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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:43 | Votes:95

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday March 22 2018, @11:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-way? dept.

Best Buy will cut ties with Huawei and stop selling Huawei products over the next few weeks. Huawei's smartphones, such as its new flagship Mate 10 Pro, are sold in the U.S. by retailers, but no U.S. wireless service provider will sell them. Now the largest electronics retailer in the U.S. is calling it quits:

The move, after similar actions from U.S. carriers including AT&T Inc, comes as U.S. scrutiny of Chinese tech firms grows amid simmering tensions over U.S.-China trade and concerns of security.

[...] Earlier this year, AT&T was forced to scrap a plan to offer Huawei handsets after some members of Congress lobbied against the idea with federal regulators, sources told Reuters. Verizon Communications Inc also ended its plans to sell Huawei phones last year, according to media reports.

Last month two Republican Senators introduced legislation that would block the U.S. government from buying or leasing telecommunications equipment from Huawei or Chinese peer ZTE Corp, citing concern the firms would use their access to spy on U.S. officials.

Also at CNET and Engadget.

Previously: U.S. Lawmakers Urge AT&T to Cut Ties With Huawei
Verizon Cancels Plans to Sell Huawei Phone Due to U.S. Government Pressure
U.S. Intelligence Agency Heads Warn Against Using Huawei and ZTE Products
The U.S. Intelligence Community's Demonization of Huawei Remains Highly Hypocritical


Original Submission

posted by CoolHand on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the micro-illuminating-the-future dept.

Inside Apple's Secret Plan to Develop and Build its Own Screens

Apple Inc. is designing and producing its own device displays for the first time, using a secret manufacturing facility near its California headquarters to make small numbers of the screens for testing purposes, according to people familiar with the situation.

The technology giant is making a significant investment in the development of next-generation MicroLED screens, say the people, who requested anonymity to discuss internal planning. MicroLED screens use different light-emitting compounds than the current OLED displays and promise to make future gadgets slimmer, brighter and less power-hungry.

The screens are far more difficult to produce than OLED displays, and the company almost killed the project a year or so ago, the people say. Engineers have since been making progress and the technology is now at an advanced stage, they say, though consumers will probably have to wait a few years before seeing the results.

[...] Right now smartphones and other gadgets essentially use off-the-shelf display technology. The Apple Watch screen is made by LG Display. Ditto for Google's larger Pixel phone. The iPhone X, Apple's first OLED phone, uses Samsung technology. Phone manufacturers tweak screens to their specifications, and Apple has for years calibrated iPhone screens for color accuracy. But this marks the first time Apple is designing screens end-to-end itself.

MicroLEDs could have several advantages over today's OLEDs:

microLED, also known as micro-LED, mLED or µLED, is an emerging flat panel display technology. As the name implies, microLED displays consist of arrays of microscopic LEDs forming the individual pixel elements. When compared to the widespread LCD technology, microLED displays offer better contrast, response times, and energy efficiency. [...] Unlike OLED, microLED is based on conventional GaN LED technology, which offers far higher total brightness than OLED produces, as much as 30 times, as well as higher efficiency in terms of lux/W. It also does not suffer from the shorter lifetimes of OLED.

Also at 9to5Mac.


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Thursday March 22 2018, @08:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the programmed-in-sea dept.

A realistic robot fish could help scientists spy on secretive sea life

It looks like a fish, moves like a fish, but it's definitely a robot. It's name is SoFi (short for soft robotic fish), and according to its creators at MIT's computer science and AI lab CSAIL, it's the most versatile bot of its kind. And with its built-in cameras, scientists should be able to use SoFi to get close to the ocean's inhabitants without spooking them — hopefully giving us greater insight into the lives of under-observed sea creatures.

SoFi is not the first robot fish designed for scientific use, but it does bring together a number of different innovations that give it a unique advantage. For a start, its housing is made from molded and 3D printed plastics, meaning it's cheap and fast to fabricate. It's got a built-in buoyancy tank full of compressed air that means it can adjust its depth and linger at specific points in the water column (good for stakeouts). It's also got a custom control system, which uses coded audio bursts to transmit instructions from a human operator. SoFi can swim semi-autonomously, and will keep going in a specific direction without oversight, but a handler can steer it left or right, up and down, using a modified SNES controller.

