In an effort to combat abuse on its platform, Pornhub said it's expanding its human moderation team, releasing an upcoming transparency report, and introducing biometric technology to verify users who upload videos. The announcement comes after the platform came under scrutiny in December for claims it hosted child sexual abuse material. As a result, Visa and Mastercard suspended services on the site indefinitely.

Some of the measures it took to address the issue at the time included banning all non-verified users from posting to the site and deleting all content uploaded from unverified sources -- which amounted to over 10 million videos being deleted, or more than 80 percent of all videos on the platform. Motherboard reports: Tuesday's statement says that verification will still be limited to people in Pornhub's Model Program, and verification will be done by Yoti, a digital identity verification company, "by providing a current photo and government-approved identification document." "Yoti will check the validity of the ID document and match the user's ID document to their photo using secure biometric technology," according to the statement.

Other portions of the expanded policies include details about how moderators will work going forward, including that they will "regularly monitor search terms within the platform for increases in phrasings that attempt to bypass the safeguards in place." Moderators will also be trained more rigorously, and offered support and therapy. "Content moderators will also undergo further exhaustive training to identify potentially illegal material and testing," Pornhub said. "If needed, content moderators have access to specialized support, including wellness benefits and therapeutic measures, to support them in their critical work."

In its statement, Pornhub also announced that it will release a transparency report "detailing its content moderation results from 2020, including the total number of reports filed with [the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children], as well as other key details related to the trust and safety of the platform." "Much like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other tech platforms, Pornhub seeks to be fully transparent about the content that should and should not appear on the platform," Pornhub said in the statement. "This report will be the first of its kind among adult content platforms, setting the standard for transparency and accountability in the industry."

In an interview on Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sat down with one of Tesla's harshest critics, Sandy Munro, and discussed the issues that plagued early Model 3s. CNN reports: In early 2018 engineering consultant Sandy Munro, who tears apart and reverse-engineers cars to assess quality, issued a brutal appraisal of the Model 3 citing "flaws that we would see on a Kia in the '90s." He noted inconsistencies such as uneven gaps between exterior panels and paint job issues, telling Autoline, "I can't imagine how they released this." Surprisingly Musk, who has often bristled at criticism, agrees. "I thought your criticism was accurate," Musk told Munro in an interview that aired Tuesday on the YouTube channel and podcast "Munro Live."

In the interview Musk also admitted that it might not be a good idea to buy a Tesla during a new model's ramp-up period. Munro's "Kia" critique came when Tesla was still struggling to meet early production targets for the Model 3. "Friends ask, 'When should I buy a Tesla?'" Musk said. "Well, either buy it right at the beginning or when production reaches steady state. During that production ramp, it's super hard to be in vertical climb mode and get everything right on the details."

Munro also questioned Musk about quality control problems more recently. He bought a 2021 Model 3 late last year, and compared it to a Model 3 someone else purchased a month later -- and saw significant improvement. "At the end of the day, this guy's car was fabulous ... as good as anybody could possibly do," Munro said. "I just don't understand. Mine was built this month, his was built a month later. Mine had problems. His was perfect." Musk said Tesla continued to make progress even as recently as December of last year, noting that the company is finding issues more quickly as the pace of production continues to speed up. "When you go faster, you just discover these things," he said. "If we knew them in advance, we'd fix them in advance."

General Motors became the latest automaker hit by the global shortage of semiconductor chips as the U.S. automaker said on Wednesday it will take down production next week at four assembly plants. From a report: GM said it will cut production entirely during the week of Feb. 8 at plants in Fairfax, Kansas; Ingersoll, Ontario; and San Luis Potosi, Mexico. It will also run its Bupyeong 2 plant in South Korea at half capacity that week. GM did not disclose how much volume it would lose or which supplier was affected by the chip shortage, but said the focus has been on keeping production running at plants building the highest-profit vehicles -- full-size pickup trucks and SUVs as well as the Chevrolet Corvette sports car. GM said it intends to make up as much lost production as possible.

