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Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)

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Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)

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COPPA imposes certain requirements on operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age, and on operators of other websites or online services that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information online from a child under 13 years of age.

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John Newman & Amy Ritchie, Bureau of Competition

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Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“COPPA”)

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COPPA imposes certain requirements on operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age, and on operators of other websites or online services that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information online from a child under 13 years of age.

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The Great Hack is a documentary that explores data exploitation in the context of the Facebook/Cambridge analytic scandal.

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THE GREAT HACK | A Netflix Original Documentary | NOW STREAMING

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The dark world of data exploitation through the compelling personal journeys of players on different sides of the explosive Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal.

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U.K. Parliament votes to continue democracy by Zoom

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U.K. Parliament votes to continue democracy by Zoom

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On Tuesday, U.K. lawmakers approved virtual Parliament.

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A handful of lawmakers returned from their Easter break on April 21 to approve the continuation of democracy via a "virtual Parliament." (Video: PARLIAMENTARY RECORDING UNIT)

LONDON - During the British Parliament's long and loquacious debates, the green leather benches in the House of Commons are usually packed with lawmakers, sitting cheek by jowl, shouting and sputtering at one another.
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The pandemic has stopped all of this close talking. Imperial College epidemiologist Neil Ferguson noted how particularly germy the Houses of Parliament are. Strict measures to enforce social distancing have essentially shut down the place in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, a handful of lawmakers returned from their Easter break to approve the continuation of democracy via a " virtual Parliament," a remarkable and unanimous vote to overturn the way things have been done here for over 700 years, and to keep on arguing - but at a proper distance.

House of Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, an old-school Conservative and Victorian scholar, said the new safeguards are necessary but not perfect - nor will they be permanent.

"In 1349, when the Black Death affected this country, Parliament couldn't sit and didn't. The session was canceled," he said. "Thanks to modern technology, even I have moved on from 1349 and am glad to say that we can sit to carry out these fundamental constitutional functions. And I am enormously grateful to many who are as traditionalist as I am who have accepted these constraints."

British politicians from across the political spectrum voted to go virtual, even as they insisted that the measures be temporary and last only long enough to get through the crisis. The new arrangements were first raised by the opposition Labour Party and agreed to by the ruling Conservatives.

The unanimity in Parliament contrasted with a fierce partisan debate in the U.S. Congress over how to conduct proceedings during the coronavirus pandemic. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) is among those who said he would oppose the House's proxy plan scheduled for a vote Thursday. "We should be here in person to vote," he said. "That's the way it's been done for 200 years. That's the way we should do it now."

For the coming weeks and perhaps months, the British Parliament will debate legislation and scrutinize the executive in weekly "Prime Minister's Questions" through new "hybrid proceedings."

Only 50 of the 650 elected members will be allowed to enter the chamber at the House of Commons at one time. They must sit at least two meters, or a little over six feet, apart. Members will be asked not to pass any notes.

Another 120 members will be allowed to participate remotely via teleconference.

It will be a Zoom Parliament, with the prime minister questioned by members from their homes, offering potentially new glimpses into the lives of the political class - with the prospect of children, partners and pets appearing in the background.

Which lawmakers participate in the House and via video will be allocaterd by each political party, based on the number of seats won in the last election. The impartial speaker of the House says he will choose representatives from all parties to speak.

Voting will also take place remotely. The government said that until balloting can be managed without threat of glitch or hack, it would introduce only legislation that would pass by overwhelming consent, meaning that no paper balloting would be necessary, just a virtual shout of "aye" or "no."

In the new virtual world, "some of the more boorish traditions, such as heckling from the backbenches, will no longer take place," reported the Guardian, because the staff of the speaker of the House will be able to select who is heard and who is not on the audio feed. Also, the newspaper said, "other parliamentary quirks, such as bobbing" - when members pop up and down from their benches to receive permission to ask a question - would probably not be Zoom-able.

Other legislatures around the world are continuing to meet in person but with social distancing measures, including the German Bundestag and Irish Dail, as well as deliberative bodies in Poland, Italy and France. The Canadian Parliament is going for one in-person assembly and two virtual sessions each week.

In Brussels, the European Parliament has moved much of its business online, even holding some of its votes by email, because many of its lawmakers are no longer able to travel from their home countries. European lawmakers say some aspects of the transition have been surprisingly smooth. Other parts - such as the give-and-take haggling that accompanies drafting legislation or other political deals - have been notably hard, some say.

On Tuesday at the Palace of Westminster, as the chambers were being outfitted with rows of new monitors and microphones, the House of Commons looked a bit like a lonesome bus station. Green plaques indicated where lawmakers were allowed to sit, with red plaques denoting the seats that should remain empty to maintain a safe distance. No one wore face masks.

Previewing the new way forward, the speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, dropped a videotaped message Monday evening, reminding the country that the cradle of parliamentary democracy had seen hard times before.

"The House has survived being burned down by the great fire of 1834 and bombed during the Second World War. We now face a new challenge, covid-19, an invisible killer that has claimed so many lives already. It means that when we come back from the Easter recess, our MPs and the House of Commons will have to work in a different way," he said.

The new way of working will begin in earnest Wednesday, when Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab - who is filling in while Prime Minister Boris Johnson recovers from a vicious bout with the coronavirus - will take questions from members, virtual and not.

Boris Johnson and his ministers accused of bungling coronavirus response, unleashing disaster

Europe thinks it is past the peak of the first wave of the coronavirus

As leaders seize powers to fight coronavirus, fear grows for democracy

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

Coronavirus: What you need to know

Vaccines: The CDC recommends that everyone age 5 and older get an updated covid booster shot designed to target both the original virus and the omicron variant. Here's some guidance on when you should get the omicron booster and how vaccine efficacy could be affected by your prior infections.

Variants: Instead of a single new Greek letter variant, a group of immune-evading omicron spinoffs are popping up all over the world. Any dominant variant will probably challenge a key line of treatment for people with compromised immune systems - the drugs known as monoclonal antibodies.

Tripledemic: Hospitals are overwhelmed by a combination of respiratory illnesses, staffing shortages and nursing home closures. And experts believe the problem will deteriorate further in coming months. Here's how to tell the difference between RSV, the flu and covid-19.

Guidance: CDC guidelines have been confusing - if you get covid, here's how to tell when you're no longer contagious. We've also created a guide to help you decide when to keep wearing face coverings.

Where do things stand? See the latest coronavirus numbers in the U.S. and across the world. In the U.S., pandemic trends have shifted and now White people are more likely to die from covid than Black people.
For the latest news, sign up for our free newsletter.

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U.K. Parliament votes to continue democracy by Zoom

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LONDON - During the British Parliament's long and loquacious debates, the green leather benches in the House of Commons are usually packed with lawmakers, sitting cheek by jowl, shouting and sputtering at one another. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia's war in Ukraine.

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This article goes over all the information that Google probably has about you. Google knows your search history,  your interests, identifying personal information, and much more.

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In order for Google to identify you, you have to have a Google account. Without one Google may well have anonymous data about you as a cookie on on a phone or computer, but it is impossible to know what data that is (just as it is impossible for Google to know who you actually are). So all of the information below relies on you being logged in to your Google Account, which I'm sure you have. Ever logged in to an Android phone or tablet, used Gmail, or used YouTube as a registered user?

The email and password you use for those things (or Google Calendar, Docs, Drive etc) is your Google Account. You may - as I do - have several. In which case you will need to repeat all of what follows for each account. Amuse yourself by spotting the differences between each account.

First, let's check the Basics.

How well does Google know me?

Google used to be only a search engine. Remember that? Almost certainly you still use Google Search, a lot. And Google collects a lot of data about the searches you make, as it says a lot about you. Sign in and head over to Google and view the search history that Google holds about you. It's actually quite freaky to see what Google knows you searched for. You can also see your YouTube search history here.

More prosaic but also critical basic information can be found in your account details. Sign in and head to https://myaccount.google.com/ to see the basic data you gave to Google. Head to Dashboard and you can see records of an array of Google tools, and your activity with them. We'll click into a couple of these further along, but suffice to say that this is an important dashboard for finding out what Google knows about you.

This is the basic data Google is likely to hold about you:

Your name, gender and date of birth

Your email addresses

Your phone numbers

Where you live

Where you work

Website you've visited

Searches you made on Google Search

Your ad preferences (more below)

Your interests

Places you've visited around the world

Your YouTube search history and recently watched videos

What you've said to the Google Assistant

How can I see my Google activity?

With ease, thanks to a relatively new tool that gives you a timeline of events and the ability to delete those events individually, should you want to.

Log into your account and head to the My Activity page. You'll see something like this:

This is what's called the Bundle view. You can drill down to the real details if you click Item view at the top left.

You can see more activity by clicking Other Google Activity from the left pane. This gives you links to many other Google services such as Sound searches, when you've left YouTube feedback or clicked on 'Not interested' on video suggestions, Google Play library information, Interests, News preferences, Call & Message information and even more.

How do I remove items?

Click the three vertical dots on any item in your activity to see a Delete option. However, bear in mind that only you can see this activity log: it isn't visible to others.

What does Google think you're interested in?

The principle reason Google tracks all this data about you is so that it can more successfully target you with advertising, in order to pay for the free services you access. Depending on your viewpoint (or demographic) this is either a sinister menace or a cool way of getting free stuff.

But it is interesting to find out just what Google thinks it knows about you, and how it uses that to target ads your way. Sign in and head to Settings. You will see what Google considers to be your gender and age, as well as your interests.

If you haven't told the truth when entering basic information - or you've never entered it - you might find it amusing that Google has your age or gender completely wrong.

When I do this test with my work email account Google thinks I am some sort of tech maniac. Which makes sense. But on my personal account my interests are naturally more broad. This matters because within this page you have the option to opt out of interest-based advertising.

These are adverts targeted at you because Google thinks you will be interested in their content. Personally I am happy to remain in - in part because I earn my living from advertising on this website, but mainly because it amuses me that all the adverts I see at work are for tech.

How to stop Google collecting your interests

You can opt out of interest-targeted ads by simply toggling off 'Ad personalization' using the button shown above.

You can also opt out of allowing website owners to track you via Google Analytics. Simply head over to the Google Analytics opt out page.

Where does Google think you've been?

One of the options available from the Google Settings Dashboard outlined above, is the ability to find out where Google thinks you have been. You can head there directly at Location History. This is typically tracked using the GPS in your phone: chances are even if you don't use an Android phone you'll still be signed into your Google account on an iPhone.

How to stop Google collecting location information

Click on Manage Location History at the bottom of the page and toggle off Location History.

What devices, apps and services have access to your Google data?

In many ways this is the most important test of all. One of the benefits of Android is that it lets you know what permissions are required by each app you install on Android.

But you encounter myriad Google apps and services on multiple devices. This page lists the devices and services, and what access they have. Click on a listed device and you can see further details and the opportunity to revoke, on the righthand side.

How can I change which Google information is visible to others?

With Google's About Me tool. This shows what's publicly visible, and you can click the pen icon to edit anything to remove it or change it.

It is well worth using Google's Privacy Checkup tool as well. Head to the Dashboard and click on the Get Started link. Now just go through the list and pick the options you're happy with.

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How to check what data Google holds on you - and how you can limit it

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Google holds a lot of data about its users, but won't sell it to other companies. It uses it to tailor which adverts it shows you, but you might be surprised just how much Google knows, and how easy it is to limit what it stores about you.

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This is a company aimed enabling people to protect their privacy on the internet and stop unwanted tracking and sharing of your personal information.

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This is an interactive documentary series that shows how we are tracked online and how others benefit from tracking us.

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Do Not Track, a personalized web series about privacy and the web economy. Directed by Brett Gaylor, coproduced by Upian, Arte, ONF & BR.

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Google blocking 18m coronavirus scam emails every day

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Google blocking 18m coronavirus scam emails every day

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There have been an increase in phishing attacks related to the coronavirus. Google blocks 18 million scam emails per day.

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Scammers are sending 18 million hoax emails about Covid-19 to Gmail users every day, according to Google.

The tech giant says the pandemic has led to an explosion of phishing attacks in which criminals try to trick users into revealing personal data.

The company said it was blocking more than 100 million phishing emails a day. Over the past week, almost a fifth were scam emails related to coronavirus.

The virus may now be the biggest phishing topic ever, tech firms say.

Google's Gmail is used by 1.5 billion people.

Individuals are being sent a huge variety of emails which impersonate authorities, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), in an effort to persuade victims to download software or donate to bogus causes.

Cyber-criminals are also attempting to capitalise on government support packages by imitating public institutions.

Google claims that its machine-learning tools are able to block more than 99.9% of emails from reaching its users.

The growth in coronavirus-themed phishing is being recorded by several cyber-security companies.

Barracuda Networks said it had seen a 667% increase in malicious phishing emails during the pandemic.

Scammers have been sending fake emails and text messages claiming to be from the UK government, the WHO, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and even individual US officials, including President Trump.

"Phishing attacks always share the common trait of inciting or depending on an emotion that causes us to act more hastily or think less about our actions at that moment in time," said independent security researcher Scott Helme.

"The coronavirus pandemic is a highly emotional topic right now and cyber-criminals clearly know this. They're hoping that the typical person might be more inclined to click through links or follow bad instructions if they use this lure."

'Exploitation'

Researchers have also found malicious websites and smartphone applications based on genuine coronavirus resources.

One malicious Android app claims to help track the spread of the virus, but instead infects the phone with ransomware and demands payment to restore the device.

Last week, the National Cyber Security Centre and the US Department of Homeland Security issued a joint advisory.

They said they had seen "an increasing number of malicious cyber-actors" that were "exploiting the current Covid-19 pandemic for their own objectives".

The NCSC has published advice on its website to help people avoid becoming the victim of a scam.

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Google blocking 18m coronavirus scam emails a day

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Scammers are sending 18 million hoax emails about Covid-19 to Gmail users every day, according to Google. The tech giant says the pandemic has led to an explosion of phishing attacks in which criminals try to trick users into revealing personal data. The company said it was blocking more than 100 million phishing emails a day.

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How Coronavirus Is Eroding Privacy                      Technology to track and monitor individuals aims to slow pandemic, but raises concerns about government overreach 

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How Coronavirus Is Eroding Privacy                      Technology to track and monitor individuals aims to slow pandemic, but raises concerns about government overreach 

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"The Covid-19 pandemic is ushering in a new era of digital surveillance and rewiring the world’s sensibilities about data privacy.

Governments are imposing new digital surveillance tools to track and monitor individuals. Many citizens have welcomed tracking technology intended to bolster defenses against the novel coronavirus. Yet some privacy advocates are wary, concerned that governments might not be inclined to unwind such practices after the health emergency has passed."

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In South Korea, investigators scan smartphone data to find within 10 minutes people who might have caught the coronavirus from someone they met. Israel has tapped its Shin Bet intelligence unit, usually focused on terrorism, to track down potential coronavirus patients through telecom data. One U.K. police force uses drones to monitor public areas, shaming residents who go out for a stroll.

The Covid-19 pandemic is ushering in a new era of digital surveillance and rewiring the world's sensibilities about data privacy.

Governments are imposing new digital surveillance tools to track and monitor individuals. Many citizens have welcomed tracking technology intended to bolster defenses against the novel coronavirus. Yet some privacy advocates are wary, concerned that governments might not be inclined to unwind such practices after the health emergency has passed.

Authorities in Asia, where the virus first emerged, have led the way. Many governments didn't seek permission from individuals before tracking their cellphones to identify suspected coronavirus patients. South Korea, China and Taiwan, after initial outbreaks, chalked up early successes in flattening infection curves to their use of tracking programs.

In Europe and the U.S., where privacy laws and expectations are more stringent, governments and companies are taking different approaches. European nations monitor citizen movement by tapping telecommunications data that they say conceals individuals' identities.

American officials are drawing cellphone location data from mobile advertising firms to track the presence of crowds-but not individuals. Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google recently announced plans to launch a voluntary app that health officials can use to reverse-engineer sickened patients' recent whereabouts-provided they agree to provide such information.

The first global pandemic in an age of ubiquitous smartphones has meant governments now have surveillance capabilities unimaginable during prior outbreaks. Data flowing from the world's 5.2 billion smartphones can help identify who, where and how people get infected-and lasso in those who might.

The extent of tracking hinges on a series of tough choices: Make it voluntary or mandatory? Collect personal or anonymized data? Disclose information publicly or privately?

In Western Australia, lawmakers approved a bill last month to install surveillance gadgets in people's homes to monitor those placed under quarantine. Authorities in Hong Kong and India are using geofencing that draws virtual fences around quarantine zones. They monitor digital signals from smartphone or wristbands to deter rule breakers and nab offenders, who can be sent to jail. Japan's most popular messaging app beams health-status questions to its users on behalf of the government.

Authorities in Moscow said last month they used facial-recognition technology to catch a Chinese woman who broke quarantine and was walking the streets illegally. The police in Derbyshire, England, used drones to spot residents venturing out to a scenic overlook. Kansas recently said it used third-party GPS tracking data to monitor whether people were abiding calls to stay at home.

A little more than half of Americans now back anonymized government smartphone tracking, according to a Harris Poll survey of about 2,000 people conducted between March 28 and 30. In another Harris survey last year, Americans indicated data privacy was the biggest issue facing companies.

The perceived invasiveness of such technologies varies, but the tentpoles are shifting, said Joseph Cannataci, the United Nations' special rapporteur on privacy rights. "Things are going too fast, and not enough scrutiny is being applied," said Mr. Cannataci, whose next report to the U.N. General Assembly in October will address coronavirus surveillance and privacy.

Security professionals say the coronavirus crisis could become a watershed moment similar to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which ushered in new government surveillance powers around the world in the name of protecting public safety. Jim Harper, an original member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, said that once such surveillance powers are in place, they rarely recede and can be repurposed as a political tool.

Surveillance efforts this time around have a new ally: public-health experts. They say some form of digital tracking will be necessary in the months ahead, even as people return to more normal lives after city lockdowns relax. Billions will live with a continuing coronavirus threat as the world waits for a vaccine.

Until then, technologies can allow officials to quickly identify carriers and stamp out new outbreaks before they spread, said Dale Fisher, an infectious-disease expert who investigated China's coronavirus outbreak with a World Health Organization team in February.

The biggest privacy debate has centered on the involuntary use of smartphones and other digital data to conduct contact tracing, a process of identifying everyone with whom infected patients had recent interactions. Such tracing typically relies on in-person interviews with the patient. After singling out at-risk individuals, authorities then test and quarantine them, preventing the further spread of disease.

The most aggressive pandemic surveillance so far has been in China. Authorities there used mobile-phone numbers and location data to trace the identities of thousands of residents who had left Wuhan, the earliest center of the outbreak, for other cities over the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday. The information was then passed to local officials and neighborhood minders, who asked the targeted individuals to quarantine themselves for two weeks-even though many had yet to show any symptoms. Chinese authorities also used travel records and security cameras to identify people who had been in contact with the country's coronavirus patients on trains, airplanes and street corners. Those residents also were put in forced isolation.

South Korea, a liberal democracy and one of the wealthiest Asian nations, built its coronavirus approach on public disclosures and technology. At its outbreak's peak in late February, it reported more than 900 cases in a single day. This week, the daily average is around 30-without resorting to lockdowns.

A sweeping infectious-disease law passed after South Korea botched its response to a different coronavirus five years ago-MERS, or Middle East respiratory syndrome-authorized officials to produce dossiers of confirmed patients using cellphone data, credit-card transactions and security footage. Authorities are using such information to identify people who have come into contact with coronavirus patients, then encourage them to get tested or stay home.

Suh Chae-wan of the Minbyun Lawyers for a Democratic Society, which focuses on human rights and democracy, said the government has accessed information on far more people than those with the virus. Even though officials are required to notify individuals when their personal information is being used for investigation, only confirmed patients themselves appear to have been notified so far, he said.

South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declined to say how many individuals' data had been accessed. It does so, a spokesman said, only when a person violates self-quarantine or if necessary for contact-tracing purposes.

South Korean government websites publish detailed reports about confirmed coronavirus cases. The reports include patients' ages, work and home addresses and personal details such as the restaurants they frequent and trips to family get-togethers and even to get massages. One aim was to show people where not to go.

Although the dossiers don't provide names, they sometimes provide enough clues for individuals to be identified. That has led to patients being targeted online with unfounded accusations and hate speech, according to a recent letter signed by more than a dozen South Korean advocacy groups, including the Minbyun lawyers organization.

On March 4, the country's infectious-disease law was expanded. It granted not just health officials, but local government heads, the power to request information. The government said it can identify and locate at-risk patients in 10 minutes or less by automating access to personal information.

One South Korean coronavirus patient detailed on her blog how quickly neighbors figured out her identity. Her apartment building name had been shared, and fellow residents started asking others what floor her family lived on and their room number.

"It gave me shivers," wrote the blogger, who didn't respond to interview requests. "I was afraid of how people would view me and my children, and worried people would come to our house. That was scarier than contracting the virus."

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mobilized the Shin Bet, the nation's domestic intelligence unit, to collaborate with the country's health ministry to halt coronavirus spread. The Shin Bet gained access to a telecom database previously used only to fight terrorism and espionage. That meant citizens who had come into contact with coronavirus carriers would be sent a text message telling them to quarantine themselves for two weeks. Those who knowingly violate self-quarantine face fines.

Officials at Israel's health ministry have praised the Shin Bet program, calling it crucial to stopping the spread of the virus. Some 500 people identified by the Shin Bet eventually tested positive, the agency said on March 26.

The Israeli Medical Association questioned why such intrusive monitoring was necessary with most of the public already largely confined to their homes by government order. In a letter to the Knesset, Israel's parliament, the association said the lack of input from epidemiologists and public-health specialists raises the likelihood of errors. It recommended testing and other preventive measures instead.

Within days, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the Knesset to set up a supervisory committee to oversee the tracking.

Tel Aviv gynecologist Itamar Zilberman got himself tested for the coronavirus after coming down with a fever and cough in mid-March. He initially tested positive, but a repeat check declared him free of the virus.

Israel health authorities input his data incorrectly because of a typing error, Dr. Zilberman said. The Shin Bet immediately began using cellphone location data to track down the people Dr. Zilberman had been in contact with. His colleagues and family received text messages from the government requiring them to stay home for 14 days, even though Dr. Zilberman faced no such restrictions.

Israeli health authorities didn't respond to emails seeking comment.

As Israel prepares to reopen, the country's defense minister wants to introduce a digital health-rating system that ranks all citizens on a 1-to-10 scale. Those with high risk would have higher scores. The real-time rating could nudge up, for instance, if government tracking reveals a person had recently visited an infected area. Anyone graded at 9.5 or above would have to be tested. The proposed system awaits signoff from the attorney general and prime minister.

In Germany, home to some of the world's most stringent privacy laws, Health Minister Jens Spahn, a conservative, defended a bill he proposed last month borrowing some mobile-phone tactics from South Korea to "very quickly investigate infection chains."

The proposal would have allowed officials to use cellphone data to track the movements of people who tested positive. The measure was quickly criticized by privacy advocates and rival political parties, and the bill was put on ice.

Lawmakers are learning that voluntary contact-tracing apps that claim to preserve users' privacy, such as the one proposed by Apple and Google, aren't effective without high levels of participation.

Only about one-fifth of Singapore's 5.6 million residents have downloaded the government's "TraceTogether" app, even after health officials implored citizens to partake. The tally must rise by millions more to be effective, the government said.

-Dasl Yoon in Seoul, Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv, Bojan Pancevski in Berlin and Rachel Yeo in Singapore contributed to this article.

Write to Liza Lin at Liza.Lin@wsj.com and Timothy W. Martin at timothy.martin@wsj.com

Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Liza Lin in Singapore and Timothy W. Martin in Seoul

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In South Korea, investigators scan smartphone data to find within 10 minutes people who might have caught the coronavirus from someone they met. Israel has tapped its Shin Bet intelligence unit, usually focused on terrorism, to track down potential coronavirus patients through telecom data. One U.K.

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UN chief: world faces misinformation epidemic about virus

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UN chief: world faces misinformation epidemic about virus

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The U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is urging social media organizations to do more to stop the spread of misinformation about the Coronavirus.

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that the world is facing "a dangerous epidemic of misinformation" about COVID-19 and announced a U.N. campaign to flood the internet with facts and science to counter what he called "a poison" that is putting lives at risk.

The U.N. chief decried what he described as a global "misinfo-demic" that is spreading harmful health advice, "snake-oil solutions," falsehoods, and wild conspiracy theories.

Guterres urged social media organizations to do more to counter the misinformation and to "root out hate and harmful assertions about COVID-19."

"Hatred is going viral, stigmatizing and vilifying people and groups," he said in a video statement. "Mutual respect and upholding human rights must be our compass in navigating this crisis."

The U.N. chief said people around the world "are scared" and want to know what to do and where to turn for advice, and they need science.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric stressed the importance of accurate information,

He said the United Nations "will be in touch with various social media companies," adding that quite a few of them are actively trying to root out disinformation and suspending accounts of people pushing out information "that is plain wrong and dangerous."

Dujarric said the U.N. recognizes the delicate balance between free speech and misinformation, saying "that's a balancing act that is played out every day around the world even in the most free democracies."

"The secretary-general is not going to be the one to decide," Dujarric said.

"What we are doing is we will push out scientifically based information, information that will help us as a global community fight the virus," he said. "Social media companies, news organizations are making those decisions all the time, but I think it is important that we all do what we can to fight the spread of dangerous misinformation on fighting the virus."

The secretary-general saluted "journalists and others fact-checking the mountain of misleading stories and social media posts."

He called for trust in science and in institutions "grounded in responsive, responsible, evidence-based governance and leadership."

"Together, let's reject the lies and nonsense out there," Guterres said. "With common cause for common sense and facts, we can defeat COVID-19 -- and build a healthier, more equitable, just and resilient world."

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UN chief: world faces misinformation epidemic about virus

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that the world is facing "a dangerous epidemic of misinformation" about COVID-19 and announced a U.N. campaign to flood the internet with facts and science to counter what he called "a poison" that is putting lives at risk. The U.N.

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Did You Fall For A Coronavirus Hoax? Facebook Will Let You Know

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Did You Fall For A Coronavirus Hoax? Facebook Will Let You Know

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In order to help stop the spread of false information, Facebook will be informing users if they interacted with fake posts. Users will be directed to the WHO's myth busters page.

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subscribe to Coronavirus Daily podcast

In a new move to stop the spread of dangerous and false information about the coronavirus, Facebook will start telling people when they've interacted with posts about bogus cures, hoaxes and other false claims.

In the coming weeks, Facebook users who liked, reacted to or commented on potentially harmful debunked content will see a message in their news feeds directing them to the World Health Organization's "Myth busters" page. There, the WHO dispels some of the most common falsehoods about the pandemic.

"We want to connect people who may have interacted with harmful misinformation about the virus with the truth from authoritative sources in case they see or hear these claims again off of Facebook," wrote Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president for integrity, in a blog post.

The new feature will go beyond Facebook's current attempts to keep dangerous misinformation about the virus off its network. Up until now, it has been notifying users only when they share a post that fact-checkers have labeled false.

This week, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned the world is facing "a dangerous epidemic of misinformation" about the coronavirus. And on Wednesday, the global advocacy group Avaaz released a study saying millions of users have been exposed to coronavirus-related misinformation on Facebook.

The study pointed to conspiracy theories that the virus was created by the World Health Organization and the Gates Foundation; false cures such as oregano oil and garlic; and the potentially lethal recommendation that drinking chlorine dioxide, an industrial bleach, will "destroy" the virus.

None of those are true.

"Not only is Facebook an epicenter of misinformation, but more dangerously, people's lives are being put at risk, because they're not being informed that this content was false," said Fadi Quran, campaign director at Avaaz. He said the new alerts are "a huge step forward."

A Facebook spokesperson said: "We share Avaaz's goal of reducing misinformation about COVID-19 and appreciate their partnership in developing the notifications we'll now be showing people who engaged with harmful misinformation about the virus we've since removed. However, their sample is not representative of the community on Facebook and their findings don't reflect the work we've done."

Avaaz examined 104 posts and videos in six languages, posted between Jan. 21 and April 7, that had been rated as false by independent fact-checkers. The study found these posts were shared over 1.7 million times and racked up 117 million views.

In 43 cases, the posts were still available on Facebook without any warning label indicating that fact-checkers had debunked their claims. Avaaz said after it shared the list of posts with Facebook, the company removed 17 of them.

Avaaz found it could take up to three weeks for Facebook to post warning labels or remove content that fact-checkers rated as false. Facebook declined to say how long it typically takes to flag or remove posts that violate its policies.

Rosen said Facebook has removed "hundreds of thousands" of pieces of virus-related misinformation that could lead to "imminent physical harm," including posts that promote fake cures or contradict advice about social distancing.

For other debunked claims, including conspiracy theories about the virus's origin, Facebook limits how many people see those posts and shows "strong warning labels and notifications" when people view them or try to share them.

Facebook displayed warnings on 40 million posts in March that included 4,000 articles found false by fact-checkers, Rosen said. "When people saw those warning labels, 95% of the time they did not go on to view the original content," he said.

Like many companies, Facebook has sent most of its workers home during the pandemic. It is now relying more heavily on automated systems to monitor and flag posts, which the company says could lead to more mistakes.

Avaaz is also examining misinformation on Twitter and YouTube, Quran said, to see how they are enforcing their policies.
Editor's note: Facebook is among NPR's sponsors.

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Did You Fall For A Coronavirus Hoax? Facebook Will Let You Know

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subscribe to Coronavirus Daily podcast In a new move to stop the spread of dangerous and false information about the coronavirus, Facebook will start telling people when they've interacted with posts about bogus cures, hoaxes and other false claims. In the coming weeks, Facebook users who liked, reacted to or commented on potentially harmful debunked content will see a message in their news feeds directing them to the World Health Organization's "Myth busters" page.

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Quibi Hits 1.7 Million Downloads in First Week

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Quibi Hits 1.7 Million Downloads in First Week

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Quibi is a new mobile video service that offers short programs designed to be viewed on the go.

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CEO Meg Whitman told CNBC that the mobile video service's debut "exceeded our plans."

Mobile video service Quibi had 1.7 million downloads during its first week, according to CEO Meg Whitman.

Quibi, which offers shortform episodic programming, was designed to be viewed on the go. Although the service launched April 6 amid the coronavirus pandemic, Whitman told CNBC host David Faber on Monday that sheltering in place "didn't hurt us at all."

The 1.7 million figure that Whitman cited does not indicate how many people signed up for the app, which is offering an extended 90-day free trial. Once the trial ends, Quibi will cost $5 with advertising and $8 without advertising. Whitman said that the initial reaction "exceeded our plans and expectations."

The exec explained that even while isolating at home, people are still finding time to tune in to the app's slate of programming, everything from the comedy Flipped starring Will Forte and Kaitlin Olson to a reboot of Punk'd, during breaks in the day. "Turns out, people have in-between moments at home; in between Zoom calls, in between wrangling the kids," she said.

Founded by Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Quibi has raised $1.75 billion to create a mobile-first streaming video service devoted to offering up bite-sized programming. Unlike streaming giant Netflix and newcomers like Disney+, Quibi isn't relying on libraries of licensed hits and well-known IP. Instead, it launched with 50 new shortform series, including news-driven programming called Daily Essentials.

In a March interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Whitman and Katzenberg acknowledged that Quibi would likely build its audience slower than Disney+, which shot out of the gate with 10 million signups and has 50 million paid subscribers after five months. "Hulu, Showtime, HBO, Netflix, none of them has ever behaved that way, and we won't likely either," Katzenberg said at the time. "We're not going to be a rocket ship."

On Monday's CNBC appearance, Whitman said she is "delighted by the launch," noting that 80 percent of people who start a Quibi show watch the entirety of the first episode. Completion rates are likely to be higher for Quibi shows in comparison to other streamers, given that all episodes run under 10 minutes each.

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Quibi Hits 1.7 Million Downloads in First Week

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Mobile video service Quibi had 1.7 million downloads during its first week, according to CEO Meg Whitman. Quibi, which offers shortform episodic programming, was designed to be viewed on the go. Although the service launched April 6 amid the coronavirus pandemic, Whitman told CNBC host David Faber on Monday that sheltering in place "didn't hurt us at all."

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Supreme Court to hear cases on Trump's financial docs, religious freedom and Electoral College via telephone

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Supreme Court to hear cases on Trump's financial docs, religious freedom and Electoral College via telephone

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The Supreme Court of the United States is transitioning to hear cases over the telephone in order follow public health guidance about social distancing.

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supreme court to hear cases on trump's financial docs

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religious freedom and electoral college via telephone - cnnpolitics

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Supreme Court to hear cases on Trump's financial docs, religious freedom and Electoral College via telephone

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Oral arguments will be made available for live audio broadcast in an unprecedented move.

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"A small team at the Library of Congress is archiving internet culture as fast as it can (now, from home).

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A small team at the Library of Congress is archiving internet culture as fast as it can (now, from home).

The web archiving team, photographed at the Library of Congress on March 4, is led by Abbie Grotke (wearing black). Credit... Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

Future researchers can rest easy: Know Your Meme, Urban Dictionary, Creepypasta and Cute Overload have all been preserved by the Library of Congress. So has the band website for They Might Be Giants and the entire published output of The Toast, the humor site that shut down in 2016.

And while the Library of Congress owns a rare print copy of the Gutenberg Bible, the web archive features the LOLCat Bible Translation Project, which rendered the bible in LOLspeak.

For the past 20 years, a small team of archivists at the Library of Congress has been collecting the web, quietly and dutifully in its way. The initiative was born out of a desire to collect and preserve open-access materials from the web, especially U.S. government content around elections, which makes this the team's busy season.

But the project has turned into a sweeping catalog of internet culture, defunct blogs, digital chat rooms, web comics, tweets and most other aspects of online life.

"Suddenly, these new technologies and social media platforms come in, and these new types of ways people were communicating or sharing data online," said Abbie Grotke, who leads the archiving team and has worked for the program since 2002, two years after its founding. "And we had to keep up with it all. There's always something new the web is throwing at us."

March turned out to be particularly chaotic. With an entire team working from home, the web archivists are participating in an international project to collect content around the coronavirus, as well as adding to the library's own collections about the pandemic. And, of course, it's still technically campaign season.

"We do an all-hands-on-deck," Ms. Grotke said."And we don't delete anything. We're digital hoarders."

We asked the Library of Congress digital archivists
to riff on popular memes

The web archive team has grown from one librarian who used to read newspapers and circle mentions of websites to a staff of five, along with employees from other departments who pitch in. It is hardly adequate, given their monumental task.

Already the library has amassed more than 2.129 petabytes of data - or put another way, 18 billion digital documents. And that's just a sliver of the internet.

"In the vastness of the web, what is the sampling of stuff that we can pull together that demonstrates what's going on now?" said John Fenn, the head of research and programs at the American Folklife Center. He is also one of about 80 recommending officers, who make suggestions for the library's archive - in Mr. Fenn's case, for the Web Cultures collection. (It is one of several thematic groupings in the archive, along with the Webcomics collection, American Music Creators and dozens more.)

"It's like whack-a-mole," said Gina Jones, a digital projects coordinator on the team.

The criteria for selection typically used by print archivists - value to future scholars, uniqueness of the material - still apply to the web archivists, though the high extinction rate of digital matter factors into decision making. One of the most recent acquisitions is the recently defunct Design Sponge, an interior decorating website that ran for 15 years. (Though it will cease to exist as a website, every single blog post will be fully accessible through the Library's web archive.)

The earliest material in the archive dates to the 2000 elections, when the web archive was still a pilot program. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, when heart-rending memorials and fierce political debates played out online, the library recognized the need for an official digital record.

For years, collecting was keyed to major news events: the Iraq War, the 2004 elections. Then, around 2009, came a more continuing, expanded approach that sought to reflect the web in all its dizzying newness.

It is inevitable that many things go uncollected or are lost forever. The recommending officers have regrets.

Megan Halsband, who oversees the Webcomics collection, still mourns the death of Joey Manley in 2013, and with him, the influential sites he published like Serializer and Girlamatic. And she has so far been unable to archive another popular webcomics site, The Oatmeal, because in that case, the cartoonist who runs it has never responded to her emails seeking permission. (The library has an opt-in policy.)

"It probably goes into their spam," Ms. Halsband said.

The Library of Congress Web archive isn't the only in-depth record of the internet and it is not as comprehensive as the Wayback Machine, which is a project of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit in San Francisco. (The Wayback Machine has been crawling the internet since 1996, preserving more than 411 billion web pages by recent count.)

But the Library of Congress digital collection carries with it the heft of the federal government and the official stamp of American history. Digital material that is chosen by the web archivists will live alongside the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, "Moby Dick" and other sacrosanct print holdings.

Ms. Grotke, 52, is of the generation who were adults when they first learned about the internet. In her case, it was back around 1993, at a house in the Dupont Circle of Washington, D.C., where a friend of her brother's lived. "He brought us over and we got to see Mosaic, an early browser," she said. "I remember clicking and, like, whoa, there's hyperlinks."

That wide-eyed reaction to the internet has morphed, over 18 years of trying to corral it, into a more seasoned outlook. "The web is messy, and the web archives are messier," she likes to say.

In addition to running the team, Ms. Grotke's other current task is to make the public aware of the archive's existence. The archive's website is available to anyone with an internet connection, but after 20 years it remains underutilized by the general public and the scholars it may be most beneficial to.

Ian Milligan, an associate professor of history at the University of Waterloo in Canada, has used the web archive to research the 1990s, and as a teaching tool in the classroom. Historians have had a long tradition of sitting down in a reading room, looking through tidily packaged print material, he said.

But with a digital archive, "we're talking petabytes of information. You need technical skills to work with this - skills that are beyond almost anyone in the social sciences," or the general public.

Ms. Grotke said that if the archive is slightly impenetrable at present, it's a consequence of limited resources and the ever-expanding ocean of digital content. "We don't have time to stop and make it more user friendly. We're just trying to collect it all" before it disappears, she said.

"Our archives are just massive and keep growing and growing," Ms. Grotke said. "And I have the same number of staff."

When Grace Bonney, the creator of Design Sponge, decided to stop publishing, she thought she would leave the website online indefinitely as a static archive for anyone who still wanted to read it.

But after a talk with her accountant, who explained the hosting fees would run to thousands of dollars each month - an unaffordable sum - Ms. Bonney ran into a paradoxical truth about the internet: Information doesn't live forever online.

Even websites as successful as Design Sponge, which played a pivotal role in teaching the first internet generation how to decorate and what to cook and where to buy paper goods sourced from Uruguay, are prone to disappear overnight.

Ms. Bonney had resigned herself to that fate when, last fall, she received an email that began: "The United States Library of Congress has selected your website for inclusion in its web archives. We consider your website to be an important part of this collection and the historical record."

To be asked to be part of the national record was "surreal," Ms. Bonney said. "When you work on the internet, it's easy to feel nothing ever happens. It can disappear in a blink of an eye," she said, adding, "to be one of the lucky few to have our work saved is like winning the lottery."

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A small team at the Library of Congress is archiving internet culture as fast as it can (now, from home). Future researchers can rest easy: Know Your Meme, Urban Dictionary, Creepypasta and Cute Overload have all been preserved by the Library of Congress.

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Apple and Google are launching a joint COVID-19 tracing tool for iOS and Android

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Apple and Google are launching a joint COVID-19 tracing tool for iOS and Android

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Apple and Google are working together to create a contract tracing app in order to help health authorities track the spread of the disease. There are some privacy concerns about centralized data collection. Apple and Google say they are committed to creating something that doesn't compromise personal privacy.

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Apple and Google's engineering teams have banded together to create a decentralized contact tracing tool that will help individuals determine whether they have been exposed to someone with COVID-19.

Contact tracing is a useful tool that helps public health authorities track the spread of the disease and inform the potentially exposed so that they can get tested. It does this by identifying and "following up with" people who have come into contact with a COVID-19-affected person.

The first phase of the project is an API that public health agencies can integrate into their own apps. The next phase is a system-level contact tracing system that will work across iOS and Android devices on an opt-in basis.

The system uses on-board radios on your device to transmit an anonymous ID over short ranges - using Bluetooth beaconing. Servers relay your last 14 days of rotating IDs to other devices, which search for a match. A match is determined based on a threshold of time spent and distance maintained between two devices.

If a match is found with another user that has told the system that they have tested positive, you are notified and can take steps to be tested and to self-quarantine.

Contact tracing is a well-known and debated tool, but one that has been adopted by health authorities and universities that are working on multiple projects like this. One such example is MIT's efforts to use Bluetooth to create a privacy-conscious contact tracing tool that was inspired by Apple's Find My system. The companies say that those organizations identified technical hurdles that they were unable to overcome and asked for help.

Our own Jon Evans laid out the need for a broader tracing apparatus a week ago, along with the notion that you'd need buy-in from Apple and Google to make it happen.

The project was started two weeks ago by engineers from both companies. One of the reasons the companies got involved is that there is poor interoperability between systems on various manufacturer's devices. With contact tracing, every time you fragment a system like this between multiple apps, you limit its effectiveness greatly. You need a massive amount of adoption in one system for contact tracing to work well.

At the same time, you run into technical problems like Bluetooth power suck, privacy concerns about centralized data collection and the sheer effort it takes to get enough people to install the apps to be effective.
Two-phase plan
To fix these issues, Google and Apple teamed up to create an interoperable API that should allow the largest number of users to adopt it, if they choose.

The first phase, a private proximity contact detection API, will be released in mid-May by both Apple and Google for use in apps on iOS and Android. In a briefing today, Apple and Google said that the API is a simple one and should be relatively easy for existing or planned apps to integrate. The API would allow apps to ask users to opt-in to contact tracing (the entire system is opt-in only), allowing their device to broadcast the anonymous, rotating identifier to devices that the person "meets." This would allow tracing to be done to alert those who may come in contact with COVID-19 to take further steps.

The value of contact tracing should extend beyond the initial period of pandemic and into the time when self-isolation and quarantine restrictions are eased.

The second phase of the project is to bring even more efficiency and adoption to the tracing tool by bringing it to the operating system level. There would be no need to download an app, users would just opt-in to the tracing right on their device. The public health apps would continue to be supported, but this would address a much larger spread of users.

This phase, which is slated for the coming months, would give the contract tracing tool the ability to work at a deeper level, improving battery life, effectiveness and privacy. If its handled by the system, then every improvement in those areas - including cryptographic advances - would benefit the tool directly.
How it works
A quick example of how a system like this might work:

1. Two people happen to be near each other for a period of time, let's say 10 minutes. Their phones exchange the anonymous identifiers (which change every 15 minutes).

2. Later on, one of those people is diagnosed with COVID-19 and enters it into the system via a Public Health Authority app that has integrated the API.

3. With an additional consent, the diagnosed user allows his anonymous identifiers for the last 14 days to be transmitted to the system.

4. The person they came into contact with has a Public Health app on their phone that downloads the broadcast keys of positive tests and alerts them to a match.

5. The app gives them more information on how to proceed from there.

Privacy and transparency
Both Apple and Google say that privacy and transparency are paramount in a public health effort like this one and say they are committed to shipping a system that does not compromise personal privacy in any way. This is a factor that has been raised by the ACLU, which has cautioned that any use of cell phone tracking to track the spread of COVID-19 would need aggressive privacy controls.

There is zero use of location data, which includes users who report positive. This tool is not about where affected people are but instead whether they have been around other people.

The system works by assigning a random, rotating identifier to a person's phone and transmitting it via Bluetooth to nearby devices. That identifier, which rotates every 15 minutes and contains no personally identifiable information, will pass through a simple relay server that can be run by health organizations worldwide.

Even then, the list of identifiers you've been in contact with doesn't leave your phone unless you choose to share it. Users that test positive will not be identified to other users, Apple or Google. Google and Apple can disable the broadcast system entirely when it is no longer needed.

All identification of matches is done on your device, allowing you to see - within a 14-day window - whether your device has been near the device of a person who has self-identified as having tested positive for COVID-19.

The entire system is opt-in. Users will know upfront that they are participating, whether in app or at a system level. Public health authorities are involved in notifying users that they have been in contact with an affected person.

The American Civil Liberties Union appears to be cautiously optimistic.

"No contact tracing app can be fully effective until there is widespread, free, and quick testing and equitable access to healthcare. These systems also can't be effective if people don't trust them," said ACLU's surveillance and cybersecurity counsel Jennifer Granick. "To their credit, Apple and Google have announced an approach that appears to mitigate the worst privacy and centralization risks, but there is still room for improvement. We will remain vigilant moving forward to make sure any contract tracing app remains voluntary and decentralized, and used only for public health purposes and only for the duration of this pandemic."