Most important, though, is SoFi's propulsion system. This is a powerful hydraulic actuator that pumps water in and out of a pair of internal chambers, moving its tail fin back and forth. Not only is this quieter than using propellors like a submarine, but it's also less dangerous, as there are no sharp moving parts, and better camouflage. A hydraulic tail is quiet and looks just like the real thing. (Or should that be the real fin.)

Also at NYT.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday March 22 2018, @06:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the malware-is-malware-no-matter-who-controls-it dept.

US officials: Kaspersky "Slingshot" report burned anti-terror operation

A malware campaign discovered by researchers for Kaspersky Lab this month was in fact a US military operation, according to a report by CyberScoop's Chris Bing and Patrick Howell O'Neill. Unnamed US intelligence officials told CyberScoop that Kaspersky's report had exposed a long-running Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operation targeting the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.

The malware used in the campaign, according to the officials, was used to target computers in Internet cafés where it was believed individuals associated with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda would communicate with their organizations' leadership. Kaspersky's report showed Slingshot had targeted computers in countries where ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other radical Islamic terrorist groups have a presence or recruit: Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The publication of the report, the officials contended, likely caused JSOC to abandon the operation and may have put the lives of soldiers fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda in danger. One former intelligence official told CyberScoop that it was standard operating procedure "to kill it all with fire once you get caught... It happens sometimes and we're accustomed to dealing with it. But it still sucks. I can tell you this didn't help anyone."

This is good malware. You can't expose the good malware!

Related: Kaspersky Claims to have Found NSA's Advanced Malware Trojan
Ties Alleged Between Kaspersky Lab and Russian Intelligence Agencies
Kaspersky Willing to Hand Source Code Over to U.S. Government
Kaspersky Lab has been Working With Russian Intelligence
FBI Reportedly Advising Companies to Ditch Kaspersky Apps
Federal Government, Concerned About Cyberespionage, Bans Use of Kaspersky Labs Products
Kaspersky Lab and Lax Contractor Blamed for Russian Acquisition of NSA Tools


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the gamma-radiation dept.

A first of its kind study shows typical interruptions experienced by on-call radiologists do not reduce diagnostic accuracy but do change what they look at and increase the amount of time spent on a case.

The implication of the finding is that as radiologists contend with an increasing number of workplace interruptions, they must either process fewer cases or work longer hours -- both of which have adverse effects in terms of patient outcomes, said Trafton Drew, the study's lead author. They also may spend more time looking at dictation screens than reviewing medical images.

"In radiology, there is a growing recognition that interruptions are bad and the number of interruptions faced by radiologists is increasing," said Drew, an assistant professor of cognitive and neural science in the University of Utah's Department of Psychology. "But there isn't much research at all on the consequences of this situation."


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Thursday March 22 2018, @03:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the plus-d'argent dept.

Technology giants face European 'digital tax' blow

Big technology firms face paying more tax under plans announced by the European Commission. It said companies with significant online revenues should pay a 3% tax on turnover for various online services, bringing in an estimated €5bn (£4.4bn). The proposal would affect firms such as Facebook and Google with global annual revenues above €750m and taxable EU revenue above €50m.

The move follows criticism that tech giants pay too little tax in Europe. EU economics affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici said the "current legal vacuum is creating a serious shortfall in the public revenue of our member states". He stressed it was not a move against the US or "GAFA" - the acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. According to the Commission, top digital firms pay an average tax rate of just 9.5% in the EU - far less than the 23.3% paid by traditional companies.

Also at Reuters and WSJ.


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Thursday March 22 2018, @02:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the fight-infections dept.

An infection with cytomegalovirus is usually harmless for adults. However, during pregnancy the virus can be transmitted to the unborn baby and cause malformations. Once the viruses have invaded a human cell, they start to produce large amounts of viral proteins. This includes more than 500 different proteins and peptides, including 200 previously unknown to science.