Google, together with its partner SubCom, today announced that the company's privately owned Dunant subsea cable between Virginia Beach, Virginia and Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez on the French Atlantic coast is now operational. From a report: Google first announced this project, which was named after the first Noble Peach Price winner and founder of the Red Cross, Henry Dunant, back in the middle of 2018. At the time it expected the project to go live in 2020, but besides dealing with the complications of spanning a long cable between continents, the project leaders probably didn't budget for a global pandemic at the time. The almost 4,000-mile cable has a total capacity of 250 terabits per second -- or enough to transmit the "entire digitized Library of Congress three times every second" (though maybe using Library of Congress data size references is starting to feel a bit antiquated at this point?). Unlike some older cables, Dunant uses 12 fiber pairs, coupled with a number of technical innovations around maximizing its bandwidth, to achieve these numbers.

"Google is dedicated to meeting the exploding demand for cloud services and online content that continues unabated," said Mark Sokol, senior director of Infrastructure, Google Cloud. "With record-breaking capacity and transmission speeds, Dunant will help users access content wherever they may be and supplement one of the busiest routes on the internet to support the growth of Google Cloud. Dunant is a remarkable achievement that would not have been possible without the dedication of both SubCom and Google's employees, partners, and suppliers, who overcame multiple challenges this year to make this system a reality."

Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), the commercial version of the ubiquitous Defender antivirus and Microsoft's top enterprise security solution, is currently having a bad day and labeling yesterday's Google Chrome browser update as a backdoor trojan. From a report: The detections are for Google Chrome 88.0.4324.146, the latest version of the Chrome browser, which Google released last night. As per the screenshot (embedded in the linked story), but also based on reports shared on Twitter by other dismayed system administrators, Defender ATP is currently detecting multiple files part of the Chrome v88.0.4324.146 update package as containing a generic backdoor trojan named "PHP/Funvalget.A." The alerts have caused quite a stir in enterprise environments in light of recent multiple software supply chain attacks that have hit companies across the world over the past few months. System administrators are currently awaiting a formal statement from Microsoft to confirm that the detection is a "false possitive" and not an actual threat.

Apple is investing 4 trillion won ($3.6 billion) in Kia Motors in a collaboration to build an electric car. From a report: This is according to a report by Korean outlet DongA Ilbo, which claims a deal may get inked on February 17. According to the report, the plan is to launch the Apple Car in 2024, with an initial target of producing 100,000 cars per year. This can later be expanded to 400,000 units, the report claims. Apple's funds will be used to build exclusive facilities for the production and development of Apple Car.

The report follows a January report that Apple is talking to Hyundai about Apple Car production, which Hyundai has readily confirmed. The company noted, however, that the discussion was "at its early stage" and that "nothing has been decided." However, Hyundai later revised the statement, only confirming that it's been talking to partners about building an autonomous electric vehicle.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: South Korea returned to first place in the latest Bloomberg Innovation Index, while the U.S. dropped out of a top 10 that features a cluster of European countries. Korea regained the crown from Germany, which dropped to fourth place. The Asian nation has now topped the index for seven of the nine years that it's been published. Singapore and Switzerland each moved up one spot to rank second and third. The Bloomberg index analyzes dozens of criteria using seven equally weighted metrics, including research and development spending, manufacturing capability and concentration of high-tech public companies.

Korea's return to the top spot is mainly due to an increase in patent activity, where it ranks top, alongside a strong performance in R&D and manufacturing. Second-placed Singapore, which has been allocating budget funds to help workers and companies transition to a digital economy, also scores high for manufacturing -- and its globally competitive universities put it top of the tertiary education gauge. Switzerland, a leader in financial and biological technology, ranks near the top in both of the index's research categories. Germany's loss of the crown follows a warning two years ago by Juergen Michels, chief economist of Bayerische Landesbank, who said the country lacked skilled workers and a proper strategy for next-generation technology. As the two biggest economies, the U.S. and China account for much of the world's innovation. But both saw their rankings decline this year.

The U.S., which topped the first Bloomberg Innovation Index in 2013, dropped two places to 11th. The country scores badly in higher education, even though U.S. universities are world-famous. That underperformance was likely made worse by obstacles to foreign students, who are usually prominent in science and technology classes -- first due to the Trump administration's visa policies, and later to the pandemic. China, which fell one place to 16th in the 2021 index, is locked in a battle with the U.S. over key aspects of innovation policy. Other gainers in this year's index include India, which climbed back into the top 50 for the first time since 2016, and Uruguay, which qualified for the first time. Algeria and Argentina were among the countries that fell furthest.

