you write and the types of companies, geographies, technologies and business models you are focusing on?

Richard Anton: We will lead funding rounds anywhere in the range $5-20 million in SaaS companies. Some themes we’re especially excited about include data convergence and the refining and usage of data (think applications of machine learning, for example), the future of work, financial services infrastructure, end-user empowerment and sustainable business.



via Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2STOVTO

PayPal accounts are getting abused en-masse for unauthorized payments

All signs point to an attack exploiting PayPal's Google Pay integration.

from Latest news https://ift.tt/2HSrKTO
via IFTTT

Apple dives deep into specs for the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR


via Engadget RSS Feed https://ift.tt/3a5VYyF

Apple Maps expands its Street View competitor to Boston, DC, Philadelphia

Apple Maps has been slowly expanding regional coverage for its Google Street View-like Look Around feature, and now MacRumors forum members have spotted rollouts for the feature in the US cities of Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington DC.

Look Around was added as a feature in iOS 13 last September, but it launched with coverage only in or near San Francisco. Like Google Street View, the feature allows users to zoom in to street-level photography of most streets in an urban area. Apple displays Yelp listings and other data on real-world buildings and monuments in the viewport when Look Around is displayed in full screen.

Generally, we have observed that the resolution and quality of the photography is better than what we've usually seen in Google's version, and Apple applies some slick animations and parallax effects to make the view more immersive and natural-looking.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments



from Tech – Ars Technica https://ift.tt/2T9EDxX
via IFTTT

Upgraded doomsday vault gets new seed deposits

NORWAY-SEED-VAULT-SCIENCE Photo credit should read JUNGE, HEIKO/AFP via Getty Images

Today, the so-called “doomsday” vault in Norway is taking in its biggest deposit of seeds since vital upgrades in 2019. The deposit will feature over 60,000 seed samples from 36 different groups — the most to send their seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault at one time. That includes the Cherokee Nation, the first tribe based in the US to make a deposit. Departments of agriculture from Thailand, the US, and Ireland and universities and research centers from Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and elsewhere will make contributions as well.

The Vault was built to safeguard the DNA of the world’s crops in order to ensure a diversity of species and that there’s always enough...

Continue reading…



from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2PnS0cy
via IFTTT

Fox could buy Tubi while NBCUniversal eyes Vudu - CNET

Reports last year said Walmart was thinking of selling its on-demand video service Vudu.

from CNET https://ift.tt/37T7Lyz
via IFTTT

Party like it's 1999 with an HP Sprocket 2-in-1 printer and camera for just $55 - CNET

The Sprocket is a digital camera with a built-in printer, which is just retro enough to be cool.

from CNET https://ift.tt/2vYdrdF
via IFTTT

Save up to $150 on Arcade1Up retro arcade cabinets, including Star Wars and Space Invaders - CNET

Walmart is back at it, offering solid discounts on the gaming cabinets we grew up with.

from CNET https://ift.tt/38WgyRD
via IFTTT

Forensic Architecture redeploys surveillance state tech to combat state-sponsored violence

The specter of constant surveillance hangs over all of us in ways we don’t even fully understand, but it is also possible to turn the tools of the watchers against them. Forensic Architecture is exhibiting several long-term projects at the Museum of Art and Design in Miami that use the omnipresence of technology as a way to expose crimes and violence by oppressive states.

Over seven years Eyal Weizman and his team have performed dozens of investigations into instances of state-sponsored violence, from drone strikes to police brutality. Often these events are minimized at all levels by the state actors involved, denied or no-commented until the media cycle moves on. But sometimes technology provides ways to prove a crime was committed and occasionally even cause the perpetrator to admit it — hoisted by their own electronic petard.

Sometimes this is actual state-deployed kit, like body cameras or public records, but it also uses private information co-opted by state authorities to track individuals, like digital metadata from messages and location services.

For instance, when Chicago police shot and killed Harith Augustus in 2018, the department released some footage of the incident, saying that it “speaks for itself.” But Forensic Architecture’s close inspection of the body cam footage and cross reference with other materials makes it obvious that the police violated numerous rules (including in the operation of the body cams) in their interaction with him, escalating the situation and ultimately killing a man who by all indications — except the official account — was attempting to comply. It also helped additional footage see the light which was either mistakenly or deliberately left out of a FOIA release.