This discovery was made possible by a new bioinformatics analysis method developed at the Department of Virology of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany. The teams of Professor Lars Dölken and Professor Florian Erhard have published their method in the journal Nature Methods. The new technique is relevant for medical applications, because knowledge of the repertoire of viral proteins used to evade the immune system, for example, is crucial to fight infections or develop vaccines.

What makes the JMU development superior to the previous method? It allows the ribosomal activities to be captured much more accurately than before. All proteins and peptides are assembled at the numerous ribosomes of a cell. During viral infection, the ribosomes also synthesize all proteins the virus needs to reproduce. The assembly instructions are delivered by special messenger molecules, the mRNAs.

[...] To make this possible, the Würzburg scientists provide their analysis tool as open-source software on the internet. They assume that their method will be used on a wide scale and become the international standard to analyse Ribo-seq experiments.

Florian Erhard, Anne Halenius, Cosima Zimmermann, Anne L'Hernault, Daniel J Kowalewski, Michael P Weekes, Stefan Stevanovic, Ralf Zimmer, Lars Dölken. Improved Ribo-seq enables identification of cryptic translation events. Nature Methods, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.4631


Original Submission

posted by takyon on Thursday March 22 2018, @12:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the carmagedon dept.

A few Soylentils wrote in to tell us about a fatal accident between a pedestrian and an autonomous Uber vehicle.

Update - Video Released of Fatal Uber - Pedestrian Accident

I debated just replying to the original story, but this seemed a pretty significant update to me:

The Uber vehicle was operating in autonomous mode when it crashed into 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg on Sunday evening. Herzberg was transported to a hospital, where she later died from her injuries, in what may be the first known pedestrian fatality in a self-driving crash.

The video footage does not conclusively show who is at fault. Tempe police initially reported that Herzberg appeared suddenly; however, the video footage seems to show her coming into view a number of seconds before the crash. It also showed the vehicle operator behind the wheel intermittently looking down while the car was driving itself.

The link shows video of the seconds just before the accident.

The pedestrian did not step out in front of the vehicle, she was essentially out in the middle of the road, and all her lateral movement was nearly irrelevant. She might as well have been a stationary object in the middle of the road. You can see the headlights bring her feet into view first, (meaning she was pretty much in the line before the headlights could see her, and then move up her body; she's already in the middle of the road in front of him when she comes into view.

If I were driving that car, I think I'd have had time to hit brakes (but not stop in time). I also think that that if the camera view is an accurate representation of what was really visible, then the car was overdriving its headlights. Although given my experience with cameras, I wouldn't be surprised if actual visibility was better than what the video shows.

This, in my opinion, is pretty damning.

Police Chief: Uber Self-Driving Car "Likely" Not At Fault In Fatal Crash

The chief of the Tempe Police has told the San Francisco Chronicle that Uber is likely not responsible for the Sunday evening crash that killed 49-year-old pedestrian Elaine Herzberg. “I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident," said chief Sylvia Moir.

Herzberg was "pushing a bicycle laden with plastic shopping bags," according to the Chronicle's Carolyn Said, when she "abruptly walked from a center median into a lane of traffic."

After viewing video captured by the Uber vehicle, Moir concluded that “it’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway." Moir added that "it is dangerous to cross roadways in the evening hour when well-illuminated, managed crosswalks are available."

Self-Driving Car Testing Likely to Continue Unobstructed

Self-Driving Cars Keep Rolling Despite Uber Crash

The death of a woman who was struck by a self-driving Uber in Arizona on Sunday has auto-safety advocates demanding that U.S. regulators and lawmakers slow down the rush to bring autonomous vehicles to the nation's roadways. Don't count on it.

Efforts to streamline regulations to accommodate the emerging technology have been under way since the Obama administration with strong bipartisan support. And the Trump administration's aversion to restrictions and regulations makes it even more unlikely that the accident in Tempe, Arizona, in which an autonomous Uber sport utility vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian, will result in significant new barriers, according to former U.S. officials and some safety advocates.

"Honestly, the last thing under this administration that car companies and self-driving vehicle developers have to worry about is heavy regulation," said David Friedman, a former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration administrator under President Barack Obama who's now director of cars and product policy for Consumers Union.