Apple and Google say that they will openly publish information about the work that they have done for others to analyze in order to bring the most transparency possible to the privacy and security aspects of the project.

"All of us at Apple and Google believe there has never been a more important moment to work together to solve one of the world's most pressing problems," the companies said in a statement. "Through close cooperation and collaboration with developers, governments and public health providers, we hope to harness the power of technology to help countries around the world slow the spread of COVID-19 and accelerate the return of everyday life."

You can find more information about the contact tracing API on Google's post here and on Apple's page here including specifications.
Updated with comment from the ACLU.

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Apple and Google are launching a joint COVID-19 tracing tool for iOS and Android

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Apple and Google's engineering teams have banded together to create a decentralized contact tracing tool that will help individuals determine whether they have been exposed to someone with COVID-19. Contact tracing is a useful tool that helps public health authorities track the spread of the diseas...

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Lawmakers outline proposals for virtual voting

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Lawmakers outline proposals for virtual voting

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"A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Tuesday called on House leaders to consider allowing votes on legislation by phone or video conferencing so they can conduct congressional business while still abiding by health guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic."

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A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Tuesday called on House leaders to consider allowing votes on legislation by phone or video conferencing so they can conduct congressional business while still abiding by health guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Problem Solvers Caucus, a nearly 50-member group of Democrats and Republicans, outlined multiple ideas for how the House could allow lawmakers to cast roll-call votes remotely on legislation during emergencies, like the coronavirus crisis, that make travel and congregating in large groups difficult.

"Unlike the flu pandemic of 1918, modern technology offers us a host of options to govern from afar, safely and securely, during these exigent circumstances," the caucus members, led by Reps. (D-N.J.) and (R-N.Y.), wrote in a letter to Speaker (D-Calif.) and House Minority Leader (R-Calif.).

The caucus members pointed to other legislatures around the world that have implemented systems allowing lawmakers to vote remotely on measures to address the pandemic.

"Similarly, we believe Congress must be responsive to the changing operational requirements created by the pandemic crisis," they wrote.

"As many of our states remain in lockdown and face public health threats, we acknowledge the difficulty in achieving a physical quorum in our chamber. Traditional travel to Washington, and congressional committee and floor work could create unnecessary risks," they stated.

The Problem Solvers members laid out three ideas for how lawmakers could cast roll-call votes while back in their home districts.

One would be for lawmakers to call the House clerk by telephone and log their votes by voice. Members would then receive an email confirmation to their House-provided email account. Ideas for verifying members' identities include confirming the numbers on their individual voting cards - which they use to vote electronically on the House floor - or having secure lines installed in their homes.

The letter also suggested having lawmakers use video conferencing to log their votes or an audio line for those who don't have internet access at home.

A third proposed option would be installing voting machines similar to those on the House floor in lawmakers' district offices or homes. But the Problem Solvers members acknowledged that it would "require substantial set up and planning, which would delay the utility of this potential solution during the COVID-19 crisis."

They also suggested using video conferencing for lawmakers to participate in debate on legislation, which could be conducted from district offices, members' homes or secure video lines in nearby military or law enforcement offices.

As for committee activity, the lawmakers proposed using a video conferencing system with "redundant systems in place" to prepare for potential disruption by hackers. They suggested that committee votes could be conducted like their proposed options for floor votes, such as secure video or phone.

House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), at the request of Pelosi, issued a report last month outlining lawmakers' options for voting during the pandemic. The report concluded that quickly establishing a remote voting system would not be feasible in the midst of a pandemic and that passing legislation by an unprecedented and untested system could lead to legal challenges.

The report issued by McGovern's office also floated potential rules changes, such as proxy voting that would allow an absent member to authorize another member physically present in the House chamber to cast a vote on their behalf.

But McCarthy has rejected the idea of proxy voting - which has precedent in committees - in arguing that it "puts too much power in one hand."

The House can pass bills by voice vote or unanimous consent without requiring all members to be physically present, but a single dissenting member can unilaterally block it.

House leaders faced a conundrum late last month when Rep. (R-Ky.) objected to passing a $2 trillion relief package by voice vote even though it otherwise had broadly bipartisan support.

Pelosi and McCarthy subsequently scrambled to ensure they had enough members on hand in the chamber to establish a quorum - in this case, a minimum of 216 members - to override Massie's objections. The bill still passed by voice vote, but House officials had to take special precautions like ensuring that lawmakers sat far apart from each other and disinfecting microphones after every use during floor debate.

Despite Pelosi and McCarthy's teamwork in ensuring they could get around Massie's demands, the two parties have otherwise not come to an agreement on alternatives to in-person voting during the pandemic.

But the proposals outlined by the Problem Solvers Caucus indicate that there are ideas that have at least some bipartisan support.

Pelosi last week dismissed the idea of remote voting, telling reporters "let's not waste time on something that is not going to happen."

Senate Majority Leader (R-Ky.) has also dismissed the idea of remote voting, despite calls for the move from some senators in both parties.

Both the House and Senate are scheduled to remain on recess until at least April 20.

While Congress has not been able to establish a way for lawmakers to cast virtual votes, legislatures in some U.S. states and other countries have created alternatives during the pandemic so they can vote using email, conference calls and video conferencing.

Spain, which currently has the second-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, already had a system in place for several years that allows members of its Parliament to vote remotely while they are on parental leave or dealing with a serious illness. Most Spanish lawmakers have taken to using that system during the pandemic to cast votes remotely while the country is on a national lockdown.

The European Union Parliament also allowed its members to cast votes by email on coronavirus relief measures last month.

And in the United Kingdom, House of Commons leaders said last week that they are reviewing how Parliament can operate virtually.

In the U.S., some state legislatures have changed their rules in recent weeks to allow remote voting. New Jersey legislators passed coronavirus relief measures by conference call last month, while Pennsylvania state lawmakers did the same with video conferencing software.

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Lawmakers outline proposals for virtual voting

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A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Tuesday called on House leaders to consider allowing votes on legislation by phone or video conferencing so they can conduct congressional business while still abiding by health guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic.

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Facebook launches an app for couples to talk to each other

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Facebook launches an app for couples to talk to each other

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The new app Tuned creates a social network just between the couple. Users can share their mood, exchange music, and create a digital scrapbook.

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First, Facebook launched a dating feature, and now, a small group within the company has launched an app designed for couples. The New Product Experimentation team's app, called Tuned, encourages couples to create an intimate social network between just each other. From the iOS-only app, they can share their mood, exchange music, and create a digital scrapbook. It's billed as a "private space" for both people to connect.

The app, as first spotted by The Information, connects to Spotify for music sharing, and a couple can send each other photos, notes, cards, and voice memos. They can also use custom stickers and reactions. It's free to use and seemingly doesn't require a Facebook account, although users are subject to Facebook's data rules, meaning the data people provide can be used for ad targeting.

Generally, this app doesn't seem much different than any other social network where people can chat directly with one another. You could, for example, send each other memos or voice notes with photos on any messaging app, but having a space solely dedicated to daily relationship maintenance could be helpful. Other relationship apps have created similar experiences with some offering activities or therapy techniques to practice.

The NPE team, which launched last summer, has already created a meme-making app, as well as one similar to Pinterest. Neither of these has gotten much promotional love from Facebook, so presumably, the company won't do a major push for Tuned either. Still, it's interesting to see Facebook experiment publicly with building apps for smaller social network connections, like it did with Threads, as well as Close Friends on Instagram.

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Facebook launches an app for couples to talk to each other

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First, Facebook launched a dating feature, and now, a small group within the company has launched an app designed for couples. The New Product Experimentation team's app, called Tuned, encourages couples to create an intimate social network between just each other. From the iOS-only app, they can share their mood, exchange music, and create a digital scrapbook.

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Attackers can use Zoom to steal users’ Windows credentials with no warning

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Attackers can use Zoom to steal users’ Windows credentials with no warning

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"Users of Zoom for Windows beware: the widely used software has a vulnerability that allows attackers to steal your operating system credentials, researchers said." The attack works using the Zoom chat window.

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Update: 4/2/2020 9:47 California time On late Wednesday, Zoom officials said that the UNC bug and a separate pair of bugs disclosed by researcher Patrick Wardle had been fixed. The video conferencing company also said it was enacting a feature freeze for the next 90 days so it could focus on securing the features that are already in place. Wednesday's post also said that the UNC vulnerability described in this post, and a separate pair of vulnerabilities researcher Patrick Wardle found in Zoom for macOS, have been fixed. What follows is the Ars post as it appeared earlier on Wednesday:

Users of Zoom for Windows beware: the widely used software has a vulnerability that allows attackers to steal your operating system credentials, researchers said.

Discovery of the currently unpatched vulnerability comes as Zoom usage has soared in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. With massive numbers of people working from home, they rely on Zoom to connect with co-workers, customers, and partners. Many of these home users are connecting to sensitive work networks through temporary or improvised means that don't have the benefit of enterprise-grade firewalls found on-premises.

Embed network location here

Attacks work by using the Zoom chat window to send targets a string of text that represents the network location on the Windows device they're using. The Zoom app for Windows automatically converts these so-called universal naming convention strings-such as \\attacker.example.com/C$-into clickable links. In the event that targets click on those links on networks that aren't fully locked down, Zoom will send the Windows usernames and the corresponding Net-NTLM-v2 hashes to the address contained in the link.

Attackers can then use the credentials to access shared network resources, such as Outlook servers and storage devices. Typically, resources on a Windows network will accept the Net-NTLM-v2 hash when authenticating a device. That leaves the networks open to so-called SMBRelay attacks, that can be used to gain unauthorized access to various resources. These attacks don't require a cracking technique to convert the hash to its corresponding plain-text password. Obtaining the hash and replaying it to a network service is sufficient to be authenticated.

"It's quite a shortcoming from Zoom," Matthew Hickey, cofounder of the security boutique Hacker House, told me. "It's a very trivial bug. With more of us working from home now, it's even easier to exploit that bug."

More than 24 hours after receiving a request to comment and nine hours after this post went live, a Zoom representative emailed with the follow statement: "At Zoom, ensuring the privacy and security of our users and their data is paramount. We are aware of the UNC issue and are working to address it."

The vulnerability was first described last week by a researcher who uses the Twitter handle @_g0dmode. He wrote: "#Zoom chat allows you to post links such as \\x.x.x.x\xyz to attempt to capture Net-NTLM hashes if clicked by other users.

#Zoom chat allows you to post links such as \\x.x.x.x\xyz to attempt to capture Net-NTLM hashes if clicked by other users.

- Mitch (@_g0dmode) March 23, 2020

On Tuesday, Hickey expanded on the discovery. He showed in one tweet how the Zoom Windows client exposed the credentials that could be used to access restricted parts of a Windows network.

"Hi @zoom_us & @NCSC," Hickey wrote. "Here is an example of exploiting the Zoom Windows client using UNC path injection to expose credentials for use in SMBRelay attacks. The screen shot below shows an example UNC path link and the credentials being exposed (redacted)."

The screenshot shows the Windows username as Bluemoon/HackerFantastic. Immediately below, the Net-NTLM-v2 hash appears, although Hickey redacted most of it in the image he posted.

Hi @zoom_us & @NCSC - here is an example of exploiting the Zoom Windows client using UNC path injection to expose credentials for use in SMBRelay attacks. The screen shot below shows an example UNC path link and the credentials being exposed (redacted). pic.twitter.com/gjWXas7TMO

- Hacker Fantastic (@hackerfantastic) March 31, 2020

Attacks can be mounted by people posing as a legitimate meeting participant or during so-called Zoom bombing raids, in which trolls access a meeting not secured by a password and bombard everyone else with offensive or harassing images.

Protect yourself

While the attack works only against Windows users, Hickey said attacks can be launched using any form of Zoom, again, by sending targets a UNC location in a text message. When Windows users click on the link while they're connected to certain unsecured machines or networks, the Zoom app will send the credentials over port 445, which is used to transmit traffic related to Windows SMB and Active Directory services.

In the event that port 445 is closed to the Internet-either by a device or network firewall or through an ISP that blocks it-the attack won't work. But it's hardly a given that this egress will be closed on many Zoom users' networks. The events of the past month have left millions of people working from home without the same levels of IT and security support they get when working on premises. That makes it more likely that port 445 is open, either because of an oversight or because the port is needed to connect to enterprise resources.

Zoom's statement didn't indicate when a fix will be in place. Until then, Windows users should be extra suspicious of chat messages that contain links. When possible, users should also ensure that port 445 is either blocked or can access only trusted addresses on the Internet.

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Attackers can use Zoom to steal users' Windows credentials with no warning

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Update: 4/2/2020 9:47 California time On late Wednesday, Zoom officials said that the UNC bug and a separate pair of bugs disclosed by researcher Patrick Wardle had been fixed. The video conferencing company also said it was enacting a feature freeze for the next 90 days so it could focus on securing the features that are already in place.

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Study: Fake Russian Twitter accounts politicized discourse about vaccines

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Study: Fake Russian Twitter accounts politicized discourse about vaccines

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"Activity from phony Twitter accounts established by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) between 2015 and 2017 may have contributed to politicizing Americans’ position on the nature and efficacy of vaccines, a health care topic which has not historically fallen along party lines, according to new research published in the American Journal of Public Health."

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BUFFALO, N.Y. - Activity from phony Twitter accounts established by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) between 2015 and 2017 may have contributed to politicizing Americans' position on the nature and efficacy of vaccines, a health care topic which has not historically fallen along party lines, according to new research published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The findings, based on machine learning analysis of nearly 3 million tweets from fake accounts, expose a general threat made startlingly more relevant in the face of the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus, according to Yotam Ophir, an assistant professor of communication in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, who co-authored the study.

"There is a real danger of health topics being politicized and used as propaganda tools. If that happens for topics such as coronavirus, people would be inclined to evaluate the importance and veracity of health messages - from either health experts, politicians, or trusted media outlets - based on how it reflects their political leanings," says Ophir, an expert in computational modeling, media effects and persuasion.

"If people perceive health topics as being aligned with a political agenda, whether it's left or right, then they will consequently begin to lose trust in health organizations and question their objectivity."

To understand why this might only be the beginning of more intense polarization is to understand that the threat posed by polarizing health care topics may be an unintended side effect of Russian attempts to influence other political discussions, including topics tied closely to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

"I don't believe the Russians wanted to sow discord around vaccines specifically, but rather chose to harness social tensions around vaccines in order to make the Republican characters they created appear more Republican and the Democratic characters they created to appear more Democratic. This intensifies a recently emerging divide where one previously did not exist."

The Russians' intentions in this particular case, however, don't matter when considering the implications for public health, according to Ophir. What is pertinent is that the IRA used a public health topic to serve its own strategic and political needs that targeted Republicans and Democrats with different messages. If that proves effective, the Russians will ramp up their misinformation campaign, moving from what might be an unplanned outcome to a more persistent and focused effort.

"In recent years, we see the change already with Republicans starting to lose trust in vaccines while Democrats seem unmoved," Ophir says. "Again, I don't think the Russians care about vaccines, but along the way they created and intensified this emerging divide.

"Now they can target each party with different messages, spreading misinformation unequally, targeting susceptible groups with lower trust in government and science."

Ophir's paper with Dror Walter, an assistant professor of communication at Georgia State University, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, began as a conversation at a 2018 conference, after it was first discovered that Twitter troll accounts were discussing non-political topics such as vaccines.

At around the same time, Jamieson published "Cyber-War," a book about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that identified thematic personas among Twitter trolls. These personas are designated topical and linguistic roles played by each fake account.

Inspired by Jamieson's work, previous research and Ophir's focus on connecting health misinformation and politics, the team used computational methods to identify nine personas among nearly 2,700 accounts.

The pro-Trump personas were more likely to express anti-vaccine sentiment, while anti-Trump personas expressed support for vaccines. Accounts falling under the persona type mimicking African Americans and Black Lives Matter activists also expressed more anti-vaccine messages.

The researchers used their own method, the Analysis of Topic Model Networks, to identify patterns among the nearly 3 million tweets and network analysis that treats each topic as a node in a semantic network.

This form of unsupervised machine learning finds associations and clusters that are beyond human reach.

"I have reason to strongly believe, though we don't have the data, that Russia and other countries who try to interfere in our political discourse will use coronavirus to spread misinformation and rumors to solidify the relationships they're building with new troll accounts that replace the ones removed by Twitter," says Ophir.

"The virus is not political, but when any health topic becomes a political matter at the expense of fact, the result is to base conclusions and make decisions, such as whether to social distance or not, on party loyalty, not science.

"That's extremely dangerous," Ophir says.

Media Contact Information

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Study: Fake Russian Twitter accounts politicized discourse about vaccines

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BUFFALO, N.Y. - Activity from phony Twitter accounts established by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) between 2015 and 2017 may have contributed to politicizing Americans' position on the nature and efficacy of vaccines, a health care topic which has not historically fallen along party lines, according to new research published in the American Journal of Public Health.

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Some mobile phone apps may contain hidden behaviors that users never see                  Study indicates a large number of apps may be vulnerable to hacking. 

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Some mobile phone apps may contain hidden behaviors that users never see                  Study indicates a large number of apps may be vulnerable to hacking. 

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A research team evaluated 150,000 apps from the Google Play store and found that about 8.5% contained "backdoor secrets- hidden behaviors within the app that accept certain types of content to trigger behaviors unknown to regular users." Some of the apps also had a master passwords, which allows anyone with the password to access the app and its private data.

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Some mobile phone apps may contain hidden behaviors that users never see

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A team of cybersecurity researchers has discovered that a large number of cell phone applications contain hardcoded secrets allowing others to access private data or block content provided by users.

The study's findings: that the apps on mobile phones might have hidden or harmful behaviors about which end users know little to nothing, said Zhiqiang Lin, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at The Ohio State University and senior author of the study.

The study has been accepted for publication by the 2020 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in May. The conference has moved online because of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

Typically, mobile apps engage with users by processing and responding to user input, Lin said. For instance, users often need to type certain words or sentences, or click buttons and slide screens. Those inputs prompt an app to perform different actions.

For this study, the research team evaluated 150,000 apps. They selected the top 100,000 based on the number of downloads from the Google Play store, the top 20,000 from an alternative market, and 30,000 from pre-installed apps on Android smartphones.

They found that 12,706 of those apps, about 8.5 percent, contained something the research team labeled "backdoor secrets" - hidden behaviors within the app that accept certain types of content to trigger behaviors unknown to regular users. They also found that some apps have built-in "master passwords," which allow anyone with that password to access the app and any private data contained within it. And some apps, they found, had secret access keys that could trigger hidden options, including bypassing payment.

"Both users and developers are all at risk if a bad guy has obtained these 'backdoor secrets,'" Lin said. In fact, he said, motivated attackers could reverse engineer the mobile apps to discover them.

Qingchuan Zhao, a graduate research assistant at Ohio State and lead author of this study, said that developers often wrongly assume reverse engineering of their apps is not a legitimate threat.

"A key reason why mobile apps contain these 'backdoor secrets' is because developers misplaced the trust," Zhao said. To truly secure their apps, he said, developers need to perform security-relevant user-input validations and push their secrets on the backend servers.

The team also found another 4,028 apps - about 2.7 percent - that blocked content containing specific keywords subject to censorship, cyber bullying or discrimination. That apps might limit certain types of content was not surprising - but the way that they did it was: validated locally instead of remotely, Lin said.

"On many platforms, user-generated content may be moderated or filtered before it is published," he said, noting that several social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, already limit the content users are permitted to publish on those platforms.

"Unfortunately, there might exist problems - for example, users know that certain words are forbidden from a platform's policy, but they are unaware of examples of words that are considered as banned words and could result in content being blocked without users' knowledge," he said. "Therefore, end users may wish to clarify vague platform content policies by seeing examples of banned words."

In addition, he said, researchers studying censorship may wish to understand what terms are considered sensitive.

The team developed an open source tool, named InputScope, to help developers understand weaknesses in their apps and to demonstrate that the reverse engineering process can be fully automated.

Other authors on this work include Chaoshun Zuo at Ohio State, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt at New York University, and Giancarlo Pellegrino at CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security.

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Some mobile phone apps may contain hidden behaviors that users never see

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A team of cybersecurity researchers has discovered that a large number of cell phone applications contain hardcoded secrets allowing others to access private data or block content provided by users. The study's findings: that the apps on mobile phones might have hidden or harmful behaviors about which end users know little to nothing, said Zh...

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Washington State signs facial recognition curbs into law; critics want ban

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Washington State signs facial recognition curbs into law; critics want ban

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"Washington’s law requires government agencies to obtain a warrant to run facial recognition scans, except in case of emergency. The software used must have a way to be independently tested for “accuracy and unfair performance differences” across skin tone, gender, age and other characteristics, according to the legislation, which applies to all public agencies in the state.

The law also requires training and public reporting around usage of facial recognition."

Microsoft supports this new law and sells facial recognition software. The State Senator that sponsored the legislation is a senior program manager at Microsoft.

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Tuesday signed the first U.S. state law that sharply curbs law enforcement's use of facial recognition technology, while civil rights activists said the measure did not go far enough to protect marginalized groups.

Facial recognition software can identify individuals in photos and videos based on a database of known subjects. The technology has won over businesses and police in the last few years despite objections that it invades people's privacy and exacerbates racial and gender biases.

Washington's law requires government agencies to obtain a warrant to run facial recognition scans, except in case of emergency. The software used must have a way to be independently tested for "accuracy and unfair performance differences" across skin tone, gender, age and other characteristics, according to the legislation, which applies to all public agencies in the state.

The law also requires training and public reporting around usage of facial recognition.

Previously, several cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, have banned government use of facial recognition, and California is among states that have barred facial recognition from being used in tandem with police body cameras.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington said it was disappointed and called for more discussion on whether facial recognition "should be used at all." It has called for a temporary moratorium on facial recognition usage.

Microsoft Corp, based in Redmond, Washington, sells facial recognition software and backed the new law. State Senator Joe Nguyen, who is a senior program manager at Microsoft, had sponsored the legislation.

Microsoft has said bans go too far and that real-world usage is needed to determine how best to regulate facial recognition. Brad Smith, the company's president, said the new law established civil liberty safeguards while preserving the public safety benefits, as when governments use the technology to find missing people.

"This balanced approach ensures that facial recognition can be used as a tool to protect the public, but only in ways that respect fundamental rights and serve the public interest," Smith said in a draft blog post shared with Reuters.

Other tech companies have taken a different stance. Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet Inc, said he was open to a "waiting period" before facial recognition is deployed.

Inslee vetoed part of the legislation that called for a task force to study the technology further and provide additional recommendations. He said there was no funding for the task force and suggested lawmakers instead solicit advice from local universities.

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Washington State signs facial recognition curbs into law; critics want ban

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Tuesday signed the first U.S. state law that sharply curbs law enforcement's use of facial recognition technology, while civil rights activists said the measure did not go far enough to protect marginalized groups.

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With Medical Equipment in Short Supply, 3-D Printing Steps Up in Coronavirus Crisis

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With Medical Equipment in Short Supply, 3-D Printing Steps Up in Coronavirus Crisis

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"Health-care workers are 3-D printing face masks and nasal swabs needed for Covid-19 testing"

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Health providers are turning to 3-D printers as a stopgap measure to fabricate the equipment they need, from nasal swabs to face masks, in the fight against Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Hospital system Northwell Health is producing nasal swabs in New York, the epicenter of the disease in the U.S. With more cases than any other state, New York has seen the effect of global supply-chain disruptions.

"We're drowning in it," said Todd Goldstein, director of 3-D design and innovation at Manhattan-based Northwell, referring to Covid-19 cases.

The nasal swabs that were being sent to health-care providers in the U.S. as recently as a few weeks ago were being manufactured in Italy and China, countries whose supply chains have been disrupted because they are centers of the coronavirus outbreak, said Summer Decker, associate professor at the College of Medicine Radiology at University of South Florida, which is affiliated with Tampa General Hospital.

Doctors from Northwell Health and the University of South Florida recently worked together to test, design and manufacture nasal swabs using 3-D printers from Somerville, Mass.-based Formlabs Inc. The idea came from the health-care providers.

Northwell Health, the University of South Florida and Formlabs each print the swabs at their facilities.

Northwell Health has the capacity to print as many as 3,000 nasal swabs daily for its hospitals and outpatient facilities, Dr. Goldstein said. The swabs are long, thin flexible sticks with bristled ends and are printed using a sterilized, surgical-grade resin. The swabs go through the nose to the back of the throat to collect a viral sample from a person's nasopharynx that is then sent to a lab for testing.

The 3-D printing technique "gives us hope that we can tackle this thing head-on, because without testing, we're not going to be able to quarantine people," Dr. Goldstein said.

3-D printers, used in industries from aircraft parts manufacturing to home building, are having a moment during the coronavirus pandemic. Suppliers of basic medical supplies, many located in areas crippled by the pandemic, can't keep up with rising U.S. demand. And as the mobilization in the U.S. of homegrown production still gears up, health officials and 3-D printing companies are sharing digital files which can be "printed" into potentially lifesaving equipment in a fraction of the time.

"Rather than waiting weeks to get your supply, you may pay more per unit, but you're getting parts the same week versus waiting. I think that's very important to consider," said Terry Wohlers, president of research and consulting firm Wohlers Associates Inc.

Recognizing the need for lifesaving components, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week issued updated guidance for health-care providers around 3-D printing specific medical devices and personal protective equipment. The guidance lists recommendations and precautions hospitals should take when 3-D printing and testing equipment.

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St. Luke's University Health Network is getting 250 face masks a week from Filament Innovations, a 3-D printing company in Bethlehem, Pa., where the hospital network also has its headquarters.

The design for the masks, which can be sterilized and reused, was taken from Thingiverse, a website where people can share digital designs. Filament modified the design to meet St. Luke's specifications and moved the wraparound band for a better airtight fit. The mask uses a HEPA filter, which is also used in air purifiers.

The 3-D printing community, from students to 3-D printing companies, has overwhelmingly reached out to offer help in printing equipment, said Megan Augustine, director of the network simulation center at St. Luke's.

One of the advantages of 3-D printing is that many products can be manufactured at a high rate using a single digital design, and the design and quantity can be adjusted as needed, said Dávid Lakatos, chief product officer at Formlabs.

The company, which typically prints products such as dental retainers, jewelry and movie props, among other products, can print as many as 100,000 nasal swabs daily from a facility in Ohio to help medical professionals across the country speed up testing for Covid-19, Mr. Lakatos said.

Dr. Decker of University of South Florida said she began researching whether 3-D printing could help address the nationwide shortage of testing swabs in early March. The shortage affected Tampa General Hospital.

In Tampa, a team of radiologists, infectious disease experts and ear, nose and throat physicians finalized the design for the nasal swabs, printed samples and confirmed that they were safe to use in about a week, Dr. Decker said. It could typically take as long as a year to get a new medical product to that stage, she added.

"The fact that everybody's really been able to set aside time and dedicate work to this is really phenomenal," Dr. Decker said.

Tampa General Hospital and New York's Northwell Health have been performing clinical trials on a small number of patients to measure the performance of the swabs printed by Formlabs.

"We've been able to make some tweaks to the design on the fly," Dr. Decker said.

Write to Sara Castellanos at sara.castellanos@wsj.com and Agam Shah at agam.shah@wsj.com

Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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With Medical Equipment in Short Supply, 3-D Printing Steps Up in Coronavirus Crisis

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Health providers are turning to 3-D printers as a stopgap measure to fabricate the equipment they need, from nasal swabs to face masks, in the fight against Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Hospital system Northwell Health is producing nasal swabs in New York, the epicenter of the disease in the U.S.

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Tech Giants Prepared for 2016-Style Meddling. But the Threat Has Changed.

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Tech Giants Prepared for 2016-Style Meddling. But the Threat Has Changed.

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Platforms such as Google and Facebook are spending billions to try and fix the problems of spreading fake news and misinformation on their platforms. However, they face new challenges as some of this misinformation comes from American (not Russian) led campaigns. Additionally, the coronavirus pandemic is straining Facebook's technical infrastructure.

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After spending billions to avoid a repeat of 2016, the tech giants are careening from crisis to crisis as their foes change tactics.

Credit... Nate Kitch

SAN FRANCISCO - The day after the New Hampshire primary last month, Facebook's security team removed a network of fake accounts that originated in Iran, which had posted divisive partisan messages about the U.S. election inside private Facebook groups.

Hours later, the social network learned the campaign of Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, had sidestepped its political ad process by directly paying Instagram meme accounts to post in support of his presidential bid.

That same day, a pro-Trump group called the Committee to Defend the President, which had previously run misleading Facebook ads, was found to be promoting a photo that falsely claimed to show Bernie Sanders supporters holding signs with divisive slogans such as "Illegal Aliens Deserve the Same as Our Veterans."

Facebook, Twitter, Google and other big tech companies have spent the past three years working to avoid a repeat of 2016, when their platforms were overrun by Russian trolls and used to amplify America's partisan divide. The internet giants have since collectively spent billions of dollars hiring staff, fortifying their systems and developing new policies to prevent election meddling.

But as the events of just one day - Feb. 12 - at Facebook showed, although the companies are better equipped to deal with the types of interference they faced in 2016, they are struggling to handle the new challenges of 2020.

Their difficulties reflect how much online threats have evolved since the 2016 election. Russia and other foreign governments once conducted online influence operations in plain sight, buying Facebook ads in rubles and tweeting in broken English, but they are now using more sophisticated tactics such as bots that are nearly impossible to distinguish from hyperpartisan Americans.

More problematic, partisan groups in the United States have borrowed Russia's 2016 playbook to create their own propaganda and disinformation campaigns, forcing the tech companies to make tough calls about restricting the speech of American citizens. Even well-funded presidential campaigns have pushed the limits of what the platforms will allow.

"They've built defenses for past battles, but are they prepared for the next front in the war?" Laura Rosenberger, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank that works to counter foreign interference campaigns, said of the tech companies. "Anytime you're dealing with a sophisticated actor, they're going to evolve their tactics as you evolve your defenses."

By most accounts, the big tech companies have gotten better at stopping certain types of election meddling, such as foreign trolling operations and posts containing inaccurate voting information. But they are reluctant to referee other kinds of social media electioneering for fear of appearing to tip the scales. And their policies, often created hastily while under pressure, have proved confusing and inadequate.

Adding to the companies' troubles is the coronavirus pandemic, which is straining their technical infrastructure, unleashing a new misinformation wave and forcing their employees to coordinate a vast election effort spanning multiple teams and government agencies from their homes.

In interviews with two dozen executives and employees at Facebook, Google and Twitter over the past few months, many described a tense atmosphere of careening from crisis to crisis to handle the newest tactics being used to sow discord and influence votes. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss sensitive internal issues.

Some Facebook and Google employees said they feared being blamed by Democrats for a Trump re-election, while others said they did not want to be seen as acting in Democrats' favor. Privately, some said, the best-case scenario for them in November would be a landslide victory by either party, with a margin too large to be pinned on any one tech platform.

Google declined to speak publicly for this article. Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, said the threats of 2016 were less effective now but "we've seen threat actors evolving and getting better." Twitter also said the threats were a game of "cat and mouse."

"We're constantly trying to stay one step ahead," said Carlos Monje Jr., Twitter's director of public policy.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, ordered a "lockdown" for hundreds of employees late last year.

A lockdown is Facebook-speak for a period of intense, focused effort on a high-priority project. The workers, who included engineers and policy employees, were ordered to drop other projects and build tools to prevent interference in the 2020 election, said two people with knowledge of the instructions.

For Mr. Zuckerberg, who once delegated the messy business of politics to his lieutenants, November's election has become a personal fixation. In 2017, after the extent of Russia's manipulation of the social network became clear, he vowed to prevent it from happening again.

"We won't catch everyone immediately, but we can make it harder to try to interfere," he said.

Facebook has since required anyone running U.S. political ads to submit proof of an American mailing address, and included their ads in a publicly searchable database. It has invested billions to moderate content, drawn up new policies against misinformation and manipulated media, and hired tens of thousands of safety and security workers.

In the 2018 midterm elections, those efforts resulted in a relatively scandal-free Election Day. But 2020 is presenting different challenges.

Last year, lawmakers blasted Mr. Zuckerberg for refusing to fact-check Facebook posts or take down false ads placed by political candidates; he said it would be an affront to free speech. The laissez-faire approach has been embraced by some Republicans, including President Trump, but has made Facebook unpopular among Democrats and civil rights groups.

Still, Facebook's rank-and-file workers are cautiously optimistic. In late January, just before the Iowa caucuses, a group of employees gathered at the company's headquarters for a party to celebrate the end of the lockdown.

For hours, they ate, drank, and watched a talent show featuring employee-led musical acts and improv comedy sketches. An Iowa state flag hung on the wall.

At one point, said two people who attended, a surprise guest entered: Mr. Zuckerberg, who stopped by to thank the team for its work.

Just after noon last Oct. 30, Jack Dorsey, Twitter's chief executive, posted a string of 11 tweets to announce he was banning all political ads from the service.

"Paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today's democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle," he wrote.

His zero-tolerance move was one action that Twitter and companies like Google have taken to stave off another election crisis - or at least to distance themselves from the partisan fray.

Over the past year, Twitter has introduced automated systems to detect bot activity and has taken down Russian, Chinese, Venezuelan and Saudi bots. The company also prohibited users from posting information illegally obtained through a security breach.

And this month, Twitter enforced new guidelines to label or remove deceptively edited videos from its site.

"We're moving away from a model of waiting for a report to spotting patterns of behavior that can spot stuff before it catches fire," Mr. Monje said.

Google, which owns YouTube, also altered its policies to prevent foreign-backed disinformation campaigns and introduced transparency measures for political ads.

The changes are evident in how the Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the Kremlin-linked news outlet RT - two of YouTube's most popular political newscasters in 2016 - no longer wield outsize influence on the site. Once YouTube tightened its hate speech policies, it banned Mr. Jones and other repeat offenders, and tweaked its recommendation algorithm to promote more authoritative news and fewer conspiracy theories.

Google security engineers said they were embedded in every corner of the company to look for Russian-style influence campaigns. They deliver daily threat briefings to executives and are conducting "red-team" drills to practice responding to hypothetical election-meddling scenarios, like hackers potentially manipulating the Google Maps locations of polling places on voting day.

Yet gaps remain in the tech platforms' armor.

Government officials and former employees said Twitter's algorithms were not reliably distinguishing between bots and humans who simply tweet like bots. Its efforts to label manipulated media have been underwhelming, said election campaigns. And some Twitter employees tracking election threats have been pulled away to triage misinformation about the coronavirus, such as false claims about miracle cures.

Threats have also emerged in unexpected places. In December, The New York Times revealed foreign spies were hiding in plain sight inside app stores from Google and Apple. Millions of users worldwide had downloaded a popular app, ToTok, which was leaking audio, photos, texts, and contacts to United Arab Emirates intelligence officials through a network of Emirati contractors.

Apple removed ToTok, but Google reinstated the app two weeks later. For six more weeks, Emirati spies continued siphoning off Google users' data, said security experts and intelligence officials.

Google, which declined to comment on ToTok, eventually removed it from its app store last month.

Tracing interference attempts to Russia, or any other country, has become increasingly difficult.

For Facebook, Google and Twitter, the complications were clear through the evolving tactics of Russia's Internet Research Agency, the troll farm that meddled online in 2016. Its trolls once barely made any attempt to hide themselves online, with misspelled posts riddled with poor grammar.

Now the Russian group has better disguised itself, posting divisive messages stolen from American sites or publications. The trolls may now also be paying Americans to post information on their behalf, to better hide their digital tracks.

In one Facebook influence campaign in Africa last year, the Russian group appeared to pay locals to attend rallies and write favorable articles about its preferred candidates.

"Figuring out who is behind these campaigns can take months, years even," said Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of site integrity.

To connect the dots, security executives from Twitter, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and other companies said they were meeting regularly with the Department of Homeland Security, the F.B.I. and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. They were also trading intelligence and discussing threats over encrypted chat messages with one another.

"I talk to them more than I talk to my husband," Mr. Roth said of his counterparts at Facebook, Google and other companies.

The most divisive content this year may not come from Russian trolls or Macedonian teenagers peddling fake news for clicks, but from American politicians using many of the same tactics to push their own agendas.

One chief perpetrator? The White House.

Last month, Mr. Trump and other Republicans shared a video of Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, during the president's State of the Union address. Ms. Pelosi had ripped up a copy of Mr. Trump's speech at the end of the address. But the video was edited so it appeared as if she had torn up the speech while he honored a Tuskegee airman and military families.

A spokesman for Ms. Pelosi called for the video to be removed from Facebook and Twitter, saying it was "deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people." But the companies said the video did not violate their policies on manipulated media.

This month, Dan Scavino, the White House social media director, shared another selectively edited video. It showed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. appearing to say, "We can only re-elect Donald Trump." In fact, the full video showed Mr. Biden saying Mr. Trump would only get re-elected if Democrats resorted to negative campaigning.

Facebook marked the video as partly false and limited its spread, but did not remove it. By the time Twitter labeled it as manipulated, it had been viewed more than five million times. Because of a glitch, some Twitter users did not see the label at all.

"The Biden video wasn't manipulated, and if Nancy Pelosi didn't want to see video of herself ripping up the speech, she shouldn't have ripped up the speech," said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump re-election campaign. He suggested that Twitter's efforts to label the video were evidence of bias.

Democrats have also pushed the envelope to get messages out on social media. Mr. Bloomberg's presidential campaign, which he suspended this month, caused headaches for the tech platforms, even as they took in millions of dollars to run his ads.

Among his campaign's innovations was buying sponsored posts from influential Instagram meme accounts and paying "digital organizers" $2,500 a month to post pro-Bloomberg messages on their social media accounts. The campaign also posted a video of Mr. Bloomberg's presidential debate performance, which had been edited to create the impression of long, awkward silences by his opponents.

Some of the tactics seemed perilously close to violating the tech companies' rules on undisclosed political ads, manipulated media and "coordinated inauthentic behavior," a term for networks of fake or suspicious accounts acting in concert.

Facebook and Twitter scrambled to react, hastily patching together solutions, including requiring more disclosure - or taking no action at all.

By then, the Bloomberg campaign, which declined to comment, had set a new playbook for other campaigns to follow.

"We can't blame Russia for all our troubles," said Alex Stamos, Facebook's former chief security officer who now researches disinformation at Stanford University. "The future of disinformation is going to be domestic."

Inside the tech companies, people charged with protecting the election have at times clashed with those whose job is to keep lawmakers happy, partly by avoiding the appearance of partisan bias.

At Facebook, those tensions spilled out last year.

In November and December, members of Facebook's security team clashed with the policy team, whose Washington-based leadership includes several former Republican operatives, over a network of Facebook accounts, groups and pages run by The Daily Wire, a right-wing media company started by the conservative pundit Ben Shapiro.

Facebook's security team had found The Daily Wire and other similar networks used tactics commonly associated with disinformation networks, including coordinating messaging and posts without indicating they were centrally administered, said people with knowledge of the findings.

Some security team members wanted an expanded mandate to investigate hyperpartisan networks based in the United States, the people said. But the policy team discouraged them and made it clear that foreign influence operations took priority over domestic ones, they said.

Part of the policy team's concern, said one employee who participated in the discussions, was that taking action against a prominent right-wing network could set off a Republican backlash.

Mr. Gleicher, of Facebook, said he did not recall tensions over The Daily Wire, adding that the investigation found the site did not meet the threshold for enforcement. He also disputed that Facebook had discouraged investigations into domestic influence operations because of possible political fallout.

"We make decisions based on behavior," he said. "Whether it's foreign or domestic, the question is, are they engaged in these consistent behaviors?"

The specter of partisan backlash surfaced again this month, when Mr. Trump's re-election campaign ran Facebook ads asking people to take an "Official 2020 Congressional District Census." In fact, the ads linked to a Trump campaign survey.

That prompted an uproar. Civil rights groups said the ads could mislead voters by suggesting they were connected to the official U.S. census.

Over a frenetic 48 hours, Facebook went into damage control. Although the social network has said it would not fact-check political ads, it also prohibits misinformation about the census.

The policy team initially decided the Trump census ads did not violate Facebook's rules. But a day later, under fire for inaction, a senior Facebook executive reversed the call.

The ads came down, after all.

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Tech Giants Prepared for 2016-Style Meddling. But the Threat Has Changed.

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After spending billions to avoid a repeat of 2016, the tech giants are careening from crisis to crisis as their foes change tactics. SAN FRANCISCO - The day after the New Hampshire primary last month, Facebook's security team removed a network of fake accounts that originated in Iran, which had posted divisive partisan messages about the U.S.

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Facebook Offers Clues to Medical Distress, Research Shows

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Facebook Offers Clues to Medical Distress, Research Shows

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"The language people use on Facebook subtly changes before they make a visit to the emergency department (ED), according to a new study"

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The language people use on Facebook subtly changes before they make a visit to the emergency department (ED), according to a new study published in Nature Scientific Reports.

A team of researchers in part led by H. Andrew Schwartz, PhD, Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, along with Sharath Chandra Guntuku, PhD, a research scientist in Penn Medicine's Center for Digital Health, compared patients' Facebook posts to their medical records, which showed that a shift to more formal language and/or descriptions of physical pain, among other changes, reliably preceded hospital visits. The study provides more evidence that social media is often an unseen signal of medical distress and could be used to better understand the contexts in which patients seek care, such as during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The study's researchers recruited 2,915 patients at an urban hospital who consented to sharing their Facebook posts and electronic health records (EHRs). Of those patients, 419 had a recent emergency department (ED) visit, ranging from chest pain to pregnancy-related issues. Posts from as early as two-and-a-half months before the date of the patients' ED visit were analyzed using a machine learning model that processed their language to find changes over time.

As patients got closer to their eventual ED visit, the researchers found that Facebook posts increasingly discussed family and health more. They also used more anxious, worrisome, and depressed language and less informal language such as "lol" "😊" or swearing.

"The decrease in informal language seems to go hand-in-hand with an increase in anxiety-related language," said Schwartz, who collaborated with the Penn Medicine Center for Digital Health, part of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "While it is hard to say right now if this would be the same result across multiple social media platforms, people live a lot of their lives online and Facebook is that dominant platform right now."

"The better we understand the context in which people are seeking care, the better they can be attended to," said lead author Guntuku. "While this research is in a very early stage, it could potentially be used to both identify at-risk patients for immediate follow-up or facilitate more proactive messaging for patients reporting doubts about what to do before a specific procedure." Guntuku and Schwartz designed and conducted the analyses along with Stony Brook University graduate student, Adarsh Kashyap, MS CS.

Ultimately, it was found that most patients underwent a significant change in language before they went to the ED. Before their visit, patients were less likely to post about leisure (not using words like "play," "fun," and "nap") or use internet slang and informal language (such as using "u" instead of "you").

When the researchers looked more closely at the context of some posts, they noticed there might be some clues to patients' health behaviors related directly to their hospital visit. One post, for example, talked about the patient eating a cheeseburger and fries less than a month before they were admitted for chest pain related to having heart failure. Another patient confirmed that they were following directions from their care team, posting about fasting 24 hours before they had a scheduled surgery.

"How does life affect personal decisions to seek care? How does care affect life? These are the things I would hope that we could fully describe, how people's everyday lives intermix with health care," Schwartz added.

The study primarily looked at the change in language before a hospital visit, but a previous study involving Schwartz and the paper's senior author, Raina Merchant, MD, the director of the Center for Digital Health, showed that a person's depression could be predicted through the language of Facebook posts as far ahead as three months before official diagnosis.

Guntuku said that there is tremendous potential in user generated content (on Facebook, Twitter, and now on smartphones) to study the behaviors and mental states that lead to a healthcare visit. "Any research in this domain must give patient privacy and agency utmost priority and transparency about where, how and by whom these digital markers are being used to understand health is critical," he added.

The researchers plan to study broader populations in subsequent studies in an attempt to understand what actionable and interpretable insights can be provided to patients who opted to share their data.

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college of engineering and applied sciences

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Facebook Offers Clues to Medical Distress, Research Shows | | SBU News

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The language people use on Facebook subtly changes before they make a visit to the emergency department (ED), according to a new study published in Nature Scientific Reports . A team of researchers in part led by H.

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There Is a Racial Divide in Speech-Recognition Systems, Researchers Say

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There Is a Racial Divide in Speech-Recognition Systems, Researchers Say

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"Technology from Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft misidentified 35 percent of words from people who were black. White people fared much better."

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There Is a Racial Divide in Speech-Recognition Systems, Researchers Say (Published 2020)

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Technology from Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft misidentified 35 percent of words from people who were black. White people fared much better.

