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takyon writes:

Deep Learning 'Godfather' Bengio Worries About China's Use of AI

Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian computer scientist who helped pioneer the techniques underpinning much of the current excitement around artificial intelligence, is worried about China's use of AI for surveillance and political control.

Bengio, who is also a co-founder of Montreal-based AI software company Element AI, said he was concerned about the technology he helped create being used for controlling people's behavior and influencing their minds.

"This is the 1984 Big Brother scenario," he said in an interview. "I think it's becoming more and more scary."

[...] The Chinese government has begun using closed circuit video cameras and facial recognition to monitor what its citizens do in public, from jaywalking to engaging in political dissent. It's also created a National Credit Information Sharing Platform, which is being used to blacklist rail and air passengers for "anti-social" behavior and is considering expanding uses of this system to other situations.

"The use of your face to track you should be highly regulated," Bengio said.

Bengio is not alone in his concern over China's use-cases for AI. Billionaire George Soros recently used a speech at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 24, to highlight the risks the country's use of AI poses to civil liberties and minority rights.

Also at Futurism.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

YouTube is trying to prevent angry mobs from abusing "dislike" button

YouTube's dislike button can be a source of anxiety for many creators, and now YouTube is considering a number of options to prevent viewers from abusing that tool. Tom Leung, director of project management at YouTube, posted an update to the Creator Insider channel recently in which he detailed some "lightly discussed" options for combatting "dislike mobs," or large groups of users who slam the dislike button on a video before watching the whole thing, or even watching the video at all.

[...] One of the new options YouTube has talked about is making those ratings invisible by default, so you wouldn't be able to see the number of likes or dislikes a video has. Other options include asking users to provide more information about why they disliked a video (possibly in the form of a checklist), removing the dislike count across the board, and removing the dislike button entirely.

Leung acknowledges that all of these options have pros and cons, and YouTube may not implement any of them after testing. Particularly, he notes that removing the dislike button from YouTube isn't the most democratic option, and it's quite extreme. Leung invites users to leave their own suggestions as to what YouTube should do in the comments of the update video.

While plenty of creators have fallen victim to dislike mobs, YouTube itself experienced a massive mob recently when its 2018 Rewind video became the most disliked video on the platform last year (as of today, it has 15 million dislikes). Millions of those dislikes may have been genuine, but it's possible that millions of other dislikes came from users hopping on the negativity bandwagon.

Is review/dislike mobbing a real problem? Is there a positivity bandwagon?

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A cryptocurrency exchange in Canada has lost control of at least $137 million of its customers' assets following the sudden death of its founder, who was the only person known to have access the the offline wallet that stored the digital coins. British Columbia-based QuadrigaCX is unable to access most or all of another $53 million because it's tied up in disputes with third parties.

The dramatic misstep was reported in a sworn affidavit that was obtained by CoinDesk. The affidavit was filed Thursday by Jennifer Robertson, widow of QuadrigaCX's sole director and officer Gerry Cotten. Robertson testified that Cotten died of Crohn's disease in India in December at the age of 30.

Following standard security practices by many holders of cryptocurrency, QuadrigaCX stored the vast majority of its cryptocurrency holdings in a "cold wallet," meaning a digital wallet that wasn't connected to the Internet. The measure is designed to prevent hacks that regularly drain hot wallets of millions of dollars (Ars has reported on three such thefts here, here, and here.)

Thursday's court filing, however, demonstrates that cold wallets are by no means a surefire way to secure digital coins. Robertson testified that Cotten stored the cold wallet on an encrypted laptop that only he could decrypt. Based on company records, she said the cold wallet stored $180 million in Canadian dollars ($137 million in US dollars), all of which is currently inaccessible to QuadrigaCX and more than 100,000 customers.

"The laptop computer from which Gerry carried out the Companies' business is encrypted, and I do not know the password or recovery key," Robertson wrote. "Despite repeated and diligent searches, I have not been able to find them written down anywhere."

The expert, she added, has already accessed Cotten's personal and work email accounts and is now trying to gain access to an encrypted email account. Cotten also used an encrypted messaging system, but the chances of successfully reading the communications appear dim because, the expert has reported, "messages would disappear from the encrypted messaging system after a short period."