Who is to blame when driverless cars have an accident?

[Partial] or full autonomy raises the question of who is to blame in the case of an accident involving a self-driving car? In conventional (human-driven) cars, the answer is simple: the driver is responsible because they are in control. When it comes to autonomous vehicles, it isn't so clear cut. We propose a blockchain-based framework that uses sensor data to ascertain liability in accidents involving self-driving cars.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2Original Submission #3Original Submission #4

posted by mrpg on Thursday March 22 2018, @11:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the now-we-can-surf-the-web dept.

Seagate has announced a 14 terabyte helium-filled hard drive that uses perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) rather than shingled magnetic recording (SMR). Toshiba announced a similar drive in December:

Seagate this week formally introduced its first hard drive with 14 TB capacity aimed at cloud datacenters that does not use shingled magnetic recording. The new Exos X14 HDDs are filed with helium and are based on the latest-generation PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording) platters, running at 7200 RPM.

[...] The Exos X14 is Seagate's response to Toshiba's MG07ACA HDD with 14 TB capacity announced last year, although until we recieve further information, we cannot do a direct comparison. The major benefit of both drives is their increased capacity that enables datacenter operators to store 3360 TB of data per rack (compared to 2440 TB with 10 TB HDDs), which is a key advantage for companies that need to maximize their storage capacity per square meter and per watt, while meeting other TCO objectives. Another indisputable win of 14 TB hard disks from Seagate and Toshiba (vs. HGST's Ultrastar Hs14) is their conventional magnetic recording technology, which ensures predictable writing performance and permits drop in compatibility of the HDDs with existing storage applications.

The author guesses it will have nine ~1.55 TB platters, like Toshiba's version. 9th-generation and beyond PMR platters that can store 1.8 TB or more may be seen before the technology is phased out:

[November 2017's] top-of-the-range enterprise-class 3.5" HDDs from Seagate and Western Digital can store up to 12 TB of data. They are based on eight 8th generation PMR platters featuring ~1.5 TB capacities. Toshiba is a little bit behind its rivals with their 10 TB units featuring seven 8th gen platters with 1.43 TB capacity. With the arrival of the 9th gen PMR platters in 2018, hard drive makers will be able to increase the capacities of their eight-platter models to 14 TB, while designs with seven platters can go up to 12 TB.

Related: Western Digital Announces 12-14 TB Hard Drives and an 8 TB SSD
Western Digital to Use Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording to Produce 40 TB HDDs by 2025
Western Digital Shipping 14 TB Helium-Filled Shingled Magnetic Recording Hard Drives
Seagate to Stay the Course With HAMR HDDs, Plans 20 TB by 2020, ~50 TB Before 2025


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday March 22 2018, @09:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the I'll-drink-to-that dept.

The hop plant Humulus lupulus L. produces a flower with remarkable biochemical properties. When boiled, various compounds are isomerized and produce bitter-tasting compounds that serve to cut what would be a very sweet drink to make it palatable, but it also has good antimicrobal characteristics that keeps the beer from spoiling. Depending upon the beer style, they can also make a significant flavor contribution, such as the pine notes from Northern Brewer and Chinook, the citrus and tropical notes from Citra, or even the chocolate notes from Southern Cross. A thousand different chemical compounds have been identified in hops, but two major ones that drive hop flavor are linalool and geraniol. It is the subtle relative differences between hops varieties of these and other compounds that lets one produce beers with a very broad range of flavor profiles.

A team of researchers wanted to insert the genetic material that produces linalool and geraniol into the brewing yeast and have those compounds generated during the fermentation process. They inserted the gene sequences that are known to produce these compounds into a widely used commercial strain of beer yeast (White Labs WLP001). They made beer using these engineered strains as well as one with an unmodified strain and presented the results to a tasting panel. The found that the engineered strains produced a product that had a "hoppier" flavor than the unmodified strain.

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03293-x


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday March 22 2018, @08:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-much-has-changed dept.

Triceratops may have had horns to attract mates

Dinosaurs like the Triceratops may have had horns and frills to attract a mate, a new study suggests.