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"The new institute will seek new ways of slowing the pathogen’s spread, speeding the development of medical treatments, designing and repurposing drugs, planning clinical trials, predicting the disease’s evolution, judging the value of interventions, improving public health strategies and finding better ways in the future to fight infectious outbreaks."

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A new consortium of top scientists will be able to use some of the world's most advanced supercomputers to look for solutions.

The Blue Waters supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Credit... C3.ai

Advanced computers have defeated chess masters and learned how to pick through mountains of data to recognize faces and voices. Now, a billionaire developer of software and artificial intelligence is teaming up with top universities and companies to see if A.I. can help curb the current and future pandemics.

Thomas M. Siebel, founder and chief executive of C3.ai, an artificial intelligence company in Redwood City, Calif., said the public-private consortium would spend $367 million in its initial five years, aiming its first awards at finding ways to slow the new coronavirus that is sweeping the globe.

"I cannot imagine a more important use of A.I.," Mr. Siebel said in an interview.

Known as the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, the new research consortium includes commitments from Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago, as well as C3.ai and Microsoft. It seeks to put top scientists onto gargantuan social problems with the help of A.I. - its first challenge being the pandemic.

The new institute will seek new ways of slowing the pathogen's spread, speeding the development of medical treatments, designing and repurposing drugs, planning clinical trials, predicting the disease's evolution, judging the value of interventions, improving public health strategies and finding better ways in the future to fight infectious outbreaks.

Condoleezza Rice, a former U.S. secretary of state who serves on the C3.ai board and was recently named the next director of the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank on the Stanford campus, called the initiative a unique opportunity to "better manage these phenomena and avert the worst outcomes for humanity."

The new institute plans to award up to 26 grants annually, each featuring up to $500,000 in research funds in addition to computing resources. It requires the principal investigators to be located at the consortium's universities but allows partners and team members at other institutions. It wants coronavirus proposals to be submitted by May and plans to award its first grants in June. The research findings are to be made public.

The institute's co-directors are S. Shankar Sastry of the University of California, Berkeley, and Rayadurgam Srikant of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The computing power is to come from C3.ai and Microsoft, as well as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. The schools run some of the world's most advanced supercomputers.

The institute plans to hold a virtual news conference at 9 a.m. Eastern on Thursday.

Successful A.I. can be extremely hard to deliver, especially in thorny real-world problems such as self-driving cars. When asked if the institute was less a plan for practical results than a feel-good exercise, Mr. Siebel replied, "The probability of something good not coming out of this is zero."

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Thomas M. Siebel, C3.ai's founder and chief executive. Credit... C3.ai

In recent decades, many rich Americans have sought to reinvent themselves as patrons of social progress through science research, in some cases outdoing what the federal government can achieve because its goals are often unadventurous and its budgets unpredictable.

Forbes puts Mr. Siebel's current net worth at $3.6 billion. His First Virtual Group is a diversified holding company that includes philanthropic ventures.

Born in 1952, Mr. Siebel studied history and computer science at the University of Illinois and was an executive at Oracle before founding Siebel Systems in 1993. It pioneered customer service software and merged with Oracle in 2006. He founded what came to be named C3.ai in 2009.

The first part of the company's name, Mr. Siebel said in an email, stands for the convergence of three digital trends: big data, cloud computing and the internet of things, with A.I. amplifying their power. Last year, he laid out his thesis in a book - "Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction." C3.ai works with clients on projects like ferreting out digital fraud and building smart cities.

In an interview, Eric Horvitz, the chief scientist of Microsoft and a medical doctor who serves on the spinoff institute's board, likened the push for coronavirus solutions to a compressed moon shot.

The power of the approach, he said, comes from bringing together key players and institutions. "We forget who is where and ask what we can do as a team," Dr. Horvitz said.

Seeing artificial intelligence as a good thing - perhaps a lifesaver - is a sharp reversal from how it often gets held in dread. Critics have assailed A.I. as dangerously powerful, even threatening the enslavement of humanity to robots with superhuman powers.

"In no way am I suggesting that A.I. is all sweetness and light," Mr. Siebel said. But the new institute, he added, is "a place where it can be a force for good."

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A new consortium of top scientists will be able to use some of the world's most advanced supercomputers to look for solutions. Advanced computers have defeated chess masters and learned how to pick through mountains of data to recognize faces and voices.

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Neighbors Are Reaching Out on Nextdoor            Homebound city dwellers are turning to a neighborhood app to connect, organize and help each other without risking physical contact.  

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Neighbors Are Reaching Out on Nextdoor            Homebound city dwellers are turning to a neighborhood app to connect, organize and help each other without risking physical contact.  

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Neighbors have been offering to help people they don't even know to pick up things such as prescriptions. Nextdoor is an app that neighbors can use to get recommendations and air grievances. It has seen an increase in engagement in some neighborhoods.

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Homebound city dwellers are turning to a neighborhood app to connect, organize and help each other without risking physical contact.

Credit... James Steinberg

"I'm 84 years old, so staying confined to the house for protection," wrote Marcia Savin, a children's book author and teacher who lives alone in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, on the neighborhood social networking app Nextdoor.

It was Saturday, March 21. Her prescriptions were ready at a local pharmacy, she said, but she couldn't pick them up "because I'm not leaving the house and they have stopped answering phone."

Soon, she said, she received five offers to help. "None of them were people I know," Ms. Savin said in a phone interview on Tuesday. "It's been quite heartening. This has been the only good side to all of this - the community reaching out."

So far, Laura Weiland, 32, has made two drop-offs at Ms. Savin's home. Their interactions are simultaneously neighborly and distant. "I'm completely confined," Ms. Savin said. She doesn't open the front door. "I see the person, I flip the check through the mail slot, I tell her to leave the supplies and I drag them in," she said.

Now she has her medicine, and her fridge is full. She is grateful to Ms. Weiland, whom she has never met without a phone, screen or door between them. Ms. Weiland, a marketing professional, described her neighbor as "lovely."

Before the virus, Nextdoor was, to most users, something between a hyperlocal Facebook and an updated version of Craigslist. (Users must register with their real addresses, which are confirmed by mail or cellphone billing address.) It could be a good place to ask for recommendations, sell old stuff or gain traction for a local interest or cause; it could also turn nasty, or paranoid, as a space for neighbors to air grievances about anything and everything, including one another.

In recent weeks, however, some New Yorkers, many isolated and under quarantine, have logged on, many for the first time, with a more focused and urgent set of questions. Last week, Nextdoor told CNN that engagement had nearly doubled. In Ms. Savin's neighborhood, the posts read like a diary of a neighborhood on lockdown.

There were inventory updates. The hardware store had received a fresh shipment of Lysol wipes and Purell, and a deli nearby had toilet paper. One poster with a friend who was ill was asking where to buy a thermometer; a small pharmacy had some a few days ago, wrote another neighbor.

There were also requests and offers. Did anyone have an old computer or laptop? No luck. A spare computer monitor? Available for pickup immediately. Protective gear for a risky but necessary journey? "I have a mask and gloves free," a neighbor said. MetroCards offered for free to essential workers? Claimed right away.

An international student needed at home, with nobody to take her pet bird. An offer from a "friend of a friend," then resolution: "I've just found someone through this post," the student said. "I am so, so grateful."

Nextdoor has added new features to the platform, including a map to which neighbors wishing to help can add their location and volunteering abilities, seizing a moment when neighborliness is both necessary and necessarily mediated. The company fast-tracked the rollout of a "groups" features, with which users can congregate around particular topics or causes. Upon opening, the app shows local announcements and general safety guidelines.

In New York, where millions of people are living under some of the country's strictest rules, users have been posting as they see fit, unsure, as in so many other things, what a local social network is for.

There are still relics of Nextdoor 1.0: complaints about discourteous runners, unverified rumors about what the city may do next and full-on conspiracy theories. The busybodies are still there, lecturing and occasionally yelling, somehow no more helpful than before, even in this golden opportunity for giving advice.

But Nextdoor was not built to be a disaster-relief platform. Its most vital role may be in directing people to organizations and networks best suited to respond to needs as the city weighs guidelines for safely helping neighbors.

Another of Ms. Savin's neighbors, Liz Baldwin, 31, a librarian at the New York Public Library, has used Nextdoor to spread the word about a group she started called Corona Couriers, through which bike couriers - some professionals, some just people with bikes and time - deliver essential goods to people in isolation all over New York.

The group quickly grew and now runs a digital call center and no-touch delivery service, with deliveries coordinated over Google Docs and Slack.

Shira Milikowsky, 38, who lives near Ms. Weiland, posted her own offer to help on Nextdoor. There she found a small army of others nearby who were also looking for ways to chip in. "It was people saying, 'me too, me too, me too,'" she said.

Another of her neighbors took this energy and "ran with it," resulting, along with the work of other organizers, and posts on local Facebook groups, in the creation of Brooklyn Mutual Aid, a group offering delivery services and social support across the borough.

"It did indeed start on Nextdoor," said Kate Ramsey, 45, a public health professional and one of the organizers of Brooklyn Mutual Aid. The service was a good place to gather names and gauge interest. It has since grown, much like Corona Couriers, into a humming logistical operation, overseen by a group of volunteers with various personal and professional backgrounds, likewise depending on various pieces of professional and personal software.

The organization, and others like it, are discovering the limits of neighborhood social networks, which are used by a tiny and often unrepresentative slice of a neighborhood's residents.

As such, efforts to connect with people who need the most help are turning low-tech: fliers around the neighborhood and at local essential businesses, outreach to churches and pre-existing community organizations, and calls to senior centers.

Nextdoor has also continued to function in another way: as an object of bewilderment and humor. Jenn Takahashi, 31, a tech worker in San Francisco who runs @bestofnextdoor, a Twitter account that collects strange, shocking and whimsical posts from the platform, hasn't been too surprised by what has been sent her way.

"Conspiracy theories, people trying to lighten the mood with humor, and the bad ones - racist submissions," she said. Ms. Takahashi also been sent lots of generous posts, including offers to run errands and face-mask giveaways.

There's still room for more lighthearted fare. A few residents of Minneapolis circulated a call to get together and sing from their front porches, inspired by videos of quarantined Italians singing from their balconies.

One later shared the experience, which was then shared with Ms. Takahashi. "I guess a bunch of people sang last night, and I tried it tonight," the poster wrote. "I was the only one on my block but it still felt really good, and just a little bit embarrassing."

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Homebound city dwellers are turning to a neighborhood app to connect, organize and help each other without risking physical contact. "I'm 84 years old, so staying confined to the house for protection," wrote Marcia Savin, a children's book author and teacher who lives alone in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, on the neighborhood social networking app Nextdoor.

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Pro and amateur cyclists meet in VR amid coronavirus race cancellations

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Pro and amateur cyclists meet in VR amid coronavirus race cancellations

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During this time of year, normally bike races would be occurring across Northern Europe, so professional cyclists have taken up racing online.

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It's not just football, basketball, Formula 1, golf, and baseball that have been canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak, professional road cycling has taken a big hit too.

At this time of year, most races take place across Northern Europe in many of the regions affected by the virus. As such, races are being canceled left, right, and center and many professional teams, like Mitchelton-Scott and INEOS, are actively avoiding the ones that were scheduled. But professional cyclists aren't letting the situation stop them - they're taking racing online.
[Read: How this VR video game is transforming indoor cycle training]
Throughout March, top flight pros from Mitchelton-Scott's men's and women's squads are taking to online bike racing game Zwift to keep their racing form. What's more, the team is even inviting regular ol' amateur Zwifters to come join the fun and race alongside the pros in the online world.

In the team's opening event earlier this month, more than 1,300 fans joined 30 of the team's riders to spin their legs around Zwift's virtual world, Bicycling Australia reports.

Riding indoors in Zwift is a dramatic improvement over old-fashioned turbo trainers, which were dull, boring, and monotonous.

In some cases though, Zwift is providing a more welcome distraction from the monotony of self-isolation and quarantine.

Late last month, riders were quarantined to their hotels in the UAE after the outbreak led race organizers to call off the country's national bike race. Last week, some riders were still holed up in their hotel with little to entertain themselves.

However, riders from French team, Groupama-FDJ, took to Zwift to partake in the virtual Denmark Cycling Union 2020 Cup in an attempt to get some race miles in their legs and sharpen their form.

Another French team, Cofidis, were also quarantined to their hotel. One of the team's riders, Nathan Haas, reached out to Zwift directly in an attempt to get something to stem the boredom and prevent a loss of fitness.

Hey @GoZwift any chance you can save the day here in the UAE? Our team is required to stay longer, any way you could get us some indoor trainers? I'd even create a special #quarantinerace if you'd like 🙌

- Nathan Haas (@NathanPeterHaas) March 1, 2020

As it turns out, Haas seemed to quite like his time on Zwift. Maybe he's a convert now?

Ok, so @GoZwift is more fun then I expected 🙌🙌🙌

- Nathan Haas (@NathanPeterHaas) March 6, 2020

For those just wanting to keep training, like British pro and Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas, Zwift is also proving a useful tool. And again, it's another opportunity to reach out to the fans and ride with them, even if it is all virtual.

No racing for a while so I'm saddling up in the Tour of Watopia again tonight... Group B at 5pm GMT / 6pm CET on @gozwift - see you there! pic.twitter.com/Ow8kGnWNbw

- Geraint Thomas (@GeraintThomas86) March 14, 2020

It should come as no surprise that some are even suggesting Zwift could step in and replace the canceled races entirely - a luxury most other sports can't enjoy (unless you finish the football season on FIFA?).

At the moment, Zwift is certainly proving to be a useful stand in for racing given the unique situation riders are under at the moment. Pros can race and ride together - with fans, too - on Zwift, but whether the platform can replace the real-world races entirely, is a very different ask. With the virtual nature of Zwift, ensuring races are fair requires a different strategy to conventional events.

Late last year, eRacing saw the first rider banned for what was categorized as "digital doping." The rider in question was sanctioned by the sport's governing body, but it also highlighted how far the sports governing bodies still have to go to ensure eRaces are as fair as possible.
For more gear, gadget, and hardware news and reviews, follow Plugged on Twitter andFlipboard.
Published March 16, 2020 - 11:29 UTC

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Pro and amateur cyclists meet in VR amid coronavirus race cancellations

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It's not just football, basketball, Formula 1, golf, and baseball that have been canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak, professional road cycling has taken a big hit too. At this time of year, most races take place across Northern Europe in many of the regions affected by the virus.

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Facebook Is ‘Just Trying to Keep the Lights On’ as Traffic Soars in Pandemic                The social network is straining to deal with skyrocketing usage as its 45,000 employees work from home for the first time.  

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Facebook Is ‘Just Trying to Keep the Lights On’ as Traffic Soars in Pandemic                The social network is straining to deal with skyrocketing usage as its 45,000 employees work from home for the first time.  

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Facebook is struggling to deal with the increased usage on its platform due to COVID-19. Employees are also having issues adapting to working at home because executives at the company value face-to-face meetings. There is also the issue of contractors not having the technology set up at home to work remotely in order to moderate Facebook's posts.

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The social network is straining to deal with skyrocketing usage as its 45,000 employees work from home for the first time.

Facebook's 45,000 employees have been asked to work at home during the pandemic, emptying the offices. Credit... Jason Henry for The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO - As the coronavirus spread around the world and people everywhere were ordered to stay home, phone calls over Facebook's apps more than doubled. In many countries, messaging on Instagram and Facebook soared by over 50 percent, while group calls in Italy jumped by more than 1,000 percent. And hungry for information, people clicked repeatedly on virus news stories shown by the social network.

Inside Facebook, that meant the pressure was on.

"We're just trying to keep the lights on over here," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said in an interview last week.

As airlines, hotels, restaurants and other companies struggle to stay afloat during the pandemic, Facebook is also laboring to cope with the fallout. But unlike those other businesses, the Silicon Valley giant is being strained by the coronavirus in a different way: Its usage is going through the roof.

Skyrocketing traffic and a crush of new users are now stressing Facebook's systems just as its 45,000 employees are dealing with working remotely for the first time. The company is also trying to keep its users' data secure while employees who sift through posts to moderate content do so from home. At the same time, Facebook has added to its workload by promising to do more to limit virus misinformation.

It is a pressure test moment for Facebook, which has for years grappled with a backlash over privacy and toxic content, but now has a chance to change that narrative and be seen as an essential communications and information tool during the outbreak.

"The usage growth from Covid-19 is unprecedented across the industry, and we are experiencing new records in usage almost every day," Alex Schultz and Jay Parikh, two Facebook vice presidents working on infrastructure, said in a blog post on Tuesday. "Maintaining stability throughout these spikes in usage is more challenging than usual now that most of our employees are working from home."

What has saved Facebook's network from crashing altogether, Mr. Zuckerberg said, was that the virus and the quarantines have had the largest impact in just a few areas where Facebook operates. Facebook is banned in China, where the virus first appeared, for instance.

Those areas that have the highest concentration of people using Facebook's services during peak hours from home are also spread out by time zone, Mr. Zuckerberg said, which staggers the swell of traffic.

"It really is a big technical challenge," he said. "We're basically trying to ready everything we can." He said Facebook had mobilized its engineers to make sure the company has enough computing capacity and adequate support to handle the surges.

The strain has been compounded by Facebook's work force adapting to working from home, which had been discouraged in the past.

The company's executives have long preached internally that face-to-face meetings and in-person collaboration were central to Facebook's success. The importance of in-person conversation was so great that employees at offices from Singapore to New York were frequently asked to travel to the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., for quarterly meetings.

That has made the transition to working from home especially difficult, said four Facebook employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

To communicate, Facebook employees were told to use BlueJeans, which provides technology for videoconferencing calls, they said. But they quickly found that calls were frozen, or the video quality so bad that it was hard to make out who was speaking. Many employees instead turned to Apple's FaceTime feature, Google video hangouts or Zoom conference calls. Some even built their own version of a video conference call, according to two employees.

Issues quickly piled up.

Two days into working from home, some Facebook managers sent the engineering teams a message: limit idle chat on work message boards.

Facebook employees had been posting on those boards at a record rate, according to one employee. While some workers were sharing tips and best practices of how to set up a home office, others were sharing links to buy heirloom seeds for at-home farming, and instructions on how to sew their own face masks, one employee said.

Other snafus surfaced.

Last week, a bug within Facebook's system began marking thousands of posts by major news outlets like Politico and The Sydney Morning Herald as spam, which resulted in the removal of the posts. It took Facebook a day to correct the mistake, as engineers struggled to communicate remotely with one another over how the bug had been introduced and what it would take to fix it.

While they scrambled, rumors spread among Facebook's users over the source of the bug, with many accusing the company of censoring people's speech. Internally, Facebook managers said that while the bug was routine, the amount of time it took to fix it was not.

"This was just a technical error, and we're still doing the post-mortem to understand what happened so we can operationalize any learnings from that," Mr. Zuckerberg said last week.

Working from home has also made moderating Facebook's posts more difficult. This month, Facebook put its army of global contractors from outside agencies on paid leave. Those contractors, who number over 15,000, are responsible for sorting through the posts, images and videos that flow through Facebook's services on a daily basis to weed out sensitive, explicit or hateful material.

As the outbreak spread, contractors were ordered not to come into the office, where they worked on protected networks behind virtual firewalls to maintain user privacy. Many of those contractors do not have the same technology setup at home.

Facebook is still trying to figure out how to let the contractors continue working. For now, it is relying on full-time employees, who do not have the training or the time, to moderate the posts themselves.

Given that, Facebook employees have been asked to remove only the most sensitive, fringe posts, said one employee. The company also told employees that it would rely more heavily on their artificial intelligence systems to flag and remove posts.

"I do think it's reasonable to expect that for some of the other categories where the severity might not be as imminent or extreme, that we may be a little less effective in the near term while we're adjusting to this," Mr. Zuckerberg said.

While Facebook's usage is soaring, that may not translate into financial gains. Most of the increase in traffic has occurred on the company's messaging services - like WhatsApp and Messenger - which bring in relatively little revenue. And though more people are using the main News Feed and Facebook Stories in the core app, the company said it wasn't immune to a wider pullback in advertising.

"Our business is being adversely affected like so many others around the world," Mr. Schultz and Mr. Parikh said in the blog post. "We've seen a weakening in our ads business in countries taking aggressive actions to reduce the spread of Covid-19."

Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook was doing what it could to prepare for the weeks ahead, as it doesn't anticipate the issues to abate anytime soon.

"I've never seen anything like this before," he said.

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Facebook Is 'Just Trying to Keep the Lights On' as Traffic Soars in Pandemic

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The social network is straining to deal with skyrocketing usage as its 45,000 employees work from home for the first time. SAN FRANCISCO - As the coronavirus spread around the world and people everywhere were ordered to stay home, phone calls over Facebook's apps more than doubled.

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Houseparty is another social networking platform that was popular a couple years ago, but some people are starting to use it again since they are stuck at home for the foreseeable future.

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Disney+ Joins Netflix, Apple, Amazon And YouTube In Throttling Streaming Quality During Coronavirus Outbreak

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Disney+ Joins Netflix, Apple, Amazon And YouTube In Throttling Streaming Quality During Coronavirus Outbreak

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Disney+ was set to launch in Europe on March 24th, but they will also be throttling streaming quality to help the broadband systems cope with increased usage. Additionally, Disney pushed its launch in France back until April 7th.

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On the eve of its main European launch, Disney+ has announced that it's going to be joining the other major video streaming services by throttling back its 'bandwidth utilisation' across Europe in a bid to, supposedly, help broadband systems cope with the increase in demand caused by anti-Coronavirus measures.

In fact, Disney+ has gone even further in France, where in response to the request of the French government it's actually postponed its launch from March 24 until April 7.

The Disney+ news came in a statement today from Kevin Mayer, Walt Disney Company's Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer And International. As with Netflix, which became the first platform to announce a reduction in its streaming bandwidth on Thursday, Disney+ is "proactively instituting measures to lower our overall bandwidth utilization by at least 25% in all of the markets launching Disney+ on March 24th."

Mayer's statement goes further than anything Netflix has confirmed to date, though, by saying that "In the coming days, we will be monitoring Internet congestion and working closely with Internet service providers to further reduce bitrates as necessary to ensure they are not overwhelmed by consumer demand." In other words, 25% might just be the start.

'Look softer on TV than I should I might' - Disney+ has announced it's reducing its streaming ... [+]
Photo: The Mandalorian, Walt Disney Studios

This all started last week on the back of a phone call between EU Commissioner Thierry Breton and Netflix CEO Max Hastings. As reported here, during this call it appears that Breton asked the streaming giant to stop streaming high definition and stick to standard definition to ease pressure on broadband services while so many children and employees are now self-isolating at home.

Fortunately in these days of 4K and 8K TVs, Netflix decided not to comply with Breton's wishes of pointlessly streaming everything in standard definition. Instead it compromised and said it was going to start limiting its bandwidth usage by 25%.

Once Netflix had made this move it was pretty much inevitable that the other major streaming platforms would follow suit, rather than risk looking like they were being 'irresponsible' in a time of global crisis.

As I noted in my story about Netflix throttling its bandwidth on Thursday, though, it's unclear at this point just how necessary any of this is. So far, all of the main UK internet providers, at least, are reporting that while they have indeed seen usage of their services rise between 20 and 50 percent in the past few days, they are still not concerned about being able to meet the demands of the self-isolating, home-working masses.

Furthermore, as reported by decrypt.co soon after the Netflix announcement on Thursday, David Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT and renowned Internet pioneer, believes the move to be unnecessary. He states that there's plenty of internet bandwidth to go around - in Europe as well as in the rest of the Web-connected world. "[What's happening] just tells me they don't understand how the Internet works," Clark concludes. (I strongly recommend you read the whole article once you've finished this one.)

People who have complained about these moves to downgrade the quality of streaming services have been accused by some of selfishly caring more about how good their streamed picture quality looks than the horrors of the Coronavirus pandemic.

In reality, though, the issue here - at least as things stand at the time of writing - is not about self-entitled video fans. Rather it's about the apparent power of one EU commissioner with seemingly questionable levels of technical knowledge (it's notable that Breton talked of switching HD to SD, with no mention of switching, say, 4K to HD) to be able to cause a reduction in the quality of paid-for entertainment services across an entire continent with apparently little if any actual justification or scrutiny.

Further to this point, it's noticeable that none of the streaming services have decided to reduce their bandwidth utilization outside of Europe, despite Coronavirus now being a truly global threat.

None of the streaming services have been prepared to discuss in any technical detail how they're achieving their bandwidth reductions, and end-user experiences with different portals for different streaming apps seem to be inconsistent at the moment. Though Apple TV+ seems to be the most aggressively affected; at the time of writing its streams are for me now a mushy, compressed-looking shadow of their normally pristine selves - and this is the experience, too, of the Apple experts at 9to5mac.com.

For the avoidance of doubt, if at any point people who actually know stuff about the Internet, such as the big ISPs and David Clark, start to say that we really are approaching some kind of Internet melt down, and that limiting video streaming quality at source really could make a difference, trust me: I and, I'm sure, most other AV fans around the world would instantly rally behind the throttling move. As things stand right now, though, it feels like a forced reaction to a knee-jerk, inadequately scrutinized political decision. And those sort of situations surely should always be at least be questioned, no matter what else might be going on around us.

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If you found this story interesting, you might also like these:
Netflix To Reduce Picture Quality During Coronavirus Pandemic
Netflix And Disney+ Should Slash Picture Quality To Cut Coronavirus Internet Strain, Says EU Commissioner.

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Disney+ Joins Netflix, Apple, Amazon And YouTube In Throttling Streaming Quality During Coronavirus Outbreak

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On the eve of its main European launch, Disney+ has announced that it's going to be joining the other major video streaming services by throttling back its 'bandwidth utilisation' across Europe in a bid to, supposedly, help broadband systems cope with the increase in demand caused by anti-Coronavirus measures.

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Israel Begins Tracking And Texting Those Possibly Exposed To The Coronavirus

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Israel Begins Tracking And Texting Those Possibly Exposed To The Coronavirus

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"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the country's Shin Bet domestic spy agency, usually tasked with monitoring Palestinian and Israeli extremists, to launch the cellphone surveillance. It locates people who could have the virus and messages them."

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subscribe to Coronavirus Daily podcast

Hundreds of Israelis were startled Wednesday by an unsolicited text message.

"Hello. According to an epidemiological investigation," it began, addressing each recipient by name. "You were near someone sick with the coronavirus. You must immediately isolate at home [14 days] to protect your relatives and the public. ... This information will be used only for this purpose and will be erased when no longer needed. Sincerely, public health services."

It's part of a sweeping new program. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the country's Shin Bet domestic spy agency, usually tasked with monitoring Palestinian and Israeli extremists, to launch the cellphone surveillance. It locates people who could have the virus and messages them.

Meanwhile, late Thursday Israel's Supreme Court stopped the police from using the data to enforce quarantines, which it had started doing. The court also said it could scrap the program unless it goes through parliament or if the country is put on a total lockdown.

The court order appeared to be written before the government required people to stay at home, with some exceptions, late Thursday. It's unclear how that will affect the future of the surveillance program.

With more than 600 cases and tens of thousands quarantined, the country has closed all schools, restaurants and entertainment venues.

The moves come as Netanyahu struggles to stay in power after an election March 2, which has so far failed to produce a winner. The opposition leader is trying to gather the votes in parliament to unseat him.

Small protests broke out Thursday - in defiance of emergency rules against gatherings - after the speaker of the parliament, a Netanyahu ally, shut down the chamber until next week. Police broke up the crowds.

The phone surveillance has added to the fears among some about the country's democracy.

"Big Brother is here," wrote Omer, a young father, on Facebook, minutes after he received a text message that he'd been close to a virus carrier the previous week.

"I guess I can understand why they're doing it," he said in an interview, withholding his last name due to, well, privacy concerns. "But it makes you think what other private personal information they have access to, and if it's being used in the appropriate way."

Michal Rudnik, 22, was recently driving her ill 20-year-old brother to the doctor when a police car pulled up next to her at a gas station in the southern Israeli town of Meitar. She was driving her father's car, and her parents are in quarantine after returning from a trip to London.

"The policeman asked me, 'Who is in the back seat?' So I said, 'It's my brother.' And he said, 'OK, I thought it was your father, who's supposed to be in quarantine.' And I was like, 'No, no, it's my brother.' "

She said the officer followed up by naming her father and asking if he was sticking to the quarantine. "I was in shock," Rudnik said. "I guess in a way it's also the right thing to do, but it wasn't a good feeling."

The country's Health Ministry had already been publicizing the dates and times people with the virus had visited any locations, based on interviews. Now, officials use cellphone tracking going back two weeks and send the text messages to people who crossed paths with the virus.

Netanyahu's Cabinet approved the surveillance measures in the middle of the night Monday, circumventing a parliamentary oversight committee still debating whether they were justified.

The Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians said a lack of transparency about the surveillance program hurt public trust. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel was among several groups that petitioned Israel's Supreme Court Thursday to demand an end to the surveillance program.

"I think that people in Israel in general are willing to limit their right of privacy to combat terrorism - Palestinians or other enemies," said Gil Gan-Mor, an attorney with the civil rights group. "Now people find out that the Shin Bet and the police know exactly where they are in any second. People are awakening and understanding the problem of giving too much power to the government when it comes to our privacy."

It's likely that Israelis who were not within 2 meters (6 feet) of distance from a virus carrier will still be identified for quarantine. Sharon Perry, a cellular tracing expert, said the GPS technology of civilian mobiles can pinpoint a person's location only within 5 to 6 meters' accuracy if the cellphone is outdoors, or 10 to 20 meters if the phone is indoors. But he argued the breach of privacy was justified.

"In any case that someone can trace your route and location you should be concerned, but I guess that when you have a global pandemic happening in the world, there is a kind of justification for this move," Perry said.

Alon Hazay, a cybersecurity expert who used to do work for a national cyberdefense initiative connected to Shin Bet intelligence, said the trove of cellphone location data could get into the hands of hackers, private investigators or criminal organizations. "When the data is out there then other parties can try to take advantage and misuse this information, and create a huge problem for privacy of the citizens of Israel," Hazay said.

Anti-Netanyahu lawmakers - who are a slim majority in parliament following this month's election - accuse caretaker Prime Minister Netanyahu of exploiting the coronavirus to barricade himself in office, harming Israel's democratic institutions.

Netanyahu faces charges of bribery and fraud and his trial was supposed to start this week. But his justice minister closed down the courts, leading judges to postpone the trial.

Netanyahu said he requires maximum oversight for the surveillance program to protect Israelis' private data.

"While I'm fighting the coronavirus war to save Israeli lives, giving my soul day and night, the opposition is trying to topple the prime minister who is navigating the boat during the corona storm," he said in an interview to Israeli Channel 12 TV.
Sami Sockol contributed reporting.

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Israel Begins Tracking And Texting Those Possibly Exposed To The Coronavirus

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subscribe to Coronavirus Daily podcast Hundreds of Israelis were startled Wednesday by an unsolicited text message. "Hello. According to an epidemiological investigation," it began, addressing each recipient by name. "You were near someone sick with the coronavirus. You must immediately isolate at home [14 days] to protect your relatives and the public.

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Amazon, Netflix, YouTube Cut Stream Quality to Ease Networks

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Amazon, Netflix, YouTube Cut Stream Quality to Ease Networks

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To ensure that the European networks can handle increased usage during the outbreak, Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube are reducing the quality of their video streaming in Europe.

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The researchers who once studied WoW's Corrupted Blood plague are now fighting the coronavirus

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The researchers who once studied WoW's Corrupted Blood plague are now fighting the coronavirus

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In 2005, a plague went through the game World of Warcraft and killed off many servers of players. Researchers wrote a paper using the World of Warcraft incident to model future epidemics. Now these same researchers are working on fighting the Covid-19.

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In 2005, a surprise plague swept through World of Warcraft, killing off entire servers of players while Blizzard scrambled to stop it. The infamous Corrupted Blood incident didn't pose any of the real danger we're currently facing with coronavirus , which has killed more than 5,000 people and infected at least 137,000 so far. But back in 2005, the idea of an epidemic in an MMO captivated scientists who played the game. They saw WoW's crisis as a tool to model future epidemics and wrote a paper about it. More than a decade later, they're helping save lives by researching Covid-19.

"I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist, so emerging infectious diseases are kind of my wheelhouse," says Dr. Eric Lofgren, who now works at Washington State University, in one of the US states hardest-hit by coronavirus so far. Lofgren's research is focused on "healthcare-associated infections," meaning he and his colleagues are working to understand how hard Covid-19 will impact the US healthcare system. That means gathering and analyzing data on how likely patients are to be hospitalized and need respirators, and how likely the infection is to spread to the doctors and nurses taking care of them.

For me, it was a good illustration of how important it is to understand people's behaviors

Dr. Eric Lofgren

"One of the things we are finding, if we look at both Wuhan and Italy, is there's a huge demand on the healthcare system, and that's a genuinely serious concern here in the United States," he says. "So essentially validating what a bunch of hospitals are doing right now, preparing, and a little bit bracing for the worst."

I thought it might be a stretch to compare Dr. Lofgren's current work on a global epidemic to his past research paper on World of Warcraft, written back in 2007. But Dr. Lofgren is quick to point out some significant parallels and talk about how his time researching (and playing) WoW has affected his current work on Covid-19.

"For me, it was a good illustration of how important it is to understand people's behaviors," he says. "When people react to public health emergencies, how those reactions really shape the course of things. We often view epidemics as these things that sort of happen to people. There's a virus and it's doing things. But really it's a virus that's spreading between people, and how people interact and behave and comply with authority figures, or don't, those are all very important things. And also that these things are very chaotic. You can't really predict 'oh yeah, everyone will quarantine. It'll be fine.' No, they won't."

Lofgren has recently been playing WoW Classic and says Corrupted Blood often comes up, with people reminiscing and hoping that Blizzard will launch a pre-patch version of the raid so it can happen all over again. That may seem a little morbid given the reality of coronavirus, but he says those chats, and games like Plague Inc., give people a way to talk about an epidemic, and better understand it, with a bit of detachment. The 2011 disaster movie Contagion has shot to the top of rental charts recently for the same reason.

(Image credit: Eric Lofgren and Nina Fefferman)

Corrupted Blood's lethality was a real annoyance for players who wanted to visit WoW cities like Ironforge, but of course it wasn't truly dangerous. No real lives were lost. We don't yet know the true mortality rate of Covid-19, but research continues to evolve and indicate that initial assumptions that it was little worse than the flu were significant underestimates. The problem with a low mortality rate, Dr. Lofgren points out, is that it makes it seem like no big deal: "Except a small number multiplied by a big number can still be a really big number."

From WoW to TED

It's not about individual risk, but about the risk you pose to others, whose vulnerability to Covid-19 may even be invisible to you. For someone who often gets bronchitis or has severe asthma, for the elderly and immunocompromised, your small risk could expose them to a much greater one.

"To pull it back to a Corrupted Blood analogy, and something I've been thinking about-one of the critiques we got from a lot of people, both gamers and scientists, was over this idea of griefing," Dr. Lofgren says. "How griefing isn't really analogous to anything that takes place in the real world. People aren't intentionally getting people sick. And they might not be intentionally getting people sick, but wilfully ignoring your potential to get people sick is pretty close to that. You start to see people like 'oh this isn't a big deal, I'm not going to change my behavior. I'm going to the concert and then going to see my elderly grandma anyway.' Maybe don't do that. That's a big takeaway. Epidemics are a social problem... Minimizing the seriousness of something is sort of real-world griefing."

I emailed Dr. Nina Fefferman, who co-authored the Corrupted Blood study, who works across the country from Dr. Lofgren at the University of Tennessee. She says she also found their research in Azeroth invaluable when it comes to understanding the social side of epidemics.

"It led me to think really deeply about how people perceive threats and how differences in that perception can change how they behave," Dr. Fefferman writes. "A lot of my work since then has been in trying to build models of the social construction of risk perception and I don't think I would have come to that as easily if I hadn't spent time thinking about the discussions WoW players had in real time about Corrupted Blood and how to act in the game based on the understanding they built from those discussions."

The equivalent to WoW players chatting about how to deal with the virus is now playing out across social media with Covid-19. Dr. Fefferman says that all her current work "focuses on how small decisions from individuals can lead to big changes for entire populations." She's studying how the age of patients and how they're tested is impacting our understanding of how Covid-19 is progressing. So far in the United States, our testing has been woefully limited, and likely means there are many more Covid-19 cases than we currently know.

Dr. Lofgren doesn't have any good news to share about a vaccine-expect that to be a long time coming. The same goes for the likelihood of this coronavirus receding in a few weeks as winter turns to spring. He says there isn't much evidence to support that this virus is seasonal, and early research using latitude as a proxy for temperature hasn't been encouraging. If it does turn out to be seasonal, following the pattern of influenza or , which is a coronavirus, that means Covid-19 could re-emerge in the fall.

The response this week across the US, and in many other countries, has been to cancel schools, send workers home, and ban large public gatherings to prevent the spread of the virus. Dr. Lofgren says this kind of strong reaction is actually important: "It's hard once a disease gets really well-established in a population to put that genie back in the bottle."

(Image credit: Blizzard)

It might already be too late for that. The US could have been better prepared to deal with the coronavirus, but "we have over the last couple years reduced our ability to respond to epidemics," Dr. Lofgren says. Some top experts in this field left the US government in 2018, though claims that the CDC has had its funding slashed have been misleading. But it's undeniable that the US and UK government's, and many others, have been unprepared for this epidemic.

"Corrupted Blood was this unexpected black swan event. We treat this [coronavirus] as if it's unexpected, but nature is really good at getting people sick," Dr. Lofgren says. "If you think again in gaming terms, we're making saving throws against new emerging diseases all the time. And sometimes you fail... We have epidemics recur with some degree of frequency. It's sort of like getting rid of people who predict earthquakes because you haven't had an earthquake in awhile. Well, yeah, you're gonna have another one."

The best thing we can all do is avoid underestimating the severity of the situation. No, you don't need to hoard toilet paper or face masks (healthcare professionals really need those). Yes, you can leave your house-but think about minimizing trips, avoid touching your face, practice the Elmo sneeze, and for god's sake, wash your hands. If you need a meme to remind you how long you should be watching, Dr. Lofgren is partial to Dune's Litany Against Fear.

And if you want an epidemiologist's advice on how to deal with the loneliness of working from home in isolation-personally, he suggests a raid. Zul'Gurub, which caused the Corrupted Blood Incident, will hit WoW Classic in April.

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The researchers who once studied WoW's Corrupted Blood plague are now fighting the coronavirus

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In 2005, a surprise plague swept through World of Warcraft, killing off entire servers of players while Blizzard scrambled to stop it. The infamous Corrupted Blood incident didn't pose any of the real danger we're currently facing with coronavirus Covid-19, which has killed more than 5,000 people and infected at least 137,000 so far.

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Here's Why Facebook Has Been Marking Posts About The Coronavirus As Spam

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Here's Why Facebook Has Been Marking Posts About The Coronavirus As Spam

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There was a bug on Facebook that flagged posts about the coronavirus with links to reputable news sites as spam. Zuckerberg stated the problem was caused by a "technical error"

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says a bug that flagged Facebook posts with links to articles published by reputable news sites about the coronavirus as spam was caused by an error with the company's spam detection system.

Many people complained on social media on Tuesday that they had received notifications that posts with links to articles by news publications went against Facebook's Community Standards.

On Wednesday, Zuckerberg told reporters that the problem was caused by a "technical error."

On Tuesday evening, Facebook's vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen, confirmed the bug on Twitter and said the company had restored all the posts that were unintentionally removed.

Posts linking to articles published by BuzzFeed News, Politico, the Atlantic, and the Sydney Morning Herald about the coronavirus were all flagged.

Users were told that the reach of their post had been limited so "no one else can see your post."

Earlier, Rosen rebuked speculation by the company's former security chief, Alex Stamos, that the error was a result of "less human oversight" of an anti-spam machine learning algorithm.

Facebook told its workers Monday to work from home if possible. On Tuesday, the company told its contract moderators not to come into the office; however, they are barred from working from home due to privacy concerns.

Facebook has previously launched a number of initiatives to combat misinformation and spam about the coronavirus, including allowing health authorities to flag fake news and showing users an information module when searching for information about the virus.

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Here's Why Facebook Has Been Marking Posts About The Coronavirus As Spam

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says a bug that flagged Facebook posts with links to articles published by reputable news sites about the coronavirus as spam was caused by an error with the company's spam detection system. Many people complained on social media on Tuesday that they had received notifications that posts with links to articles by news publications went against Facebook's Community Standards.

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Reddit Tweeted about being committed to keeping communities informed along with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube

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Reddit Tweeted about being committed to keeping communities informed along with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube

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"We are working closely together on COVID-19 response efforts. We're helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world. We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe."

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Together with @Facebook, @Google, @LinkedIn, @Microsoft, @Twitter and @YouTube, we are committed to keeping our communities informed.

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Together with @Facebook, @Google, @LinkedIn, @Microsoft, @Twitter and @YouTube, we are committed to keeping our communities informed. https://t.co/Ka7iq75VIE

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Together with @Facebook, @Google, @LinkedIn, @Microsoft, @Twitter and @YouTube, we are committed to keeping our communities informed. pic.twitter.com/Ka7iq75VIE
— Reddit (@Reddit) March 17, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
Together with @Facebook, @Google, @LinkedIn, @Microsoft, @Twitter and @YouTube, we are committed to keeping our communities informed. https://t.co/Ka7iq75VIE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Together with @Facebook, @Google, @LinkedIn, @Microsoft, @Twitter and @YouTube, we are committed to keeping our communities informed. https://t.co/Ka7iq75VIE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Together with @Facebook, @Google, @LinkedIn, @Microsoft, @Twitter and @YouTube, we are committed to keeping our communities informed.

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Facebook, Twitter dismantle Russian interference campaign targeting African Americans

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Facebook, Twitter dismantle Russian interference campaign targeting African Americans

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This campaign was another attempt by Russia to bring discord to the U.S. The campaign workers were tasked with spreading divisive and polarizing messages specifically targeted at black social media users in the United States.

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Facebook and Twitter on Thursday announced they have dismantled a Russia-backed online interference campaign targeting African Americans.

The campaign was based out of Ghana and Nigeria, marking Russia's latest attempt to obfuscate how it's working to sow discord on U.S. soil by propping up volunteers and workers from foreign nations.

Russia was supporting the workers based in the two African nations, who were tasked with spreading divisive and polarizing messages, specifically targeted at black social media users in the U.S., according to a CNN investigation published Thursday.

Facebook removed 49 accounts, 69 pages and 85 Instagram accounts for engaging in foreign interference on its platforms, the company announced.

"This network was in the early stages of building an audience and was operated by local nationals - some wittingly and some unwittingly - in Ghana and Nigeria on behalf of individuals in Russia," Facebook said. "It targeted primarily the United States."

Twitter suspended 71 accounts "largely Tweeting in English and that presented themselves as based in the United States," the company said.

"These 71 removed accounts, operating out of Ghana and Nigeria and which we can reliably associate with Russia, attempted to sow discord by engaging in conversations about social issues, like race and civil rights," Twitter wrote.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff Adam Bennett Schiff Trump defends firing of intel watchdog, calling him a 'disgrace' Democrats seize on Trump's firing of intelligence community watchdog Trump fires intelligence community watchdog who flagged Ukraine whistleblower complaint MORE (D-Calif.) in a statement said the disclosure shows "the Russians will not stop."

"The potential use of cutouts on another continent meant to mask Russian connections is a startling signal that our adversaries continue to pursue new and inventive ways to cover their tracks and evade detection," Schiff said.

"The companies were right to make this foreign influence public quickly, and stop it, before it could seep deeper into our domestic political and societal conversation," he added. "The companies must continue working together and be as transparent as possible with the public and their users moving forward."

Since 2016, when Russian trolls successfully manipulated the world's largest social media networks to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, the tech industry has been on high alert to defend against foreign interference from Russia and other hostile foreign actors. Twitter, Facebook and Google have poured enormous resources and energy into detecting and removing influence campaigns, which often involve posts about divisive topics and bunk news stories.

But as the tech companies have cracked down, Russia and other countries have expanded and advanced their techniques. The takedowns on Thursday exemplified a new online influence tactic: Russians helped prop up a nonprofit in Ghana dedicated to spreading messages in the U.S. about social issues, specifically aimed at fanning the flames of racial divisions, CNN reported.

The posts were focused on topics like "black history, black excellence and fashion, celebrity gossip, news and events related to famous Americans like historical figures and celebrities, and LGBTQ issues," Facebook said, as well as "police brutality."

Russian trolls in 2016 also targeted black voters in an effort to deter the minority population from voting and intensify tensions around the Black Lives Matter movement.