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

On February 18th, Israeli firm SpaceIL is ready to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida what will become

the first privately funded mission to launch from Earth and land on the moon, and the first spacecraft to propel itself over the lunar surface after landing by "hopping" on its rocket engine to a second landing spot. The mission marks yet another milestone, not only in the history and technical arc of space exploration, but also in how humankind goes about space exploration.

The lander for the mission, dubbed 'Beresheet' which stands for "In the beginning", is

... about the size and shape of a family dinner table, roughly 6 feet in diameter and 4 feet high, weighing (on Earth) about 350 pounds.

The article neglects to mention that a single layer of approximately 462 of the landers would fit within the confines of an Ice Hockey rink.

Carrying instrumentation to measure the magnetic field of the moon, a laser-reflector provided by NASA and a time-capsule of cultural and historical Israeli artifacts, the mission will ride into space as a secondary payload — like a rideshare passenger — aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The primary payload is a communications satellite bound for geostationary orbit (less than 1/10 of the way to the moon). Once dropped off at geostationary orbit by the Falcon 9,

with a small amount of additional energy from its own propulsion system, Beresheet can boost its own orbit by positioning itself so that it's captured by the moon's gravitational pull. This process will take several weeks.

Once landed on the moon, however, the mission may only last a few more days. The lander is not designed for the long haul, but instead will demonstrate advances in technology as well as the business model for a privately funded spacecraft landing on another body in the solar system.

It is always possibile that future moon hikers will come across the lander's various landing spots on the lunar surface. No doubt future moon park rangers will inform them that Beresheet's hop locations can be identified by deposits the lander made which contain small bells and smell like pepper.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

During the NAFTA negotiations Bell Canada tried to make using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) illegal. While the treaty does not specifically have the term VPN in it, it does describe exactly what a VPN does. From the article:

Apparently, you can count Canadian telecom incumbent Bell among the companies hoping to ban VPN use. Anja Karadeglija, the editor of paywalled telecom news outlet the Wire Report, obtained documents this week highlighting how Bell had been pushing Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland for a VPN ban to be included in NAFTA negotiations. Why? It doesn't want users using VPNs to watch the US Netflix catalog:

"In its submission, Bell argued that Canadians accessing content from a US service with a VPN "unjustly enriches the US service, which has not paid for the Canadian rights" but nonetheless makes that content available to Canadians. Bell's media arm reportedly spends millions on content for it streaming service, Crave TV, which allows Canadians to stream content from American networks such as HBO and Showtime."

[...] How exactly you're supposed to determine that somebody is using a VPN to not watch Bell's own television services isn't really explained, and the fact that enforcement would likely be technically impossible appears to have been an afterthought. As Canadian Law Professor Michael Geist was quick to note, trying to ban VPNs just as they're reaching critical mass as a partial solution to raging North American privacy scandals suggests Bell may not exactly have its finger on the pulse of common sense on this particular subject.

Evil has a new name.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Netflix, Amazon, and Hollywood studios shut down maker of "free TV" box

The entertainment industry has scored a big victory over the maker of a "free TV" box that helped users watch pirated video.

Dragon Media Inc., whose "Dragon Box" device connects to TVs and lets users watch video without a cable TV or streaming service subscription, has agreed to shut down the Dragon Box services and pay $14.5 million in damages to plaintiffs from the entertainment industry.

Dragon Media was sued in January 2018 by Netflix, Amazon, Columbia Pictures, Disney, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros. Dragon Media's lawyer initially predicted that the lawsuit would backfire on the entertainment industry, but the Dragon Box maker must have decided it had little chance of winning at trial.Netflix, Amazon, and major studios sue maker of "free TV" box"Free TV" box lawyer says video industry is "digging its own grave"

The plaintiffs and defendant filed a proposed settlement Monday at US District Court for the Central District of California.