After being asked by the NHTSA, Tesla is recalling 135,000 Model S and Model X vehicles because their large center touchscreens can fail. "The recall applies to some 2012 through 2018 Model S and 2016 through 2018 Model X vehicles," notes CNN. From the report: Under the recall, which will begin on March 30, Tesla must notify owners of cars with the failure-prone touchscreens and replace a computer chip that controls the screen. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) considers this a safety issue because without a functioning center screen, drivers lose the display for the car's backup camera and controls for the window defroster and defogger. Even in its correspondence with NHTSA agreeing to the recall, Tesla noted that it was aware of no crashes related to the problem and said the vehicles could still be safely operated without the screen.

Thus far, Tesla has been charging customers to upgrade or replace the screens, but the costs of official recall repairs are supposed to be absorbed by the vehicle manufacturer. Tesla said in its letter to NHTSA that it will make the recall repairs for free and will offer a discount on upgraded screen hardware. Tesla is also required to regularly report to NHTSA on its progress in repairing all 135,000 touchscreens. Automakers face fines for not repairing recalled vehicles quickly enough.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast is doubling download speeds and increasing upload speeds for the $10-per-month Internet Essentials plan that it sells to low-income subscribers. Comcast had faced criticism for keeping the plan's speeds at 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up during the pandemic, though even those speeds were an increase from the 15Mbps/2Mbps offered until March 2020. In today's announcement, Comcast said it is "doubling the program's Internet download speed to 50Mbps and increasing the upstream speed to 5Mbps for all new and existing customers at no additional cost." The speed upgrade "will be rolled out nationally beginning March 1," Comcast said.

Low-income users still face Comcast's 1.2TB data cap, which adds $10 to a monthly bill for each additional block of 50GB. But data-cap overage charges are capped at $30 per month for Internet Essentials subscribers, while the extra charges can go up to $100 for other customers. Information on how to qualify for Internet Essentials is available here. The new speed increase "is the sixth time in 10 years that Comcast has increased broadband speeds for Internet Essentials customers while keeping the cost of the service at $9.95 a month," the company said.

The report notes that Comcast has been offering two months free to new Internet Essentials customers ever since the pandemic started, and it plans on keeping that deal open until June 30, 2021.

Google's cloud business reported operating loss of $5.61 billion in 2020. It brought in $13.06 billion in revenue for the year. It's the first time the company revealed the operating income metric for its cloud business. CNBC reports: Alphabet's latest push to show it's serious about its cloud unit comes as it tries to diversify revenue, which primarily comes from advertising, a business that showed vulnerability in 2020 -- particularly in the second quarter. Google Cloud includes infrastructure and data analytics platforms, collaboration tools, and "other services for enterprise customers."

The company's past attempts to bolster its cloud unit under CEO Diane Greene, who left in 2018, failed to capture much market share. But, since former Oracle executive Thomas Kurian came to Google to lead its cloud efforts in 2019, the company has gone on hiring and acquisition sprees.

Ransomware gangs made at least $350 million in ransom payments last year, in 2020, blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis said in a report last week. From a report: The figure was compiled by tracking transactions to blockchain addresses linked to ransomware attacks. Although Chainalysis possesses one of the most complete sets of data on cryptocurrency-related cybercrime, the company said its estimate was only a lower bound of the true total due. The company blamed this on the fact that not all victims disclosed their ransomware attacks and subsequent payments last year, with the real total being many times larger than what the company was able to view. But despite the low figure, Chainalysis says that ransomware was actually on the rise. According to numbers released in a previous report, ransomware payments accounted for 7% of all funds received by "criminal" cryptocurrency addresses in 2020.

Where there's a coup, there will probably be an internet outage. From a report: Internet disruptions in Myanmar early Monday morning coincided with reports that top politicians, including the country's de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, were being rounded up by the military. That's no surprise: internet blackouts are now common around the world when power hangs in the balance. At least 35 countries have restricted access to the internet or social media platforms at least once since 2019, according to Netblocks, a group which tracks internet freedom. Authorities have used the outages to reduce or prevent unrest -- or to hide it from public view. Blockages are particularly common around elections in Africa, most recently in Uganda. Netblocks also reported disruptions in Russian cities during recent protests over the detention of Alexey Navalny. Neighboring Belarus also disrupted the internet during recent protests, as have countries from Algeria to Zimbabwe.