Kailee Scales, managing director of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, told CNN that her organization has been watching for online interference targeting the African American community.

"We are walking into the 2020 election cycle with eyes wide open to the fact that international and domestic actors are striving to undermine our organizing, and we are not going to let that happen," Scales said.
Updated 6:31 P.M.

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Facebook, Twitter dismantle Russian interference campaign targeting African Americans

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Facebook and Twitter on Thursday announced they have dismantled a Russia-backed online interference campaign targeting African Americans. The campaign was based out of Ghana and Nigeria, marking Russia's latest attempt to obfuscate how it's working to sow discord on U.S. soil by propping up volunteers and workers from foreign nations.

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Wireless, skin-mounted sensors monitor babies, pregnant women in the developing world

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Wireless, skin-mounted sensors monitor babies, pregnant women in the developing world

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Researchers at Northwestern University developed a wireless, batter-charged monitoring system for new born babies. This technology can also monitor pregnant women during labor.

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Caring for the most vulnerable patients

Technology

Wireless, skin-mounted sensors monitor babies, pregnant women in the developing world

Every year, 15 million babies are born too early, with 1 million never making it to their next birthday. And in low-resource settings, the outlook is even more dire. Half of babies born at 32 weeks or earlier will die; whereas in high-resource settings, almost all of these babies survive.

To help bridge this gap, an interdisciplinary team of Northwestern University researchers has developed a new wireless, battery-charged, affordable monitoring system for newborn babies that can easily be implemented to provide clinical-grade care in nearly any setting.

The new devices also exceed the capabilities of existing, wired monitoring technologies to provide information beyond traditional vital signs, including crying, movement, body orientation and heart sounds. These soft, flexible sensors also are far gentler on newborns' fragile skin, and their wireless capabilities allow for more skin-to-skin contact with parents.

Not only can this technology lower risks by monitoring babies, it also can monitor pregnant women during labor to ensure a healthy and safe delivery and reduce risks of maternal mortality. By closely monitoring the most vulnerable patients, physicians can be alerted to intervene before the infant or mother become seriously ill.

15 million babies are born prematurely each year

Details about the technology were published March 11 in the journal Nature Medicine, with extensive tests on newborns at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago. The sensors described in the paper also are now being tested on newborns at Aga Khan University Hospital Nairobi, Kenya and on pregnant mothers in the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia.

'From the hospital to the home to the field'

Led by Northwestern's John A. Rogers, a pioneer in the emerging field of bio-integrated electronics, the research team developed the sensors last year and tested them on babies in the United States. Now, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Save the Children, his team is deploying the devices internationally, starting with hospitals in Ghana, India, Kenya and Zambia.

"We designed our technology to offer affordable, clinical-grade monitoring capabilities for use anywhere in the world - from the hospital to the home to the field," Rogers said. "Using advanced concepts in soft electronics, we achieved devices that are safe, easy to use and patient-centric. We included in our research a focus on features to allow application in low-resource settings in the developing world, where this type of technology has the greatest potential to improve and possibly save lives."

"The new technology represents a monumental advance in neonatal and pediatric care," said Dr. Debra Weese-Mayer, a pediatrician in autonomic medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who co-led the study with Rogers. "This is not strictly about making critical care systems 'wireless', this is about thinking expansively about what non-traditional variables we need to incorporate to more fully study health and ensure stability."

Rogers is the Louis Simpson and Kimberley Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering in Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and professor of neurological surgery in Feinberg. He also is executive director of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bio-electronics at Northwestern. Weese-Mayer is the Beatrice Cummings Mayer Professor of Pediatric Autonomic Medicine at Feinberg and chief of pediatric autonomic medicine at Lurie Children's Hospital.

Reliable in areas without stable power

The new study builds on previous research conducted in the Rogers lab. Last February, Rogers and his collaborators published results from a study conducted at Lurie Children's Hospital and Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago. Here, researchers tested a pair of wireless, battery-free, flexible sensors on premature babies. The sensors proved to be as precise and accurate as traditional wire-based monitoring devices that interfere with parent-baby cuddling and physical bonding.

To move these platforms from Chicago into the developing world, Rogers' team added a small, thin, rechargeable battery to give the device stable, reliable power for operation in rural settings and to improve the wireless operating range. The team also added extra sensing capabilities to monitor crying, movement and heart sounds.

"We couldn't just drop our existing technology into other countries and different settings without taking their specific needs into account," Rogers said. "We wanted to understand the broader landscape and to develop a technology that is easy-to-use, helpful and practical. We knew that we needed to build the foundations for highly robust, reusable devices, applicable in regions with limited facilities and resources."

"Some areas experience rolling blackouts every day and uneven internet coverage," said Dr. Shuai (Steve) Xu, a Northwestern Medicine dermatologist and co-first author of the study who leads deployment of the system on the ground. "People in these areas need a practical device that works and is cheaper to manufacture."

Sensors send data to mobile devices

The sensors use radio frequencies to wirelessly transmit data from the baby to nurses' station displays. They also can send data directly to a smartphone or tablet.

"The beauty of the technology is that it can operate with a wide range of mobile devices without sacrificing accuracy, relative to the most sophisticated systems used in hospitals today," Xu said. "You don't need expensive equipment that requires a specialized bioengineer and I.T. department to install. You pull out your mobile device, connect to our sensors, and you're taking care of patients."

Implementing technology abroad

Xu, the medical director of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bio-electronics, assistant professor of dermatology and pediatrics at Feinberg and assistant professor of biomedical engineering at McCormick, has spent the past six months leading a team of engineers in setting up the technology in hospitals in Kenya and Zambia, working with nurses and physicians. The program will involve testing the sensors on 15,000 pregnant women and 500 newborn babies by mid-2021.

"This is a collaborative team effort," Xu said. "We've spent a lot of time working with and listening to physicians, nurses and health care workers in each location. We want to make sure that our technology is useful and helps solve problems they face every day. It's been incredibly motivating."

So far, 42 babies in Kenya have worn the wireless sensors alongside gold-standard, traditional monitoring systems so researchers could do a side-by-side, quantitative comparison. After validating the device at Aga Khan University Hospital, the team plans to move the technology to low-resource hospitals in rural Africa, where the need is greatest.

"The urgency of need in Nairobi is significant, but nothing compared to that in the rural areas," Rogers said. "There's room for improvement everywhere, but the added value of making affordable health care monitoring systems is so much higher in these settings."

Collaborating with nurses

Rogers and Xu said the early feedback from hospital nurses has been invaluable. The sensors work in pairs - one on the chest and one wrapped around a foot. In an earlier version of the technology, nurses worried that the chest sensor might be too large for small, fragile newborns. Rogers and his team immediately responded to this feedback to make a smaller, thinner chest device.

"The nurses have been enthusiastic about the new iteration," Rogers said. "These latest platforms also are giving us great data. When we put the sensor on the baby, it starts working immediately, in nearly any setting or location."

Nurses also have struggled with perfecting the foot sensor's alignment. If the sensor is not correctly wrapped around the foot, then the data are not as accurate.

"It takes some practice to quickly align the foot sensor," Rogers said. "So we designed a system that lights up as red, yellow or green - incorrect, close or in the right place - depending on the accuracy of the alignment, to provide feedback to the caregiver."

Mothers love our sensors because they can have more skin-to-skin contact with their babies."

Dennis Ryu
Ph.D. student, Rogers lab

What's next? Scalability, AI and hospital placement

With an exclusive license to the technology from Northwestern, Rogers and Xu launched Sibel Health to scale the technology and to earn FDA approval later this year, with a focus on maternal, fetal, neonatal and pediatric health. More recently, Sibel announced a strategic partnership with Dräger, a leading international safety and medical technology company that focuses on products that protect, support and save lives.

Next, Rogers and Xu plan to incorporate artificial intelligence into the sensors to extract insights from the data and provide health care professionals with recommendations for care.

"These systems are generating half a gigabyte of data for one patient a day. That's a lot of physiological information," Xu said. "We'd like to use clinically validated algorithms that could, for example, tell us if a baby is likely to develop sepsis within the next 24 hours based on their vital signals. Then we could have ventilators and antibiotics ready to escalate care almost proactively. For pregnant women, we're working with Dr. Jeffrey Stringer - the director of the division of Global Women's Health at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to more quickly identify danger signals in low-resource settings."

Rogers estimates these new wireless sensors could appear in U.S. hospitals within the next year. His team also expects to send sensors to more hospitals in countries around the world as part of an ongoing international effort to improve affordable health care monitoring.

"We believe that our technology could significantly enhance the quality of neonatal care around the world," Rogers said. "We think in terms of a 'NICU of the future,' available anywhere."

"The vision is bold," Xu said. "We want to see these sensors in every country, monitoring the first heartbeat to the last in our most vulnerable patients."

About the study

The paper's first authors, who are all from Northwestern, are Ha Uk Chung, Alina Rwei, Aurélie Hourlier-Fargette and Dr. Xu.

The study, "Skin-interfaced biosensors and pilot studies for advanced wireless physiological monitoring in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units," was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (award numbers OPP1182909, OPP1193311 and INV-000787), the Gerber Foundation, Save the Children (award number 999002170), National Institutes of Health (grant number TL1TR001423) and the National Science Foundation (grant numbers 1400159, 1534120 and 1635443).

Editor's note: Rogers and Xu have financial interests in and affiliations with Sibel Health. Northwestern University has financial interests (equities, royalties) in Sibel Health.

Faculty

Debra Weese-Mayer

She is the Beatrice Cummings Mayer Professor of Pediatric Autonomic Medicine at Feinberg and chief of pediatric autonomic medicine at Lurie Children's Hospital

Shuai (Steve) Xu

He is an assistant professor of dermatology at Feinberg, a Northwestern Medicine dermatologist and medical director of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics

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Wireless, skin-mounted sensors monitor babies, pregnant women in the developing world

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Caring for the most vulnerable patients Wireless, skin-mounted sensors monitor babies, pregnant women in the developing world Every year, 15 million babies are born too early, with 1 million never making it to their next birthday. And in low-resource settings, the outlook is even more dire.

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A platform where video calls with friends are for two minutes one on one.

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An app for 2 minute, one-on-one, video chats with your friends (and friends of friends). 🥳 Catch up with people that matter most to you, and meet people that matter to them. Anytime, anywhere.

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Israel takes step toward monitoring phones of virus patients

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Israel takes step toward monitoring phones of virus patients

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The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet authorized "the Shin Bet security agency to use its phone-snooping tactics on coronavirus patients." He acknowledged that it is a violation of privacy and that this technology has never been used on its citizens before, but given the unprecedented situation they find it necessary.

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JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel has long been known for its use of technology to track the movements of Palestinian militants. Now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to use similar technology to stop the movement of the coronavirus.

Netanyahu's Cabinet on Sunday authorized the Shin Bet security agency to use its phone-snooping tactics on coronavirus patients, an official confirmed, despite concerns from civil-liberties advocates that the practice would raise serious privacy issues. The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending an official announcement.

Netanyahu announced his plan in a televised address late Saturday, telling the nation that the drastic steps would protect the public's health, though it would also "entail a certain degree of violation of privacy."

Israel has identified more than 200 cases of the coronavirus. Based on interviews with these patients about their movements, health officials have put out public advisories ordering tens of thousands of people who may have come into contact with them into protective home quarantine.

The new plan would use mobile-phone tracking technology to give a far more precise history of an infected person's movements before they were diagnosed and identify people who might have been exposed.

In his address, Netanyahu acknowledged the technology had never been used on civilians. But he said the unprecedented health threat posed by the virus justified its use. For most people, the coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms. But for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness.

"They are not minor measures. They entail a certain degree of violation of the privacy of those same people, who we will check to see whom they came into contact with while sick and what preceded that. This is an effective tool for locating the virus," Netanyahu said.

The proposal sparked a heated debate over the use of sensitive security technology, who would have access to the information and what exactly would be done with it.

Nitzan Horowitz, leader of the liberal opposition party Meretz, said that tracking citizens "using databases and sophisticated technological means are liable to result in a severe violation of privacy and basic civil liberties." He said any use of the technology must be supervised, with "clear rules" for the use of the information.

Netanyahu led a series of discussions Sunday with security and health officials to discuss the matter. Responding to privacy concerns, he said late Sunday he had ordered a number of changes in the plan, including reducing the scope of data that would be gathered and limiting the number of people who could see the information, to protect against misuse.

The only other place believed to have used similar technology to fight coronavirus is Taiwan, where the government used mobile phones to make sure infected people didn't leave quarantine.

Netanyahu's office said the Shin Bet would not be involved in enforcing quarantine orders against sick patients. It also said the order, which still needs approval from a parliamentary subcommittee, would be in effect for no more than 30 days.

Yuval Elovici, the head of the cybersecurity research center at Israel's Ben-Gurion University, said there are ways to minimize privacy concerns, including the possibility of collecting data anonymously, and that the benefits are too great to ignore.

"There is no doubt about the privacy issue," he said. "But in a technological society, it makes sense to use such technology to save lives. I personally strongly support it."

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Israel takes step toward monitoring phones of virus patients

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JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel has long been known for its use of technology to track the movements of Palestinian militants. Now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to use similar technology to stop the movement of the coronavirus.

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Education robots offer leg-up to disadvantaged students

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Education robots offer leg-up to disadvantaged students

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"Autistic children find robots’ simplified facial features easier to understand than humans"

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The idea of robot teachers sounds like a plot for Black Mirror, the techno-dystopian Netflix series, but some education experts believe they can complement humans, especially for disadvantaged children.

"Robots are highly engaging and they attract the attention of children quickly," says Laura Boccanfuso, chief executive of South Carolina-based Vän Robotics, developer of an educational smart robot tutor called ABii.

"They are social but not overly complicated, so for those who have trouble with social communication, or have sensory processing disorders . . . a robot has enough interaction to keep them engaged but not overwhelmed,"

Because robots are more predictable than humans, some children "find it easier and less threatening to work with robots to improve their social and imitation skills", says Maria Jose Galvez Trigo, a researcher at the University of Nottingham's school of computer science.

A robot called Milo, for instance, teaches students with autism to tune in to emotions, express empathy and better understand social situations, while Kaspar, a companion robot, has simplified facial features that are easier for autistic children to understand than humans. One study showed that children with autistic spectrum disorder exhibited more interaction when an educational robot was introduced compared with learning sessions with a person.

Robots, equipped with artificial intelligence, might be better than humans at detecting a child's emotional state and quality of attention. For example, while looking away from a textbook or whiteboard might indicate disengagement, there is a more complex relationship between attention and visual gaze.

"Let's say I'm tracking your [visual] attention and I notice a dip, but your cognitive performance is going strong," says Ms Boccanfuso. "You may be looking away from your screen or paper, or playing with a pencil, but you are processing, and you just need to disconnect from the screen or page." ABii can track the past and present correlation between paying attention and performance.

Kids struggle if they don't master a subject and see their peers mastering it. With robots, they don't worry about the social aspect of being judged

Laura Boccanfuso, Vän Robotics

Conversely, robots could identity when a student is frustrated. Ms Boccanfuso, whose academic research focused on physiological manifestations of stress, received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to develop thermal sensors that monitor signals such as breathing, heart rate and body heat. These allow ABii to identify when a student is feeling stress or suffering other distracting mental states.

"If you start to lose attention and your performance is degrading, the robot can stop the lesson and provide the opportunity for a 'brain break', like a breathing exercise or stretching for 15 seconds to refocus your attention," Ms Boccanfuso says.

She believes that too little attention is paid to such "learning readiness" factors - the ways a child's emotional and physiological state enables or constrains their ability to study. This might include shyness at asking or answering questions in class, or demonstrating a skill to a group. "Kids struggle if they don't master a subject and see their peers mastering it. With robots, they don't worry about the social aspect of being judged," Ms Boccanfuso says.

There is a long history of robots in education, including work by the late South African computer scientist Seymour Papert, after whose book, Mindstorms, Lego named its range of robotic educational toys.

Contemporary edu-bots include Nao, a humanoid model from the robotics arm of Japan's SoftBank, which has been customised and put to use in an autism specialist school. Others include Wonder Workshop's robot Dash, which teaches children to code.

However, integrating new technologies into classrooms has presented challenges, including inadequate teacher training and financial costs. Experts have identified a gap between the tools that product developers are offering and what schools really need, while others worry that, in areas such as virtual reality, more attention is paid to usability than on learning outcomes.

Robotics experts have recognised past challenges and want to ensure their products are co-designed with educators and made part of the teaching process, rather than a standalone novelty.

ABii, for instance, produces data that teachers can consult to understand how their student is progressing. "Teachers love the fact they have this device that is pedagogically in line with what they are doing in the classroom," says Ms Boccanfuso. "This robot can produce data that shows the students' attention levels, what days they perform best, what are the optimal learning times for this student."

Edu-bots are also becoming more affordable, partly thanks to public funding. For ABii, funding from the South Carolina Department of Education was conditional on making 120 robots available to disadvantaged schools in the state, and at $1,000 per robot including all relevant curriculum information, Ms Boccanfuso believes it can be accessible on a broader scale. "With so many state and federal grants, we can usually find a funding instrument they can use to make it a reality."

While robot use-cases such as coding have their place, Ms Boccanfuso sees robots helping to address fundamental deficits in the US education system. "We have a specific pain point in reading and maths, that has a direct influence on quality of life, and our mission is that realm."

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Education robots offer leg-up to disadvantaged students

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The idea of robot teachers sounds like a plot for Black Mirror, the techno-dystopian Netflix series, but some education experts believe they can complement humans, especially for disadvantaged children. "Robots are highly engaging and they attract the attention of children quickly," says Laura Boccanfuso, chief executive of South Carolina-based Vän Robotics, developer of an educational smart robot tutor called ABii.

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Big 'gram on campus: At USC, students train to become influencers

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Big 'gram on campus: At USC, students train to become influencers

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At the University of Southern California, professor Robert Kozinets created a class focused on the social media influencing industry. There is also a club called reach at USC for student content creators and social media managers.

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LOS ANGELES - Lighting is everything to Gabrielle Robinson.

Adjusting two bright softbox lights in the space behind her navy blue sofa - the area in her apartment she's designated her "studio" - she prepared to film an unboxing video.

On this day in mid-February, Robinson, 21, propped her camera in the nook of the back of her sofa in order to film the short video of herself opening the package sent to her from the short-form video app TikTok, which contained pink and black swag embellished with the company's logo.

"Light's obviously the most important part," the University of Southern California senior said as she knelt on a white shag rug, wrapping her pink manicured nails around her iPhone. "If you don't have good lighting, like, what do you have?"

The apartment is set up as the perfect backdrop for the social media videos and posts that Robinson, a paid TikTok ambassador at USC, creates. The white walls are decorated with the words "Good Vibes" formed by a string of purplish, blue LED lights, while another string of white lights glimmered around the perimeter of the ceiling.

TikTok is just one of approximately five ambassadorships Robinson has accrued since getting serious about content creation two years ago. In that time, she has built a social media presence, from which she earns enough money to offset some of her college expenses.

At USC, social media influencing and content creation are more than just a hobby for a select group of students - it is seen as a viable career path. While there is no major that focuses on this growing multibillion-dollar industry, USC is ahead of the curve in creating curriculum to bring influencing into the world of academia. The school offers an Influencer Relations class within the school of communications and an on-campus social media influencing club called Reach.

Robinson hopes that one day she can parlay her side gig into a full-time career and she's well on her way, thanks to the guidance and support from her peers in Reach who've already helped her grow her brand.

"Reach has given me a crazy amount and a lot of opportunities in the social media space," Robinson told NBC News. "I'm a college student first and foremost, but everything circles back to Reach for me."

The influencer marketing industry, worth approximately $8 billion in 2019, is projected to be worth up to $15 billion by 2022, according to a Business Insider Intelligence report, which is based on Mediakix data.

With about 59 percent of global marketers saying they've increased their budget for influencers, according to the report, the students at USC are demanding to learn how to navigate an industry that has little academic foundation yet is exploding in growth.

That's where Influencer Relations comes in.

Last spring, Robert Kozinets, a professor of strategic public relations at USC's Annenberg school for communication and journalism, started a full-semester course focused on the influencing industry. The class, which Kozinets believes is among the first of its kind, looks at the industry from the public relations perspective but some students say the skills learned in the class are applicable to the influencing side as well.

"I think we're just starting to see this emerge into the phenomena that it's going to become. So I think this is a huge area. I can tell you the students who are focusing on these areas are not having a problem finding jobs here in Los Angeles and in other places," Kozinets said. "They're in demand."

Despite a former member of the USC community, influencer Olivia Jade, 20, suffering a public scandal when her parents, "Full House" actress Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, are accused of paying $500,000 to fraudulently get Olivia and her sister, Isabella Rose, 21, admitted to the school, students said the reward of a career in social media is more enticing than the risks.

"I personally don't care about what other people think. So if something bad were to happen, I mean, it's still PR. They say that all the time. Bad PR is just more PR," Robinson said.

Reach is where student content creators, social media managers and others interested in a career in the social media space meet in order to hone their craft and network.

It is not a club for hobbyists.

The approximately 30 student members were selected following a rigorous application process by the group's board, and only about 10 students are admitted into the club per semester.

"It's not really for somebody who's looking to build social media when they have no knowledge on it. We expect that you already have a level of knowledge going in," Robinson said. "So it can be a little bit competitive."

When Robinson learned about the group in 2017, the year it was founded, from her then-roommate, she could already foresee the opportunities the group could offer.

The first Reach meeting for 2020 was held in mid-February in a classroom in Waite Phillips Hall where students watched a presentation on how to go viral on TikTok.

The students filled rows of seats behind long white tables and sat with their eyes fixed on the presentation about the app that was still in its infancy as an influencing platform the year prior.

Alan Chikin Chow, 23, a USC grad and a former Reach member who now works in content creation, and Mia Finney, the current vice president of Reach, opened the discussion by asking the group members their thoughts on the platform.

"I hated it, but now I love it, and I can't get the TikTok viral songs out of my head," one student said.

A chorus of students echoed in agreement and they went on to discuss the marketing and influencing potential of the app.

Robinson said that during her internship with Warner Brothers, she'd observed the company using TikTok to market the music in films.

"It goes to show college kids can use it, and so can big companies," she told the room. "It's interesting for the marketing and money side of it."

During their "TikTalk" presentation, Chow and Finney played a series of viral TikToks that they had either found or created and discussed what they felt had propelled them to success.

Shortly after, members broke into groups to create their own TikToks that would be assessed at the next week's meeting. Some filmed skits, others lip synced to singer Doja Cat's song "Cyber Sex," while others learned the choreography to the wildly viral "Renegade" dance.

In the past, Reach focused on teaching its members how to network, build a personal brand and market themselves on social media. But this semester, club president Kalina Benhamou said, the focus would lean heavily on content creation.

While the teaching elements of Reach are vital to its mission, Benhamou said, in her opinion, the club's most important element is the "community of people who want to learn and who understand the business potential of social media."

"It's really a group of people who want to use social media as a business platform, monetize, make a career out of it and we all work together, teach each other, learn from each other, collaborate," she said. "It's really fun."

Reach is more than a club to learn social media tips and tricks - members also gain access to a host of guest speakers and field trips that can be vital to growing their brands. In the past, Reach has had speakers from social media giant Facebook and social media consultancy Fullscreen and recently took a trip to visit the Google campus.

Students shuffled into a lower level classroom in Wallis Annenberg Hall on USC's campus on an evening in mid-February, eager for the fifth lesson from Kozinets in the much sought-after Influencer Relations class.

Kozinets had held the inaugural class a year earlier as a graduate-level course but this semester, undergraduate students were permitted to enroll.

Kozinets is clear - the course doesn't teach students how to become influencers. It is instead about the public relations of influencing and how to manage brands.

"So we're trying to put together all of these different sorts of tools into a toolkit that students can apply to the question at hand, which is how do you run successful campaigns? How do you find good influencers? How do you manage this? How do you think about it?" Kozinets said. "And, of course, all of that is framed in the world of public relations, which is about crisis communication."

After a lecture by Kozinets on how companies track their social media reach by monitoring analytics, a guest speaker led the class in a discussion about authenticity - asking the class to analyze an apology video by makeup influencer James Charles.

Kozinets has been studying influencers since their inception at the dawn of the internet in the early 1990s. But it was in 2015, when he joined the faculty of USC, that the industry of influencing began to solidify, and Kozinets first started to see the potential to structure a course around the growing market.

"If you look, the growth year over year is substantial and here in America, the latest statistics say that it's somewhere around a $10-to-$15 billion industry this year. It's at least that large in China and worldwide, we have to be talking about an industry that's $50 billion or more," Kozinets said.

The topic of an influencer class first came up during faculty meetings in 2017.

"We kept talking about how this was important and we really didn't have enough material to satisfy the needs of students," Kozinets said. "And so in 2018, I proposed to the school that we have a full length course on, on influencers."

The course was held for the first time last spring, and already Kozinets has had to modify the syllabus to keep up with the ever-evolving social media landscape.

"Last year, we didn't even mention TikTok," Kozinets said. "Now, TikTok is a part of almost every conversation that we have and so the ground has shifted."

To Kozinets' knowledge, his course is among the first to teach students how to manage brands and campaigns from the social media perspective.

The class is less intense when it comes to enrollment than Reach - students taking the class encompass a wide range from those studying public relations to those who are curious about influencer marketing to those already working in the space.

Cosette Rinab, 20, a TikTok influencer with more than 1.6 million followers on the app, said she's already applying lessons learned in Influencer Relations to her career.

"I'm still processing how a college campus offers this kind of course," she said.

Rinab said she initially didn't even think she'd get a spot in the class, knowing how many people on USC's campus were vying to get into what she called the most coveted class.

"It's so competitive, everyone wants to be in this class," Rinab, who is also a former president of Reach, said. "It was also the talk around campus. Everyone was like, 'I want to get into the influencer class!'"

For Kozinets, the next step for the ever-evolving Influencer Relations course is writing a textbook so that other schools and professors can be privy to the knowledge of social media marketing as demand for the specific education grows.

"We're trying to systematize this knowledge so that other people can teach courses in it," Kozinets said.

Along with continuing to help its members grow their brands, Reach will also be taking on a new project: opening chapters at other schools.

As influencer circles grow on college campuses in California and across the nation, Benhamou said the group has been contacted by other students who want to expand Reach on to their campuses so they can reap the same networking and learning opportunities as the students of USC.

"They're really interested in what we do and I don't really know how they heard about us, but that's great either way," Benhamou said.

Reach founder Markian Benhamou, who is now a full-time social media content creator, is proud of what he's built at the school.

"It's awesome that the club is still alive even though I'm gone," he said after the February meeting.

Like many alumni of Reach, he still comes back to visit and share what he's learned running his own content creation group SMILE.

But while he is no longer enrolled at USC, he said it's exciting that his younger sister Kalina has taken up the helm of Reach and is continuing his mission of meeting the demand for education and information in the influencing world.

"All of our alumni members still have a very strong presence in what we do and help collaborate with everything that we do. And that's one of the biggest things that I value from Reach on top of everything - that we learn and teach each other," Kalina Benhamou said.

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Big 'gram on campus: At USC, students train to become influencers

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LOS ANGELES - Lighting is everything to Gabrielle Robinson. Adjusting two bright softbox lights in the space behind her navy blue sofa - the area in her apartment she's designated her "studio" - she prepared to film an unboxing video.

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Panel outlines massive federal cybersecurity overhaul

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Panel outlines massive federal cybersecurity overhaul

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"A congressionally created commission on Wednesday proposed sweeping changes to how the federal government approaches cybersecurity in an effort to better defend the U.S. against increasingly bold and devastating digital attacks. After nearly a year of work... the commission made more than 75 recommendations, including the creation of a Senate-confirmed National Cyber Director, House and Senate Cybersecurity Committees, a special fund to respond to and recover from cyberattacks and the creation of a Bureau of Cyber Statistics."

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"For over 20 years, nation-states and non-state actors have used cyberspace to subvert American power, American security, and the American way of life," wrote the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which Congress created in 2018. Lawmakers modeled the panel after President Dwight Eisenhower's Project Solarium, which developed a Cold War strategy to counter the Soviet Union.

Today's Solarium is looking to defend against digital threats from Russia, China and elsewhere. "Despite numerous criminal indictments, economic sanctions, and the development of robust cyber and non-cyber military capabilities, the attacks against the United States have continued," it wrote.

The recommendations would need congressional approval to take effect and, in some cases, new funding and approval across numerous federal agencies.

The commission believes that a more "layered cyber deterrence" will be the best way to reduce the "probability and impact of cyberattacks of significant consequence."

Specifically, the three "layers" include promoting international norms to encourage responsible nation-state behavior in cyberspace, hardening the U.S. defenses to make attacks difficult and a willingness to strike back against attackers.

The commission's report recommends giving the administration the authority to declare a "cyber state of distress," which would trigger state and local access to a Cyber Response and Recovery Fund.

It also plans to release legislative language that Congress can use to take action on cyber issues during debates on the annual defense policy measure via other House and Senate committees.

Commission leaders plan to testify before multiple congressional committees in both chambers, both in open session and behind closed doors, and already has been working with the Hill to advance their proposals.

The recommendations stop short of establishing one unified federal cyber agency,an idea that some cyber experts have advanced in recent years. Rather, it suggested the National Cyber Director in the White House take the lead on national coordination. Until 2018, the White House had a cyber coordinator, but the position was not Senate-confirmed.

"I feel it's a strong report," Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who co-chaired the commission, told POLITICO. "There's not a lot of holding back or timid recommendations."

King said: "The big picture is really important. We have to reorganize to cope with this problem or it's only going to get worse."

He also admitted that creating House Permanent Select and Senate Select Committees on Cybersecurity will be among the group's most difficult recommendations to enact; lawmakers are loath to relinquish turf, once gained.

Congress is essential to many of the report's recommended structural overhauls. The Solarium also suggested Congress pass a law to make some tech companies liable for legal damages from known and unpatched vulnerabilities.

It also should pass legislation to strengthen data security and privacy protection, improve international law enforcement tools, bolster cyber talent recruitment, improve digital literacy, enshrine the concept of prioritizing "systemically important critical infrastructure" and mandate the executive branch write a Continuity of the Economy plan.

One key recommendation involves the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The commission wants to give its leader power that's equivalent to a deputy secretary, expanding its budget and handing its director a five-year term for long-term planning.

Morning Cybersecurity

A daily briefing on politics and cybersecurity - weekday mornings, in your inbox.

"We want working at CISA to become so appealing to young professionals interested in national service that it competes with the NSA, the FBI, Google, and Facebook for top-level talent (and wins)," the report states.

CISA would be the home of a Joint Planning Cell for federal government and private sector readiness for major cyber incidents and campaigns, and the agency'spublic-private integrated cyber center would be given stronger connections to similar centers across the government.

The Solarium also focused on election security. "The American people still do not have the assurance that our election systems are secure from foreign manipulation," it said. "If we don't get election security right, deterrence will fail and future generations will look back with longing and regret on the once powerful American Republic and wonder how we screwed the whole thing up."

Other significant recommendations include:

- DHS and NSA would lead a Joint Collaborative Environment to expand access to threat information. DHS also would be responsible for a federally funded research and development center to develop certifications for cyber insurance products.

-The State Department would get an assistant secretary focused on cybersecurity, the Election Assistance Commission would get a steady budget and a fifth member to vote on cybersecurity issues and the Defense Department would conduct review of the Cyber Mission Force and vulnerability assessments of nuclear controls and weapons systems under the report's suggestions.

-The Commerce Department would head up a National Cybersecurity Certification and Labeling Authority and be home to a Bureau of Cyber Statistics, similar to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

-Legislation to strengthen data security and privacy protection, improve international law enforcement tools, bolster cyber talent recruitment, improve digital literacyand enshrine the concept of prioritizing "systemically important critical infrastructure" into law.

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Panel outlines massive federal cybersecurity overhaul

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"For over 20 years, nation-states and non-state actors have used cyberspace to subvert American power, American security, and the American way of life," wrote the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which Congress created in 2018. Lawmakers modeled the panel after President Dwight Eisenhower's Project Solarium, which developed a Cold War strategy to counter the Soviet Union.

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Buffed-up avatars deter us from exercising hard

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Buffed-up avatars deter us from exercising hard

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"An award-winning paper from the University of Bath shows people perform better in VR exercise games when they compete against a realistic avatar of themselves."

"your performance improves when they compete against an avatar that more closely matches your authentic self."

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Dr Christof Lutteroth as an exergame player, alongisde his two avatars

If you've ever played an immersive game using virtual reality (VR) technology, you'll be familiar with the concept of customising an avatar to represent you. Most people design an aspirational, buffed-up version of themselves, but new research from the University of Bath suggests you should temper your vanity when the game is for fitness, as your performance improves when they compete against an avatar that more closely matches your authentic self.

"Idealised avatars increase wishful identification but seem to impact physical performance negatively," said Dr Christof Lutteroth, who led the research from the University's Department of Computer Science.

The Bath study explores the effects of two types of customisation (idealised and realistic) in an immersive bike racing exergame. The findings are presented in a paper that has received a prestigious Best Paper Award from the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, due to take place in Hawaii next month.

For the study, racers wearing VR headsets self-competed against both a generic avatar and an avatar that represented them more accurately. They performed better against their realistic avatar and found the game more motivating. Next, racers self-competed against their realistic versus an idealised avatar. Though they had fun playing against their pumped-up selves, they performed better against their realistic avatar, as measured through power output.

"The game pushed people to their limits for 30 seconds to see how hard they could exert themselves over a short time. When they competed against their realistic avatar, they were 3% faster than when with their idealised avatar - in other words, they exerted themselves 3% more. We believe that over time, as fitness is increased, the gap in effort would grow."

Also involved in the study were Professor Eamonn O'Neill from the Department of Computer Science, PhD student Zoe Jeffery and former students Jordan Koulouris and James Best.

Ms Jeffery said: "This study is the first of its kind, blending both quantitative and qualitative methods to give a deeper understanding of the effects of avatar customisation on motivation within virtual reality exercise games. It has the potential to influence further research in this field, and has given me a well-needed boost for my own PhD study."

Dr Lutteroth said a possible explanation for the positive effect of the realistic avatar is a mechanism known as feedforward. This describes the motivation and performance gains that come from competing against a self-model that you can readily identify with. A generic and idealised self-model are likely to lower the feedforward effect by reducing self-recognition.

"Our results suggest that exergame designers should definitely consider using realistic avatar customisation to improve player experience and performance," said Dr Lutteroth.

Explaining the significance of his research, he added: "Many people struggle to meet the recommended levels of physical activity, with 40-65% of those who begin exercise regimes dropping out within three to six months. Combining exergames with VR has revolutionised the possibilities for health interventions, creating an immersive experience with possible attentional distraction from physical exertion. If we can persuade people to stick with their exercise programmes through self-identification with their avatar, that will be a move in the right direction."

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Buffed-up avatars deter us from exercising hard

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If you've ever played an immersive game using virtual reality (VR) technology, you'll be familiar with the concept of customising an avatar to represent you. Most people design an aspirational, buffed-up version of themselves, but new research from the University of Bath suggests you should temper your vanity when the game is for fitness, as your performance improves when they compete against an avatar that more closely matches your authentic self.

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White House urges researchers to use AI to analyze 29,000 coronavirus papers

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White House urges researchers to use AI to analyze 29,000 coronavirus papers

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The White House's Office of Science Technology and Policy is encouraging researchers to use AI to analyze coronavirus papers in order to answer questions about the coronavirus.

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy on Monday challenged researchers to use artificial intelligence technology to analyze about 29,000 scholarly articles to answer key questions about the coronavirus.

The White House office said it had partnered with companies such as Microsoft Corp () and Alphabet Inc's () Google to compile the most extensive database of scholarly articles about the virus available to researchers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have said they want help to better understand the origins and transmission of the coronavirus in aid of developing a vaccine and treatments. The coronavirus causes a respiratory known COVID-19.

The hope is that computers will be able to scan the research more quickly than humans and uncover findings that humans may miss, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios, who works in the White House, told reporters on a conference call.

Machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence in which software is designed to detect patterns in data on its own, is already used in healthcare and other industries to develop summaries from large amounts of text. But before it can effectively draw conclusions, machine learning software sometimes needs to analyze millions of similar content items.

Only about 13,000 of the coronavirus articles are included in the new database in their entirety in a format that makes it easy for software to analyze, Kratsios said. The database contains partial text, such as summaries, of the other 16,000 articles.

The database and researchers' submissions are being hosted on Google's Kaggle service here a popular tool for organizing machine learning competitions online.

Officials with the U.S. government along with American tech companies and research institutions said they rushed in the last few days to get legal permission from academic publishing companies and others to make the coronavirus papers widely available.

Microsoft Corp's () chief scientific officer, Eric Horvitz, whose company's software helped curate coronavirus-related papers, told reporters the goal is to "empower scientists and empower (health) care practitioners to come to solutions more quickly."

"It's really all hands on deck for this," he said.

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biotechnology and medical research (trbc)

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White House urges researchers to use AI to analyze 29,000 coronavirus papers

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy on Monday challenged researchers to use artificial intelligence technology to analyze about 29,000 scholarly articles to answer key questions about the coronavirus.

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Customers Want Customization, and Companies Are Giving It to Them

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Customers Want Customization, and Companies Are Giving It to Them

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"More and more industries and companies are joining the mass-customization bandwagon. Many are niche manufacturers and start-ups, unencumbered by expensive legacy factories and supply chains. Others are big brands that have added customization options to extend their product lines and increase sales."

"High-speed connectivity and robotized factories also have a part. To keep costs low, mass-customized products often combine bespoke components with mass-produced ones, with the bespoke elements added toward the end of a production run. So-called smart factories are best positioned to add bespoke elements to otherwise standardized products in a cost-efficient way."

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Robinhood experienced two major outages in two days

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Robinhood experienced two major outages in two days

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Robinhood experienced two major outages in two days due to the infrastructure not being able to support increased usage on the platform.

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On Tuesday morning, investing app Robinhood experienced its second major outage in two days. The first outage lasted from around 9:30AM ET on March 2nd until around 2AM ET on March 3rd, according to a Robinhood spokesperson. Robinhood tweeted about the second outage at 10:11AM ET today and said that service had been fully restored at 11:54AM ET.

The two outages were related, Robinhood tells The Verge, and caused by instability in a part of the company's infrastructure that allows its systems to communicate with each other. Robinhood says it did not lose any customer data, information, or funds during either outage.

In a blog post published Tuesday evening, Robinhood co-founders and co-CEOs Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev wrote:

We now understand the cause of the outage was stress on our infrastructure-which struggled with unprecedented load. That in turn led to a "thundering herd" effect-triggering a failure of our DNS system.

Multiple factors contributed to the unprecedented load that ultimately led to the outages. The factors included, among others, highly volatile and historic market conditions; record volume; and record account sign-ups.

Screenshots shared on Twitter appeared to show that Robinhood's code may not have accounted for 2020 being a leap year, and some speculated that was the cause of yesterday's outage. The company denied that in an email sent on Monday to The Verge and this morning on Twitter.

The outage was not caused by a failure to code for the leap year. We had instability in a part of our infrastructure that allows our systems to communicate with each other.
- Robinhood Help (@AskRobinhood) March 3, 2020

Robinhood's customer agreement says that the company is not responsible for service interruptions:

Although considerable effort is expended to make the Website, App and other operational and communications channels available around the clock, Robinhood does not warrant that these channels will be available and error free every minute of the day. I agree that Robinhood will not be responsible for temporary interruptions in service due to maintenance, Website or App changes, or failures, nor shall Robinhood be liable for extended interruptions due to failures beyond our control, including but not limited to the failure of interconnecting and operating systems, computer viruses, forces of nature, labor disputes and armed conflicts.

Robinhood is reaching out to customers with information about how to contact the company and will work with them on a case-by-case basis, according to a Robinhood spokesperson. Efforts may include offering billing credits as well as other potential types of compensation.
Update, March 3rd, 9:38PM ET: Added context from Robinhood blog post.

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Robinhood experienced two major outages in two days

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On Tuesday morning, investing app Robinhood experienced its second major outage in two days. The first outage lasted from around 9:30AM ET on March 2nd until around 2AM ET on March 3rd, according to a Robinhood spokesperson. Robinhood tweeted about the second outage at 10:11AM ET today and said that service had been fully restored at 11:54AM ET.

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Robot designed in China could help save lives on medical frontline

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Robot designed in China could help save lives on medical frontline

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Researchers at a Chinese university have designed a robotic arm on wheels that can perform various functions such as ultrasounds and listening to patient's organs.

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Researchers at one of China's top universities have designed a robot they say could help save lives on the frontline during the coronavirus outbreak.

The machine consists of a robotic arm on wheels that can perform ultrasounds, take mouth swabs and listen to sounds made by a patient's organs, usually done with a stethoscope.

Such tasks are normally carried out by doctors in person. But with this robot, which is fitted with cameras, medical personnel do not need to be in the same room as the patient, and could even be in a different city.

"Doctors are all very brave," said Tsinghua University Professor Zheng Gangtie, the robot's chief designer. "But this virus is just too contagious ... We can use robots to perform the most dangerous tasks."

The idea came to Zheng around the turn of the Lunar New Year. Wuhan had just been put on lockdown and the number of cases and deaths was rising rapidly every day.

As an engineer, Zheng wanted to do something to contribute to the relief effort. On the first day of the Lunar New Year, he heard from his friend, Dong Jiahong, executive president at Beijing's Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, that the biggest problem was that of frontline workers getting infected.

Gathering a team, Zheng set to work converting two mechanized robotic arms with the same technology used on space stations and lunar explorers. The robots were almost entirely automated, and could even disinfect themselves after performing actions involving contact, Zheng said.

"But the feedback from doctors was that it would be better for there to be less automation, as a personal presence would comfort and calm the patient," he said.

The team now has two robots, which have been trialed by doctors at hospitals in Beijing. One is still at the team's lab at the university, but the other is at the Wuhan Union Hospital, where doctors started training to use it on Thursday.

If all goes to plan, the robot may be put to use on coronavirus patients in Wuhan from Sunday, Zheng said. It would be joined on its ward rounds by a nurse or other member of staff.

Zheng would like to build more such robots but funding from the university has run out. The robots cost RMB 500,000 ($72,000) a piece to make. He does not plan on commercializing his robot design but hopes a company comes along to take that on.

China has sent tens of thousands of medical workers to the epicenter of the outbreak, Hubei province, state media say. More than 3,000 medical workers had been infected by late last month, including whistleblower Li Wenliang, whose death in early February sparked a brief and rare outpouring of grief and rage on Chinese social media.

(This refile corrects headline to say robot, not robotic arm)

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healthcare facilities and services (trbc)

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healthcare equipment and supplies (trbc)

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Robot designed in China could help save lives on medical frontline

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Researchers at one of China's top universities have designed a robot they say could help save lives on the frontline during the coronavirus outbreak. The machine consists of a robotic arm on wheels that can perform ultrasounds, take mouth swabs and listen to sounds made by a patient's organs, usually done with a stethoscope.

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Chinese agriculture drone makers see demand rise amid coronavirus outbreak

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Chinese agriculture drone makers see demand rise amid coronavirus outbreak

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"Large farms, local governments and agricultural products distributors are buying high-tech equipment as the spread of the coronavirus puts an impetus on reducing human contact."

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While the coronavirus outbreak in China has hit many industries hard, some technology start-ups in agriculture are seeing demand rise.

"In the first two months of 2020, we delivered 4,000 units of our newly released agricultural drones," Justin Gong, co-founder of XAG, a major agricultural drone maker based in the southern city of Guangzhou, said in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation.

XAG is not alone. In the north, Beijing Yifei Technology's Chief Marketing Officer Liu Zhuo said he expects the company's revenue to at least quadruple this year to over 30 million yuan ($4.31 million).

"Recently, we received increased inquiries about agricultural drones and unmanned vehicles," Liu said, according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.

Large farms, local governments and agricultural products distributors are buying high-tech equipment as the spread of the coronavirus puts an impetus on reducing human contact. That's a key challenge in putting millions of Chinese back to work since most still labor by hand on small family farms. Since emerging in late December, the highly contagious coronavirus has killed more than 3,000 people in the country and infected tens of thousands nationwide.

The interest in agricultural technology products and services also comes as the Chinese government has stepped up its efforts to reduce reliance on food imports from the U.S. and other countries over the last few years.

In fact, promoting agricultural modernization was written into the 13th five-year plan of the Chinese economy, which reflects the central government's priorities and growth targets from 2015 to 2020. China's agriculture ministry estimated that more than 30,000 drones for targeted plant protection will be deployed this spring. The Chinese market for technology-driven smart agriculture products is expected to grow from approximately $13.7 billion in 2015 to $26.8 billion this year, according to Statista.