The settlement requires Dragon Media to "cease all operation of the Dragon Box system" and related services within five days. Under the settlement, "[j]udgment shall be entered against Defendants and in favor of Plaintiffs on Plaintiffs' claims of copyright infringement, and damages shall be awarded to Plaintiffs in the amount of US $14,500,000," the document says.

Dragon Media, Dragon Media owner Paul Christoforo, and reseller Jeff Williams "[s]hall be further enjoined from operating any website, system, software, or service that is substantially similar to the Dragon Box service," the settlement says.

The settlement also prohibits the defendants from making its source code or other technology available to others.

[...] Dragon Media temporarily stopped sales after the lawsuit was filed last year but "later decided to change its business model, moving from a Kodi-addon platform subscription-based services," TorrentFreak wrote today. "First, it moved to 'BlendTV' and a few months later to 'My TV Hub.'"

However, the settlement requires Dragon Media to shut down both BlendTV and My TV Hub at the same time that it shuts down the Dragon Box service. The settlement defines the Dragon Box Service as "the hardware devices preloaded with copyright infringing software, addons, programs, applications, and all related services that Defendant marketed, promoted, sold, and supported." The settlement defines BlendTV as "the copyright-infringing software, programs, applications, and services that transmit or otherwise communicate television programs and motion pictures over the Internet that Defendant marketed, promoted, sold, and supported."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Movie Piracy 'Alternative' UltraViolet is Shutting Down - TorrentFreak

When UltraViolet was first launched eight years ago, it was portrayed as a convenient alternative to piracy.

The cloud-based service, backed by major Hollywood studios, allows users to store digital copies of purchased films and TV-shows, which they can then easily access on various platforms and devices.

In the years that followed UltraViolet amassed over 30 million users, but in recent times things went downhill. The number of supported retailers slowly started to drop and this week parent organization DECE threw in the towel, Variety reports.

According to the official announcement, the planned closure on July 31 was triggered by “market factors” including the rise of new platforms.

“In the years since UltraViolet's launch, we've seen the emergence of services that provide expanded options for content collection and management independent of UltraViolet.  This and other market factors have led to the decision to discontinue UltraViolet,” the statement reads.

[...] The good news is that in ‘most’ cases, users can still redeem their UltraViolet codes through the retailers which are still operating. This includes VUDU, Kaleidescape, and Sony Pictures.

“In most cases, we anticipate very little impact,” DECE notes. “While there could be some disruption, we do not anticipate this on a broad scale and are working diligently to minimize and avoid such instances.”

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

A Federal Communications Commission lawyer faced a skeptical panel of judges today as the FCC defended its repeal of net neutrality rules and deregulation of the broadband industry.

FCC General Counsel Thomas Johnson struggled to explain why broadband shouldn't be considered a telecommunications service, and struggled to explain the FCC's failure to protect public safety agencies from Internet providers blocking or slowing down content.

Oral arguments were held today in the case, which is being decided by a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. (Audio of the four-hour-plus oral arguments is available here.) Throttling of firefighters' data plans played a major role in today's oral arguments.

[...] The lawsuit seeking to overturn the net neutrality repeal was filed by more than three dozen entities, including state attorneys general, consumer advocacy groups, and tech companies such as Mozilla and Vimeo.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/throttling-of-firefighters-hurts-fcc-case-as-it-defends-net-neutrality-repeal/

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Aetna makes an Apple Watch app—promises not to use activity data against you

Health insurance giant Aetna has teamed up with Apple to create a health-tracking app for Apple Watch that will have access to Aetna members' medical data and offer monetary rewards for meeting personalized wellness goals.

The idea is to go beyond basic activity monitors and generic step goals, the two companies said in a debut event today, January 29, in Boston. Instead, the app, called Attain, will create tailored goals—drawing from Aetna members' own insurance and medical information to do so—and provide nudges and incentives that aim to boost long-term health.

For any Aetna members wary of sharing such health tracking data with their insurer and Apple, the two companies emphasized that the app was packed with security features (such as continuous authentication) and privacy features (such as opt-in data sharing choices). Perhaps most importantly, Aetna promised that the "[i]nformation from this program will not be used for underwriting, premium or coverage decisions."