In another situation, a trio of Turkish migrants seeking asylum in Greece were shown, by analysis of their WhatsApp messages, images, and location and time stamps, to have entered Greece and been detained by Greek authorities before being “pushed back” by unidentified masked escorts, having been afforded no legal recourse to asylum processes or the like. This is one example of several recently that appear to be private actors working in concert with the state to deprive people of their rights.

Situated testimony for survivors

I spoke with Weizman before the opening of this exhibition in Miami, where some of the latest investigations are being shown off. (Shortly after our interview he would be denied entry to the U.S. to attend the opening, with a border agent explaining that this denial was algorithmically determined; We’ll come back to this.)

The original motive for creating Forensic Architecture, he explained, was to elicit testimony from those who had experienced state violence.

“We started using this technique when in 2013 we met a drone survivor, a German woman who had survived a drone strike in Pakistan that killed several relatives of hers,” Weizman explained. “She has wanted to deliver testimony in a trial regarding the drone strike, but like many survivors her memory was affected by the trauma she has experienced. The memory of the event was scattered, it had lacunae and repetitions, as you often have with trauma. And her condition is like many who have to speak out in human rights work: The closer you get to the core of the testimony, the description of the event itself, the more it escapes you.”

The approach they took to help this woman, and later many others, jog her own memory, was something called “situated testimony.” Essentially it amounts to exposing the person to media from the experience, allowing them to “situate” themselves in that moment. This is not without its own risks.

“Of course you must have the appropriate trauma professionals present,” Weizman said. “We only bring people who are willing to participate and perform the experience of being again at the scene as it happened. Sometimes details that would not occur to someone to be important come out.”

A digital reconstruction of a drone strike’s explosion was recreated physically for another exhibition.

But it’s surprising how effective it can be, he explained. One case exposed American involvement hitherto undisclosed.

“We were researching a Cameroon special forces detention center, torture and death in custody occurred, for Amnesty International,” he explained. “We asked detainees to describe to us simply what was outside the window. How many trees, or what else they could see.” Such testimony could help place their exact location and orientation in the building and lead to more evidence, such as cameras across the street facing that room.

“And sitting in a room based on a satellite image of the area, one told us: ‘yes, there were two trees, and one was over by the fence where the American soldiers were jogging.’ We said, ‘wait, what, can you repeat that?’ They had been interviewed many times and never mentioned American soldiers,” Weizman recalled. “When we heard there were American personnel, we found Facebook posts from service personnel who were there, and were able to force the transfer of prisoners there to another prison.”

Weizman noted that the organization only goes where help is requested, and does not pursue what might be called private injustices, as opposed to public.

“We require an invitation, to be invited into this by communities that invite state violence. We’re not a forensic agency, we’re a counter-forensic agency. We only investigate crimes by state authorities.”

Using virtual reality: “Unparalleled. It’s almost tactile.”

In the latest of these investigations, being exhibited for the first time at MOAD, the team used virtual reality for the first time in their situated testimony work. While VR has proven to be somewhat less compelling than most would like on the entertainment front, it turns out to work quite well in this context.

“We worked with an Israeli whistleblower soldier regarding testimony of violence he committed against Palestinians,” Weizman said. “It has been denied by the Israeli prime minister and others, but we have been able to find Palestinian witnesses to that case, and put them in VR so we could cross reference them. we had victim and perpetrator testifying to the same crime in the same space, and their testimonies can be overlaid on each other.”

Dean Issacharoff – the soldier accused by Israel of giving false testimony – describes the moment he illegally beat a Palestinian civilian. (Caption and image courtesy of Forensic Architecture)

One thing about VR is that the sense of space is very real; If the environment is built accurately, things like sight-lines and positional audio can be extremely true to life. If someone says they saw the event occur here, but the state says it was here, and a camera this far away saw it at this angle… these incomplete accounts can be added together to form something more factual, and assembled into a virtual environment.

“That project is the first use of VR interviews we have done —  it’s still in a very experimental stage. But it didn’t involve fatalities, so the level of trauma was a bit more controlled,” Weizman explained. “We have learned that the level and precision we can arrive at in reconstructing and incident is unparalleled. It’s almost tactile; You can walk through the space, you can see every object: guns, cars, civilians. And you can populate it until the witness is satisfied that this is what they experienced. I think this is a first, definitely in forensic terms, as far as uses of VR.”