Ceratopsian, or horned dinosaurs, were previously thought to have developed this ornamentation to distinguish between different species.

This has now been ruled out in a study published in a Royal Society journal.

Instead, the aggressive-looking armour may actually have evolved to signal an animal's suitability as a partner, known as socio-sexual selection.

"Individuals are advertising their quality or genetic make-up," explained Andrew Knapp, lead author of the research reported in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"We see that in peacocks too, with their tail feathers."

Also at Science Magazine.

Patterns of divergence in the morphology of ceratopsian dinosaurs: sympatry is not a driver of ornament evolution (open, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0312) (DX)


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday March 22 2018, @06:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the we're-the-good-guys,-honest dept.

The Guardian mentions that the Gold Coast council in Australia, where next month's Commonwealth Games are hosted, will use a new city WiFi service to harvest Facebook data from visitors.

The data mining, which the council says is legal and will be used to help the city market itself to tourists, relies on visitors using their Facebook accounts to log into a new high-speed WiFi service. Users who object to sharing their Facebook data can still access the free WiFi, but the speed will be much slower and downloads restricted.

The city switched on the wifi service in the tourist hubs of Surfers Paradise, Southport and Broadbeach on Tuesday, 15 days ahead of the Games opening ceremony. It spent $5m to build its own infrastructure for the Games due to concerns about the speed and rollout of the national broadband network.

A city spokeswoman insisted the council would only make "limited use" of the data it mined from tourists. She insisted data would not be shared with "other agencies" although reports about tourist activity based on the information could be made available to the tourism sector "and other sectors as appropriate".

"The most important information is about country of origin, to better understand the use by overseas tourists, who are one of the primary target groups for the service," the spokeswoman said.

"The city will be able to understand patterns of demand and use, including how many people are accessing the service, times of day and the amounts of data used. It will also be very useful for understanding numbers during events and seasonal effects."


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the fingers-crossed dept.

Stem cell transplant 'game changer' for MS patients

Doctors say a stem cell transplant could be a "game changer" for many patients with multiple sclerosis. Results from an international trial show that it was able to stop the disease and improve symptoms. It involves wiping out a patient's immune system using cancer drugs and then rebooting it with a stem cell transplant.

Louise Willetts, 36, from Rotherham, is now symptom-free and told me: "It feels like a miracle." A total of 100,000 people in the UK have MS, which attacks nerves in the brain and spinal cord.

Counterpoint:

There are just a few problems, however: The experimental procedure is under scrutiny from regulators, the experiment's web site may have overstated the effectiveness of the not-yet-proven treatment, and patients have to foot the bill. Oh, and no one has seen the study yet.

[...] The results reported in the BBC piece are just the preliminary findings. And that leaves a number of questions still unanswered — are these results permanent? What are the risks? Who isn't suited to have their immune system wiped out through aggressive chemo?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also flagged some serious issues in the study's protocol. If that sounds boring and bureaucratic, think of it this way: for a few months, the lead investigator somehow forgot to report a number of nasty side effects of the treatment, including chest infection and the worsening of conditions as diverse as vertigo, narcolepsy, stuttering, and hyperglycemia, among others.

One thing we know for sure? It's real expensive. The BBC noted it cost patients £30,000 ($42,000) to receive the experimental treatment, but biomedical scientist and science writer Paul Knoepfler, who has been following the trial since last year, says it ran some patients between $100,000 and $200,000.

Related: Low Vitamin-D Genes Linked to Multiple Sclerosis
Scientists Identify Potential Inhibitors of Cancer Metastasis and MS
Risky Stem Cell Treatment Reverses MS in 70% of Patients in Small Study


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday March 22 2018, @03:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the big-and-getting-bigger dept.

Last week Chinese eCommerce giant Alibaba announced its Q3 earnings. Cloud revenue was $553 million, an impressive 104 percent year-over-year increase. That comes out to a run rate in the range of $2.2 billion, well behind Google which announced it is pulling in a billion dollars a quarter and still buried behind the market leaders all of whom reported around $4 billion+ a quarter.