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

iRobot's Terra cuts the grass while you relax

For some, mowing the lawn is intensely satisfying. For others, it's a time-consuming chore. If the latter sounds like you, take heart. Help is on the way from iRobot, the company that gave us the Roomba robot vacuum. Its latest creation, the iRobot Terra, is a grass-cutting robot designed to autonomously trim your turf. According to iRobot, the Terra will be as smart and as easy to use as a Roomba.

iRobot's entry into the automated lawn care space is significant. It's another signal this market is growing. One report predicts that sales of these products will exceed $2 billion (roughly £1.52 billion/AU$2.79 billion) by 2022. The sophistication of robot mowers is also on the rise. Recently, multiple manufacturers announced that their models will soon work with Google Assistant and Alexa. They'll boast better navigation too, thanks to onboard GPS.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

How Space and Time Could Be a Quantum Error-Correcting Code | Quanta Magazine

So, how do quantum error-correcting codes work? The trick to protecting information in jittery qubits is to store it not in individual qubits, but in patterns of entanglement among many.

As a simple example, consider the three-qubit code: It uses three "physical" qubits to protect a single "logical" qubit of information against bit-flips. (The code isn't really useful for quantum error correction because it can't protect against phase-flips, but it's nonetheless instructive.) The |0⟩ state of the logical qubit corresponds to all three physical qubits being in their |0⟩ states, and the |1⟩ state corresponds to all three being |1⟩'s. The system is in a "superposition" of these states, designated |000⟩ + |111⟩. But say one of the qubits bit-flips. How do we detect and correct the error without directly measuring any of the qubits?

The qubits can be fed through two gates in a quantum circuit. One gate checks the "parity" of the first and second physical qubit — whether they're the same or different — and the other gate checks the parity of the first and third. When there's no error (meaning the qubits are in the state |000⟩ + |111⟩), the parity-measuring gates determine that both the first and second and the first and third qubits are always the same. However, if the first qubit accidentally bit-flips, producing the state |100⟩ + |011⟩, the gates detect a difference in both of the pairs. For a bit-flip of the second qubit, yielding |010⟩ + |101⟩, the parity-measuring gates detect that the first and second qubits are different and first and third are the same, and if the third qubit flips, the gates indicate: same, different. These unique outcomes reveal which corrective surgery, if any, needs to be performed — an operation that flips back the first, second or third physical qubit without collapsing the logical qubit. "Quantum error correction, to me, it's like magic," Almheiri said.

The best error-correcting codes can typically recover all of the encoded information from slightly more than half of your physical qubits, even if the rest are corrupted. This fact is what hinted to Almheiri, Dong and Harlow in 2014 that quantum error correction might be related to the way anti-de Sitter space-time arises from quantum entanglement.

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Move over trust falls and ropes courses, turns out playing video games with coworkers is the real path to better performance at the office.

A new study by four BYU information systems professors found newly-formed work teams experienced a 20 percent increase in productivity on subsequent tasks after playing video games together for just 45 minutes. The study, published in AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, adds to a growing body of literature finding positive outcomes of team video gaming.

"To see that big of a jump -- especially for the amount of time they played -- was a little shocking," said co-author and BYU associate professor Greg Anderson. "Companies are spending thousands and thousands of dollars on team-building activities, and I'm thinking, go buy an Xbox."

For the study, researchers recruited 352 individuals and randomly organized them into 80 teams, making sure no participants with pre-existing relationships were on the same team. For their initial experimental task, each team played in a geocaching competition called Findamine, an exercise created by previous IS researchers which gives players short, text-based clues to find landmarks. Participants were incentivized with cash rewards for winning the competition.

[...] The researchers found that while the goal-training teams reported a higher increase in team cohesion than the video-gaming teams, the video gamers increased actual performance on their second round of Findamine significantly, raising average scores from 435 to 520.

"Team video gaming may truly be a viable -- and perhaps even optimal -- alternative for team building," said lead researcher Mark Keith, associate professor of information systems at BYU.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Soycow

In 1987, a man, a woman, and their daughter attended a Tchaikovsky concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The most notable thing about their outing, all these years later, is something that actually wasn't the least bit unusual: The two women waited in an interminably long line for the bathroom, while the man did not.