A photogrammetry-based reconstruction of the area of Hebron where the incident took place.

In video of the situated testimony, you can see witnesses describing locations more exactly than they likely or even possibly could have without the virtual reconstruction. “I stood with the men at exactly that point,” says one, gesturing towards an object he recognized, then pointing upwards: “There were soldiers on the roof of this building, where the writing is.”

Of course it is not the digital recreation itself that forces the hand of those involved, but the incontrovertible facts it exposes. No one would ever have know that the U.S. had a presence at that detainment facility, and the country had no reason to say it did. The testimony wouldn’t even have been enough, except that it put the investigators onto a line of inquiry that produced data. And in the case of the Israeli whistleblower, the situated testimony defies official accounts that the organization he represented had lied about the incident.

Avoiding “product placement” and tech incursion

Sophie Landres, MOAD’s Curator of Public Programs and Education, was eager to add that the museum is not hosting this exhibit as a way to highlight how wonderful technology is. It’s important to put the technology and its uses in context rather than try to dazzle people with its capabilities. You may find yourself playing into someone else’s agenda that way.

“For museum audiences, this might be one of their first encounters with VR deployed in this way. The companies that manufacture these technologies know that people will have their first experiences with this tech in a cultural or entertainment contrast, and they’re looking for us to put a friendly face on these technologies that have been created to enable war and surveillance capitalism,” she told me. “But we’re not interested in having our museum be a showcase for product placement without having a serious conversation about it. It’s a place where artists embrace new technologies, but also where they can turn it towards existing power structures.”

Boots on backs mean this not an advertisement for VR headsets or 3D modeling tools.

She cited a tongue-in-cheek definition of “mixed reality” referring to both digital crossover into the real world and the deliberate obfuscation of the truth at a greater scale.

“On the one hand you have mixing the digital world and the real, and on the other you have the mixed reality of the media environment, where there’s no agreement on reality and all these misinformation campaigns. What’s important about Forensic Architecture is they’re not just presenting evidence of the facts, but also the process used to arrive at these truth claims, and that’s extremely important.”

In openly presenting the means as well as the ends, Weizman and his team avoid succumbing to what he calls the “dark epistemology” of the present post-truth era.

“The arbitrary logic of the border”

As mentioned earlier, Weizman was denied entry to the U.S. for reasons unknown, but possibly related to the network of politically active people with whom he has associated for the sake of his work. Disturbingly, his wife and children were also stopped while entering the states a day before him and separated at the airport for questioning.

In a statement issued publicly afterwards, Weizman dissected the event.

In my interview the officer informed me that my authorization to travel had been revoked because the “algorithm” had identified a security threat. He said he did not know what had triggered the algorithm but suggested that it could be something I was involved in, people I am or was in contact with, places to which I had traveled… I was asked to supply the Embassy with additional information, including fifteen years of travel history, in particular where I had gone and who had paid for it. The officer said that Homeland Security’s investigators could assess my case more promptly if I supplied the names of anyone in my network whom I believed might have triggered the algorithm. I declined to provide this information.

This much we know: we are being electronically monitored for a set of connections – the network of associations, people, places, calls, and transactions – that make up our lives. Such network analysis poses many problems, some of which are well known. Working in human rights means being in contact with vulnerable communities, activists and experts, and being entrusted with sensitive information. These networks are the lifeline of any investigative work. I am alarmed that relations among our colleagues, stakeholders, and staff are being targeted by the US government as security threats.

This incident exemplifies – albeit in a far less intense manner and at a much less drastic scale – critical aspects of the “arbitrary logic of the border” that our exhibition seeks to expose. The racialized violations of the rights of migrants at the US southern border are of course much more serious and brutal than the procedural difficulties a UK national may experience, and these migrants have very limited avenues for accountability when contesting the violence of the US border.

The works being exhibited, he said, “seek to demonstrate that we can invert the forensic gaze and turn it against the actors—police, militaries, secret services, border agencies—that usually seek to monopolize information. But in employing the counter-forensic gaze one is also exposed to higher level monitoring by the very state agencies investigated.”

Forensic Architecture’s investigations are ongoing; you can keep up with them at the organization’s website. And if you’re in Miami, drop by MOAD to see some of the work firsthand.



from Gadgets – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2PlmEDy
via IFTTT