While the growth was impressive, keep in mind when you have a small market share, it’s much easier to grow a big number than when you have a larger market share. In other words, it gets harder to grow, the larger you get.

It is worth noting, however that the growth spurt allowed Alibaba to show up in the top five of Synergy Research’s most recent Cloud Infrastructure Market Share report for the first time. While the market share was only around 3 or 4 percent. it’s still significant because no longer being  lumped together with “next 10” or “rest of market.”

Synergy reports that the cloud market grew 46 percent in the fourth quarter, and each of the biggest cloud companies benefited over the smaller ones. “In large part the expansion was driven by aggressive growth of Amazon (AWS), Microsoft, Google and Alibaba, who all increased their share of the worldwide market at the expense of smaller cloud providers,” Synergy wrote in their report.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday March 22 2018, @02:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the water,-water,-everywhere dept.

TRAPPIST-1's exoplanets appear to have migrated closer to TRAPPIST-1 over time until they reached their current orbits. This migration appears to have allowed them to retain too much water to support life:

What [the ASU-Vanderbilt team] found through their analyses was that the relatively "dry" inner planets ("b" and "c") were consistent with having less than 15 percent water by mass (for comparison, Earth is 0.02 percent water by mass). The outer planets ("f" and "g") were consistent with having more than 50 percent water by mass. This equates to the water of hundreds of Earth-oceans. The masses of the TRAPPIST-1 planets continue to be refined, so these proportions must be considered estimates for now, but the general trends seem clear.

"What we are seeing for the first time are Earth-sized planets that have a lot of water or ice on them," said Steven Desch, ASU astrophysicist and contributing author.

But the researchers also found that the ice-rich TRAPPIST-1 planets are much closer to their host star than the ice line. The "ice line" in any solar system, including TRAPPIST-1's, is the distance from the star beyond which water exists as ice and can be accreted into a planet; inside the ice line water exists as vapor and will not be accreted. Through their analyses, the team determined that the TRAPPIST-1 planets must have formed much farther from their star, beyond the ice line, and migrated in to their current orbits close to the host star.

[...] "We typically think having liquid water on a planet as a way to start life, since life, as we know it on Earth, is composed mostly of water and requires it to live," Hinkel explained. "However, a planet that is a water world, or one that doesn't have any surface above the water, does not have the important geochemical or elemental cycles that are absolutely necessary for life."

Called it.

Also at Phys.org.

Inward migration of the TRAPPIST-1 planets as inferred from their water-rich compositions (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-018-0411-6) (DX) (arXiv)

Related: Powerful Solar Flares Found at TRAPPIST-1 Could Dim Chances for Life
TRAPPIST-1 Older than Our Solar System
Hubble Observations Suggest TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets Could Have Water
Induction Heating Could Cause TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets to Melt
Another TRAPPIST-1 Habitability Study


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday March 22 2018, @12:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the make-fake-take-rake dept.

Google News Initiative announced to fight fake news and support journalism

Google is announcing new efforts today to support the media industry by fighting misinformation and bolstering journalism, which will live under a newly announced umbrella called the Google News Initiative. Google already offers something similar in Europe through the Digital News Initiative, but the Google News Initiative is intended to be a wider worldwide expansion of those kinds of efforts.

There are three specific goals of the Google News Initiative: highlight accurate journalism while fighting misinformation, particularly during breaking news events; help news sites continue to grow from a business perspective; and create new tools to help journalists do their jobs. Google is serious about supporting these goals, too, pledging to invest $300 million over the next three years.

Fighting fake news is obviously one of the most crucial parts of Google's forthcoming efforts. The company has had several brushes with disinformation propagating through search following events like the Las Vegas shooting last fall, making this an area where Google has room to improve. According to Google, the company is working to train its system to be better at recognizing contentious breaking news and adjust toward displaying more accurate results, using the recently added "Breaking News" section on YouTube as an example. But even with those improvements, Google still has problems with search results on YouTube, including issues where conspiracy videos topped the trending results last month following the Parkland shooting. It's good to see that Google is working to improve this, but it'll have a long way to go to regain users' trust.

Also at Bloomberg.


Original Submission