What separates their uncomfortable experience from those of innumerable others is that the man in their party was a California state senator. After witnessing just how long his family members had to wait, he introduced legislation to guarantee the state's women more toilets.

In the three decades since, dozens of cities and states have joined the cause of "potty parity," the somewhat trivializing nickname for the goal of giving men and women equal access to public toilets. These legislative efforts, along with changes to plumbing codes that altered the ratio of men's to women's toilets, have certainly helped imbalances in wait times, but they haven't come close to resolving them.

"It still remains a huge problem today, overall," says Kathryn Anthony, an architecture professor at the University of Illinois who has studied the issue for more than a decade. The issue persists for many reasons: the exigencies of real estate, the building codes that govern construction, and, of course, sexism.

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/women-men-bathroom-lines-wait/580993/

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Athletics: Though it may not rank as high in viewership as World Cup Soccer (Football to the rest of the world), the 53rd Super Bowl® is tonight and historically sports (heh!) the largest viewership in the US of any other television broadcast. The game is being held at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia and features the 2-point favorite American Football Conference (AFC) champion New England Patriots vying with the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Los Angeles Rams to be crowned the champions of the National Football League (NFL) for the 2018 season.

The game is scheduled to start at 6:30pm EST (2330 UTC) and is being broadcast in the USA on CBS and, apparently, is also available for streaming on-line.

Advertisements: Over the years, it has grown to be a spectacle where the game play is occasionally overshadowed by the advertisements. An advertisement during this year's game sets a new record of over $5 Million for a 30-second spot. Some of the most memorable ads of all time premiered during the Super Bowl®. Who can forget the Macintosh 1984 ad or Michael Jordan and Larry Bird's game of "horse" where "nothing but net" became a meme?

An Experiment: In light of this opportunity, we are going to try something new for SoylentNews. We have set up a channel on our IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server especially for this game. The Patriots are favored to win over the Rams by two points, so the game may prove to be close... discussion about the game IS welcome. We are also offering a venue for people to discuss the ads that are broadcast, in real time. See an ad you thought was lame, say so! Laughed your butt off? Say that, too! The intent is to provide a shared space for the community to watch the game together.

Ground Rules: This is intended to be an enjoyable experience. In the sole discretion of the channel operators, ad hominem attacks, uncivil behavior, trolling, spamming, and politics are all grounds for getting kicked off the channel. Repeated violations will result in a ban from the channel and whatever other steps are deemed necessary to make it an enjoyable place for people to hang out and discuss the game and ads. In short, we are inviting you to our "living room" — have fun, but don't crap on our carpet. Let's put our differences aside and gather together for a shared community experience!

Sorry, no catering is provided, so you'll have to BYOB (bring your own... bacon =).

Details: Use your favorite IRC client or use the convenient link in the left-hand slashbox titled "SoylentNews". If you are new to IRC, these commands may be helpful:

# Pick a name for use on IRC:
/NICK mynickname

# Join the channel (be careful with the spelling!)
/JOIN #SuperBowlLIII

If you have any questions about getting connected, I'd advise joining an hour or so before the game; I'm sure folks will be ready and willing to help.

Lastly, have fun, enjoy the game, and may the best team win!

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

Korean Man who Died in Mexico Returned -- Missing Organs:

The body of a Korean man who died in Mexico has been returned to his family ― without his brain, stomach and heart.

Mexican authorities claim that the man, 35, surnamed Kim, died of natural causes despite a scuffle with other people just before his death. His widow fears that someone is trying to cover up the truth.

[...] According to the widow, Kim and other men were engaged in a fight at a Monterrey karaoke on Jan. 3, which was filmed by surveillance cameras there. In a few minutes, Kim passed out and was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

"More than a week later, I received the autopsy result that says 'no external injuries.' I was dumbfounded," she wrote on the Cheong Wa Dae website.

[...] She said Mexican police are not investigating the case because Kim died ― on paper ― of natural causes.

Original Submission