Prioritize getting back to work

More than half of China extended the Lunar New Year holiday by more than a week in early February in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The number of new cases outside the disease's epicenter of Hubei province has slowed dramatically in the last few weeks, but Chinese authorities have been anxious to ensure farms are back up and running in time for the spring planting season.

Beginning in early February, the national leading group for fighting the virus has repeatedly named agriculture as a top priority. And on Thursday, state media reported that the central government had distributed 140 million yuan ($20 million) in subsidies for machine and tools purchases.

The high level of support meant that agriculture-related businesses like XAG were among the first batch of enterprises to resume work, according to the company. The dronemaker also said it is taking advantage of special policies such as rent reductions, and 100 million yuan in loans at an interest rate more than three percentage points below the market level.

With this kind of support, "agriculture might be the least impacted industry by this outbreak," said Gong Huaze, CEO of Mcfly, which is backed by Baidu Ventures and develops technology for precision pesticide and fungicide spraying. The start-up said it recently nailed a contract with the Zhejiang provincial government, and expects more deals with Hubei, the center of the virus' outbreak.

"All of these measures are deployed to ensure that we won't miss the most critical farming season in China, which falls in April this year," Gong said.

In his view, part of the rush to support agricultural production is related to trade tensions with the U.S.

"China has enough grain reserves to weather even a longer-than-expected virus outbreak," Gong said, "but any reduction in production would hurt China, a major food importer, in its bargaining position with the U.S."

As part of a phase-one trade deal signed in January, China agreed to buy at least $32 billion more in U.S. agricultural products over the next two years. So far, neither country has publicly indicated that the virus outbreak will significantly affect the ultimate fulfillment of the agreement.

More consolidation, capital ahead

Broader demographic trends support greater use of technology in China's farms in the long term. According to official data, 300 million people hail from agrarian areas and are rapidly aging, while many younger people have moved to cities, leaving farms with fewer people to tend them. Chinese President Xi Jinping initiated a strategy of "rural vitalization" in 2017 and it's widely expected to be part of China's upcoming five-year plan.

"Government policies in China serve as more than just guidelines," Qiu Shuang, a cross-border agriculture investor at Silicon Valley-based Plug and Play Tech Center, said in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation.

She pointed out that authorities often use investment funds backed by the state to create incentives for innovation in certain industries. In her view, "that explains why investment in agriculture is heating up now in China."

And as the virus' impact has hit many small businesses, including farmers, analysts expect more consolidation ahead. That will create the scale needed to drive larger purchases of farming equipment.

However, for so-called smart agricultural machinery, a major determining factor for its growth is whether it can be included in a government subsidy list, Liu said.

"Because the new kind of agricultural equipment is more expensive," he said, "only with certain subsidies from the government, can it compete with traditional agricultural equipment in the market."

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Chinese agriculture drone makers see demand rise amid coronavirus outbreak

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While the coronavirus outbreak in China has hit many industries hard, some technology start-ups in agriculture are seeing demand rise. "In the first two months of 2020, we delivered 4,000 units of our newly released agricultural drones," Justin Gong, co-founder of XAG, a major agricultural drone maker based in the southern city of Guangzhou, said in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation.

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Rhode Island, North Dakota Work to Bridge Workforce Skills Gap

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Rhode Island, North Dakota Work to Bridge Workforce Skills Gap

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Rhode Island and North Dakota have partnered with Microsoft, Code.org, and local colleges and universities to help fill their workforce skills gap by expanding computer science education at the K-12 level.

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Before Rhode Island started an initiative in 2016 to make computer science courses available at all of its public schools, only 1% of the state's students were enrolled in computer science courses.

While speaking about the initiative - known as Computer Science for Rhode Island (CS4RI) - recently at a conference in Washington, D.C., the Democratic governor said that more than 1,000 students took the AP exam in 2019.

"Our kids deserve the best opportunities in the 21st century tech-driven economy, so we need to do everything we can to help them get ahead by developing the skills that matter," Raimondo told U.S. News in an email. "Part of turning our economy around and creating jobs is making sure every student, at every level, has access to the new basic skill: computer science."

Rhode Island's CS4RI program, which was created by the state and partners including Microsoft, Code.org Advocacy Coalition and local colleges and universities, is among the ways states have been working to fill their workforce skills gaps starting at the K-12 education level.

Microsoft Philanthropies Senior Director Jane Broom says that, when Raimondo became educated about the computer science gap, she called Microsoft and Code.org.

"She said, 'I want to be the state that's going to change this.' And she really has," Broom says.

Matt Hallam, who has been working in the computer science field for a decade, says he's in his fourth year of volunteering in Rhode Island schools through Microsoft TEALS. Hallam, a software developer, first volunteered at a vocational school, where he and three other volunteers taught a computer science curriculum to seniors for two years. The following year, the math teacher whose classes Hallam had been instructing taught the curriculum. Hallam and his fellow volunteers stayed in the classroom during those lessons to provide support when needed, he says.

That same year, Hallam also taught an eight-week computer science literacy course to high school freshmen through Microsoft TEALS, and now he visits schools once or twice a year to introduce students to computer science.

"I appreciate this opportunity for students who didn't know (computer science) was an option for them," Hallam says, adding that exposing students to computer science gives them the chance to love the field.

Bria Barry, Code.org's outreach manager for the New England region, says the organization partnered with the University of Rhode Island to support CS4RI. Code.org helped Rhode Island develop its computer science curriculum through its K-12 Computer Science Framework, which includes guidelines for computer science education, and it helps train teachers who will be instructing those classes.

Barry adds that Rhode Island also has dedicated funding for teachers to take classes in computer science.

The efforts appear to be making a difference. All of Rhode Island's school districts now offer computer science instruction, according to Megan Geoghegan, communications director for the Rhode Island Department of Education.

Both Microsoft and Code.org are also working with North Dakota, which is the first state to develop K-12 cybersecurity standards. Republican Gov. Doug Burgum spoke about the initiative in February at the annual National Governors Association winter meeting in Washington, D.C.

"I think when you look at the skills gap, national and economic data and job projections, cybersecurity is one of the areas where the gaps are most significant," Broom says. "From the governor's perspective, I think he championed that work because he saw it as a great opportunity for his young people to get ahead of the curve, frankly, and to be ahead of the game and get trained in these areas that are of the greatest demand."

These statistics are signals that the country is moving in the right direction, Broom says. "But we're nowhere where we need to be in terms of equity of access and equity of opportunity."

Arkansas and Washington are among the other states Microsoft Philanthropies sees as leaders in providing computer science education to all students.

"Arkansas lit up the entire ecosystem in their state to align both policies and funding to support computer science education for K-12," Broom said in an emailed statement. She explained that Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, has made this a priority since he took office and that "we're seeing the difference."

In Washington, Broom says Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, has also shown leadership in computer science education and the state is "slowly building up the capacity to do more."

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These States Are Leaders in K-12 Computer Science Education

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Before Rhode Island started an initiative in 2016 to make computer science courses available at all of its public schools, only 1% of the state's students were enrolled in computer science courses.

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US internet bill seen as opening shot against end-to-end encryption

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US internet bill seen as opening shot against end-to-end encryption

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"US senators have proposed a new law which would make key legal protections that online platforms rely on contingent on those platforms adopting specific practices related to privacy and the prevention of child sexual exploitation." The bill would allow individuals to sue tech companies who don't take proper steps to prevent online child exploitation. Previous legislation "indemnifies internet platforms against being viewed as the publishers of content they host."

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US senators have proposed a new law which would make key legal protections that online platforms rely on contingent on those platforms adopting specific practices related to privacy and the prevention of child sexual exploitation.

The act has widely been seen as an opening salvo in a renewed war on end-to-end encryption, with the US justice department (DoJ) regularly criticising technology companies for creating products, such as iMessage and WhatsApp, which cannot be intercepted by law enforcement.

Proposing what has been called the Earn It Act, a backronym for "Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies", the new bill was introduced by a bipartisan collection of senators on Thursday.

It proposes an amendment to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, described as "the 26 words that created the internet" in a recent book of th at name, so that it only applies to platforms certified as following a set of best practices to prevent child abuse and exploitation. Section 230 indemnifies internet platforms against being viewed as the publishers of the content they host; before it was passed in 1996, websites ran the risk of taking full legal liability for everything they hosted unless they performed no moderation at all.

The Republican Lindsey Graham, one of the four primary sponsors of the bill, said: "I appreciate my colleagues working with me on this bill to ensure tech companies are using best business practices to prevent child exploitation online. This bill is a major first step. For the first time, you will have to earn blanket liability protection when it comes to protecting minors. Our goal is to do this in a balanced way that doesn't overly inhibit innovation, but forcibly deals with child exploitation."

The Democrat Dianne Feinstein, one of California's two senators, and thus Silicon Valley's representative in the Senate, added: "Technological advances have allowed the online exploitation of children to become much, much worse over recent years. Companies must do more to combat this growing problem on their online platforms. Our bill would allow individuals to sue tech companies that don't take proper steps to prevent online child exploitation, and it's an important step to protect the most vulnerable among us."

The bill has created unease. Emma Llansó of the Centre for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit organisation which campaigns "to preserve the unique nature of the internet", said it "would give government officials unprecedented powers to craft de facto regulations for online speech. Online service providers would almost certainly err on the side of caution and take down anything - including a lot of lawful, constitutionally protected speech - that the attorney general might not like."
'Don't touch your face!': website watches you to help you avoid Covid-19
The nature of the "best practices" that companies would be required to follow is left unspecified in the legislation, instead being placed under the auspices of a national commission on online child sexual exploitation prevention. But the outline was suggested by a second announcement on Thursday, by the US DoJ and the wider Five Eyes surveillance coalition, which includes the governments of the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

That group revealed a set of "voluntary principles to counter online child sexual exploitation and abuse", 11 principles that included companies "adopting enhanced safety measures with the aim of protecting children, in particular from peers or adults seeking to engage in harmful sexual activity with children" and "seeking to identify and combat the dissemination of new child sexual abuse material via their platforms and services".

The UK's Internet Watch Foundation, a charity responsible for finding and removing images of child sexual abuse from the internet, welcomed the principles. Its chief executive, Susie Hargreaves, said she hoped they would "encourage more companies to follow the lead of our members and step up and do the right thing for victims of child sexual abuse".
Topics

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US internet bill seen as opening shot against end-to-end encryption

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US senators have proposed a new law which would make key legal protections that online platforms rely on contingent on those platforms adopting specific practices related to privacy and the prevention of child sexual exploitation.

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Startups Pitch Tech Hubs Far From Silicon Valley

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Startups Pitch Tech Hubs Far From Silicon Valley

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"States between the coasts have long touted their low cost of living or quality of life to attract talent away from more-populous peers. The new crop of entrepreneurs is bringing relocation services, tech training and investor dollars to accomplish similar goals."

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San Francisco entrepreneur Madhu Chamarty got the idea for his latest startup from Amazon.com Inc.'s search for its second headquarters, which included finalists like Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio.

For him, the search highlighted overlooked cities away from the coasts that had the talent pools to host tech companies. Early last year, he launched Beyond HQ, a startup that uses technology to find new homes for Silicon Valley firms looking to move inland.

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Startups Pitch Tech Hubs Far From Silicon Valley

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San Francisco entrepreneur Madhu Chamarty got the idea for his latest startup from Amazon.com Inc.'s search for its second headquarters, which included finalists like Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio. For him, the search highlighted overlooked cities away from the coasts that had the talent pools to host tech companies.

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How to Make Money in Your Sleep                                    Some TikTok users are going viral, gaining followers and even making cash by live-streaming themselves overnight. 

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How to Make Money in Your Sleep                                    Some TikTok users are going viral, gaining followers and even making cash by live-streaming themselves overnight. 

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TikTok users have begun live-streaming themselves sleeping. One user, Brian Hector, had thousands of people tune in to watch him sleep and some donated to him. People hope to gain followers from sleep-streams. Sleep-streams also create the opportunity for live online chat.

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Some TikTok users are going viral, gaining followers and even making cash by live-streaming themselves overnight.

Credit... Sam Rowe

Many fledgling creators dream of waking up to viral fame and riches. Now that dream is beginning to look a lot like reality.

Hundreds of TikTok users have begun live-streaming themselves overnight, while they sleep. Brian Hector, 18, did it just last week. Thousands of people tuned in. Some even donated to him.

"I woke up the next morning and ended the live and went over to my mom and was like, 'Mom, I literally just made money falling asleep,'" said Mr. Hector, who has more than 347,000 followers on the app.

Through TikTok's live feature, viewers can donate digital "coins" that can be cashed out for money. On Mr. Hector's first sleep-stream, he said, he received about $10 worth of coins - not riches, exactly, but more than he'd usually be paid to go to sleep ($0).

What most users hope to gain from these sleep-streams are followers. "Overnight my video blew up, and I got over 6,000 new followers," said Oscar Reyes, 18. "After I stopped the stream I lost followers, so I don't know if people were just following for the stream, but I grew substantially. I went from 12,000 to 18,600 followers."

Jasmine Stephens, 16, said that for days, her "for you" feed on TikTok has been full of videos promoting sleep live-streams. "I scrolled and scrolled and saw more and more," Ms. Stephens said. "I was like, OK this is a thing now. I saw videos with over one million likes."

On Feb. 9, 18.5 million viewers tuned in to watch one man sleep on Douyin, TikTok's Chinese counterpart.

Before they go live, TikTok sleep-streamers usually create a promotional video that they post to their feeds, advertising the sleep-stream happening that night. When bedtime approaches, they prop up their phones on their night stands, crawl under the covers and hit the live button.

"I've seen so many people start doing it," Mr. Hector said. "The first time I saw it I thought it was honestly the weirdest thing but also the coolest thing."

For users who watch sleep-streams, the appeal isn't necessarily the person streaming but the pop-up community that forms in the stream's chat section. Live-streams on TikTok aren't archived, so sleep-streams, many of which are simply a dark blank screen, provide a time and place for users to meet.

"I think it's about trying to find online friends," Ms. Stephens said.

Todd Neer, 32, has watched a handful of sleep-streams and even done one himself.

"It creates a chance for a live online chat that's not really available anywhere else in TikTok," he said. "The sessions aren't saved, so you just chat with whoever is there. It's just an opportunity to have a more real-time dialogue than the comments section on someone's post. It's a hub for people to have conversations."

Brian Mandler, a founder of the Network Effect, a digital agency focused on TikTok, said that the streams also provide a level of authenticity that so many users on the platform currently crave. "Audiences really like the behind the scenes of someone's life," he said. "They want authentic, engaging content. Watching someone sleeping, while it's unique and somewhat strange, as you start to understand what really works on social media, it makes sense."

Between the performance anxiety and all that blue light, not everyone can sleep through a live-stream. Mr. Reyes said he woke up several times during his own; at one point, he saw about 600 people were tuned in and chatting. "When I woke up they'd be like, 'OMG he's awake!'" he said.

Because the sleep-streams are in real time and unedited - versus other TikToks - there are also safety concerns. Rylee Breann, 21, was deliberate about what her viewers would be able to see. "I didn't show much of my room because I have a lot of pictures," she said. "I didn't want to show anything that showed where I lived. You could just see my head and my bed."

Dale Adams, 21, said that he turned his phone over after a couple hours to shut the stream down. "It was kind of nerve racking," he said, "Like, what if someone could hack into my phone and figure out where I am?"

Some users have found other ways to idly host live-streams.

"People have gone live saying, 'Oh, my parents don't want me filming myself sleeping, so I'll stream this other picture in another room overnight,'" Ms. Breann said.

"I've seen people live-stream their rooftop overnight with 10,000 people watching, or people stream a glass of milk while they're gone at work," Mr. Reyes said. "All these people come into the live just to chat and make group chats."

Rather than streaming his sleep, Joe Fay, 24, decided to live-stream his white Tesla "sleeping" in the driveway overnight. He taped his phone to the window and hooked it up to a charger; by the morning he had accrued $50 worth of digital coins. "It's a pretty easy thing to do," he said, adding that he plans to continue streaming until the trend dies out.

The streams can have a pleasant, sedative effect. Some sleep-streamers play soft music, or perform a soothing bedtime routine for their viewers. The experience can be relaxing for the host too.

"When I did it, I felt like people were watching over me so nothing could happen to me," Mr. Reyes said. "I slept like a baby."

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Some TikTok users are going viral, gaining followers and even making cash by live-streaming themselves overnight. Many fledgling creators dream of waking up to viral fame and riches. Now that dream is beginning to look a lot like reality. Hundreds of TikTok users have begun live-streaming themselves overnight, while they sleep.

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Facebook says it will ban ads for medical face masks

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Facebook says it will ban ads for medical face masks

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"Facebook is temporarily banning advertisements for medical face masks as part of an effort to prevent use of its platform to exploit people's concerns about the new coronavirus."

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Facebook is temporarily banning advertisements for medical face masks as part of an effort to prevent use of its platform to exploit people's concerns about the new coronavirus.

The ban covers advertisements on the social media platform as well as commercial listings on Facebook Marketplace, the company said. Facebook said it would begin to enforce the ban over the next few days.

"Our teams are monitoring the COVID-19 situation closely and will make necessary updates to our policies if we see people trying to exploit this public health emergency," Rob Leathern, Facebook's director of product management, said in a statement issued late Friday.

Facebook noted that it previously announced a ban on ads that make claims about the health benefits of a particular product or guaranteed that "a product will prevent someone from contracting" the disease.

Some public health officials have urged people to stop buying masks. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome M. Adams noted in a tweet on Feb. 29 that masks aren't effective in protecting the general public "but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!"

In a separate development, Amtrak announced that it was canceling its nonstop Acela passenger train service between Washington, D.C., and New York City through late May because of a sharp drop in demand. That service will be canceled starting Tuesday and through May 28, Amtrak said.

The cancellation does not affect Amtrak's other high-speed Acela service connecting Washington, New York and Boston, which runs several times per day with limited stops.

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Follow AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Facebook says it will ban ads for medical face masks

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Facebook is temporarily banning advertisements for medical face masks as part of an effort to prevent use of its platform to exploit people's concerns about the new coronavirus. The ban covers advertisements on the social media platform as well as commercial listings on Facebook Marketplace, the company said.

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Location Data to Gauge Lockdowns Tests Europe’s Love of Privacy

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Location Data to Gauge Lockdowns Tests Europe’s Love of Privacy

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"Officials in Austria and Italy are starting to use location data transmitted by mobile phones to determine the effectiveness of their coronavirus lockdowns. Telekom Austria AG, the country's biggest telecom network operator, is providing 'anonymized data' to relevant authorities" These companies have to be careful with this data because European countries have some of the strictest rules concerning the use and sharing of mobile phone location. "While the companies say they will anonymize the data so no individual can be identified, research often shows otherwise. A joint study by Imperial College London and the University of Louvain in Belgium published in August showed how anonymized datasets can be traced back to individuals by way of reverse engineering using machine learning."

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Working from home during a global pandemic bingo 

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Working from home during a global pandemic bingo 

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A bingo game with funny sayings about working from home during a pandemic.

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As little as $1 a month ($12 a year!) goes a long way towards supporting our editorial staff and contributors while keeping us ad-free. Become a McSweeney's Internet Tendency patron today.

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Working From Home During a Global Pandemic Bingo

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As little as $1 a month ($12 a year!) goes a long way towards supporting our editorial staff and contributors while keeping us ad-free. Become a McSweeney's Internet Tendency patron today.

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A meme group created by students to help cope with online classes and schedule disruption during the coronavirus.

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Zoom Memes for Self Quaranteens has 231,198 members. Meme page for College studs stuck doing online courses in closed universities

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New Data Rules Could Empower Patients but Undermine Their Privacy

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New Data Rules Could Empower Patients but Undermine Their Privacy

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"New federal data-sharing requirements will enable people to use consumer apps to retrieve their medical information directly from their doctors."

The Trump administration announced new rules that will allow patients to access their medical records through mobile apps. However, organizations such as the American Medical Association are concerned about the risks to patient privacy without federal safeguards to accompany these new rules.

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New federal data-sharing requirements will enable people to use consumer apps to retrieve their medical information directly from their doctors.

Federal health regulators said new rules would give patients more insights into their health and greater choices. Credit... Al Drago for The New York Times

In a move intended to give Americans greater control over their medical information, the Trump administration announced broad new rules on Monday that will allow people for the first time to use apps of their choice to retrieve data like their blood test results directly from their health providers.

The Department of Health and Human Services said the new system was intended to make it as easy for people to manage their health care on smartphones as it is for them to use apps to manage their finances.

Giving people access to their medical records via mobile apps is a major milestone for patient rights, even as it may heighten risks to patient privacy.

Prominent organizations like the American Medical Association have warned that, without accompanying federal safeguards, the new rules could expose people who share their diagnoses and other intimate medical details with consumer apps to serious data abuses.

Although Americans have had the l egal right to obtain a copy of their personal health information for two decades, many people face obstacles in getting that data from providers.

Some physicians still require patients to pick up computer disks - or even photocopies - of their records in person. Some medical centers use online portals that offer access to basic health data, like immunizations, but often do not include information like doctors' consultation notes that might help patients better understand their conditions and track their progress.

The new rules are intended to shift that power imbalance toward the patient.

They will for first the time require doctors and medical centers to send a core set of medical data directly to third-party apps, like Apple's Health Records, after a patient has authorized the information exchange. In addition to lab test results and vital signs, the data will include clinical notes about a patient's surgeries, hospital stays, imaging tests and pathology results.

Dr. Don Rucker, the federal health department's national coordinator for health information technology, said access to medical data through consumer apps would give people more detailed insights into their health and greater choices over their health care. He compared it to ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft that let consumers make pricing choices in advance.

"We as patients have not gotten really anywhere near the benefits from modern computing that we could or should get," Dr. Rucker said. "The ability of smartphones to take the care with you, to be continuous, to be engaging, is going to allow totally different ways of thinking about chronic illness."

Jackie Nelson, a retired police evidence officer in Ormond Beach, Fla., said she hoped the new rules would eliminate the kinds of obstacles she recently experienced. When she moved from Texas, she said, her doctor there asked her to pay an exorbitant fee - more than a thousand dollars - to provide her with a copy of her medical records.

"People like myself, I'm a senior, I'm on Social Security - I don't have a thousand dollars to pay for my records," said Ms. Nelson, who is managing multiple health conditions. She said she hoped the new data-access rules would "stop doctors from withholding" patients' data and "make the doctor accountable for what they are doing."

Health regulators are opening patient access to their medical records against a backdrop of a virtual gold rush for Americans' health data by hundreds of companies. So many entities have access to Americans' medical records - including identifiable medical data and pseudonymous files that track people by ID codes - that it can seem easier for third parties to acquire patient data than patients themselves.

Dozens of professional medical organizations and health industry groups have pushed back against the rules, warning that federal privacy protections, which limit how health providers and insurers may use and share medical records, no longer apply once patients transfer their data to consumer apps.

"Apps frequently do not provide patients with clear terms of how that data will be used - licensing patients' data for marketing purposes, leasing or lending aggregated personal information to third parties, or outright selling it," Dr. James L. Madara, the chief executive of the American Medical Association, wrote in public comments to health regulators last year. "These practices jeopardize patient privacy."

Dr. Rucker, the health department's technology coordinator, said the new rules take patient privacy into account. When patients initiate the data-sharing process with apps, he said, their providers will be able to inform them about privacy risks.

But even federal health regulators acknowledge the privacy risks. An infographic on patient data rights on the health agency's website warns: "Be careful when sending your health information to a mobile application" because health providers are "no longer responsible for the security of your health information after it is sent to a third party."

The rules introduced on Monday are part of a federal effort to centralize medical data online in the hopes of helping doctors get a fuller picture of patient health and enabling patients to make more informed treatment choices.

One of the rules requires vendors of electronic health records to adopt software - known as application programming interfaces, or A.P.I.s. - to enable providers to send medical record data directly to patient-authorized apps. Another rule similarly requires Medicare and Medicaid plans to adopt A.P.I.s. That software will enable people to use apps to get their insurance claims and benefit information.

Health providers and health record vendors will have two years to comply with the A.P.I. requirements. Electronic health record vendors that impede such data-sharing - a practice called "information blocking" - could be fined up to $1 million per violation. Doctors accused of information blocking could be subject to federal investigation.

Health technology executives welcomed the new requirements, but said the initial data set available to patients through apps would be limited to more basic information like prescription drug history - and not data like radiology images.

Deven McGraw is the chief regulatory officer of Ciitizen, a start-up that helps people obtain and centralize their medical records. Credit... Jason Andrew for The New York Times

Ms. McGraw demonstrating the Citiizen app. Credit... Jason Andrew for The New York Times

"It's a decent amount of data if you're relatively healthy and you just want to check on what your lab test results were," said Deven McGraw, the chief regulatory officer at Ciitizen, a start-up that helps people obtain and centralize medical records from multiple providers. "But it's not enough data if you're really sick and you need that record."

But people who choose to send their sensitive medical data to consumer apps will largely be left on their own as far as patient privacy is concerned. While Apple has said its Health Records app does not have access to users' medical information because it is encrypted and stored locally on their iPhones, other apps may share or sell patient data.

Dr. Rucker, the health regulator, said people would choose the health data app brands they trusted.

"Just like with banks, just like with brokerage firms, people will go to organizations they trust with their data," he said. "We don't put our money into, you know, some guy running a bank out of a pickup truck on the corner. We go to someone who has a clear brand."

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New Data Rules Could Empower Patients but Undermine Their Privacy

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New federal data-sharing requirements will enable people to use consumer apps to retrieve their medical information directly from their doctors. In a move intended to give Americans greater control over their medical information, the Trump administration announced broad new rules on Monday that will allow people for the first time to use apps of their choice to retrieve data like their blood test results directly from their health providers.

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Tech Firms Seek to Head Off Bans on Facial Recognition

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Tech Firms Seek to Head Off Bans on Facial Recognition

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Some technology companies are pushing for federal regulation for the use of facial-recognition systems to prevent more serious prohibitions put in place by certain cities such as San Francisco.

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WASHINGTON-Amid rising calls for regulation, technology companies are pushing for laws that would restrict use of facial-recognition systems-and head off the more severe prohibitions some cities and states are weighing.

Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and others stand to profit as government agencies and businesses expand use of the technology, which can require large investments in machine-learning and cloud-computing capacity.

...

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Tech Firms Seek to Head Off Bans on Facial Recognition

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WASHINGTON-Amid rising calls for regulation, technology companies are pushing for laws that would restrict use of facial-recognition systems-and head off the more severe prohibitions some cities and states are weighing. Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and others stand to profit as government agencies and businesses expand use of the technology, which can require large investments in machine-learning and cloud-computing capacity.

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Smile! Your Boss Is Tracking Your Happiness.         Employers are turning to sentiment-tracking software, daily surveys and apps to monitor workers’ mental states. Does this pose a new threat to employee privacy?           

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Smile! Your Boss Is Tracking Your Happiness.         Employers are turning to sentiment-tracking software, daily surveys and apps to monitor workers’ mental states. Does this pose a new threat to employee privacy?           

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Some companies monitor emails and Slack messages with software that looks for words associated with depression or fatigue. Other companies use surveys to assess happiness.

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Your company wants to know what type of mood you are in today.

At some workplaces, software trawls email and Slack messages for words that may be associated with depression and fatigue. At others, workers are asked to regularly log their frame of mind with a smiley or frowning face, or track their moods on apps.

Anxious to retain and energize...

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Smile! Your Boss Is Tracking Your Happiness.

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Your company wants to know what type of mood you are in today. At some workplaces, software trawls email and Slack messages for words that may be associated with depression and fatigue. At others, workers are asked to regularly log their frame of mind with a smiley or frowning face, or track their moods on apps.

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This radically simple tool could solve one of our democracy’s worst problems        

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This radically simple tool could solve one of our democracy’s worst problems        

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Political scientists from Harvard and Boston University are using sophisticated mapping algorithms to ensure their solution to gerrymandering is as fair as possible.

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Louisiana's 6th would be a fairly normal-looking congressional district if it weren't for the large 2nd district that cuts into its middle. Republicans in the Louisiana statehouse designed the 2nd district to separate the high numbers of black voters in inner Baton Rouge from the 6th district, which now contains the mainly-white Baton Rouge suburbs and outlying rural areas. In effect, this created a badly gerrymandered 6th district where voting-age blacks make up only 21.6% of the electorate-helping the Party of Trump to dominate.

Such gerrymandering is common, especially in states with a close Democratic/Republican split (such as Texas and Virginia). District maps are redrawn every decade based on the census results, usually by the party in power in the statehouse. And the process is about to start again. The new census-the first to be conducted online -kicks off March 12.

New district shapes are necessary to reflect demographic shifts revealed by the census data. But the shaping of the districts often has more to do with politics than demographic and geographic correctness.

Large segments of the public have expressed anger about this kind of gerrymandering, especially by Republican majorities. If humans tend to draw district lines in such a biased, political way, what would happen if the job were turned over to a computer to draw lines that are objective and fair? Scientists could potentially feed all the census and geographic data into a neural network and let the algorithm do the rest.

However, as appealing as an apolitical computer program solving gerrymandering sounds, it turns out it's not that simple. It's practically impossible to remove the political elements from district mapping, even if technology is involved. However, researchers from Harvard and Boston University have developed a deceptively simple method that keeps the districting process in human hands and gives both parties a hand in shaping the districts, while using sophisticated mapping algorithms to ensure their approach is as fair as possible. Now if only state legislatures will choose to use it.

Why gerrymandering exists

We use voting districts to associate segments of the population-voters-with geographic places. They're supposed to ensure that segments of the population are adequately represented in everything from school districts to statehouses to the White House.

The shape of these maps has huge implications in election results. That's why majority parties in some state legislatures have weaponized the drawing of district maps to help themselves win elections and stay in power.

"The ones that continue to pop up . . . [are] states like North Carolina, Texas, and Pennsylvania," says Harvard Kennedy School political science professor Benjamin Schneer. Largely because of the district lines, it's common for one party in such states to represent a minority of voters in the state yet hold a majority of seats in the state legislature, Schneer says. "And then [they] can draw maps that really, really advantage that party in future elections."

The federal government provides some very basic district-drawing rules that apply to federal elections but leaves it mainly up to the states to form their districts. In all but seven U.S. states, the party in power either draws the district lines by itself or oversees a commission that does it. Either way, the minority party often has little say in the process.

Majority parties gerrymander in two basic ways. A party might use a practice called "cracking" to separate concentrations of voting groups (minorities, for example) and spread their voting power across several districts. Or it might do the opposite: Using a practice called "packing," it might draw district lines to concentrate members of specific voter groups into one district to create majorities of likely supporters in adjacent districts.

Especially in states such as North Carolina, Virginia, and Texas, these tactics have led to the creation of crazily drawn district lines chosen solely to maximize the electoral power of the majority party's base.

And just this past June, the options for minority parties to seek legal relief narrowed. The U.S. Supreme Court said it would not stop state legislatures in Maryland and North Carolina from drawing maps designed to minimize the political power of minorities, except possibly in extreme cases of gerrymandering. In its majority opinion, the court indicated that it's up to state legislatures and perhaps Congress to resolve disputes over district maps.

Public outcry over the problem has led to a number of state ballot initiatives to establish independent districting commissions, but even commissions face a tough challenge, and lots of political pressure, in drawing the maps.

A political strategy game could help

A district-drawing tool that people see as fair might allow the parties to work things out together, without having to rely on the court to referee.

Schneer, Harvard Kennedy School grad student Kevin DeLuca, and Boston University political scientist Max Palmer refer to their proposed method of drawing district maps as the "define and combine" procedure. It's like a political strategy game with only two moves.

Move 1 (define): The majority party goes first. It knows from the new census data the size and density of the population across the state as well as the shapes of the districts that have been used since the last census. Based on that information, the party draws the districts how it wants them. But here's the trick: it has to draw twice the number of districts as are actually called for, breaking up the districts it actually wants into two pieces. If the population of the state dictated the need for five districts, the majority party would create 10. The only rule is that the party can't draw "donut" districts that completely encircle other districts.

Move 2 (combine): Now it's the minority party's turn. Its job is to simply recombine the "subdistricts" back into the final districts. And only neighboring districts can be combined.

That's it. Both sides are very aware that their opponent will use its move to get to as advantageous a map as possible. When drawing the original group of subdistricts, the majority party will be thinking about how the minority is likely to combine them. The minority party must anticipate how the majority is likely to draw the subdistricts and have a corresponding strategy for recombining them.

By giving each party one move, the Define and Combine strategy reduces parties' ability to pack or crack.

"It's harder to pack when the other party can take what you've combined and undo it in the second stage," Palmer says. "And it's harder to crack when in the second stage that second-mover party can reunite those cracked groups."

Districting by algorithm?

To illustrate the procedure's effectiveness in the real world required some data science. Palmer, Schneer, and DeLuca started with the theoretical question: What would be the partisan composition of districts in a state that implemented Define-Combine? Would the process result in districts that treated voters in a more inclusive and fair way than if only one party drew the district lines?

They chose eight states (based on population and party competitiveness) and used mapping algorithms to generate a representative sample of all the possible ways that the state could be broken into subdistricts as in the "define" step of the procedure. This generated thousands of maps for each state, with each subdistrict having half the population of a congressional district.

Then they examined the ways that the subdistricts could be paired together, as in the "combine" step. They identified the maps that the parties would likely choose when trying to win as many seats as possible within the structure of the Define-Combine procedure. Then they compared those maps to district maps that might have been drawn unilaterally by each party.

Palmer, Schneer, and DeLuca found that implementing Define-Combine significantly affected the number of seats each party won in the legislature. With a single mapmaker, whichever party gets to draw the map retains a big advantage in the number of seats won because that party is able to gerrymander. But in the Define-Combine procedure, the majority party had a much smaller advantage. Ultimately, the process produced more moderate maps.

If algorithms were able to draw every possible district and subdistrict, you may wonder why we can't just give the whole job of drawing maps to a computer. Why not provide it with all the census, demographic, topographical, and voter data we have and let the computer generate the fairest possible district lines?

The problem is that there are different definitions of "fair," as Palmer pointed out to me. Even if you had the most powerful neural network and the best data, Palmer says, you'd still have to define your priorities in drawing the map. "Are we going to prioritize keeping counties together, or towns and other communities together?" Palmer says. "Are we going to prioritize what districts should look like and how compact things should be?"

You can imagine those types of decisions being expressed in the parameters for a neural network, which are used to weigh the importance of various data types and point the model toward a desired outcome.

"There's a lot of decisions there, and those decisions have political impact," Palmer said.

Inevitably, things get very human again very quickly, and the arguing begins. Even an advanced AI that could understand the nuances of human politics is likely to draw maps that some group of people will hate.

The long road to acceptance

Will states, and their majority parties, ever actually accept alternative methods of map drawing, such as Define-Combine?

They might. State legislatures may see Define-Combine as the least of all evils. Public opinion about state legislatures' ability to draw fair maps is very low, and pressure is rising in many states to take map drawing out of the hands of politicians and give it to independent commissions. "In comparison, the state legislature might actually prefer some sort of [approach] that brings both parties into the process but still allows it to retain some measure of control," Schneer says.

When the legislative or commission process ends in deadlock, or when it produces extreme gerrymandering, it's often state supreme courts that must act as mediator. The court can enlist experts to painstakingly draw a fair map, but this takes a long time. It might be easier and faster for the court to order the state legislature to return to the table and use a simple, prescribed method of creating a map everyone can live with. Palmer, Schneer, and DeLuca believe the courts might see the Define-Combine approach as such a method.

To date, the Define-Combine method has never been tried. Schneer and Palmer are just now preparing the research paper laying out the idea. Once they collect some feedback and perhaps make a few tweaks, they plan to send it to a peer-reviewed political science journal for publication.

If the response is promising, Schneer and Palmer aim to start trying out the approach in the real world. But they want to walk before they run. Instead of using it to help draw congressional maps, they might first suggest that states use it for something smaller, such as drawing new state legislature districts, or for mapping new school districts.

"I'd love to see this approach tried in some smaller places where it still might be partisan and contentious but maybe a simpler problem to start with," Palmer says. In the near term, Palmer, Schneer, and DeLuca hope their idea might spark some conversation among state legislators.

Their timing seems right. The political climate is only growing more partisan, and finding neutral and trusted people, institutions, and ideas is getting harder. A collaborative tool that takes some of the partisan heat out of redistricting might be just what we need.
This story is part of our Hacking Democracy series, which examines the ways in which technology is eroding our elections and democratic institutions-and what's been done to fix them. Read more here.

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This radically simple tool could solve one of our democracy's worst problems

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Louisiana's 6th would be a fairly normal-looking congressional district if it weren't for the large 2nd district that cuts into its middle. Republicans in the Louisiana statehouse designed the 2nd district to separate the high numbers of black voters in inner Baton Rouge from the 6th district, which now contains the mainly-white Baton Rouge suburbs and outlying rural areas.

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How Computer Modeling Of COVID-19's Spread Could Help Fight The Virus

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How Computer Modeling Of COVID-19's Spread Could Help Fight The Virus

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Computer models can provide insight to the spread of the virus. In this article, they talked about how modelers looked at how feasible it would be to control the virus by isolating sick people and tracking down every person they had contact with. They also looked at the utility of screening airport travelers to detect infected people. They can use these models to help advise health officials on the next best course of action concerning the virus.

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Scientists who use math and computers to simulate the course of epidemics are taking on the new coronavirus to try to predict how this global outbreak might evolve and how best to tackle it.

But some say more could be done to take advantage of these modeling tools and the researchers' findings.

"It is sort of an ad hoc, volunteer effort, and I think that's something that we could improve upon," says Caitlin Rivers, an infectious diseases modeler with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

In her view, "modeling plays a really important role in understanding how an outbreak is unfolding, where it might be going, and what we should be thinking through."

But only a small number of themodelers of epidemics work for the federal government, she says. Most are in academia, and they don't have formal relationships with officials who have to make key public health decisions.

Still, they are highly motivated to put their skills to use for the public good. They got to work almost as soon as the first reports of a new virus in China emerged in late December.

They've made similar efforts for past outbreaks, such as Ebola and Zika. But this time around felt different, people in the field say.

"I've never seen the modeling community so galvanized, you know - around this outbreak, and willing to share and collaborate," says Cecile Viboud, a scientist at the Fogarty International Center, based at the National Institutes of Health.

And research teams have been rapidly churning out insights. By mid-January, one group had circulated an analysis listing the top 15 cities at risk of the virus spreading, based on airplane flights and travel data.

Another team announced that it had used the number of infected people detected outside China to help figure out what might really be going on in Wuhan city. Those researchers estimated that there were actually more than 1,700 cases at the time, though the official count of confirmed cases was only 41.

"Putting that information out really quickly helped to bring a lot more attention of other modelers to say, 'There are now things that we can do, so let's do that,'" says Rosalind Eggo, an infectious disease modeler at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

She and her colleagues recently took the best available information about transmission and looked at how feasible it would be to control the virus by isolating sick people and tracking down every person they'd had contact with.

"That's a study that we did to try and give useful information to policymakers about what they would need to do with that strategy in order to have a good chance of controlling outbreaks," says Eggo.

What they found is that public health workers would need to trace a high percentage of a sick person's contacts to be effective in shutting down an outbreak quickly.

"You would need to trace at least 80% of contacts to have an 80% chance of containing an outbreak that started with 20 cases within three months," she says. "So that's quite a high number. And it's feasible in some places and potentially infeasible in others."

Her group also looked at the utility of screening airport travelers to detect infected people. One simulation showed that if 100 infected travelers began a journey on a 12-hour flight, about half would not be detected by inbound or outbound traveler screening that was based on symptoms.

"Due to the natural history of the infection, people spend about five days from when they get infected to when they start showing symptoms," Eggo explains. "In that time period, they can travel and won't be detected."

Studies like these can help public health officials decide where to concentrate their time, energy and money.

During the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014, for example, models forecast that the outbreak would continue to grow rapidly without aggressive intervention.

"These forecasts likely contributed to the acceleration of the international response and provided guidance for how resources might be effectively deployed," according to a recent commentary on "outbreak science."

In recent weeks, modelers inside and outside the government have been able to dial into weekly conference calls held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC typically gives an update during these calls on where things stand with the new coronavirus and talks about the questions it needs help with, says Viboud. She says one such call hadmore than 80 people on the line.

Epidemic modelers also have been communicating through the instant messaging platform Slack, as well as Twitter.

"It's never been as organized as it is now," Viboud says.

Still, a computer model is only as good as the data that get put into it.

"Right now the quality of the data is so uncertain that we don't know how good the models are going to be in projecting this kind of outbreak," says Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Modelers are eager for more information about critical issues, such as how many people are infected without symptoms and how much they can spread the virus to others.

Even without perfect data, however, Lipsitch says that virtual outbreaks studied in computers can help policymakers just get their heads around various possible scenarios.

"It's really that models help you think about things," says Lipsitch, "rather than that they tell you things for sure that you didn't know."

Some modelers believe that rather than just using models to react to emerging outbreaks, it would be better for the world to invest in real-time disease forecasting on an ongoing basis.

Sara Del Valle, a mathematical and computational epidemiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, says she'd like to see a global center set up to constantly collect information about circulating infectious illnesses.

Much like how the National Weather Service provides forecasts to help people prepare for their local weather, she says, such a center could tell people about their local risk of infectious diseases.

"People could actually, you know, just open their phones and open an app and then see the probability of infection," she says. "It could say like, 'There's a 20% probability of getting flu in your community, based on what is spreading there.'"

The advantage of a system like that, she says, is that all of the researchers, plus data-gathering and modeling resources, would already be in place if a new infectious disease threat like this coronavirus suddenly emerged.

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How Computer Modeling Of COVID-19's Spread Could Help Fight The Virus

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Scientists who use math and computers to simulate the course of epidemics are taking on the new coronavirus to try to predict how this global outbreak might evolve and how best to tackle it. But some say more could be done to take advantage of these modeling tools and the researchers' findings.

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New Jersey Lawmakers Push Data-Privacy Bill

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New Jersey Lawmakers Push Data-Privacy Bill

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Legislators in New Jersey are proposing a bill that would require companies to get permission from consumers before they collect and sell personal data. Under the bill, consumers would be able to ask companies to provide them with the data they sell to third parties and ask for their personal information to be deleted.

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New Jersey legislators are proposing a bill to strengthen data protections and impose tougher restrictions on the tech industry, potentially following in the footsteps of privacy laws passed in California and Europe.

The bill would require companies to obtain permission from New Jersey consumers before they can collect and sell personal data to third parties. The legislation, which would apply to internet companies like Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Facebook Inc., would have implications for any company that collects consumer...

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New Jersey Lawmakers Push Data-Privacy Bill

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New Jersey legislators are proposing a bill to strengthen data protections and impose tougher restrictions on the tech industry, potentially following in the footsteps of privacy laws passed in California and Europe. The bill would require companies to obtain permission from New Jersey consumers before they can collect and sell personal data to third parties.

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AI Is the Next Workplace Disrupter—and It’s Coming for High-Skilled Jobs

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AI Is the Next Workplace Disrupter—and It’s Coming for High-Skilled Jobs

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A study by the Brookings Institution found that the occupations must vulnerable to AI include marketing specialists, financial advisers, and computer programmers. Other jobs that are also vulnerable are certain types of engineers, optometrists, graphic designers, software developers, and sales managers. "AI enables computers to analyze data, predict outcomes, learn from experience by recognizing patterns and make decisions. Such tasks are currently done by professional workers, many with college degrees."

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The next wave of labor-saving technology will wear a white collar.

Artificial intelligence-programming machines to think more like humans-is expected to alter how Americans work on a scale similar to the impact of robotics and desktop computers. But employees affected by it are much more likely to be in management or professional roles than laborers turning screws or filing papers.

The...

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AI Is the Next Workplace Disrupter-and It's Coming for High-Skilled Jobs

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The next wave of labor-saving technology will wear a white collar. Artificial intelligence-programming machines to think more like humans-is expected to alter how Americans work on a scale similar to the impact of robotics and desktop computers. But employees affected by it are much more likely to be in management or professional roles than laborers turning screws or filing papers.

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BIG DATA HELPS FARMERS ADAPT TO CLIMATE VARIABILITY

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BIG DATA HELPS FARMERS ADAPT TO CLIMATE VARIABILITY

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A study by Michigan State University shows how digital technologies can help farmers adapt to threats from changing climates. It uses big data to identify areas within individual fields where yield is unstable.