Uber on Tuesday announced an agreement to buy Drizly, a Boston-based alcohol delivery startup, for $1.1 billion in cash and stock. From a report: This could represent a strategic departure for Uber, in that Drizly doesn't hire delivery drivers itself. Instead, it provides the backend infrastructure for local liquor stores to provide their own delivery services. Drizly co-founder and CEO Cory Rellas is expected to remain with Uber in an executive role.

Investment app Robinhood has plummeted back down to a one-star rating on Google Play, thanks to a flood of thousands of new negative reviews. From a report: The latest low rating comes just days after Google salvaged the app's rating by removing nearly 100,000 reviews, following a flood of negative ratings after the Robinhood blocked purchases of popular stocks from Reddit's /r/WallStreetBets like GameStop or AMC last week. Google confirmed to The Verge at the time that it was actively removing negative reviews on the app.

The review rollercoaster for Robinhood's rating has been nearly as up-and-down as GameStop's stock price. When users began to review bomb the app last Thursday, Robinhood reached a one-star rating with nearly 275,000 reviews. Google then removed nearly 100,000 of those reviews, putting the app back at a four-star average with roughly 180,000 reviews. But as of the publication of this article, Robinhood has returned to a new high of almost 305,000 reviews, along with a 1.1-star rating. Google's Play Store policies do explicitly ban reviews that are intended to "manipulate the rating" of an app; the company had previously removed earlier Robinhood reviews because it felt that they violated that policy. A Google spokesperson did confirm to The Verge that the current reviews -- which were not the ones deleted in last week's purge -- are compliant to Google's policies, and won't be removed.

An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from Bloomberg, written by Liam Denning and Elaine He: Electrifying U.S. vehicles wipes out the equivalent of our entire current power demand. The U.S. consumes a lot of energy; last year, about 100 quadrillion BTUs (equivalent to 17 billion barrels of oil; which, we'll admit, is only marginally less abstract). But only about a third of that is ultimately used in terms of actually lighting lights, turning wheels and so forth. The second law of thermodynamics means, for every unit of thermal energy we actually put to useful work, roughly another two end up wasted as heat. How we don't use energy is just as important to understand as how we use it. Here's a simplified version of a Sankey diagram from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory showing the various inputs to the U.S. energy system and where they end up.

Large-scale waste is unavoidable with a thermal energy system, or one where we mostly burn stuff or split atoms (97% of the inputs in 2019). Burning fossil fuels also generates the carbon emissions causing climate change; so wasted energy is a proxy for the damage being done (apart from nuclear power). In contrast, renewables such as wind, solar and hydropower capture energy directly from infinite sources. While a small amount is lost in transmission, the vast majority is used. So here's a thought experiment: What if the entire U.S. light-duty vehicle fleet (currently about 270 million cars and trucks) were electrified by 2030 and we expanded wind and solar generation at a rapid pace, while eliminating coal power, at the same time? The result is that we not only end up with a drop in U.S. carbon emissions of almost 30%, but also a far more efficient system overall.

The official Reddit for iOS app recently received an update that added a new video player UI, and many users don't like it one bit. XDA Developers reports: The Reddit Mobile subreddit, the community where Reddit administrators notify users of new Android and iOS app updates, is currently filled to the brim with complaints about the new video player. Many users describe the experience as TikTok or Instagram-like. Others simply say it's too intrusive and also requires more button presses to reach the comments section of a post. The new video player UI has yet to reach the Android version, but we'd be surprised if Reddit pushes ahead with the controversial video player changes in their current form. For those looking for an alternative, XDA Developers recommends the Apollo app.

Tesla boss Elon Musk said in an interview late Sunday that a monkey has been wired up to play video games with its mind by a company he founded called Neuralink. CNBC reports: Neuralink put a computer chip into the monkey's skull and used "tiny wires" to connect it to its brain, Musk said. "It's not an unhappy monkey," he said during a talk on Clubhouse, a new social media app gaining popularity that allows people to have informal voice chats while others listen in. "You can't even see where the neural implant was put in, except that he's got a slight like dark mohawk."

