“Online abuse can be cruel – but for some tech companies it is an existential threat. Can giants such as Facebook use behavioural psychology and persuasive design to tame the trolls?”
Category: internet – Page 316
On Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Mark Zuckerberg partook in what he thought would be a “fireside chat” with Wired’s Jessi Hempel but which was verifiably not fireside, and was, actually, a keynote.
Inverse picked out the best nine moments of this interview.
1.) Zuck doesn’t know that Aquila will meet regulations but is just confident that it’ll work out
Zuck reported that Aquila, Facebook’s casual wifi-beaming, solar-powered drone project, is coming along well. A team is currently constructing the second full-scale drone — which has the wingspan of a 747, is only as heavy as a car, and will be able to stay aloft for as long as six months — and another team is testing large-but-not-full-scale models every week. These drones will transmit high-bandwidth signals via a laser communications system, which, he says, require a degree of accuracy on par with hitting a quarter on the top of the Statue of Liberty with a laser pointer in California. The goal, he added, is to get these drones beaming wifi that’s 10 to 100 times faster than current systems. Facebook will roll out its first full-scale trials later this year, and Zuck expects that within 18 months, Aquila will be airborne.
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Facebook today announced the launch of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), which is bringing together a coalition of internet service providers and tech companies to focus on the engineering challenges of delivering high-res video and virtual reality. The group has 30 initial members including T-Mobile, Nokia, Intel, Deutsche Telekom, and SK Telecom. The approach is modeled after the Open Compute Project, which was started by Facebook in 2011 to share designs of data-center products, and has ties to Facebook’s Internet.org initiative to bring connectivity to rural areas and developing countries.
“Every day, more people and more devices around the world are coming online, and it’s becoming easier to share data-intensive experiences like video and virtual reality,” Jay Parikh, Facebook’s global head of engineering and infrastructure, writes in a blog post. “Scaling traditional telecom infrastructure to meet this global data challenge is not moving as fast as people need it to.”
The TIP’s technology companies and hardware makers will work together to contribute designs for products like wireless radios and optical fiber gear to better manage, store, and deliver intensive data, while telecoms can then use those designs in practice. “This will result in significant gains in cost and operational efficiency for both rural and urban deployments,” Parikh adds. The group will also work toward accelerating the development of 5G networks.
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The jury may still be out on the usefulness of the Internet of Things, but payments giant Visa is 100 percent sure that it doesn’t want to miss out. Today, it announced plans to push Visa payments into numerous fields. We’re talking “wearables, automobiles, appliances, public transportation services, clothing, and almost any other connected device” — basically anything that can or will soon connect to the internet.
Visa imagines a future where you’ll be able to pay for parking from your car dashboard or order a grocery delivery from your fridge. It makes sense, then, that Samsung is one of the first companies to sign up to the Visa Ready Program, alongside Accenture, universal payment card company Coin and Fit Pay. Chronos and Pebble are also working to integrate secure payments inside their devices.
To show off the technology, which works with any credit card, Visa or otherwise, the company has teamed up with Honda to develop an in-car app that helps automate payments. Right now they have two demos, the first of which concerns refueling. It warns the driver when their fuel level is low and directs them to the nearest gas station. Once the car arrives at the pump, the app calculates the expected cost and allows the driver to pay for the fuel without having to leave the vehicle.
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Does the connected self driving car, mean a connected work car as well?
SAN FRANCISCO — In the balancing act between business and pleasure, the modern connected car is mostly about pleasure. Drivers can easily stream music from the Internet and dictate text messages to friends, but staying connected to the office is still cumbersome, as anyone who has tried to join a teleconference while driving can attest.
People tired of checking corporate email around the clock may prefer it that way. After all, a request from the boss can still be reasonably deflected with a simple: “Sorry, I’m driving.”
Yet for Microsoft Corp., which dominates the workplace software market with its Office 365 suite, in-car productivity is a huge, untapped opportunity. Many people use cars as mobile offices, and as cars become more automated, putting together a slide deck behind the wheel may go from unsafe to commonplace.
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Meet the opponents of BMIs & their report.
*This article only represents a very small fraction of the research regarding the dangers associated with these devices. We encourage you to further your own research, and just wanted to provide a base to let you know that it’s something more of us need to pay attention to.
Did you know that a child’s brain absorbs much more radiation than that of an adult?
Dr. Martin Blank, Ph.D., from the Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Colombia University, has joined a group of scientists from around the world who are making an international appeal to the United Nations regarding the dangers associated with the use of various electromagnetic emitting devices, like cells phones and WiFi.
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5G could be done long before 2020
Posted in internet
5G in 2016 — Nokia CEO says it is.
5G mobile technology will start to get defined “in real terms” by the end of this year, Suri said at a press briefing Sunday on the eve of Mobile World Congress.
The advent of 5G is likely to bring another splurge of investment, just as orders for 4G equipment are peaking. The goal is to be able to offer users no less than the “perception of infinite capacity”, says Rahim Tafazolli, director of the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey. Rare will be the device that is not wirelessly connected, from self-driving cars and drones to the sensors, industrial machines and household appliances that together constitute the “internet of things” (IoT).
It is easy to dismiss all this as “a lot of hype”, in the words of Kester Mann of CCS Insight, a research firm. When it comes to 5G, much is still up in the air: not only which band of radio spectrum and which wireless technologies will be used, but what standards makers of network gear and handsets will have to comply with. Telecoms firms have reached consensus only on a set of rough “requirements”. The most important are connection speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second and response times (“latency”) of below 1 millisecond (see chart).
Rep. David Lifferth, R-Eagle Mountain, has introduced legislation to increase punishment for those who engage in Internet crimes. HB225, Cybercrime Amendments, specifically targets crimes known as “doxing” and “swatting.” The bill has been assigned to be heard by a House committee.
Doxing is the act of releasing personal information about a person publicly online. Oftentimes, these releases are accompanied by intimidating threats toward the targets of doxing. Releasing personal information online while encouraging others to commit crimes against the victim is understandably dangerous. However, issues have been raised concerning First Amendment rights.
Originally, HB225 included criminal charges against those who release personal information with the intent to “annoy, offend, and frighten.” Lifferth is removing these phrases particularly as they don’t necessarily indicate malicious intent. Critics have expressed that HB225 would be a violation of freedom of speech.