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A new Michigan State University study shines a light on how big data and digital technologies can help farmers better adapt to threats - both present and future - from a changing climate.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, is the first to precisely quantify soil and landscape features and spatial and temporal yield variations in response to climate variability. It is also the first to use big data to identify areas within individual fields where yield is unstable.

Between 2007 and 2016, the U.S. economy took an estimated $536 million economic hit because of yield variation in unstable farmland caused by climate variability across the Midwest. More than one-quarter of corn and soybean cropland in the region is unstable. Yields fluctuate between over-performing and underperforming on an annual basis.

Bruno Basso, MSU Foundation professor of earth and environmental sciences, and his postdoctoral research fellow, Rafael Martinez-Feria, set out to address the key pillars of the National Institute for Food and Agriculture's Coordinated Agricultural Project that Basso has led since 2015.

"First, we wanted to know why - and where - crop yields varied from year to year in the corn and soybean belt of the U.S.," Basso said. "Next, we wanted to find out if it was possible to use big data to develop and deploy climate-smart agriculture solutions to help farmers reduce cost, increase yields and limit environmental impact."

Basso and Martinez-Feria first examined soil and discovered that alone, it could not sufficiently explain such drastic yield variations.

"The same soil would have low yield one year and high yield the next," Basso said. "So, what is causing this temporal instability?"

Using an enormous amount of data obtained from satellites, research aircraft, drones and remote sensors, and from farmers via advanced geospatial sensor suites present in many modern combine harvesters, Basso and Martinez-Feria wove big data and digital expertise together.

What they found is that the interaction between topography, weather and soil has an immense impact on how crop fields respond to extreme weather in unstable areas. Terrain variations, such as depressions, summits and slopes, create localized areas where water stands or runs off. Roughly two-thirds of unstable zones occur in these summits and depressions and the terrain controls water stress experienced by crops.

With comprehensive data and the technology, the team quantified the percentage of every single corn or soybean field in the Midwest that is prone to water excess or water deficit. Yields in water-deficient areas can be 23 to 33% below the field average for seasons with low rainfall but are comparable to the average in very wet years. Areas prone to water excess experienced yields 26 to 33% below field average during wet years.

Basso believes their work will help determine the future of climate-smart agriculture technologies.

"We are primarily concerned with helping farmers see their fields in a new manner, helping them make better decisions to improve yield, reduce cost and improve environmental impact," Basso said. "Knowing that you have an area shown to be water deficient, you will plan your fertilizer applications differently. The amount of fertilizer for this area should be significantly lower than what you would apply in areas of the same field with more water available to the plants."

The study was funded by USDA NIFA (awards 2015-68007-23133, 2018- 67003-27406) and AgBioResearch.

"Combining big data spatially with landscape position this way could forever change the way midwestern farmers fertilize their fields, and ultimately reduce the amount of reactive nitrogen getting into our water," said Jim Dobrowolski, NIFA national program leader.

NIFA supports an integrated approach to ensure that groundbreaking discoveries in agriculture-related sciences and technologies reach the people who can put them into practice.

"NIFA's collaboration with the Michigan State University team has led to various papers with students and postdoctoral fellows. It supports one of its critical mandates to fund innovative agricultural science and develop the next generation of scientists," said Scott Angle, NIFA director.

(Note for media: Please include a link to the original paper in online coverage: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-59494-2)

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Big data helps farmers adapt to climate variability

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A new Michigan State University study shines a light on how big data and digital technologies can help farmers better adapt to threats - both present and future - from a changing climate. The study, published in Scientific Reports, is the first to precisely quantify soil and landscape features and spatial and temporal yield variations in response to climate variability.

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In Coronavirus Fight, China Gives Citizens a Color Code, With Red Flags                           A new system uses software to dictate quarantines — and appears to send personal data to police, in a troubling precedent for automated social control. 

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In Coronavirus Fight, China Gives Citizens a Color Code, With Red Flags                           A new system uses software to dictate quarantines — and appears to send personal data to police, in a troubling precedent for automated social control. 

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China now has software that people can get on their smart phones that determines whether they should be quarantined or allowed in public spaces. New York Times analysis of this code determined the system also shares information with the police. The program sends the person's location, city name and identifying code number to a server that likely can be accessed by the police. In some places in China, it is nearly impossible to get around without showing this code on your phone. It is unclear how the codes are determined.

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Researchers Tackle the Flu with Breakthrough Virus Simulations

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Researchers Tackle the Flu with Breakthrough Virus Simulations

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Researchers form the University of California San Diego and the University of Pittsburgh have a new approach for developing treatments for the flu. They developed new virus stimulations to model atomic movements in the viral envelope. This will help with new anti-flu drug development.

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A team of researchers from the University of California San Diego and the University of Pittsburgh offers a new approach for developing treatments for influenza. This version of the flu called pandemic Influenza A H1N1 2009, or pH1N1, differs from the Coronavirus, and has been known to kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. The Center for Disease Control estimates that it affected nearly 61 million people, resulting in more than 12,000 deaths, in the United States alone. The H1N1 virus also circulates among bird and pig populations, causing seasonal epidemic and pandemic outbreaks, such as the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed millions of people worldwide.

Additionally, the increasingly widespread resistance to antiviral medications is compounding this threat, thus requiring the development of novel approaches for the prevention and treatment of inﬂuenza virus infection.

Mesoscale simulations enhance conformational sampling of the viral glycoproteins. This image shows a fully intact all-atom model of the influenza A H1N1 2009 (pH1N1) viral envelope, containing over 160 million atoms, without explicit water molecules. Photo courtesy of Lorenzo Casalino, UC San Diego

The process of creating new therapeutics that effectively fight the flu virus involves scientists experimenting with molecular simulations. In a recent study, led by UC San Diego's Rommie Amaro, researchers broke new ground with their simulations in terms of size, complexity and methodological analyses of the simulated components. Their findings are published in Central Science, a journal of the American Chemical Society.

Working with pH1N1, the research team examined two specific binding sites among the rich molecular environment of the virus. They better characterized these two sites by developing an all-atom, solvated and experimentally based integrative model of pH1N1.

"Even just building this system from the ground up was quite challenging as it required us to integrate different types of experimental data, at different resolutions," said Amaro. "This model itself was useful to understand the physical arrangement of molecules in the virus, which had never been done before at this level of detail."

The professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego explained that to aid in drug discovery, researchers often create highly detailed models of proteins and the drugs with which they interact. In most cases, however, to do this, they greatly simplify the system and focus on one single drug target. The work by Amaro and colleagues is considered a breakthrough because it models the entire influenza viral envelope, and its many components, without sacrificing the details of each target. This effort therefore gives new views into complexity of the individual drug targets, within their native environment.

Once the system was built, the researchers employed one of the largest and most powerful supercomputers, the petascale Blue Waters system at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to simulate how all the atoms in the viral envelope move.

Amaro noted the novelty of accomplishing the simulation relative to the large scale of the biological system, one of the largest ever to be simulated.

"From a more scientific standpoint, it allowed us to see how the different flu proteins interacted with each other on the viral surface," said Amaro.

Video simulation related to new Influenza A, pH1N1 research findings by UC San Diego's Rommie Amaro and her collaborators. Video courtesy of Lorenzo Casalino, UC San Diego

The team also used the many copies of each protein in the virus together with a statistical analysis technique known as Markov state modeling to estimate how quickly different parts of the viral proteins moved.

"This was useful because it allowed us, for the first time, to characterize how quickly one particular loop known as the '150-loop' opened and closed," said Amaro. "We care about the motion of this loop because the loop is right up next to where drugs, like Tamiflu, bind to deactivate the protein."

Amaro added that the research also provided fundamental insights into the understanding of substrate recognition processes for this vital inﬂuenza drug target, suggesting a new strategy for the development of anti-inﬂuenza therapeutics.

"Our study also provides new evidence that an often-overlooked so-called 'secondary site' may be the first place the natural substrate of the flu binds. Thus a novel viable therapeutic strategy may be to design molecules that effectively block that site," said Amaro.

Blue Waters Director William Kramer said that few supercomuters are capable of the petascale performance required for these research results. "We are thrilled Blue Waters, both the computer and the support staff, was able to contribute to this groundbreaking success. To our knowledge, a molecular dynamics simulation on so grand a scale has never been attempted, let alone completed," he said.

This work was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award Program (NIH DP2 OD007237) and the National Biomedical Computation Resource (NIH P41 GM103426). Computing support on the Blue Waters Petascale Computer was provided through the National Science Foundation (OAC- 464 1811685). The researchers recognize the NSF for access to the TACC Stampede supercomputer (CHE060073N) and the Center for Research Computing at the University of Pittsburgh for a computing allocation. The authors also acknowledge Robert Malmstrom for providing sample MSM-building scripts and useful discussions.

The full research team included Amaro; Jacob Durrant, University of Pittsburg's Department of Biological Sciences and Lorenzo Casalino, Pek Ieong and Abigail Dommer from UC San Diego.

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Researchers Tackle the Flu with Breakthrough Virus Simulations

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A team of researchers from the University of California San Diego and the University of Pittsburgh offers a new approach for developing treatments for influenza. This version of the flu called pandemic Influenza A H1N1 2009, or pH1N1, differs from the Coronavirus, and has been known to kill hundreds of thousands of people each year.

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Tech Platforms Aren’t Bound by First Amendment, Appeals Court Rules                      Judges decided against Prager University, which claimed YouTube didn’t have right to flag videos

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Tech Platforms Aren’t Bound by First Amendment, Appeals Court Rules                      Judges decided against Prager University, which claimed YouTube didn’t have right to flag videos

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A court in California ruled that privately operated internet platforms are allowed to censor content they don't like in an unanimous decision. A YouTube channel operated by Prager University that promoted conservative ideas was flagged by YouTube as "inappropriate," and Prager University fought these flags in this court case. This case brings up the wider debate about the right to free speech in the digital age.

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A federal appeals court in California on Wednesday ruled that privately operated internet platforms are free to censor content they don't like.

Though not unexpected, the unanimous decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco marks the most emphatic rejection of the argument advanced in some conservative circles that YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other giant tech platforms are bound by the First Amendment.

...

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Tech Platforms Aren't Bound by First Amendment, Appeals Court Rules

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A federal appeals court in California on Wednesday ruled that privately operated internet platforms are free to censor content they don't like. Though not unexpected, the unanimous decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco marks the most emphatic rejection of the argument advanced in some conservative circles that YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other giant tech platforms are bound by the First Amendment.

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Pentagon adopts new ethical principles for using AI in war

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Pentagon adopts new ethical principles for using AI in war

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As the Pentagon is accelerating the use of AI technology on the battlefield, it has adopted new ethical principles concerning AI. The new principles call for people to "exercise appropriate levels of judgement and care" when deploying and using AI systems.

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The Pentagon is adopting new ethical principles as it prepares to accelerate its use of artificial intelligence technology on the battlefield.

The new principles call for people to "exercise appropriate levels of judgment and care" when deploying and using AI systems, such as those that scan aerial imagery to look for targets.

They also say decisions made by automated systems should be "traceable" and "governable," which means "there has to be a way to disengage or deactivate" them if they are demonstrating unintended behavior, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, director of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

The Pentagon's push to speed up its AI capabilities has fueled a fight between tech companies over a $10 billion cloud computing contract known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI. Microsoft won the contract in October but hasn't been able to get started on the 10-year project because Amazon sued the Pentagon, arguing that President Donald Trump's antipathy toward Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos hurt the company's chances at winning the bid.

An existing 2012 military directive requires humans to be in control of automated weapons but doesn't address broader uses of AI. The new U.S. principles are meant to guide both combat and non-combat applications, from intelligence-gathering and surveillance operations to predicting maintenance problems in planes or ships.

The approach outlined Monday follows recommendations made last year by the Defense Innovation Board, a group led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

While the Pentagon acknowledged that AI "raises new ethical ambiguities and risks," the new principles fall short of stronger restrictions favored by arms control advocates.

"I worry that the principles are a bit of an ethics-washing project," said Lucy Suchman, an anthropologist who studies the role of AI in warfare. "The word 'appropriate' is open to a lot of interpretations."

Shanahan said the principles are intentionally broad to avoid handcuffing the U.S. military with specific restrictions that could become outdated.

"Tech adapts. Tech evolves," he said.

The Pentagon hit a roadblock in its AI efforts in 2018 after internal protests at Google led the tech company to drop out of the military's Project Maven, which uses algorithms to interpret aerial images from conflict zones. Other companies have since filled the vacuum. Shanahan said the new principles are helping to regain support from the tech industry, where "there was a thirst for having this discussion."

"Sometimes I think the angst is a little hyped, but we do have people who have serious concerns about working with the Department of Defense," he said.

Shanahan said the guidance also helps secure American technological advantage as China and Russia pursue military AI with little attention paid to ethical concerns.

University of Richmond law professor Rebecca Crootof said adopting principles is a good first step, but the military will need to show it can critically evaluate the huge data troves used by AI systems, as well as their cybersecurity risks.

Crootof said she also hopes the U.S. action helps establish international norms around the military use of AI.

"If the U.S. is seen to be taking AI ethical norms seriously, by default they become a more serious topic," she said.

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Pentagon adopts new ethical principles for using AI in war

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The Pentagon is adopting new ethical principles as it prepares to accelerate its use of artificial intelligence technology on the battlefield. The new principles call for people to "exercise appropriate levels of judgment and care" when deploying and using AI systems, such as those that scan aerial imagery to look for targets.

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Computer Scientists’ New Tool Fools Hackers into Sharing Keys for Better Cybersecurity

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Computer Scientists’ New Tool Fools Hackers into Sharing Keys for Better Cybersecurity

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In a new cybersecurity defense approach, computer scientists at the University of Texas encourage hackers to attack a decoy site so that the computer can learn the tactics of the hacker.

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Instead of blocking hackers, a new cybersecurity defense approach developed by University of Texas at Dallas computer scientists actually welcomes them.

The method, called DEEP-Dig (DEcEPtion DIGging), ushers intruders into a decoy site so the computer can learn from hackers' tactics. The information is then used to train the computer to recognize and stop future attacks.

UT Dallas researchers presented a paper on their work, "Improving Intrusion Detectors by Crook-Sourcing," at the annual Computer Security Applications Conference in December in Puerto Rico. They presented another paper, "Automating Cyberdeception Evaluation with Deep Learning," in January at the Hawaii International Conference of System Sciences.

DEEP-Dig advances a rapidly growing cybersecurity field known as deception technology, which involves setting traps for hackers. Researchers hope that the approach can be especially useful for defense organizations.

"There are criminals trying to attack our networks all the time, and normally we view that as a negative thing," said Dr. Kevin Hamlen, Eugene McDermott Professor of computer science. "Instead of blocking them, maybe what we could be doing is viewing these attackers as a source of free labor. They're providing us data about what malicious attacks look like. It's a free source of highly prized data."

"There are criminals trying to attack our networks all the time, and normally we view that as a negative thing. Instead of blocking them, maybe what we could be doing is viewing these attackers as a source of free labor. They're providing us data about what malicious attacks look like."
Dr. Kevin Hamlen, Eugene McDermott Professor of computer science

The approach aims to solve a major challenge to using artificial intelligence for cybersecurity: a shortage of data needed to train computers to detect intruders. The lack of data is due to privacy concerns. Better data will mean better ability to detect attacks, said Gbadebo Ayoade MS'14, PhD'19, who presented the findings at the recent conferences.

"We're using the data from hackers to train the machine to identify an attack," said Ayoade, now a data scientist at Procter & Gamble Co. "We're using deception to get better data."

Hackers typically begin with their simplest tricks and then use increasingly sophisticated tactics, Hamlen said. But most cyberdefense programs try to disrupt intruders before anyone can monitor the intruders' techniques. DEEP-Dig will give researchers a window into hackers' methods as they enter a decoy site stocked with disinformation. The decoy site looks legitimate to intruders, said Dr. Latifur Khan, professor of computer science at UT Dallas.

"Attackers will feel they're successful," Khan said.

Governmental agencies, businesses, nonprofits and individuals face a constant threat from cyberattacks, which cost the U.S. economy more than $57 billion in 2016, according to a report to the White House from the Council of Economic Advisers.

As hackers' tactics change, DEEP-Dig could help cybersecurity defense systems keep up with their new tricks.

"It's an endless game," Khan said.

While DEEP-Dig aims to outsmart hackers, is it possible that hackers could have the last laugh if they realize they have entered a decoy site and try to deceive the program?

Maybe, Hamlen said. But that possibility does not worry him.

"So far, we've found this doesn't work. When an attacker tries to play along, the defense system just learns how hackers try to hide their tracks," Hamlen said. "It's an all-win situation - for us, that is."

Other researchers involved in the work included Frederico Araujo PhD'16, research scientist at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center; Khaled Al-Naami PhD'17; Yang Gao, a UT Dallas computer science graduate student; and Dr. Ahmad Mustafa of Jordan University of Science and Technology.

The research was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research, the National Security Agency, the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

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Computer Scientists' New Tool Fools Hackers into Sharing Keys for Better Cybersecurity

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Instead of blocking hackers, a new cybersecurity defense approach developed by University of Texas at Dallas computer scientists actually welcomes them. The method, called DEEP-Dig (DEcEPtion DIGging), ushers intruders into a decoy site so the computer can learn from hackers' tactics. The information is then used to train the computer to recognize and stop future attacks.

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Swarming Robots Avoid Collisions, Traffic Jams      New algorithm could help control driverless cars, automated warehouses

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Swarming Robots Avoid Collisions, Traffic Jams      New algorithm could help control driverless cars, automated warehouses

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Researchers at Northwestern University have developed the first decentralized algorithm with a collision-free, deadlock-free guarantee.

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For self-driving vehicles to become an everyday reality, they need to safely and flawlessly navigate one another without crashing or causing unnecessary traffic jams.

To help make this possible, Northwestern University researchers have developed the first decentralized algorithm with a collision-free, deadlock-free guarantee.

The researchers tested the algorithm in a simulation of 1,024 robots and on a swarm of 100 real robots in the laboratory. The robots reliably, safely and efficiently converged to form a pre-determined shape in less than a minute.

"If you have many autonomous vehicles on the road, you don't want them to collide with one another or get stuck in a deadlock," said Northwestern Engineering's Michael Rubenstein, who led the study. "By understanding how to control our swarm robots to form shapes, we can understand how to control fleets of autonomous vehicles as they interact with each other."

The paper will be published later this month in the journal IEEE Transactions on Robotics. Rubenstein is the Lisa Wissner-Slivka and Benjamin Slivka Professor in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering in Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering. He's also a member of Northwestern's Center for Robotics and Biosystems.

The advantage of a swarm of small robots - versus one large robot or a swarm with one lead robot - is the lack of a centralized control, which can quickly become a central point of failure. Rubenstein's decentralized algorithm acts as a fail-safe.

"If the system is centralized and a robot stops working, then the entire system fails," Rubenstein said. "In a decentralized system, there is no leader telling all the other robots what to do. Each robot makes its own decisions. If one robot fails in a swarm, the swarm can still accomplish the task."

Still, the robots need to coordinate in order to avoid collisions and deadlock. To do this, the algorithm views the ground beneath the robots as a grid. By using technology similar to GPS, each robot is aware of where it sits on the grid.

Before making a decision about where to move, each robot uses sensors to communicate with its neighbors, determining whether or not nearby spaces within the grid are vacant or occupied.

"The robots refuse to move to a spot until that spot is free and until they know that no other robots are moving to that same spot," Rubenstein said. "They are careful and reserve a space ahead of time."

Even with all this careful coordination, the robots are still able to communicate and move swiftly to form a shape. Rubenstein accomplishes this by keeping the robots near-sighted.

"Each robot can only sense three or four of its closest neighbors," Rubenstein explained. "They can't see across the whole swarm, which makes it easier to scale the system. The robots interact locally to make decisions without global information."

In Rubenstein's swarm, for example, 100 robots can coordinate to form a shape within a minute. In some previous approaches, it could take a full hour. Rubenstein imagines that his algorithm could be used in fleets of driverless cars and in automated warehouses.

"Large companies have warehouses with hundreds of robots doing tasks similar to what our robots do in the lab," he said. "They need to make sure their robots don't collide but do move as quickly as possible to reach the spot where they eventually give an object to a human."

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Swarming Robots Avoid Collisions, Traffic Jams

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For self-driving vehicles to become an everyday reality, they need to safely and flawlessly navigate one another without crashing or causing unnecessary traffic jams. To help make this possible, Northwestern University researchers have developed the first decentralized algorithm with a collision-free, deadlock-free guarantee.

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How To Reduce Bias in AI? Selective Amnesia.

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How To Reduce Bias in AI? Selective Amnesia.

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AI is becoming more prevalent in daily lives, so it is important to make sure that it is unbiased. Researchers developed an adversarial forgetting approach for AI that teaches AI to disregard unwanted data factors in order to make the results produced unbiased.

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Imagine if the next time you apply for a loan, a computer algorithm determines you need to pay a higher rate based primarily on your race, gender or zip code.

Now, imagine it was possible to train an AI deep learning model to analyze that underlying data by inducing amnesia: it forgets certain data and only focuses on others.

If you're thinking that this sounds like the computer scientist's version of "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," you'd be pretty spot on. And thanks to AI researchers at USC's Information Sciences Institute (ISI), this concept, called adversarial forgetting, is now a real mechanism.

The importance of addressing and removing biases in AI is becoming more important as AI becomes increasingly prevalent in our daily lives, noted Ayush Jaiswal, Ph.D. candidate at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

"AI and, more specifically, machine learning models inherit biases present in the data they're trained on and are prone to even amplify those biases," he explained. "AI is being used to make several real-life decisions that affect all of us, [such as] determining credit limits, approving loans, scoring job applications, etc. If, for example, models for making these decisions are trained blindly on historical data without controlling for biases, they would learn to unfairly treat individuals that belong to historically disadvantaged sections of the population, such as women and people of color."

The research paper, titled " Invariant Representations through Adversarial Forgetting," was presented at the Association for the Advancement for Artificial Intelligence conference in New York City on February 10, 2020. The research was led by Wael AbdAlmageed, research team leader at ISI and a research associate professor at USC Viterbi's Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and research associate professor Greg Ver Steeg, as well as Premkumar Natarajan, research professor of computer science (on leave) and former executive director of ISI. Under their guidance, lead author Jaiswal and co-author Daniel Moyer, Ph.D., developed the adversarial forgetting approach, which teaches deep learning models to disregard specific, unwanted data factors so that the results they produce are unbiased and more accurate.

Nuisances and Neural Networks

Deep learning is a core component in AI and can teach computers how to find correlations and make predictions with data, helping identify people or objects, for example. Models essentially look for associations between different features within data and the target that it's supposed to predict. If a model was tasked to find a specific person from a group, it would analyze facial features to tell everyone apart and then identify the targeted person. Simple, right?

Unfortunately, things don't always run so smoothly, as the model can end up learning things that may seem counterintuitive. It could associate your identity with a particular background or lighting setup and be unable to identify you if the lighting or background was altered; it could associate your handwriting to a certain word, and get confused if the same word was written in someone else's handwriting. These aptly-named nuisance factors aren't related to the task that you're trying to carry out, and misassociating them with the prediction target can actually end up being dangerous.

Models can also learn biases in data that are correlated with the prediction target but are undesired. For example, in tasks carried out by models involving historically collected socioeconomic data, such as determining credit scores, credit lines, and loan eligibility, the model can make false predictions and show biases by making connections between the biases and the prediction target. There's no shortage of stories of banks coming under fire for their algorithms' biased decisions in how much they charge people who've taken out loans based on their race, gender, and education, even if they have the exact same credit profile as someone in a more socially privileged population segment.

As Jaiswal explained, the adversarial forgetting mechanism "fixes" neural networks, which are powerful deep learning models that learn to predict targets from data. The credit limit you got on that new credit card you signed up for? A neural network likely analyzed your financial data to come up with that number.

The research team developed the adversarial forgetting mechanism so that it could first train the neural network to represent all the underlying aspects of the data that it's analyzing and then forget specified biases. In the example of the credit card limit, that would mean that the mechanism could teach the bank's algorithm to predict the limit while forgetting, or being invariant to, the particular data pertaining to gender or race. "[The mechanism] can be used train neural networks to be invariant to known biases in training datasets," Jaiswal said. "This, in turn, would result in trained models that wouldn't be biased while making decisions."

Deep learning algorithms are great at learning things, but it's more difficult to make sure that the algorithms don't learn certain things. Developing algorithms is a very data-driven process, and data tends to contain biases.

But can't we just take out all the data on race, gender, and education to remove the biases?

Not entirely. There are many other factors of data that are correlated with these sensitive factors that are important for algorithms to analyze. The key, as the ISI AI researchers found, is adding constraints in the model's training process to force the model to make predictions while being invariant to specific factors of data-essentially, selective forgetting.

Battling Biases

Invariance refers to the ability to identify a specific object even if its appearance (i.e., data) is altered in some way, and Jaiswal and his colleagues began thinking about how this concept could be applied to improve algorithms. "My co-author, Dan [Moyer], and I actually came up with this idea somewhat naturally based on our previous experiences in the field of invariant representation learning," he remarked. But fleshing out the concept was no simple task. "The most challenging parts were [the] rigorous comparison with previous works in this domain on a wide array of datasets (which required running a very large number of experiments) and [developing] a theoretical analysis of the forgetting process," he said.

The adversarial forgetting mechanism can be also used to help improve content generation in a variety of fields. "The budding field of fair machine learning looks at ways of reducing bias in algorithmic decision making based on consumer data," said Ver Steeg. "A more speculative area involves research on using AI to generate content including attempts at books, music, art, games, and even recipes. For content generation to succeed, we need new ways to control and manipulate neural network representations and the forgetting mechanism could be a way of doing that."

So how do biases even show up in the model in the first place?

Most models use historical data, which, unfortunately, can be largely biased towards traditionally marginalized communities like women, minorities, even certain zip codes. It's costly and cumbersome to collect data, so scientists tend to resort to data that already exists and train models based on that, which is how biases enter the picture.

The good news is that these biases are being recognized, and while the problem is far from being solved, strides are being made to understand and address these issues. "[I]n the research community, people are definitely becoming increasingly conscious of dataset biases, and designing and analyzing collection protocols to control for known biases," said Jaiswal. "The study of biases and fairness in machine learning has grown rapidly as a research field in the past few years."

Determination of which factors should be considered irrelevant or biased are made by domain experts and based on statistical analysis. "So far, invariance has mostly been used to remove factors that are widely considered unwanted/irrelevant within the research community based on statistical evidence," Jaiswal stated.

However, since researchers determine what is irrelevant or biased, there can be a potential for those determinations to turn into biases themselves. This is a factor that researchers are working on as well. "Figuring out which factors to forget is a critical problem that can easily lead to unintended consequences," noted Ver Steeg. "A recent Nature piece on fair learning points out that we have to understand the mechanisms behind discrimination if we hope to correctly specify algorithmic solutions."

Human information processing is extremely intricate, and the adversarial forgetting mechanism helps us get one step closer to developing AI that can think like we do. As Ver Steeg remarked, humans tend to separate different forms of information about the world around them by instinct-getting algorithms to do the same is the challenge at hand.

"If someone steps in front of your car, you slam on the breaks and the slogan on their shirt doesn't even enter your mind," said Ver Steeg. "But if you met that person in a social context, that information might be relevant and help you strike up a conversation. For AI, different types of information are all mashed together. If we can teach neural networks to separate concepts that are useful for different tasks, we hope it leads AI to a more human understanding of the world."

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How To Reduce Bias in AI? Selective Amnesia. - USC Viterbi | School of Engineering

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Imagine if the next time you apply for a loan, a computer algorithm determines you need to pay a higher rate based primarily on your race, gender or zip code. Now, imagine it was possible to train an AI deep learning model to analyze that underlying data by inducing amnesia: it forgets certain data and only focuses on others.

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Should All Children Learn to Code by the End of High School?

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Should All Children Learn to Code by the End of High School?

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There is a push to include coding as a subject high school students need to show proficiency in before they graduate. Many companies have shortages of employees with programming skills. There are arguments for this movement that say coding literacy is something everyone needs for the future. The arguments against this movement don't want to cater to the needs of technology company CEOs.

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At every high school, students are required to show proficiency in certain subjects to graduate. Now there's a push to include computer coding as one of those subjects.

The idea is that such a skill will be invaluable in a world that increasingly runs on computer technology. What's more, many companies report shortages of workers with programming skills.

Nearly...

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Should All Children Learn to Code by the End of High School?

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At every high school, students are required to show proficiency in certain subjects to graduate. Now there's a push to include computer coding as one of those subjects. The idea is that such a skill will be invaluable in a world that increasingly runs on computer technology.

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There is a national day of unplugging from March 6-7 2020. It is a campaign to disconnect from digital devices for 24 hours, similar to the digital detox in our class. 112,000 people have joined the movement.

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We increasingly miss out on the important moments of our lives as we pass the hours with our noses buried in our devices.

Join us and unplug, and we'll send a free toolkit with activity guides, conversation starters and "I Unplug To" signs.

a 24 hour global respite from technology. it highlights the value of disconnecting from digital devices to connect with ourselves, our loved ones and our communities in real time.

Join us for national day of unplugging 2020 from sundown to sundown, march 6 - 7.

Join the Movement

Whether by yourself or with your community, you can join by doing the following:

Read a book, meditate and take some quality you time. Join and we'll send you a free resource kits, conversation starters, and activity guides.

Unplug as a community. We'll share our free resource toolkits, with guides on how to host your own unplugging activities. Learn how to receive our cell phone sleeping bags for your event, too!

Kids were born unplugged. Let them explore, adventure and imagine in your classroom, family and youth group.

We help with corporate events, too! Introduce a little work/life balance to your organization by creating an unplugged event for your colleagues and employees. We'll supply everything you need.

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Read a book, meditate and take some quality you time. Join and we'll send you a free resource kits, conversation starters, and activity guides. Unplug as a community. We'll share our free resource toolkits, with guides on how to host your own unplugging activities.

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Twitter is Testing Tweets that Vanish After 24 Hours

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Twitter is Testing Tweets that Vanish After 24 Hours

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Twitter introduced a new concept called "fleets," which are tweets that self-destruct after 24 hours. It is launching fleets in Brazil. They hope to increase engagement with the self-deleting tweets.

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Twitter has launched a test of "fleets," ephemeral tweets that self-destruct after 24 hours - a concept first popularized by Snapchat's Stories.

Twitter said the new format is for "fleeting thoughts," which users may not want permanently nailed up as tweets. Fleets will disappear 24 hours after they're posted, and there's no ability for others to retweet, like or publicly comment on them.

"One of the unique things about Twitter is that 'what's happening' is fueled by people sharing their thoughts openly, through Tweets. But sharing your thoughts publicly can be intimidating!" Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour wrote in a post. "We've been listening to this feedback and working to create new capabilities that address some of the anxieties that hold people back from talking on Twitter."

The company is launching fleets first in Brazil, "one of the countries where people talk the most on Twitter," the company said. Twitter will evaluate the test-run of fleets in Brazil before deciding to take it elsewhere.

According to Twitter, an initial survey of users showed they would be more comfortable "sharing everyday thoughts" if they disappear after 24 hours.

Like tweets, Twitter fleets are based primarily on text, but you also can include videos, GIFs or photos in them. Users' fleets will appear at the top of their home page and visible to their followers. Other users can reply to a fleet via private direct message or with an emoji.

Twitter is late to the disappearing-content game: Snapchat launched with the core feature of messages that delete after they're viewed, and back in 2013 introduced Snapchat Stories that are viewable for 24 hours. Instagram launched a copycat in 2016 (a year after that Facebook itself did as well).

Twitter's hope is that self-deleting posts will lead to more engagement by encouraging people to share more often - and to check their Twitter feed daily. Of course, fleets can still be screen-captured by other users. But the point is to provide a home on Twitter for expiring content in part to minimize users' fears that controversial or otherwise embarrassing old tweets will come back to haunt them. Note that while Twitter lets users manually delete regular tweets, the text can remain accessible if those are "cached or cross-posted on third-party websites, applications, or search engines," the company says.

The trial launch of fleets comes after Twitter last month acquired Chroma Labs, a startup founded by three ex-Facebook employees that developed an app for editing photos and videos posted to Snapchat Stories or Instagram Stories.

Beykpour shared an example of what Twitter's fleets look like:

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Twitter Is Testing Tweets That Vanish After 24 Hours

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Twitter has launched a test of "fleets," ephemeral tweets that self-destruct after 24 hours - a concept first popularized by Snapchat's Stories. Twitter said the new format is for "fleeting thoughts," which users may not want permanently nailed up as tweets.

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Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook must accept some state regulation

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Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook must accept some state regulation

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Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has stated that Facebook must accept some form of state regulation. He classifies the company as a content provider between a newspaper and a telephone company. He also stated that Facebook is now employing 35,000 staff committed to monitoring content and security on the platform.

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Facebook must accept some form of state regulation, acknowledging its status as a content provider somewhere between a newspaper and a telephone company, its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has said.

He also claimed an era of clean democratic elections, free of interference by foreign governments, is closer due to Facebook now employing 35,000 staff working on monitoring content and security.

He admitted Facebook had been slow to understand the scale of the problem of foreign interference. He also defended his company from claims that it is leading to political polarisation, saying its purpose is to bring communities together.
'Can you post a meme?': Facebook changes ad rules after Bloomberg exploits loophole
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, an annual high-level gathering of politicians, diplomats and security specialists, Zuckerberg sought to dispel the notion that his company had undermined democracy, weakened the social fabric or contributed to the weakening of the west through spreading distrust.

He said he supported state regulations in four fields covering elections, political discourse, privacy and data portability. He said: "We don't want private companies making so many decision-balancing social equities without democratic processes."

Zuckerberg, who is due to have fresh discussions with the EU commission regulators on Monday said, so long as "enough people have weighed in to come up with an answer" on regulation, the answer will not necessarily be right, but the process by which the decision is taken will in itself help build greater trust in the internet.

By contrast, he said authoritarian states were introducing highly controlled forms of internet that limited free expression. "I do think that there should be regulation in the west on harmful content ... there's a question about which framework you use for this," Zuckerberg said during a question-and-answer session at the event.

"Right now there are two frameworks that I think people have for existing industries - there's newspapers and existing media, and then there's the telco-type model, which is 'the data just flows through you', but you're not going to hold a telco responsible if someone says something harmful on a phone line. I actually think where we should be is somewhere in between," he said.

He pointed out Facebook publishes 100bn pieces of content every day, adding: "It is simply not possible to have some kind of human editor responsible to check each one."

Facebook's responsibility for its content was not analogous to that of a newspaper editor, he said. Without expanding, he said some kind of third regulatory structure was required settled somewhere between newspapers and telephones.
Algorithms on social media need regulation, says UK's AI adviser
Denying Facebook's choice of content led to confirmatory bias by only giving its subscribers information with which they agree, he said: "We try to show some balance of views."

The average Facebook subscriber has about 200 friends, most of whom share similar views. "It is not a technology problem, it is a social affirmation problem," he argued. "The choice of what you see is based on the balance of what you share, rather than by choosing what you see. If your cousin has had a baby we had better make sure that is near the top," he said.

He said his firm had been slow to see how foreign powers were interfering in elections, but Facebook was now spending an amount on security and content equivalent to the total value of the company in 2012, and claimed this "massive effort" was producing a greater understanding about how to protect the integrity of elections. Nearly 1m accounts had been taken down, he said.

But he warned new domestic actors, as well as foreign powers, were seeking to disrupt elections. The outside forces were also becoming more sophisticated in covering their tracks by pretending their messages were coming from a variety of IP addresses in different countries.
US orders Google, Facebook and others to reveal details of years of acquisitions
Facebook was also offering election campaigns a new free service where the candidate provides the internet details of its staff, and if one or more of the staff is hacked, the campaign's security can be increased to a higher state of protection.

He said the firm had shifted from a reactive to proactive model, so much so that 99% of terrorist content is taken down before any external complaint is made. In the case of hate speech, 80% of content is removed without notification, but Facebook's Artificial Intelligence was still struggling to distinguish the "small nuances" between content that was hate speech, or content that was condemning the hate speech, he said.

AAsked by Ronen Bergman of the New York Times about Facebook and WhatsApp's lawsuit against Israeli spyware company NSO Group, Zuckerberg shrugged off the idea that the case could damage governments' ability to work against terrorism. "They can defend themselves in court if what they think is legal," he said, "but our view is that people should not be trying to hack into software that billions of people around the world use to try to communicate securely."
Topics

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Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook must accept some state regulation

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Facebook must accept some form of state regulation, acknowledging its status as a content provider somewhere between a newspaper and a telephone company, its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has said. He also claimed an era of clean democratic elections, free of interference by foreign governments, is closer due to Facebook now employing 35,000 staff working on monitoring content and security.

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Researchers devise approach to reduce biases in computer vision data sets

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Researchers devise approach to reduce biases in computer vision data sets

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Researchers from Princeton and Stanford University have developed methods to obtain fairer datasets containing images of people. They propose changes to ImageNet (a database of over 14 million images) such as removing offensive categories, such as racial and sexual characterizations, from person categories in the database.

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School of Engineering and Applied Science

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ImageNet, which includes images of objects and landscapes as well as people, serves as a source of training data for researchers creating machine learning algorithms that classify images or recognize elements within them. ImageNet's unprecedented scale necessitated automated image collection and crowdsourced image annotation. While the database's person categories have rarely been used by the research community, the ImageNet team has been working to address biases and other concerns about images featuring people that are unintended consequences of ImageNet's construction.

"Computer vision now works really well, which means it's being deployed all over the place in all kinds of contexts," said co-author Olga Russakovsky, an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton. "This means that now is the time for talking about what kind of impact it's having on the world and thinking about these kinds of fairness issues."

In a new paper, the ImageNet team systematically identified non-visual concepts and offensive categories, such as racial and sexual characterizations, among ImageNet's person categories and proposed removing them from the database. The researchers also designed a tool that allows users to specify and retrieve image sets of people that are balanced by age, gender expression or skin color - with the goal of facilitating algorithms that more fairly classify people's faces and activities in images. The researchers presented their work on Jan. 30 at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency in Barcelona, Spain.

"There is very much a need for researchers and labs with core technical expertise in this to engage in these kinds of conversations," said Russakovsky. "Given the reality that we need to collect the data at scale, given the reality that it's going to be done with crowdsourcing because that's the most efficient and well-established pipeline, how do we do that in a way that's fairer - that doesn't fall into these kinds of prior pitfalls? The core message of this paper is around constructive solutions."

A group of computer scientists at Princeton and Stanford launched ImageNet in 2009 as a resource for academic researchers and educators. Leading the effort was Princeton alumna and faculty member Fei-Fei Li, now a professor of computer science at Stanford. To encourage researchers to build better computer vision algorithms using ImageNet, the team also created the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge. The challenge focused largely on object recognition using 1,000 image categories, only three of which featured people.

Some of the fairness issues in ImageNet stem from the pipeline used to build the database. Its image categories came from WordNet, an older database of English words used for natural language processing research. ImageNet's creators adopted the nouns in WordNet - some of which, although they are clearly defined verbal terms, do not translate well to a visual vocabulary. For example, terms that describe a person's religion or geographic origin might retrieve only the most distinctive image search results, potentially leading to algorithms that perpetuate stereotypes.

A recent art project called ImageNet Roulette brought increased attention to these concerns. The project, released in September 2019 as part of an art exhibition on image recognition systems, used images of people from ImageNet to train an artificial intelligence model that classified people in words based on a submitted image. Users could upload an image of themselves and retrieve a label based on this model. Many of the classifications were offensive or simply off-base.

The central innovation that allowed ImageNet's creators to amass such a large database of labeled images was the use of crowdsourcing - specifically, the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform, through which workers were paid to verify candidate images. This approach, while transformative, was imperfect, leading to some biases and inappropriate categorizations.

"When you ask people to verify images by selecting the correct ones from a large set of candidates, people feel pressured to select some images and those images tend to be the ones with distinctive or stereotypical features," said lead author Kaiyu Yang, a graduate student in computer science.

In the study, Yang and colleagues first filtered out potentially offensive or sensitive person categories from ImageNet. They defined offensive categories as those containing profanity or racial or gender slurs; sensitive categories included, for example, the classification of people based on sexual orientation or religion. To annotate the categories, they recruited 12 graduate students from diverse backgrounds, instructing them to err on the side of labeling a category as sensitive if they were unsure. This eliminated 1,593 categories - about 54% of the 2,932 person categories in ImageNet.

The researchers then turned to MTurk workers to rate the "imageability" of the remaining safe categories on a scale of 1 to 5. Keeping categories with an imageability rating of 4 or higher resulted in only 158 categories classified as both safe and imageable. Even this highly filtered set of categories contained more than 133,000 images - a wealth of examples for training computer vision algorithms.

Within these 158 categories, the researchers studied the demographic representation of people in the images in order to assess the level of bias in ImageNet and devise an approach to create fairer data sets. ImageNet's content comes from image search engines such as Flickr, and search engines in general have been shown to produce results that overrepresent males, light-skinned people, and adults between the ages of 18 and 40.

"People have found that the distributions of demographics in image search results are highly biased, and this is why the distribution in ImageNet is also biased," said Yang. "In this paper we tried to understand how biased it is, and also to propose a method to balance the distribution."

Of the attributes protected under U.S. anti-discrimination laws, the researchers considered the three attributes that are imageable: skin color, gender expression and age. MTurk workers were asked to annotate each attribute of each person in an image. They classified skin color as light, medium or dark; and age as child (under 18), adult 18-40, adult 40-65 or adult over 65. Gender classifications included male, female and unsure - a way to include people with diverse gender expressions, as well as annotate images in which gender could not be perceived from visual clues (such as many images of babies or scuba divers).

An analysis of the annotations showed that, similar to search results, ImageNet's content reflects considerable bias. People annotated as dark-skinned, females, and adults over 40 were underrepresented across most categories.

Although the annotation process included quality controls and required annotators to reach consensus, out of concern for the potential harm of mis-annotations, the researchers opted not to release demographic annotations for individual images. Instead, they designed a web-interface tool that allows users to obtain a set of images that are demographically balanced in a way the user specifies. For example, the full collection of images in the category "programmer" may include about 90% males and 10% females, while in the United States about 20% of computer programmers are female. A researcher could use the new tool to retrieve a set of programmer images representing 80% males and 20% females - or an even split, depending on the researcher's purpose.

"We do not want to say what is the correct way to balance the demographics, because it's not a very straightforward issue," said Yang. "The distribution could be different in different parts of the world - the distribution of skin colors in the U.S. is different than in countries in Asia, for example. So we leave that question to our user, and we just provide a tool to retrieve a balanced subset of the images."

The ImageNet team is currently working on technical updates to its hardware and database, in addition to implementing the filtering of the person categories and the rebalancing tool developed in this research. ImageNet will soon be re-released with these updates, and with a call for feedback from the computer vision research community.

Princeton Ph.D. student Klint Qinami and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Jia Deng co-authored the paper along with Yang, Li and Russakovsky. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

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Researchers devise approach to reduce biases in computer vision data sets

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ImageNet, which includes images of objects and landscapes as well as people, serves as a source of training data for researchers creating machine learning algorithms that classify images or recognize elements within them. ImageNet's unprecedented scale necessitated automated image collection and crowdsourced image annotation.

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Britain to Create Regulator for Internet Content                       To push Google, Facebook and other internet giants to police their own platforms, Britain said its media watchdog would become an internet authority. 

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Britain to Create Regulator for Internet Content                       To push Google, Facebook and other internet giants to police their own platforms, Britain said its media watchdog would become an internet authority. 

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Britain introduced a plan that would give the government more authority to regulate internet content through the country's media regulator, Ofcom. It gives the media regulator the power to issue penalties against companies that didn't do enough to combat "harmful and illegal terrorist and child abuse content."

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To push Google, Facebook and other internet giants to police their own platforms, Britain said its media watchdog would become an internet authority.

Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, one of the internet giants that would face more scrutiny from Britain's media regulator, Ofcom. Credit... Pete Marovich for The New York Times

LONDON - Britain on Wednesday introduced a plan that would give the government more latitude to regulate internet content, as part of an effort to force Facebook, YouTube and other internet giants to do more to police their platforms.

The government said the country's media regulator, known as Ofcom, would take on new responsibilities monitoring internet content, and would have the power to issue penalties against companies that did not do enough to combat "harmful and illegal terrorist and child abuse content."

Left unanswered were many details, including what penalties the new regulator would have at its disposal or how it would keep tabs on the billions of pieces of user-generated content that are posted on the social media platforms.

A proposal circulated by the government last year suggested that the regulator could issue fines, block access to websites and make individual executives legally liable for harmful content spread on their platforms.

The government said further details would be released in the spring.

"We will give the regulator the powers it needs to lead the fight for an internet that remains vibrant and open but with the protections, accountability and transparency people deserve," said Nicky Morgan, the secretary of Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the agency that announced the proposal on Wednesday.

The push for tougher regulation shows a divergence from the American-led vision of the internet that is largely market driven and free of government oversight. In Europe, where free speech is more regulated than in the United States, there has been a growing willingness to impose new rules on the web, particularly related to hate speech, terrorism and material targeting children.

In Germany, companies risk fines if hate content is not removed in as little as 24 hours. France is considering a similar proposal. The European Union is also debating changes to laws that protect internet companies from being liable for content posted on their platforms.

Free-speech and human-rights advocates warned the policies would lead to censorship and be used as a template by more repressive governments.

Europe has been targeting the tech industry for years over growing concerns that American tech giants have too much power and influence. A sweeping privacy law enacted in 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation, limits what personal information can be collected and shared online. Enforcement of European Union antitrust laws has resulted in billions of dollars in penalties against Google, Apple, Amazon and others for anticompetitive behavior.

Prof. Wendy Hall, a computer scientist at Southampton University in England, said the British proposal showed how the internet was fracturing around the world, with different regions adopting different standards. At one end, she said, is the American approach that lacks regulation and is largely market driven; at the other sits China's top-down government control and censorship.

Professor Hall said that Europe was trying to find a middle path, but that democratic governments must tread carefully because judging what is acceptable online is often very subjective.

"There's not an easy solution if you're not an authoritarian government," said Professor Hall, who has served as a government policy adviser on the use of artificial intelligence.

The British proposal is the first step toward building on recommendations that officials introduced last year to regulate the web. The regulations to be debated in the months ahead would apply to internet platforms that carry user-generated content, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

Placing Ofcom in charge of internet-content regulation adds to the agency's responsibilities overseeing Britain's television networks, radio stations and newspapers, as well as the country's internet service providers.

Child-protection groups have pushed for the regulations, arguing that too much harmful content is available to young people.

"The government has today signaled they are willing to stand up to Silicon Valley and commit to landmark British regulation that could set a global standard in protecting children online," Peter Wanless, the chief executive of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said in a statement.

In Britain, the handling of the tech industry presents a dilemma. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the sector is critical to the country's economic future outside the European Union, but his government is also attempting tighter oversight. Antitrust regulators have vowed to clamp down on anticompetitive behavior by big online platforms. And the country's top privacy regulator is investigating the internet advertising industry.

Many who work in the tech industry are concerned that the rules will have unintended consequences, particularly for start-ups that don't have the financial or legal resources to navigate a more complex regulatory environment.

"It becomes a moat for them," said Rob Kniaz, a partner at the venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures in London. "These things always favor the incumbents."

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Britain to Create Regulator for Internet Content

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To push Google, Facebook and other internet giants to police their own platforms, Britain said its media watchdog would become an internet authority.

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This mobile phishing scam targeted bank app users; thousands clicked through

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This mobile phishing scam targeted bank app users; thousands clicked through

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A phishing scam sent mobile phone users a text that there was unusual activity on their bank account, and the link provided took them to a fake website that looked like their bank's website. User's entered their login details, giving the hackers their information.

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Mobile banking app users have been targeted by phishing scam messages which aim to trick them into giving up their login details.

Almost 4,000 smartphone users have been fooled into clicking through to the links that are part of a mobile phishing campaign, with most in the US and Canada.

Uncovered by researchers at mobile cybersecurity company Lookout, the campaign is based around an SMS message which attempt to lure the victim into visiting fake websites purporting to be those of major US and Canadian banks.

The group behind this phishing attack left part of its infrastructure exposed, which is how Lookout was able to identify the nearly 4,000 unique IP addresses that visited the phishing websites. The company said there was no way of knowing if any had suffered financial losses.

The phishing messages claim that the bank's security system has detected unusual activity on the user's account and urges them to follow a URL to check: but it's a trick to lure them into giving up their details.

The criminals behind the attacks don't know which bank their potential victim is a customer of, but by spamming out enough messages with the names of different banks to enough users, some of the attacks will match the right bank with the right customer - and some of those will follow the malicious link to one of over 200 phoney websites.

SEE: A winning strategy for cybersecurity (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)

Those malicious links lead to fake versions of banking websites, but ones which are designed to look like the mobile version of their authentic equivalent, featuring the correct fonts, layouts and sizing, as well as authentic links to related pages users would expect on a banking website - including notices about security and privacy.

Not only will the phishing page take the victim's username and password, but it'll also ask a series of additional 'security' questions, asking them to confirm their identity by entering a card's expiration date or double-checking the account number.

For the cyber criminals, this is to ensure they have all the information required to steal the victim's account details - either to make fraudulent transactions with the victim's money themselves, or potentially to sell the information on to others on underground forums.

It's unknown where exactly this phishing campaign originated from, but researchers note that despite the success, the attacks are far from sophisticated.

"This particular campaign shows us how easy it is for a less computer-savvy person to get into the phishing business by buying an "off-the-shelf" phishing kit. The attacker can then target potential victims en masse via SMS messages and track the kit's success with the simple user interface," Apurva Kumar, staff security intelligence engineer at Lookout told ZDNet.

Lookout has notified all of the banks targeted by the campaign and as of today, the phishing sites are all down.

However, while this phishing campaign isn't active for now, others will emerge in an effort to steal bank details and personal information - but by using some simple security knowledge, users can avoid falling victim to attacks.

"When it comes to phishing, conventional wisdom is user awareness. Be wary of links on a mobile device that have been sent to you, whether by email or text message. Instead, develop the habit of proceeding to a login screen using a bookmarked link or the official website of a service they want to use," said Kumar.
READ MORE ON CYBERSECURITY 'Apple support' phishing scams are getting really good These hackers are using Android surveillance malware to target opponents of the Syrian government New phishing email campaign impersonates US postal service to deliver malware This latest phishing scam is spreading fake invoices loaded with malware

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This mobile phishing scam targeted bank app users; thousands clicked through | ZDNet

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Mobile banking app users have been targeted by phishing scam messages which aim to trick them into giving up their login details. Almost 4,000 smartphone users have been fooled into clicking through to the links that are part of a mobile phishing campaign, with most in the US and Canada.

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Robot completes first round of "supermicrosurgeries" on human patients

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Robot completes first round of "supermicrosurgeries" on human patients

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A robotic tool called Musa performed its first round of surgeries on humans.

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A highly precise form of reconstructive surgery, known as supermicrosurgery, seeks to connect ultra-thin blood and lymph vessels as a way of restoring them to healthy function. This requires a high level of expertise on part of the surgeons, but they may soon have a new robotic tool at their disposal called Musa, which has performed its first round of procedures with great success.

Supermicrosurgery is a relatively new medical technique that focuses on reconnecting vessels with diameters ranging from 0.3 mm to 0.8 mm. One of its primary applications is tackling lymphedema, which commonly occurs following breast cancer treatment and leads to swelling and localized fluid retention. Given the delicate nature of the process, only a small number of surgeons are currently capable of performing these operations.

Microsure is a Dutch startup spun out of Eindhoven University of Technology and Maastricht University Medical Centre, where researchers have been developing a robot to take on the task of supermicrosurgery. Called Musa, the robot is controlled by a surgeon, but translates their hand movements into more precise actions for a set of robotic hands.

The idea is that this can eliminate factors like hand tremors or other subtle human movements, and overall make the procedure safer and more easily controlled. Last September, Musa performed the first ever robotic supermicrosurgery on a human, suturing a set of thin blood vessels in the patient's arm.

"Microsure allows us to be very precise in our movements during procedures that require a surgical microscope," says Dr Shan Shan Qiu Shao, a plastic surgeon at Maastricht University Medical Centre who performed that first procedure. "The robot allows us to operate on minuscule lymph vessels and blood vessels while getting better results for these complex and exhausting procedures. With the Microsure robot, we can operate on vessels of all sizes, which is extremely handy. This, of course, is great news for patients."

The team has now built on this initial success in a newly published study involving 20 lymphedema patients, who randomly underwent either traditional supermicrosurgery or one assisted by Musa. The researchers evaluated the outcomes of these procedures one month after surgery and again at three months, finding that the Musa-assisted surgeries led to an improvement in the patient's quality of life.

While noting that the findings are very promising for the future of supermicrosurgery, the scientists point out that larger multi-center trials involving more patients and surgeons are needed to verify the results.

The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Source: Scimex, Maastricht University Medical Centre

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Robot completes first round of "supermicrosurgeries" on human patients

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A highly precise form of reconstructive surgery, known as supermicrosurgery, seeks to connect ultra-thin blood and lymph vessels as a way of restoring them to healthy function. This requires a high level of expertise on part of the surgeons, but they may soon have a new robotic tool at their...

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UC smartphone lab delivers test results in 'spit' second

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UC smartphone lab delivers test results in 'spit' second

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A professor at the University of Cincinnati designed a lab device that plugs into a mobile phone and connects to a doctor's office. Using a plastic chip, the device can diagnose infectious diseases with a drop of blood or saliva.

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The mobile health tool plugs into your phone to diagnose illnesses such as coronavirus

Using your phone to diagnose disease or track your medical condition is the holy grail for remote health monitoring.

So far it's been impractical to combine the two in a single device. Tech companies don't want the regulatory headaches that would come from labeling phones medical devices.

But University of Cincinnati engineers have come up with the next best thing.

UC professor Chong Ahn designed a tiny portable lab device that plugs into a phone, connecting it automatically to a doctor's office through a custom app UC developed. With a single drop of blood or saliva on a custom plastic lab chip UC designed, the device smaller than a credit card can diagnose infectious diseases.

And while Ahn's latest study did not expressly look at coronavirus, he said it would have similar applications in diagnosing infectious diseases or tracking health conditions like depression and anxiety.

The phone provides the power and test protocol to the lab chip. A patient simply puts a single-use plastic lab chip into his or her mouth then plugs that into a slot in the box to test the saliva.

Published in Nature journal

The device automatically transmits results to the patient's doctor through a custom app UC created for nearly instant results.

In his latest study, Ahn and his research team used the smartphone device to test for malaria. But the device could be used for smart point of care testing for countless chronic or infectious diseases or to measure hormones related to stress.

"Everybody has a phone - more than 3 billion people," Ahn said. "So how can we use that technology to test for infectious diseases such as coronavirus? It's a rapid diagnostic tool you can use at home. Right now it takes several hours or even days to diagnose in a lab, even when people are showing symptoms. The disease can spread."

Ahn's study on malaria was published in January in the Nature journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering.

The project demonstrates UC's commitment to research as described in its strategic direction called Next Lives Here.

This is the future of personal healthcare.

Sthitodhi Ghosh, UC engineering student

Ahn is an electrical and biomedical engineering professor in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science. He directs two centers on campus, the Engineering Research Center Cleanroom and the Ohio Center for Microfluidic Innovation. UC honored him last year as a distinguished research professor.

His research team created a novel lab chip that uses natural capillary action, the tendency for a liquid to adhere to a surface, to draw a sample down two channels called a "microchannel capillary flow assay." One channel mixes the sample with freeze-dried detection antibodies. The other contains a freeze-dried luminescent material to read the results when the split samples combine again on three sensors.

Ahn said the device is accurate, simple to use and inexpensive.

"The performance is comparable to laboratory tests. The cost is cheaper. And it's user-friendly," Ahn said. "We wanted to make it simple so anyone could use it without training or support."

UC doctoral student Sthitodhi Ghosh, the study's lead author, said the biggest advancement in the device is in the novel design of its tiny channels that naturally draw the sample through the sensor arrays using capillary flow. Ahn is Ghosh's Ph.D. advisor.

"The innovation of this device is using a capillary-driven microfluidic lab chip," Ghosh said. "So the entire test takes place on the chip automatically. You don't have to do anything.

"This is the future of personal healthcare," Ghosh said.

While the device has applications for diagnosing or monitoring viruses or other diseases, Ahn said he sees potential in the field of mental health. Mental health providers already use smartphones to track the wellness of patients through regular surveys. But psychosocial data can be subjective.

Ahn recalled the excruciating stomach ache he felt when he was hospitalized for an infection. He had trouble translating how he felt on a pain scale of 1 to 10 for his doctors. The pain left him feverish and soaked in sweat, but he reasoned it could surely be worse.

"I said, 'I'm a 2' so they didn't give me pain medicine. My wife says, 'Honey, you almost died! Take the pain medicine.' So from then on I said I was a 6 or 7 and I got pain medicine and I was good," he said.

By routinely testing hormones or other biomarkers associated with depression or anxiety, Ahn said he could help doctors correlate how patients feel with actual changes in their biochemistry. This could improve treatment for countless patients, he said.

And the device can use saliva as well as blood, which is less invasive and stress-inducing than a finger prick.

"If you're stressed from doing a finger prick, it's already creating a bias in the testing of stress," Ghosh said. "That's why we're moving to a noninvasive method."

Ahn is pursuing a patent to commercialize his device. Medical diagnostics company Mico Biomed, which has offices in Cincinnati, is a co-author of the study.

The biggest hurdle could be making people feel confident and comfortable enough to use the unfamiliar device at home, he said.

But the vast amounts of data collected from the tests over time could help psychiatrists better understand the biochemistry underlying mental illness, which could lead to better evidence-based treatments, he said.

"My dream for the rest of my career at UC is to improve public and mental health by providing a new mobile health tool," he said.

Featured image at top: UC engineering professor Chong Ahn, left, and his graduate student Sthitodhi Ghosh show off their smartphone device in his electrical engineering lab.

Next Lives Here

The University of Cincinnati is classified as a Research 1 institution by the Carnegie Commission and is ranked in the National Science Foundation's Top-35 public research universities. UC's graduate students and faculty investigate problems and innovate solutions with real-world impact. Next Lives Here.

Become a Bearcat

Apply online or get more information about undergraduate enrollment by calling 513-556-1100.

Learn more about UC's many undergraduate and graduate programs.

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UC smartphone lab delivers test results in 'spit' second

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The mobile health tool plugs into your phone to diagnose illnesses such as coronavirus Using your phone to diagnose disease or track your medical condition is the holy grail for remote health monitoring. So far it's been impractical to combine the two in a single device.

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Activate This ‘Bracelet of Silence,’ and Alexa Can’t Eavesdrop

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Activate This ‘Bracelet of Silence,’ and Alexa Can’t Eavesdrop

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Computer Science professors at the University of Chicago designed this bracelet that will jam any microphones near the wearer. Smart devices like Alexa have microphones that are always on, but are only supposed to start recording with a wake word.

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The bracelet will jam an Echo or any other microphone in the vicinity from listening in on the wearer's conversations. Credit... Petra Ford for The New York Times

Microphones and cameras lurk everywhere. You may want to slip on some privacy armor.

The bracelet will jam an Echo or any other microphone in the vicinity from listening in on the wearer's conversations. Credit... Petra Ford for The New York Times

Last year, Ben Zhao decided to buy an Alexa-enabled Echo speaker for his Chicago home. Mr. Zhao just wanted a digital assistant to play music, but his wife, Heather Zheng, was not enthused. "She freaked out," he said.

Ms. Zheng characterized her reaction differently. First she objected to having the device in their house, she said. Then, when Mr. Zhao put the Echo in a work space they shared, she made her position perfectly clear:"I said, 'I don't want that in the office. Please unplug it. I know the microphone is constantly on.'"

Mr. Zhao and Ms. Zheng are computer science professors at the University of Chicago, and they decided to channel their disagreement into something productive. With the help of an assistant professor, Pedro Lopes, they designed a piece of digital armor: a " bracelet of silence " that will jam the Echo or any other microphones in the vicinity from listening in on the wearer's conversations.

The bracelet is like an anti-smartwatch, both in its cyberpunk aesthetic and in its purpose of defeating technology. A large, somewhat ungainly white cuff with spiky transducers, the bracelet has 24 speakers that emit ultrasonic signals when the wearer turns it on. The sound is imperceptible to most ears, with the possible exception of young people and dogs, but nearby microphones will detect the high-frequency sound instead of other noises.

"It's so easy to record these days," Mr. Lopes said. "This is a useful defense. When you have something private to say, you can activate it in real time. When they play back the recording, the sound is going to be gone."

During a phone interview, Mr. Lopes turned on the bracelet, resulting in static-like white noise for the listener on the other end.

As American homes are steadily outfitted with recording equipment, the surveillance state has taken on an air of domesticity. Google and Amazon have sold millions of Nest and Ring security cameras, while an estimated one in five American adults now owns a smart speaker. Knocking on someone's door or chatting in someone's kitchen now involves the distinct possibility of being recorded.

It all presents new questions of etiquette about whether and how to warn guests that their faces and words could end up on a tech company's servers, or even in the hands of strangers.

By design, smart speakers have microphones that are always on, listening for so-called wake words like "Alexa," "Hey, Siri," or "O.K., Google." Only after hearing that cue are they supposed to start recording. But contractors hired by device makers to review recordings for quality reasons report hearing clips that were most likely captured unintentionally, including drug deals and sex.

Two Northeastern University researchers, David Choffnes and Daniel Dubois, recently played 120 hours of television for an audience of smart speakers to see what activates the devices. They found that the machines woke up dozens of times and started recording after hearing phrases similar to their wake words.

"People fear that these devices are constantly listening and recording you. They're not," Mr. Choffnes said. "But they do wake up and record you at times when they shouldn't."

Rick Osterloh, Google's head of hardware, recently said homeowners should disclose the presence of smart speakers to their guests. "I would, and do, when someone enters into my home, and it's probably something that the products themselves should try to indicate," he told the BBC last year.

Welcome mats might one day be swapped out for warning mats. Or perhaps the tech companies will engineer their products to introduce themselves when they hear a new voice or see a new face. Of course, that could also lead to uncomfortable situations, like having the Alexa in your bedside Echo Dot suddenly introduce herself to your one-night stand.

The "bracelet of silence" is not the first device invented by researchers to stuff up digital assistants' ears. In 2018, two designers created Project Alias, an appendage that can be placed over a smart speaker to deafen it. But Ms. Zheng argues that a jammer should be portable to protect people as they move through different environments, given that you don't always know where a microphone is lurking.

At this point, the bracelet is just a prototype. The researchers say that they could manufacture it for as little as $20, and that a handful of investors have asked them about commercializing it.

"With the Internet of Things, the battle is lost," Mr. Zhao said, referring to a lack of control over data captured by smart devices, whether it gets into the hands of tech companies or hackers.

"The future is to have all these devices around you, but you will have to assume they are potentially compromised," he added. "Your circle of trust will have to be much smaller, sometimes down to your actual body."

Other precursors to the bracelet include a " jammer coat" designed by an Austrian architecture firm in 2014 to block radio waves that could collect information from a person's phone or credit cards. In 2012, the artist Adam Harvey created silver-plated stealth wear garments that masked people's heat signature to protect them from the eyes of drones, as well as a line of makeup and hairstyles, called CV Dazzle, to thwart facial recognition cameras.

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Glasses developed by Scott Urban reflect infrared light from security cameras to blur out the wearer's face. Credit... Reflectacles

In 2016, Scott Urban, an eyewear maker in Chicago, developed a line of reflective frames that turned back visible and infrared light. When a surveillance camera films a person wearing the $164 frames, the reflected light blurs out the face. Mr. Urban called them Reflectacles.

He is now working full time on privacy protection eyewear, including a new version with lenses that absorb infrared light to deter iris-scanning and facial recognition cameras. His customers include privacy enthusiasts, political activists and card counters whose faces have been placed on casinos' watch lists.

"People into their privacy are no longer shunned as loonies," Mr. Urban said. "It's become a concern for people of all ages, political perspectives and walks of life."

He added: "New technologies are continually eroding our privacy and anonymity. People are looking for an opt-out, which is what I'm trying to provide."

Woodrow Hartzog, a law and computer science professor at Northeastern University, doesn't think privacy armor is the solution to our modern woes.

"It creates an arms race, and consumers will lose in that race," he said. "Any of these things is a half-measure or a stopgap. There will always be a way around it."

Rather than building individual defenses, Mr. Hartzog believes, we need policymakers to pass laws that more effectively guard our privacy and give us control over our data.

"Until then, we're playing cat and mouse," he said. "And that always ends poorly for the mouse."

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Activate This 'Bracelet of Silence,' and Alexa Can't Eavesdrop

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Microphones and cameras lurk everywhere. You may want to slip on some privacy armor. The bracelet will jam an Echo or any other microphone in the vicinity from listening in on the wearer's conversations. Credit... Petra Ford for The New York Times Last year, Ben Zhao decided to buy an Alexa-enabled Echo speaker for his Chicago home.

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Attackers can impersonate other mobile phone users

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Attackers can impersonate other mobile phone users

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Researchers found a vulnerability in the mobile communication standard LTE. Hackers can impersonate the phone user and purchase subscriptions in the phone user's name and access websites using the victim's identity. However, the attacker has to be nearby to exploit the vulnerability.

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Exploiting a vulnerability in the mobile communication standard LTE, also known as 4G, researchers at RUB can impersonate mobile phone users. Consequently, they can book fee-based services in their name that are paid for via the mobile phone bill - for example, a subscription to streaming services.

"An attacker can book services, for example stream shows, but the owner of the attacked phone would have to pay for them," illustrates Professor Thorsten Holz from Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security, who discovered the vulnerability together with David Rupprecht, Dr. Katharina Kohls and Professor Christina Pöpper. The team from Bochum will present the results on 25 February 2020 at the Network Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS for short, in San Diego, USA. Details of the attacks are also available on the website www.imp4gt-attacks.net.

According to the researcher, the vulnerability may also affect investigations of law enforcement agencies because attackers can not only make purchases in the victim's name, but can also access websites using the victim's identity. For example, an attacker can upload secret company documents and to network operators or law enforcement authorities, it would look as if the victim is the perpetrator.

Almost all mobile phones and tablets at risk

The discovered vulnerability affects all devices that communicate with LTE, i.e. virtually all mobile phones, tablets, and some connected household appliances. Only changing the hardware design would mitigate the threat. The Bochum-based team is attempting to close the security gap in the latest mobile communication standard 5G, which is currently rolled out. "For a technical perspective this is possible," explains David Rupprecht. "However, mobile network operators would have to accept higher costs, as the additional protection generates more data during the transmission. In addition, all mobile phones would have to be replaced and the base station expanded. That is something that will not happen in the near future."

Attacker has to be nearby

The problem is the lack of integrity protection: data packets are transmitted encrypted between the mobile phone and the base station, which protects the data against eavesdropping. However, it is possible to modify the exchanged data packets. The researchers can convert the encrypted data traffic between the mobile phone and the base station into plain text, and also send commands to the mobile phone, which are then encrypted and forwarded to the provider - such as a purchase command for a subscription. However, for a successful attack, the attacker must be in the vicinity of the victim's mobile phone.

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Attackers can impersonate other mobile phone users

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Exploiting a vulnerability in the mobile communication standard LTE, also known as 4G, researchers at RUB can impersonate mobile phone users. Consequently, they can book fee-based services in their name that are paid for via the mobile phone bill - for example, a subscription to streaming services.

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Texas man close to exoneration after computer algorithm leads to new suspect

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Texas man close to exoneration after computer algorithm leads to new suspect

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A software program was used to reanalyze the DNA used in the case of Lydell Grant. This program showed that Grant's DNA did not match the DNA in evidence. The software runs the DNA through a statistical algorithm to untangle DNA mixtures.

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Nearly a decade into his life sentence for murder, Lydell Grant was escorted out of a Texas prison in November with his hands held high, free on bail, all thanks to DNA re-examined by a software program.

"The last nine years, man, I felt like an animal in a cage," Grant, embracing his mother and brother, told the crush of reporters awaiting him in Houston. "Especially knowing that I didn't do it."

Now, Grant, 42, is on a fast track to exoneration after a judge recommended in December that Texas' highest criminal court vacate his conviction. His attorneys are hopeful a ruling is made in the coming weeks.

For Grant to get to here hinged on two prongs: the DNA evidence, which was reanalyzed through an emerging software that has also come under scrutiny, and an unprecedented decision to use the findings to conduct an FBI criminal database search that was initiated by a third party not part of the initial investigation. That led to the discovery of a new suspect, who has been charged after police said he confessed.

The search process used in Grant's case has enormous potential to solve cold cases or re-evaluate other convictions that could pave the way for more exonerations nationwide, forensic scientists say.

"There's probably 5,000 or 6,000 innocent people in Texas prisons alone," said lawyer Mike Ware, executive director of the Innocence Project of Texas, which is representing Grant. "How many of them could benefit from such a reanalysis of DNA that was used to convict them? I don't really know, but this is a historic case that could open the door for those who thought it was shut forever."

Grant's ordeal began in December 2010, when Aaron Scheerhoorn was stabbed outside a Houston gay bar. Authorities said Scheerhoorn, who was bleeding from his abdomen, had run to the bar's entrance seeking help from horrified bar patrons and employees. The witnesses described the killer as a black man, about 25 to 30 years old and around 6 feet tall. Police told local media that it may have been a "crime of passion."

A tip came in about a car that might belong to the suspect. Five days later, an officer pulled over a vehicle matching its description, and Grant, who at the time was driving on a suspended license, was taken in for questioning.

Investigators also interviewed seven witnesses, all but one of whom picked out Grant as the suspect from a photo lineup.

Grant, then 33, had a criminal record going back several years, including aggravated robbery, marijuana use and theft. But he maintained his innocence in the stabbing, said he had never met Scheerhoorn and produced an alibi for his defense.

At Grant's trial in 2012, prosecutors centered their case on the eyewitness testimony - a practice that the Innocence Project argues plays a major role in defendants' being wrongfully accused. In addition, jurors heard about DNA collected from fingernail scrapings from Scheerhoorn's right hand. The DNA was actually a mixture of that of two people: the victim and a second male profile.

Houston's police crime lab at the time was unable to conclude that the other genetic material was Grant's, and the state's expert's testimony suggested to the jury that it "could not be excluded."

Jurors also heard from Grant's alibi witness, who said he was with Grant on the night Scheerhoorn was murdered, but his testimony failed to sway them, court documents show.

Grant was found guilty of first-degree felony murder. From his jail cell in Harris County, he began writing to anyone he thought could help.

A letter eventually landed on a pile at the Innocence Project of Texas, which receives hundreds of inmate letters every month. In 2018, it was referred to the Texas A&M School of Law, which partners with the Innocence Project of Texas.

"We knew at the very least the prosecutor put on inaccurate testimony at trial," Ware said. "We didn't know where the facts were going to lead to."

The law students got to work, paying particular attention to the DNA report that described the mixture of genetic materials. In 2011, the Houston crime lab had analyzed it using a traditional method in which a forensic scientist studies the genetic makeup of the DNA sample, which is translated into a type of graph that can be reviewed manually, and determines the probability that a particular person's DNA matches the sample. But when a sample includes a mixture of DNA from more than one person, it is increasingly difficult to separate and interpret the data. Flawed DNA readings by analysts have been known to ensnare innocent people.

After Ware and the students took a fresh look at the original DNA report, they were convinced that Grant's DNA could not have been a part of the mixture. Last March, Ware began working with DNA expert Angie Ambers, an associate professor of forensic science at the University of New Haven in Connecticut.

Ambers was familiar with a type of DNA technology known as "probabilistic genotyping."

"Years after Lydell Grant was convicted and sent to prison, there was a paradigm shift in how we interpreted DNA mixtures in criminal casework," she said. "Rather than having a human DNA analyst interpret a mixture of DNA, computer software programs were developed to reduce the subjectivity in interpretation."

Ambers learned of one such software program created by Cybergenetics, a small company in Pittsburgh that had analyzed DNA samples from unidentified victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

It was worth a shot: Ware requested the raw DNA data from the Harris County District Attorney's Office, and then it was shared with Cybergenetics and run through its program, TrueAllele. (The name is a play on the word that signifies the different forms a person's genes can take.)

The company offered a free preliminary screening, and the software did what a human could not do: determine that Grant's DNA did not match that of the unknown male profile.

Ambers had a hunch that something was off when she first reviewed the case because a large number of alleles present in the DNA mixture were inconsistent with Scheerhoorn's or Grant's profiles. But she said TrueAllele's discovery alone wouldn't guarantee that Grant would be cleared of a crime.

Armed with the new evidence, the Innocence Project of Texas went a step further, prompting Cybergenetics to work with a partner crime lab in Beaufort County, South Carolina, which has access to a powerful FBI database known as the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS.

Typically, federal, state and local law enforcement and government crime labs can upload an unknown profile into the database and compare it for a possible match against that of one of the more than 14 million convicted criminals and those arrested already in the system. The process, for instance, can help authorities link crimes from several scenes to a single person.

The South Carolina crime lab's search resulted in a hit. The DNA profile belonged to a man in Atlanta named Jermarico Carter, who police say left Houston shortly after Scheerhoorn's murder. Carter also has a lengthy criminal record, and Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said in a statement in December that he confessed to the killing.

Acevedo at the time also issued a rare apology to Grant and his family, "as they have waited for justice all these years."

Cybergenetics CEO Mark Perlin, the developer of TrueAllele, said the use of a probabilistic genotyping software's findings in CODIS is significant, as it's the first time it was attempted because an independent party, the Innocence Project, requested it, not law enforcement. And most remarkably, it resulted in a match.

He touted his software, which runs DNA data through a statistical algorithm with 170,000 lines of code, for being able to untangle DNA mixtures.

The mixtures "have a complex pattern based on how much of each person is there along with distortions," Perlin said. "A computer can account for that and dig deeper into the data to get far more information."

But while TrueAllele has been lauded for helping both prosecutors and defense attorneys get to the bottom of cases, and while it has been used in crimes labs in Baltimore; Cleveland; Bakersfield, California; and elsewhere, the technology also has detractors.

Some who favor transparency ask how, if the patented program's source code is decipherable only by the company, it can be trusted to be accurate every time.

Greg Hampikian, a biology professor at Boise State University who was an expert consultant in the high-profile case of Amanda Knox, credits TrueAllele with helping to free the wrongly convicted in other cases he's worked on. But he also supports the release of the software's source code and believes that if prosecutors have the same access to such a program for a trial, then the defense must, too. He acknowledged that there are difficulties to ensuring that a defense team can be fully trained to "counter these highly sophisticated mathematical programs without having actually used them." They can also be cost-prohibitive, running in the tens of thousands of dollars.

If probabilistic genotyping software is being used in trials, defendants should have every opportunity to know how the algorithm came to its conclusion to mount a capable defense, said DNA expert Dan Krane, the interim dean of Wright State University's Lake Campus in Ohio.

"There's a conflict between a defendant's constitutional right to confront the witnesses versus an inventor's right to protect the intellectual property associated with their invention," Krane said.

Judges in several cases throughout the country have rejected attempts to force private companies to reveal the formulas behind their software.

In 2016, however, a federal judge in New York ordered the release of the source code for a software tool developed by New York City's crime lab, which was the subject of a ProPublica report that found "increased complaints by scientists and lawyers that flaws in the now-discontinued software program may have sent innocent people to prison."

Perlin has argued in court filings that TrueAllele's source code is a "trade secret" and one that must be protected in a "highly competitive commercial environment." (Its main competitor is the software STRMix, which is being used in more than 50 forensic labs across the country, including the Houston Forensic Science Center, an independent agency that replaced the Houston Police Department's crime lab in 2014 after past scandals.)

For criminal cases, Perlin said, his source code can be provided to defense experts at no cost under a confidentiality agreement.
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The issue has caught the attention of lawmakers. Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., introduced legislation in September that would require defendants to be provided with access to source code and standards put in place to ensure that the algorithm used was fair. The Justice in Forensic Algorithms Act has been referred to the Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Space, Science and Technology.

While some experts are wary of how the technology may be applied in cases, they do see a benefit in using its findings to locate a profile match in CODIS. But the FBI, which has used STRMix for cases, has been reluctant to allow third parties like the Innocence Project of Texas direct access to the database, instead requiring that they specifically go through law enforcement or crime lab sources to perform a CODIS search.

Supporters of opening the database argue that, sometimes, law enforcement and crime labs involved in the original case can't be counted on to run a new search in a timely manner, particularly if the results threaten to undermine an existing investigation.

In response to questions from NBC News, the FBI said CODIS remains a "tool legislatively authorized for law enforcement use only." In addition, the agency said it uses STRMix for one of two functions: to "help a human figure out DNA mixtures (and therefore possibly put a better profile into CODIS)" or to highlight the likelihood that two profiles are, indeed, a match.

Perlin sees his DNA technology at the forefront when it comes to solving more cases, but he said that will also depend on whether crime labs like the one in South Carolina are willing to partner with third parties that use probabilistic genotyping software.

He said Cybergenetics will continue to help prisoners who may have been wrongfully convicted and believes that partnerships with crime labs can grow, although only "to the extent that the FBI lets them."

"These labs want to use better science to get better justice for all parties," Perlin added.

Grant's case, proponents of the DNA technology say, could prove to be the shining example to get more people on board.

While awaiting the court's finding that he is officially exonerated, Grant, who remains free on a $100,000 bond, told reporters in December that he isn't angry with prosecutors and has put his faith in God. And he sees a silver lining for others wrongly convicted.

"I really believe that my story will be able to help someone else's," he said.

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A Texas jury found him guilty of murder. A computer algorithm proved his innocence.

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Nearly a decade into his life sentence for murder, Lydell Grant was escorted out of a Texas prison in November with his hands held high, free on bail, all thanks to DNA re-examined by a software program.

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Algorithms are better than people in predicting recidivism, study says

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Algorithms are better than people in predicting recidivism, study says

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A study by California researchers found that algorithms are better at predicting recidivism. The algorithm approached 90% accuracy, while human predictions were at 60% accuracy.

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In a study with potentially far-reaching implications for criminal justice in the United States, a team of California researchers has found that algorithms are significantly more accurate than humans in predicting which defendants will later be arrested for a new crime.

When assessing just a handful of variables in a controlled environment, even untrained humans can match the predictive skill of sophisticated risk-assessment instruments, says the new study by scholars at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.

But real-world criminal justice settings are often far more complex, and when a larger number of factors are useful for predicting recidivism, the algorithm-based tools performed far better than people. In some tests the tools approached 90% accuracy in predicting which defendants might be arrested again, compared to about 60% for human prediction.

"Risk assessment has long been a part of decision-making in the criminal justice system," said Jennifer Skeem, a psychologist who specializes in criminal justice at UC Berkeley. "Although recent debate has raised important questions about algorithm-based tools, our research shows that in contexts resembling real criminal justice settings, risk assessments are often more accurate than human judgment in predicting recidivism. That's consistent with a long line of research comparing humans to statistical tools."

"Validated risk-assessment instruments can help justice professionals make more informed decisions," said Sharad Goel, a computational social scientist at Stanford University. "For example, these tools can help judges identify and potentially release people who pose little risk to public safety. But, like any tools, risk assessment instruments must be coupled with sound policy and human oversight to support fair and effective criminal justice reform."

The paper - "The limits of human predictions of recidivism" - was published Feb. 14, 2020, in Science Advances. Skeem presented the research on Feb. 13 in a news briefing at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle, Wash. Joining her were two co-authors: Ph.D. graduate Jongbin Jung and Ph.D. candidate Zhiyuan "Jerry" Lin, who both studied computational social science at Stanford.

The research findings are important as the United States debates how to balance community security needs while reducing incarceration rates that are the highest of any nation in the world - and disproportionately affect African Americans and communities of color.

If the use of advanced risk assessment tools continues and improves, that could refine critically important decisions that justice professionals make daily: Which individuals can be rehabilitated in the community, rather than in prison? Which could go to low-security prisons, and which to high-security sites? And which prisoners can safely be released to the community on parole?

Assessment tools driven by algorithms are widely used in the United States, in areas as diverse as medical care, banking and university admissions. They have long been used in criminal justice, helping judges and others to weigh data in making their decisions.

But in 2018, researchers at Dartmouth University raised questions about the accuracy of such tools in a criminal justice framework. In a study, they assembled 1,000 short vignettes of criminal defendants, with information drawn from a widely used risk assessment called the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS).

The vignettes each included five risk factors for recidivism: the individual's sex, age, current criminal charge, and the number of previous adult and juvenile offenses. The researchers then used Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform to recruit 400 volunteers to read the vignettes and assess whether each defendant would commit another crime within two years. After reviewing each vignette, the volunteers were told whether their evaluation accurately predicted the subject's recidivism.

Both the people and the algorithm were accurate slightly less than two-thirds of the time.

These results, the Dartmouth authors concluded, cast doubt on the value of risk-assessment instruments and algorithmic prediction.

The study generated high-profile news coverage - and sent a wave of doubt through the U.S. criminal justice reform community. If sophisticated tools were no better than people in predicting which defendants would re-offend, some said, then there was little point in using the algorithms, which might only reinforce racial bias in sentencing. Some argued such profound decisions should be made by people, not computers.

Grappling with "noise" in complex decisions

But when the authors of the new California study evaluated additional data sets and more factors, they concluded that that risk assessment tools can be much more accurate than people in assessing potential for recidivism.

The study replicated the Dartmouth findings that had been based on a limited number of factors. However, the information available in justice settings is far more rich - and often more ambiguous.

"Pre-sentence investigation reports, attorney and victim impact statements, and an individual's demeanor all add complex, inconsistent, risk-irrelevant, and potentially biasing information," the new study explains.

The authors' hypothesis: If research evaluations operate in a real-world framework, where risk-related information is complex and "noisy," then advanced risk assessment tools would be more effective than humans at predicting which criminals would re-offend.

To test the hypothesis, they expanded their study beyond COMPAS to include other data sets. In addition to the five risk factors used in the Dartmouth study, they added 10 more, including employment status, substance use and mental health. They also expanded the methodology: Unlike the Dartmouth study, in some cases the volunteers would not be told after each evaluation whether their predictions were accurate. Such feedback is not available to judges and others in the court system.

The outcome: Humans performed "consistently worse" than the risk assessment tool on complex cases when they didn't have immediate feedback to guide future decisions.

For example, the COMPAS correctly predicted recidivism 89% of the time, compared to 60% for humans who were not provided case-by-case feedback on their decisions. When multiple risk factors were provided and predictive, another risk assessment tool accurately predicted recidivism over 80% of the time, compared to less than 60% for humans.

The findings appear to support continued use and future improvement of risk assessment algorithms. But, as Skeem noted, these tools typically have a support role. Ultimate authority rests with judges, probation officers, clinicians, parole commissioners and others who shape decisions in the criminal justice system.

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Algorithms are better than people in predicting recidivism, study says

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In a study with potentially far-reaching implications for criminal justice in the United States, a team of California researchers has found that algorithms are significantly more accurate than humans in predicting which defendants will later be arrested for a new crime.

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Mapping coronavirus: South Koreans turn to online tracking as cases surge

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Mapping coronavirus: South Koreans turn to online tracking as cases surge

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Private software developers et up websites and apps to track cases of the coronavirus in South Korea and help people avoid places where the infected have been. They created an interactive map at Coronamap.live and update it with new cases. There is also a similar site called Wuhanvirus.kr.

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SEOUL (Reuters) - As the new coronavirus spreads in South Korea, private software developers have set up websites and apps to help people track cases and shun places where infected people have been in the hope of avoiding the fast-spreading virus.

The government, stung by criticism of how it handled past outbreaks, initially released very detailed information on confirmed cases, including the age, gender and daily routes infected people took before being quarantined.

Identities were not published but the information that was enabled web developers to build detailed maps tracking the movements of patients.

"We experienced a public backlash after a mass infection took place during the MERS outbreak five years ago, because we didn't make public where those patients had gone," a health official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters.

A button on one of the sites, Coronamap.live, is labeled "See whether I am safe". A click shows users if there are any known coronavirus cases in their vicinity.

Many South Koreans have been logging on to the sites, with some saying the thought of becoming infected and appearing on an online map is so mortifying it keeps them from going out.

Seo Su-sung, a 21-year-old student who finds Coronamap.live the most useful, said the more information, the better for everyone.

"It keeps society at ease to avoid the contaminated areas when you can," Seo said.

"Otherwise I could not only harm myself, but also others around me."

Ryan Jun-seo Hong, 19, a computer science major who set up the Coronamap.live site while waiting for his mandatory military service to begin, said more than 300,000 people have been viewing the site every day.

But the increase in cases over recent days with confirmed infections surging from 31 to more than 763, including seven deaths, in less than a week, has made it nearly impossible to keep up.

"Currently adding 600+ places," said a message on Monday on Coronamap.live, which offers an interactive map in Korean, Chinese and English.

'TAKING A TOLL'

Health authorities also just can't keep up with the new cases and in recent days have been forced to publish more general summaries and regional information on cases.

Still, the government regularly releases updates and discusses cases in briefings, and Hong said he uses a wide range of other open-source resources like news reports to supplement official data.

"I gather all kinds of information for updates, and I include personal feedback from users," Hong said.

Another developer, Kwon Young-jae, runs a similar site with his wife, Ju Yeun-jin, who is also a software developer, but they've been overwhelmed by the surge in cases.

Their Wuhanvirus.kr shows a real-time tally of the infections, deaths and discharged patients from both South Korea and the world.

But Kwon said the soaring numbers meant he and his wife were hardly getting any sleep.

"It was easy to update the page up until the beginning of last week," he said.

"But with tens of new patients every few hours, it's starting to take a toll on us."

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Mapping coronavirus: South Koreans turn to online tracking as cases surge

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SEOUL (Reuters) - As the new coronavirus spreads in South Korea, private software developers have set up websites and apps to help people track cases and shun places where infected people have been in the hope of avoiding the fast-spreading virus.

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New artificial intelligence algorithm better predicts corn yield

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New artificial intelligence algorithm better predicts corn yield

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At the University of Illinois they are trying to change how people run agronomic research by working more directly with farmers to develop algorithms to generate yield predictions.

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College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences

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URBANA, Ill. - With some reports predicting the precision agriculture market will reach $12.9 billion by 2027, there is an increasing need to develop sophisticated data-analysis solutions that can guide management decisions in real time. A new study from an interdisciplinary research group at University of Illinois offers a promising approach to efficiently and accurately process precision ag data.

"We're trying to change how people run agronomic research. Instead of establishing a small field plot, running statistics, and publishing the means, what we're trying to do involves the farmer far more directly. We are running experiments with farmers' machinery in their own fields. We can detect site-specific responses to different inputs. And we can see whether there's a response in different parts of the field," says Nicolas Martin, assistant professor in the Department of Crop Sciences at Illinois and co-author of the study.

He adds, "We developed methodology using deep learning to generate yield predictions. It incorporates information from different topographic variables, soil electroconductivity, as well as nitrogen and seed rate treatments we applied throughout nine Midwestern corn fields."

Martin and his team worked with 2017 and 2018 data from the Data Intensive Farm Management project, in which seeds and nitrogen fertilizer were applied at varying rates across 226 fields in the Midwest, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa. On-ground measurements were paired with high-resolution satellite images from PlanetLab to predict yield.

Fields were digitally broken down into 5-meter (approximately 16-foot) squares. Data on soil, elevation, nitrogen application rate, and seed rate were fed into the computer for each square, with the goal of learning how the factors interact to predict yield in that square.

The researchers approached their analysis with a type of machine learning or artificial intelligence known as a convolutional neural network (CNN). Some types of machine learning start with patterns and ask the computer to fit new bits of data into those existing patterns. Convolutional neural networks are blind to existing patterns. Instead, they take bits of data and learn the patterns that organize them, similar to the way humans organize new information through neural networks in the brain. The CNN process, which predicted yield with high accuracy, was also compared to other machine learning algorithms and traditional statistical techniques.

"We don't really know what is causing differences in yield responses to inputs across a field. Sometimes people have an idea that a certain spot should respond really strongly to nitrogen and it doesn't, or vice versa. The CNN can pick up on hidden patterns that may be causing a response," Martin says. "And when we compared several methods, we found out that the CNN was working very well to explain yield variation."

Using artificial intelligence to untangle data from precision agriculture is still relatively new, but Martin says his experiment merely grazes the tip of the iceberg in terms of CNN's potential applications. "Eventually, we could use it to come up with optimum recommendations for a given combination of inputs and site constraints."

The article, "Modeling yield response to crop management using convolutional neural networks," is published in Computers and Electronics in Agriculture [ DOI: 10.1016/j.compag.2019.105197]. Authors include Alexandre Barbosa, Rodrigo Trevisan, Naira Hovakimyan, and Nicolas Martin. Barbosa and Hovakimyan are in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering in the Grainger College of Engineering at Illinois. Trevisan and Martin are in the Department of Crop Sciences in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois.

The University of Illinois and the College of ACES are leading the digital agriculture revolution with a new Center for Digital Agriculture; first-of-their-kind majors combining computer science and crop and animal sciences; the Data Intensive Farm Management project; engineering of teachable agricultural robots; and many more initiatives.

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New artificial intelligence algorithm better predicts corn yield

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URBANA, Ill. - With some reports predicting the precision agriculture market will reach $12.9 billion by 2027, there is an increasing need to develop sophisticated data-analysis solutions that can guide management decisions in real time. A new study from an interdisciplinary research group at University of Illinois offers a promising approach to efficiently and accurately process precision ag data.

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Coding for uncertainty increases security Researchers develop algorithm to protect against poaching and other “green” security challenges

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Coding for uncertainty increases security Researchers develop algorithm to protect against poaching and other “green” security challenges

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Drones in South Africa are used to detect poachers. Computer Scientists at Harvard came up with an algorithm that accounts for uncertainty in catching poachers. The algorithm calculates whether or not the drone should signal for a ranger if it sees a poacher and a ranger isn't nearby.

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With this algorithm, if a drone sees a poacher and a ranger is nearby, it will sometimes signal because the poacher is likely to be caught. But, if the drone sees a poacher and a ranger isn't nearby, it may signal or it may not, depending on calculations from the algorithm. And, to account for the uncertainty of the device, the drone may signal even if it sees nothing at all.

This acknowledgement of uncertainty gave the algorithm, called GUARDSS, an edge over other strategies. In fact, the researchers found that if a signaling algorithm ignored its uncertainties, it did worse than using no drones at all.

"This algorithm gives us an informational advantage over the poachers," said Bondi. "We know whether or not we've seen them but the poachers don't. We've turned our uncertainties into our advantage."

"Exploiting uncertainties and informational advantages to deceive has long been used by human beings in competitive interactions," said Haifeng Xu, a former postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and co-author of the paper. "It's exciting to discover that such bluffing tactics can also be rigorously computed and implemented as algorithms for the purpose of social good, like to combat illegal poaching."

"This tool can assist rangers in their mission by exploiting real-time information about poaching," said Milind Tambe, the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at SEAS and senior author of the paper. "It joins other AI tools we've been building over the past several years to assist rangers and wildlife conservation agencies, including WWF and WCS, in their extremely important work in protecting endangered wildlife."

This research was co-authored by Hoon Oh, Haifeng Xu, Fei Fang and Bistra Dilkina. It was presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Conference.

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Coding for uncertainty increases security

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With this algorithm, if a drone sees a poacher and a ranger is nearby, it will sometimes signal because the poacher is likely to be caught. But, if the drone sees a poacher and a ranger isn't nearby, it may signal or it may not, depending on calculations from the algorithm.

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Study finds quarter of climate change tweets from bots

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Study finds quarter of climate change tweets from bots

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In a study at Brown University, researchers found that a quarter of tweets about climate change were from bots and gave the impression that there was a high level of climate denial.

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A study by researchers at Brown University has found a quarter of posts about climate change on Twitter were written by bots.

Bots are computer programs that can masquerade as humans to post or send messages on social media.

Researchers discovered tweets posted by bots created the impression there was a high level of climate change denial.

The paper detailing the finds has not yet been published and was first reported by The Guardian newspaper.

The research team analysed 6.5 million tweets from the period surrounding President Donald Trump's June 2017 announcement that he was removing the United States from the Paris climate accord.

The finding showed 25% of tweets on climate change were likely posted by bots. Most of those tweets centred on denials of global warming or rejections of climate science.

"These findings suggest a substantial impact of mechanized bots in amplifying denials messages about climate change," the authors of the reporter wrote, according to The Guardian.

Bots are automated to post or send messages but they must be set up by a human. The Brown University team could not identify who was behind these climate change denying bots.

Bots for both sides

Researchers used a tool from Indiana University called Botometer to determine the probability that a tweet was sent by bots or by humans. Within the overarching topic of climate change, they also broke down several subcategories.

Tweets about "fake science" were found to have been written by bots 38% of the time and 28% of tweets about oil company Exxon were posted by bots.

Posts in support of action to protect the environment were far less likely to come from bots. Researchers found only 5% of tweets advocating such action came from this type of software.

Emilio Ferrara, a research professor at the University of Southern California - who has conducted his own research on the influence of bots - explained this type of software is used to amplify a message.

"Think of a bot as a megaphone," Professor Ferrara said.

"Bots give the impression that there is organic support behind a movement or idea."

Paris climate accord

During the days directly surrounding President Trump's announcement that the US was leaving the Paris agreement, there was a general increase in the number of posts about climate change. This included the number of posts by bots - they rose from hundreds per day to more than 25,000 per days.

But because more humans were also posting about climate change during this period the percentage of bot posts was reduced. They made up just 13% of all posts during that time.

Though the Brown University study was unable to identify who set up the bots, Professor Ferrara, from USC, said there is cause for concern.

"If someone is manipulating the messages that we consumer online then there is a reason to be concerned that they are changing people's perceptions or beliefs," he told the BBC.

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Bots post quarter of climate change tweets

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A study by researchers at Brown University has found a quarter of posts about climate change on Twitter were written by bots. Bots are computer programs that can masquerade as humans to post or send messages on social media. Researchers discovered tweets posted by bots created the impression there was a high level of climate change denial.

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Researchers are using AI to find patterns of gene expression with machine learning.

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An artificial neural network can reveal patterns in huge amounts of gene expression data, and discover groups of disease-related genes. This has been shown by a new study led by researchers at Linköping University. The scientists hope that the method can eventually be applied within precision medicine and individualised treatment.

Artificial neural networks are excellent at learning how to find patterns in enormous amounts of complex data. Photo credit metamorworks

It's common when using social media that the platform suggests people whom you may want to add as friends. The suggestion is based on you and the other person having common contacts, which indicates that you may know each other. In a similar manner, scientists are creating maps of biological networks based on how different proteins or genes interact with each other. The researchers behind a new study have used artificial intelligence, AI, to investigate whether it is possible to discover biological networks using deep learning, in which entities known as "artificial neural networks" are trained by experimental data. Since artificial neural networks are excellent at learning how to find patterns in enormous amounts of complex data, they are used in applications such as image recognition. However, this machine learning method has until now seldom been used in biological research.

"We have for the first time used deep learning to find disease-related genes. This is a very powerful method in the analysis of huge amounts of biological information, or 'big data'", says Sanjiv Dwivedi, postdoc in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM) at Linköping University.

The scientists used a large database with information about the expression patterns of 20,000 genes in a large number of people. The information was "unsorted", in the sense that the researchers did not give the artificial neural network information about which gene expression patterns were from people with diseases, and which were from healthy people. The AI model was then trained to find patterns of gene expression.

One of the challenges of machine learning is that it is not possible to see exactly how an artificial neural network solves a task. AI is sometimes described as a "black box" - we see only the information that we put into the box and the result that it produces. We cannot see the steps between. Artificial neural networks consist of several layers in which information is mathematically processed. The network comprises an input layer and an output layer that delivers the result of the information processing carried out by the system. Between these two layers are several hidden layers in which calculations are carried out. When the scientists had trained the artificial neural network, they wondered whether it was possible to, in a manner of speaking, lift the lid of the black box and understand how it works. Are the designs of the neural network and the familiar biological networks similar? Mika Gustafsson.

"When we analysed our neural network, it turned out that the first hidden layer represented to a large extent interactions between various proteins. Deeper in the model, in contrast, on the third level, we found groups of different cell types. It's extremely interesting that this type of biologically relevant grouping is automatically produced, given that our network has started from unclassified gene expression data", says Mika Gustafsson, senior lecturer at IFM and leader of the study in Nature Communications.

The scientists then investigated whether their model of gene expression could be used to determine which gene expression patterns are associated with disease and which is normal. They confirmed that the model finds relevant patterns that agree well with biological mechanisms in the body. Since the model has been trained using unclassified data, it is possible that the artificial neural network has found totally new patterns. The researchers plan now to investigate whether such, previously unknown patterns, are relevant from a biological perspective.

"We believe that the key to progress in the field is to understand the neural network. This can teach us new things about biological contexts, such as diseases in which many factors interact. And we believe that our method gives models that are easier to generalise and that can be used for many different types of biological information", says Mika Gustafsson.

Mika Gustafsson hopes that close collaboration with medical researchers will enable him to apply the method developed in the study in precision medicine. It may be possible, for example, to determine which groups of patients should receive a certain type of medicine, or identify the patients who are most severely affected.
The study has received financial support from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) and the Swedish Research Council.

Translated by George Farrants

The article: " Deriving disease modules from the compressed transcriptional space embedded in a deep autoencoder", Sanjiv K. Dwivedi, Andreas Tjärnberg, Jesper Tegnér and Mika Gustafsson, (2020), Nature Communications, published online 12 February 2020, doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-14666-6

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An artificial neural network can reveal patterns in huge amounts of gene expression data, and discover groups of disease-related genes. This has been shown by a new study led by researchers at Linköping University. The scientists hope that the method can eventually be applied within precision medicine and individualised treatment.

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Robots that admit mistakes foster better conversation in humans

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Robots that admit mistakes foster better conversation in humans

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In a Yale study of a robots' effects on human-to-human interactions, human teams with a robot that expressed vulnerability communicated more with each other and reported have a more positive group experience when compared with groups paired with a silent robot or a robot that only state the game score.

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Three people and a robot form a team playing a game. The robot makes a mistake, costing the team a round. Like any good teammate, it acknowledges the error.

"Sorry, guys, I made the mistake this round," it says. "I know it may be hard to believe, but robots make mistakes too."

This scenario occurred multiple times during a Yale-led study of robots' effects on human-to-human interactions.

The study, which published on March 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the humans on teams that included a robot expressing vulnerability communicated more with each other and later reported having a more positive group experience than people teamed with silent robots or with robots that made neutral statements, like reciting the game's score.

"We know that robots can influence the behavior of humans they interact with directly, but how robots affect the way humans engage with each other is less well understood," said Margaret L. Traeger, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the Yale Institute for Network Science (YINS) and the study's lead author. "Our study shows that robots can affect human-to-human interactions."

Because social robots are becoming increasingly prevalent in human society, she said, people are encountering them in stores, hospitals and other everyday places. This makes understanding how they shape human behavior important.

"In this case," Traeger said, "we show that robots can help people communicate more effectively as a team."

The researchers conducted an experiment in which 153 people were divided into 51 groups composed of three humans and a robot. Each group played a tablet-based game in which members worked together to build the most efficient railroad routes over 30 rounds. Groups were assigned to one of three conditions characterized by different types of robot behavior. At the end of each round, robots either remained silent, uttered a neutral, task-related statement (such as the score or number of rounds completed), or expressed vulnerability through a joke, personal story, or by acknowledging a mistake; all of the robots occasionally lost a round.

People teamed with robots that made vulnerable statements spent about twice as much time talking to each other during the game, and they reported enjoying the experience more compared to people in the other two kinds of groups, the study found.

Conversation among the humans increased more during the game when robots made vulnerable statements than when they made neutral statements. Conversation among the humans was more evenly distributed when the robot was vulnerable instead of silent.

The experiment also showed more equal verbal participation among team members in groups with the vulnerable and neutral robots than among members in groups with silent robots, suggesting that the presence of a speaking robot encourages people to talk to each other in a more even-handed way.

"We are interested in how society will change as we add forms of artificial intelligence to our midst," said Nicholas A. Christakis, Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science. "As we create hybrid social systems of humans and machines, we need to evaluate how to program the robotic agents so that they do not corrode how we treat each other."

Understanding the social influence of robots in human spaces is important even when the robots do not serve an intentionally social function, said Sarah Strohkorb Sebo, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and a co-author of the study.

"Imagine a robot in a factory whose task is to distribute parts to workers on an assembly line," she said. "If it hands all the pieces to one person, it can create an awkward social environment in which the other workers question whether the robot believes they're inferior at the task. Our findings can inform the design of robots that promote social engagement, balanced participation, and positive experiences for people working in teams."

Other co-authors on the study are Yale's Brian Scassellati, professor of computer science, cognitive science, and mechanical engineering; and Cornell's Malte Jung, assistant professor in information science.

The research was supported by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Related

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Robots that admit mistakes foster better conversation in humans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Three people and a robot form a team playing a game. The robot makes a mistake, costing the team a round. Like any good teammate, it acknowledges the error. "Sorry, guys, I made the mistake this round," it says. "I know it may be hard to believe, but robots make mistakes too."

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Occupational Gender Bias Prevalent in Online Images, Rutgers Study Finds

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Occupational Gender Bias Prevalent in Online Images, Rutgers Study Finds

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A study by Rutgers researchers found that online images of men and women in the professions of librarian, nurse, computer programmer and civil engineer reinforce existing gender stereotypes. Men were typically displayed as the computer programmer and civil engineer and women were portrayed as the librarian and the nurse. However, the study did find that when individuals generate content directly, the stereotypes of gender in certain occupations were challenged.

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Gender stereotypes are produced and reinforced on digital and social media platforms

Vivek Singh, assistant professor of library and information science, and Mary Chayko, interdisciplinary teaching professor, studied the ways photos of four strongly gendered professions are presented on different types of digital platforms.

Rutgers researchers say gender bias and stereotypes corresponding to certain occupations are prevalent on digital and social media platforms.

The study, published in The Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, finds that online images of men and women in four professions - librarian, nurse, computer programmer and civil engineer - tend to represent and reinforce existing gender stereotypes.

In the study, Rutgers researchers analyzed search results for images of people in each of the four occupations on four digital media platforms: Twitter, NYTimes.com, Wikipedia and Shutterstock. They also compared the search results to the gender representation of each occupation as per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The results showed gender stereotypes and biases to be prevalent. Women were overrepresented as librarians and nurses and underrepresented as computer programmers and civil engineers, especially when the collection and curation of content is largely automated by an algorithm, such as on Twitter.

However, on platforms where individuals can generate and curate content more directly, such as NYTimes.comand Shutterstock, stereotypes were more likely to be challenged. Search results of NYTimes.com, for example, produced images of civil engineers who are women and nurses who are men more often than would be expected given their representation in the Labor Statistics.

"More direct content curation will help counter gender stereotypes," said Vivek Singh, an assistant professor of library and information science in Rutgers' School of Communication and Information.

While women tend to be underrepresented in male-dominated professions on digital media platforms, Singh noted some progress toward equity in the gendered presentation of images from 2018 to 2019. For instance, more women were shown in images for male-dominated professions on Twitter in 2019 than in 2018.

"Gender bias limits the ability of people to select careers that may suit them and impedes fair practices, pay equity and equality," said co-author Mary Chayko, a sociologist and interdisciplinary teaching professor at the School of Communication and Information. "Understanding the prevalence and patterns of bias and stereotypes in online images is essential, and can help us challenge, and hopefully someday break, these stereotypes."

The researchers said that the study could help prevent biases from being designed into digital media platforms, algorithms and artificial intelligence software. And while human beings indeed construct algorithms, the study's results may help content creators and platform designers identify whether algorithm‐heavy or human‐heavy curation may be better suited to a task.

The study was co-authored by Raj Inamdar, a research associate at Rutgers' Behavioral Informatics Lab and Diana Floegel, a doctoral student at Rutgers' School of Communication and Information.

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Occupational Gender Bias Prevalent in Online Images, Rutgers Study Finds

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Rutgers researchers say gender bias and stereotypes corresponding to certain occupations are prevalent on digital and social media platforms. The study, published in The Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, finds that online images of men and women in four professions - librarian, nurse, computer programmer and civil engineer - tend to represent and reinforce existing gender stereotypes.

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Brazil takes a page from China, taps facial recognition to solve crime

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Brazil takes a page from China, taps facial recognition to solve crime

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There is a push for facial recognition technology in Brazil in order to fight violent crime. Many people feel that privacy is a price they must pay for security. The article highlights that many U.S. cities such as San Francisco have banned facial recognition technology due to concerns of accuracy and potential abuse. A lot of the facial recognition technology being used in Brazil comes from China.

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Ester Clenilda's Rio de Janeiro neighborhood could become the latest testing ground for Brazil's experiment in fighting staggering crime with high-tech surveillance, like facial recognition. She's supportive, even if weary about being watched.

"I will be calmer knowing that they're looking for the criminals," Ms. Clenilda says.

Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro was elected in large part on his vow to give police more power to crack down on soaring violence. Cities and states across the country are mulling bills that would allow or even mandate surveillance technology in public spaces and Mr. Bolsonaro recently signed decrees that aim to create a centralized database of citizens' personal and biometric information.

Despite enthusiasm, for some, the government's approach harks back to Brazil's military dictatorship, which leaned heavily on surveillance to target opponents. In China, an unrivaled state surveillance apparatus has had a chilling effect on political expression and personal freedoms. It also happens to be the country providing Brazil with the bulk of its surveillance technology.

Ester Clenilda is not comfortable with the idea of police watching her every move. Yet she still welcomes a new project that could see officers hunting down criminals in her neighborhood with facial-recognition cameras mounted on their uniforms.

"It's a good thing," says Ms. Clenilda who sells headphones, small gadgets, and cables at a tidy electronics stall in Rocinha, one of Brazil's largest favelas. "People will have peace of mind. I will be calmer knowing that they're looking for the criminals."

Rocinha is a jumble of cinder-block homes stacked high above some of Rio's wealthiest beachfront neighborhoods. After a stretch of relative calm, Rocinha is suffering renewed violence as gangs battle each other and the police. It could become the latest testing ground for Brazil's broader experiment in fighting staggering crime with high-tech surveillance.

While in much of the world citizens are increasingly speaking out against mass surveillance and digital invasions of privacy, Brazil appears poised to embrace them in the name of security.

The government is yet to hold a public hearing on the use of such surveillance, but Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro was elected in large part on his vow to give police more power - digital and otherwise- to crack down on crime. Now, cities and states are mulling a patchwork of bills that could mandate crime-fighting technology, like facial recognition cameras, in public spaces. Mr. Bolsonaro recently signed a pair of decrees that aim to create a vast, centralized database of personal and biometric information on Brazil's more than 200 million citizens.

Some fear the government's new approach harks back to Brazil's repressive 1964-1985 military dictatorship, which leaned heavily on surveillance to weed out opponents. And some of the clearest risks of this technology are already visible in China, where an unrivaled state surveillance apparatus has had a chilling effect on political expression and personal freedoms.

"If you look at the history of facial recognition, it is often developed - first and foremost - to prevent dissent," says Maya Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch. "These systems developed to perpetuate inequality rather than securing public safety."

Intelligence vs. brutality

In Brazil, the push for security solutions comes against a grisly backdrop of violent crime, both at the hands of gangs and police. Mr. Bolsonaro has played into citizen exasperation with violence, vowing that criminals will "die like cockroaches in the streets." He proposed legislation that would allow police and civilians to shoot suspected offenders without fear of persecution, in addition to his more high-tech surveillance ideas.

The increased desperation for solutions has pushed Brazilians to embrace the promises of state surveillance, says Christian Perrone, a senior researcher on rights and technology at the Institute for Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro. Although crime has fallen since hitting a record high in 2017, Brazil still logged more than 57,000 homicides in 2018.

"People are not as aware of what they are giving up. But they understand very well the crime and security side that affects their lives every day," says Mr. Perrone, adding that privacy is a price many feel they must pay for security.

For Ocimar Santos, a Rocinha resident and community leader, the hope is that the new approach will lead to smarter and more targeted policing, replacing the chaotic and bloody shootouts that often occur between gangs and authorities in Rio's favelas. The number of deaths at the hands of police was at an all-time high in Rio last year: Police killed an average of five citizens per day, and the city averaged 20 shootouts per day last year.

"The way things have traditionally been done puts the life of the common citizen at risk," Mr. Santos says. "Anything that uses intelligence instead of the brutality" is preferred.

The context in Brazil is starkly different from many other parts of the world like Europe and North America, where governments - under mounting pressure from civil society - are considering banning facial recognition tools. Several U.S. cities, like San Francisco, have already outlawed their use, citing concerns about accuracy and potential abuse by law enforcement.

An appealing market for China?

Much of Brazil's push toward mass surveillance appears inspired - and made possible - by China, home to some of the world's biggest manufacturers of this technology. For Chinese companies, Brazil represents a huge market with special appeal.

There are millions of cameras monitoring citizens across China, though experts say their accuracy is far from perfect, especially when implemented in less homogenous countries like Brazil.

"Brazil is actually a strategic point ... because of our cultural diversity," says Mr. Perrone. "When you train in such a diverse, multicultural place, you're actually training your artificial intelligence to be smarter and more accurate."

Soon after President Bolsonaro took office last year, several senators from his party were invited on a free trip to China to learn about its surveillance work. At the time, they said they were inspired by China's use of facial recognition systems and, in August, one lawmaker introduced a bill that aims to make the technology mandatory in all public spaces.

China has already sold some of this surveillance equipment to other countries in Latin America, a potentially vast and lucrative market with by high crime. Out of the 20 nations in the world with the highest homicide rates, nearly all are in Latin America. Ecuador implemented a far-reaching surveillance system using Chinese technology. A province in northern Argentina began using Chinese facial recognition technology last year.

"China's market for mass surveillance has grown so much that the companies are really benefiting from it," Ms. Wang says. She says the ease of selling in this market is appealing, but there are perks for the Chinese government as well: "The intention is also to build a world that is friendly to the Chinese Communist Party."

Chinese surveillance is already leaving its mark on Brazil. In late 2018, the city of Campinas, in Sao Paulo state, started a pilot using Huawei facial recognition cameras with the aim of " replicating " the company's "advanced public safety" model for smart cities.

The program in Campinas uses artificial intelligence to collect and comb through a database of biometric information, personal data, and social media images. When artificial intelligence identifies a wanted suspect, the system alerts nearby authorities via mobile phone, allowing them to make an arrest quickly.

The same Huawei technology has been used in the northeastern state of Bahia on an even wider scale. Police credit the program for 118 identifications of wanted criminals as of mid-January. Huawei has also strategically partnered with Brazilian telecommunications giant Oi to commercialize facial recognition technology in the country.

Facial recognition surveillance is being tested in Rio de Janeiro, where technology from Oi and Huawei was used during Carnaval last year and the Copa America soccer final. The technology passed the "first test drive" and police say it will be implemented on a wider scale.

Last month, authorities announced they plan to mount 200 cameras on police patrolling Rocinha, with images sent to a control center running facial recognition software.

Is it working?

There is no "compelling evidence" that this technology improves safety, Ms. Wang from Human Rights Watch says. Mr. Perrone fears it could simply push crime outside the boundaries monitored by cameras.

Critics warn that unchecked use of such high-tech tactics like facial recognition without legal protection already in place could have far-reaching implications, allowing companies to amass and potentially misuse a vast trove of personal information. Although Brazil passed a data protection law in 2018 set to create a supervising authority and a legal framework for how personal data is handled, it won't take effect until August. Last year, a leak revealing personal information like social security numbers and names of family members of about 20 million people in Ecuador - which does not yet have a data protection law - put some of these risks in sharp relief.

"In many parts of the world, facial recognition is new and so legislators are literally just catching up," in terms of protection measures, Ms. Wang says. "In this vacuum, it's easy for surveillance companies to move in."

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Brazil takes a page from China, taps facial recognition to solve crime

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Ester Clenilda's Rio de Janeiro neighborhood could become the latest testing ground for Brazil's experiment in fighting staggering crime with high-tech surveillance, like facial recognition. She's supportive, even if weary about being watched. "I will be calmer knowing that they're looking for the criminals," Ms. Clenilda says.

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Countries Debate Openness of Future National IDs

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Countries Debate Openness of Future National IDs

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The High Court in Kenya ruled that a new amendment requiring for national biometric digital identification went to far on the counts of links to DNA or GPS records. Over half of African countries are developing some form of biometric or digital national ID. This raises concerns of data protection and privacy. The court ruled that the passing of the overall law was valid.

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IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News

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What’s your brand? A new algorithm analyzes social media data to help brands improve their marketing

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What’s your brand? A new algorithm analyzes social media data to help brands improve their marketing

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Using algorithm that analyzed data of consumer's daily activity on social media, researchers created an algorithm that can correctly predict consumer purchases.

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Researchers created an algorithm that successfully predicted consumer purchases. The algorithm made use of data from the consumers' daily activity on social media. Brands could use this to analyze potential customers. The researchers' method combines powerful statistical modeling techniques with machine learning-based image recognition.

Associate Professor Toshihiko Yamasaki and his team from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo explore new and interesting ways to make use of data such as social media data. Some applications they develop are useful for entities like companies to improve their effectiveness in different ways, but in particular in how they reach and influence potential customers.

"I posed two questions to my team: 'Is it possible to calculate the similarity between different brands based on the way customers engage with them on social media?' And, 'If so, can brands use this information to improve the way they market themselves?'" said Yamasaki. "And with some time, effort and patience, they came back with a simple but confident answer: 'Yes!'"

But the way their team deduced this was anything but simple. The computational analysis of social media data is often called mining, as the term suggests it is a monumental and laborious task. For this reason, researchers in this field make use of various computational tools to analyze social media in ways that human beings cannot.

"In the past, many companies improved their marketing strategies with the use of customer surveys and projections based on their sales data," explained lead researcher Yiwei Zhang. "However, these are time-consuming and imprecise. Now we have access to and expertise in tools such as machine learning and complex statistical analysis."

The team began its work by gathering publicly available social media data from followers of selected brands. They used proven image recognition and machine-learning methods to analyze and categorize photos and hashtags relating to the brands' followers. This revealed patterns of behavior of consumers towards different brands. These patterns meant the researchers could calculate the similarity between different or even unrelated brands.

"We evaluated our proposed algorithm against purchase history and questionnaires, which are still useful to provide context to purchase information," continued Zhang. "The experimental results show that credit card or point card companies could predict customers' past purchasing behavior well. Our algorithm could accurately predict customers' willingness to try new brands."

This research could be extremely useful for new promotions of brands that make use of social media networks. It could also be used by shopping centers and malls to plan which stores they include or for stores themselves to choose which brands to stock. And the research could even help match brands with suitable social media influencers to help better advertise their products.

"To visualize what has not been visible before is always very interesting," concluded Yamasaki. "People might say that professionals already 'see' these kinds of patterns, but being able to show the similarity between brands numerically and objectively is a new innovation. Our algorithm is demonstrably more effective than judging these things based on intuition alone."

Papers

Yiwei Zhang, Xueting Wang, Yoshiaki Sakai, and Toshihiko Yamasaki, "easuring Similarity between Brands using Social Media Content," ACM International Conference on Multimedia Asia: December 19, 2019, doi:10.1145/3338533.3366600.
Link ( Publication )

Related links

Related Faculty Members

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What's your brand? | The University of Tokyo

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Researchers created an algorithm that successfully predicted consumer purchases. The algorithm made use of data from the consumers' daily activity on social media. Brands could use this to analyze potential customers. The researchers' method combines powerful statistical modeling techniques with machine learning-based image recognition.

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Facial Recognition Moves Into a New Front: Schools

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Facial Recognition Moves Into a New Front: Schools

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The Lockport City School District in New York will start using facial recognition technology to monitor who is on its property. The public school district argues that it is a crucial crime-fighting tool. However, others have concerns over privacy, accuracy, and racial bias. 300 cameras have been installed, and the district spent $1.4 million on this project.

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A district in New York has adopted the technology in the name of safety. Opponents cite privacy and bias concerns.

Lockport High School in Lockport, N.Y., has adopted a facial recognition system for security. Credit... Libby March for The New York Times

LOCKPORT, N.Y. - Jim Shultz tried everything he could think of to stop facial recognition technology from entering the public schools in Lockport, a small city 20 miles east of Niagara Falls. He posted about the issue in a Facebook group called Lockportians. He wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times. He filed a petition with the superintendent of the district, where his daughter is in high school.

But a few weeks ago, he lost. The Lockport City School District turned on the technology to monitor who's on the property at its eight schools, becoming the first known public school district in New York to adopt facial recognition, and one of the first in the nation.

The district, said Mr. Shultz, 62, "turned our kids into lab rats in a high-tech experiment in privacy invasion."

The decision underscores how facial recognition is spreading across the country and being deployed in new ways in the United States, as public officials turn to the technology in the name of public safety.

Image

A few cities, like San Francisco and Somerville, Mass., have barred their governments from using the technology, but they are exceptions. More than 600 law enforcement agencies started using the technology of one company, Clearview AI, in just the past year. Airports and other public venues, like Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, have adopted it as well.

Schools are a newer front, and the debate that took place in Lockport encapsulates the furor surrounding the technology. Proponents call it a crucial crime-fighting tool, to help prevent mass shootings and stop sexual predators. Robert LiPuma, the Lockport City School District's director of technology, said he believed that if the technology had been in place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the deadly 2018 attack there may never have happened.

"You had an expelled student that would have been put into the system, because they were not supposed to be on school grounds," Mr. LiPuma said. "They snuck in through an open door. The minute they snuck in, the system would have identified that person."

But opponents like Mr. Shultz say the concerns about facial recognition - namely privacy, accuracy and racial bias - are even more worrisome when it comes to children.

"Subjecting 5-year-olds to this technology will not make anyone safer, and we can't allow invasive surveillance to become the norm in our public spaces," said Stefanie Coyle, deputy director of the Education Policy Center for the New York Civil Liberties Union. "Reminding people of their greatest fears is a disappointing tactic, meant to distract from the fact that this product is discriminatory, unethical and not secure."

The debate in Lockport has unfolded over nearly two years. The school district initially announced its plans to install a facial recognition security system, called Aegis, in March 2018. The district spent $1.4 million, with money it had been awarded by the state, to install the technology across 300 cameras.

But when administrators wanted to do a test run last May, the State Education Department told them to hold off, partly in response to mounting public concerns over student privacy. The state wanted Lockport to make sure that students' data would be properly protected, and demanded a policy that would forbid the use of student data, including their photos.

By June, Lockport officials said they had adjusted their policies, and they began testing parts of the system. In late November, the State Education Department said the district's revised policy addressed its concerns. In January, the school board unanimously approved the latest policy revision.

When the system is on, Mr. LiPuma said, the software looks at the faces captured by the hundreds of cameras and calculates whether those faces match a "persons of interest" list made by school administrators.

That list includes sex offenders in the area, people prohibited from seeing students by restraining orders, former employees who are barred from visiting the schools and others deemed "credible threats" by law enforcement.

If the software detects a person on the list, the Aegis system sends an alert to one of 14 rotating part- and full-time security personnel hired by Lockport, Mr. LiPuma said. The human monitor then looks at a picture of the person in the database to "confirm" or "reject" a match with the person on the camera.

If the operator rejects the match, the alert is dismissed. If the match is confirmed, another alert goes out to a handful of district administrators, who decide what action to take.

The technology will also scan for guns. The chief of the Lockport Police Department, Steven Abbott, said that if a human monitor confirmed a gun that Aegis had detected, an alert would automatically go to both administrators and the Police Department.

If the Aegis system sent an alert to the department and the police could not reach anyone at the school to confirm the threat, Chief Abbott said, "it would be treated as a live situation."

Days after the district announced that the technology had been turned on, some students said they had been told very little about how it worked.

"I'm not sure where they are in the school or even think I've seen them," said Brooke Cox, 14, a freshman at Lockport High School. "I don't fully know why we have the cameras. I haven't been told what their purpose is."

Others, like Tina Ni, 18, said the new technology and the news coverage of her school were "cool."

Critics of the technology, including Mr. Shultz and the New York Civil Liberties Union, point to the growing evidence of racial bias in facial recognition systems. In December, the federal government released a study, one of the largest of its kind, that found that most commercial facial recognition systems exhibited bias, falsely identifying African-American and Asian faces 10 to 100 times more than Caucasian faces. Another federal study found a higher rate of mistaken matches among children.

In Lockport, black students are disproportionately disciplined. In the 2015-16 school year, 25 percent of suspended students in the district were black even though enrollment was only 12 percent black, according to data from the federal Department of Education.

Mr. LiPuma, the director of technology, said he believed that Lockport's system was accurate. He also said he, as well as some other school officials, would like to add suspended students to the watch list in the future, despite the State Education Department's recent directive that Lockport make it clear in its policy that it is "never" to use the system "to create or maintain student data." Most school shootings in the last decade, Mr. LiPuma said, were carried out by students.

"The frustration for me as a technology person is we have the potential" to prevent a school shooting, he said. "If something happens, I'm not going to feel any better about that, but it wasn't my decision. That's on State Ed."

Jason Nance, a law professor at the University of Florida who focuses on education law and policy, warned that listing students as "persons of interest" could have unintended consequences.

"If suspended students are put on the watch list, they are going to be scrutinized more heavily," he said, which could lead to a higher likelihood that they could enter into the criminal justice system.

Jayde McDonald, a political science major at Buffalo State College, grew up as one of the few black students in Lockport public schools. She said she thought it was too risky for the school to install a facial recognition system that could automatically call the police.

"Since the percentages for the false matches are so high, this can lead to very dangerous and completely avoidable situations," Ms. McDonald said.

She added that she believed police officers would "do whatever it takes in order to stop a suspicious person," even if that person was a young student in school.

Opponents of the new technology now pin their hopes on state lawmakers. In April, Assemblywoman Monica Wallace, a Democrat from Lancaster, introduced a bill that would force Lockport to halt the use of facial recognition for a year while the State Education Department studied the technology. The bill easily passed in the Assembly but was not taken up by the Senate.

Ms. Wallace said she intended to make passing the bill a priority in this new legislative session.

"We all want to keep our children safe in school," she said. "But there are more effective, proven ways to do so that are less costly."

She said school districts could, for instance, take smaller steps like upgrading entrances and exits, hiring school resource officers, and investing in counselors and social workers.

Mr. Shultz said he would keep making his case.

"Hopefully, other districts around the country will learn from Lockport's dumb mistakes," he said. "A decision to bring facial recognition and artificial intelligence into our schools ought to be the subject of a serious conversation."

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Facial Recognition Moves Into a New Front: Schools (Published 2020)

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A district in New York has adopted the technology in the name of safety. Opponents cite privacy and bias concerns. LOCKPORT, N.Y. - Jim Shultz tried everything he could think of to stop facial recognition technology from entering the public schools in Lockport, a small city 20 miles east of Niagara Falls.

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Australia to focus on blockchain potential with new roadmap

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Australia to focus on blockchain potential with new roadmap

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The Australian government wants to use blockchain technology to create jobs and new economic growth. They created a roadmap that focuses on three areas: Regulation and standards; skills, capability, and innovation; and international investment and collaboration. The government hopes to implement this 12 step plan by the end of 2025.

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The Australian government believes there are opportunities across the economy that can be seized and enabled by the use of blockchain technology.

The government, in its 52-page blockchain roadmap [PDF], says the technology has the potential to create jobs, create new economic growth, save businesses money, and improve the nation's overall productivity.
See also: Blockchain: A cheat sheet (TechRepublic)
The roadmap, The National Blockchain Roadmap: Progressing towards a blockchain-empowered future, focuses on three areas: Regulation and standards; skills, capability, and innovation; and international investment and collaboration.

The roadmap is comprised of 12 steps the government hopes to execute before the end of 2025. The first is to formalise the National Blockchain Roadmap Advisory Committee and rename it the National Blockchain Roadmap Steering Committee.

One of the responsibilities of the committee would be to provide advice regarding existing government programs and what support is available to the sector. It would also be required to work with other committees, such as the Treasury Fintech Advisory Committee.

It would also be tasked with providing advice to government on the next two blockchain use cases that would be explored.

Step number two of the roadmap is progressing work on those next two use cases through working alongside industry, the research sector, and government.

With three use cases highlighted in the roadmap, which includes the use of blockchain in the agriculture sector, with a focus on supply chains and wine exports; the education sector, with a focus on trusted credentials and facilitating trusted information about an individual's skills and capabilities; and the financial sector, with a focus on identify checks, specifically Know Your Customer (KYC) checks -- the third step is to investigate options for progressing them.

It is expected the establishment of a group of government blockchain users would see discussions on the learnings from existing government use cases; and that all involved would look internationally to identify examples of countries using blockchain to provide efficient government services, such as Estonia, for learnings for Australia.
See also: e-Estonia: What is all the fuss about?
The roadmap also asks for those involved to work closely with blockchain providers, as well as to ensure that blockchain is included in broader policy work to "increase management capability around digital technologies".

Roadmap item number eight asks for industry and educational institutions to work together to "develop common frameworks and course content for blockchain qualifications".

Similarly, working alongside Austrade, the roadmap envisions a "capability development program" to be stood up for Australian blockchain startups so they can go global with their ideas. Austrade would also be involved, alongside the government, in a blockchain-focussed "inbound investment program" aimed at introducing potential investors to the Australian blockchain ecosystem.

"This roadmap highlights some of the enormous opportunities blockchain technology can enable -- across our whole economy, not just in the financial sector," Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews said in her foreword.

"These opportunities include supply chains and logistics; agriculture; trusted credentials; and smart contracts -- just to name a few. Australia has some real strengths in blockchain technology, from our world-class research to our innovative companies to our leading role in the development of international standards for blockchain."

"Blockchain is a technology with real potential to save businesses money and to open new business and export opportunities," she added, calling it the "start of the conversation between government, industry, and universities".

In preparing its roadmap, the government looked into 138 blockchain activities in Australia, which revealed activity mostly came from small-to-medium sized businesses in New South Wales and Victoria. The financial and insurance services had the most activity.

See also: Commonwealth Bank to trial blockchain 'BioTokens' for biodiversity investment
The roadmap follows the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) giving advice over a year ago to those getting lost in the buzz of blockchain that they should turn their attention elsewhere.

DTA chief digital officer Peter Alexander also dunked on its use, adding to the above that "for every use of blockchain you would consider today, there is a better technology -- alternate databases, secure connections, standardised API engagement".

"Blockchain: Interesting technology but early on in its development, it's kind of at the top of a hype cycle," he said.

The government entity has even published a questionnaire for organisations to self-evaluate before bothering with something that can just be stored in a secure database.

MORE BLOCKCHAIN IN AUSTRALIA

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Australia to focus on blockchain potential with new roadmap | ZDNet

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The Australian government believes there are opportunities across the economy that can be seized and enabled by the use of blockchain technology. The government, in its 52-page blockchain roadmap [PDF], says the technology has the potential to create jobs, create new economic growth, save businesses money, and improve the nation's overall productivity.

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Instagram Brings In More Than a Quarter of Facebook Sales

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Instagram Brings In More Than a Quarter of Facebook Sales

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In 2019, Instagram brought in $20 billion in ad revenue, which was more than a quarter of Facebook's revenue for 2019. The app makes money by selling ads that look like posts in user's feeds, and Facebook has increased the frequency of ads in the past couple of years.

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YOUTUBE AD REVENUE, DISCLOSED BY GOOGLE FOR THE FIRST TIME, TOPPED $15 BILLION IN 2019

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YOUTUBE AD REVENUE, DISCLOSED BY GOOGLE FOR THE FIRST TIME, TOPPED $15 BILLION IN 2019

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In 2019, YouTube brought in $15.1 billion in ad revenue, and majority of this money goes to the creators of videos on the platform. This is the first time Google has disclosed its revenue for YouTube. According to the terms of service, Google keeps 45% of the ad revenue shown in videos. A lot of the advertising revenue comes from brand advertisement before videos play on the platform.

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The Virtues and Downsides of Online Dating

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The Virtues and Downsides of Online Dating

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According to a Pew Research Study, 30% of American Adults say they have used an online dating app or site, and 12% say they have been in a committed relationship or married to someone they met on a dating site or app. Young adults and those who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual are more likely to use online dating sites or apps. LGB adults are twice as likely to use a dating app/site when compared with their straight counterparts.

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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Monica Anderson, Emily A. Vogels and Erica Turner

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The Virtues and Downsides of Online Dating

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30% of U.S. adults say they have used a dating site or app. A majority of online daters say their overall experience was positive, but many users – particularly younger women – report being harassed or sent explicit messages on these platforms

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Israel’s Sheba unveils first known coronavirus telemedicine program

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Israel’s Sheba unveils first known coronavirus telemedicine program

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The Sheba Medical center is using telemedicine to protect their staff from the coronavirus and to treat sick patients. They would also like to use the telemedicine to treat less sick patients in their own homes.

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Sheba Medical Center has launched the first known coronavirus telemedicine program in the world this week, according to the hospital.

The program, which is being tested on Israeli patients suspected of having the respiratory virus, is twofold, according to Dr. Galia Barkai, head of telemedicine services at Sheba.

First, the hospital is using a Vici telemedicine solution designed by California-based virtual healthcare company Intouch Health, which looks like a robot and can enter the infected person's room and be controlled by doctors or nurses from the outside. The robot can monitor the patient's vital signs, including heart rate.

"This is one way to use telemedicine to protect our staff," Barkai explained. "By minimizing direct contact between the patients and medical personnel, we reduce the percentage risk of healthcare staff contracting the virus."

In addition, the hospital plans to provide its Datos Health-designed telemedicine application to less severely ill patients, who can then be monitored by medical professionals from the comfort and isolation of their own homes.

Barkai said she envisions that if and when the virus comes to Israel, there might be multiple patients who are diagnosed with it at the same time. Sheba has only a limited number of isolation rooms, and if there are too many coronavirus patients, staff and patients could be at risk, even if extreme precautions are taken.

"Less severe patients could be monitored outside the hospital," she explained. "We would give them our telemedicine application and communicate with them via video at least twice a day. This would allow them to stay more comfortably in their homes and reduce risk within the hospital."

Barkai noted that, so far, Israel does not have patients who have tested positive for the new coronavirus, but that the hospital started testing the system Tuesday on those people who returned from China, reported to the hospital and were put on home quarantine for 14 days - the incubation period of the virus.

"Although we don't have any positive patients in Israel, we are always dealing with suspected patients and preparing for the worst-case scenario," she said. "So, we are creating all these systems to help us deal with the occasion when we might have to deal with many patients."

The death toll from the monthlong virus outbreak has risen to close to 500 worldwide, all except a few occurring in China, and there continues to be a surge of new cases. Figures released Tuesday by the World Health Organization showed that, so far, 20,630 people in 23 countries are known to have been infected with the coronavirus. A Wednesday report by China's Health Commission reported nearly 4,000 additional confirmed cases.

On Tuesday, Sheba ran the first drill in its new field hospital, which could be used as a dedicated external unit for treating coronavirus patients. The modular unit can be erected quickly in a nearby open area, much like a military field hospital, and would include a special area for examining those people suspected of having the virus, as well as an isolation area for those who test positive.

Doctors working in the unit, according to a release by Sheba, would be able to provide all the medical services available in the inpatient hospital building. However, patients hospitalized at Sheba for other reasons would benefit from keeping coronavirus patients outside the main building, as sick people are often immunosuppressed and could be more susceptible to catching the potentially lethal virus.

OVER THE past week, the country has convened several high-level meetings to discuss the coronavirus threat. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with senior government, health and emergency service executives to help ensure that the country is prepared to protect itself from and combat the spread of the virus.

"We are not taking any unnecessary risks," the prime minister said Saturday night. "We are aware that the virus cannot be completely prevented, so we are preparing to deal with the virus after its first entry into Israel."

Sheba's new methodology was announced on the same day that Magen David Adom said that it, too, would be implementing new safety measures to prevent any risk of blood transfusion patients getting infected by the coronavirus.

"Although there is no indication that the virus can be transmitted by blood, we decided to take precautions to keep the blood-product patients safe," said Prof. Eilat Shinar, deputy director of Magen David Adom blood services.

MDA said a person who visited China, or was exposed to someone with the virus, or got sick and then recovered from coronavirus, would have to wait 28 days before being allowed to donate blood.

WHO reported on the status of the virus in the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday night, disseminating a three-page situation report that showed no confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the Palestinian territories.

"Five confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV were reported in the Eastern Mediterranean region - all in the United Arab Emirates," the WHO said, noting that it had developed and shared with the PA Health Ministry a protocol for the investigation of early cases, guidance for laboratory diagnosis and recommendations to reduce the risk of transmission from animals to humans.

The ministry conducted meetings of the national emergency committee in the West Bank and Gaza and agreed on priority actions to prevent and manage an outbreak, WHO reported.

It said that medical points at the King Hussein and Rafah border crossings have been established to screen incoming travelers. WHO is also providing technical assistance in development, printing and dissemination of public communication materials at these ports of entry and others.

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Israel's Sheba unveils first known coronavirus telemedicine program

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Sheba Medical Center has launched the first known coronavirus telemedicine program in the world this week, according to the hospital. The program, which is being tested on Israeli patients suspected of having the respiratory virus, is twofold, according to Dr. Galia Barkai, head of telemedicine services at Sheba.