The billionaire -- who also spoke about space travel, colonies on Mars, crypto, artificial intelligence and Covid-19 vaccines -- said Neuralink is trying to figure out if it can use its chips to get monkeys to play "mind Pong" with each other. "That would be pretty cool," said Musk, who is CEO of Neuralink, in addition to SpaceX and Tesla. Neuralink's team of around 100 people is trying to develop an implementable computer-brain interface. Musk describes it as a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires that go into your brain. [...] Musk said Neuralink will "probably" be releasing some videos that show the company's progress in the next month or so. Last August, Neuralink conducted a live demo of its technology on three pigs. A wireless link from the Neuralink device showed the pig's activity activity as it snuffled around a pen on stage.

Musk made the comments on the audio chat app Clubhouse, where he also grilled Robinhood CEO about what happened with GameStop.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: In China's popular online-streaming industry, virtual gift-giving is big. You can send your favorite live performer anything from a rose for 5 yuan (80 cents) to a space rocket for 500 yuan. The present is just a symbol, but the money is real -- and that's what's made Kuaishou Technology so successful. [...] Co-founders Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao will each be worth more than $5.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Su, a native of China's central Hunan province, studied computer programming at the prestigious Tsinghua University before joining Google in Beijing in 2006. There, he earned about $23,000 annually, eight times the country's average salary back then. While he said he was "extremely happy," a stay in Silicon Valley inspired him to start his own business, according to Kuaishou's biography. The 38-year-old quit Google during the global financial crisis to start his own video-advertising venture, which didn't come to fruition. After a short stint with Baidu Inc., he got acquainted with Cheng in 2011 and they soon decided to pair up. In 2013, the duo transformed the Kuaishou app from a GIF-maker to the social-video platform it is today, initially gaining popularity with its videos of life in rural China.

With the rise of ByteDance's Douyin, the Chinese twin app of TikTok, Kuaishou broadened its appeal, luring influencers backed by talent agencies and pop stars like Taiwan's Jay Chou. Along the way, it sped up monetization by creating ad slots and in-app stores for brands and merchants. While virtual gift purchases are still its bread and butter -- they make up almost two-thirds of its revenue -- the company is delving deeper into higher-margin businesses like e-commerce and online gaming. Its sales rose almost 50% to 40.7 billion yuan in the first nine months of last year, according to the IPO prospectus.

Apple's latest iOS 14.5 update for beta testers brings support for the new PS5 DualSense and Xbox Series X controllers. The Verge reports: Apple's upcoming iOS 14.5 update follows the company revealing back in November that it was working with Microsoft to include support for the Xbox Series X controllers. Steam also added PS5 controller support last year, followed by Nvidia's Shield TV support last month. Other features of iOS 14.5 include the ability to unlock an iPhone with an Apple Watch while wearing a mask, Siri emergency contact calling, CarPlay ETA sharing, and dual-SIM 5G support. The official release is expected in the next couple of months.

Facebook is testing a notification that notifies Apple iOS users about ways the tech giant uses their data to target personalized ads to them. Axios reports: The test is happening in light of upcoming changes to Apple's privacy settings that will make it harder for Facebook and others to collect data on Apple users for ad targeting. Facebook warned investors last week that changes to Apple's "Identifier for Advertisers" (IDFA) user tracking feature will likely impact its business. The feature asks Apple iOS users to opt-in to having their data collected, instead of asking them to opt-out. Developers forecast that only around 10-30% of users will actually opt-in to having their data collected, making it much harder for advertisers to target potential Apple customers without as much access to their data.

Details: In an updated blog post, Facebook says it will be showing their prompt "to ensure stability for the businesses and people who use our services." The prompt, which provides information about how Facebook uses personalized ads, will be shown to users globally on Facebook and Instagram. In the post, Facebook says that if users accept the prompts for Facebook and Instagram, the ads you see on those apps won't change. "If you decline, you will still see ads, but they will be less relevant to you." The tech giant notes that Apple has said that providing education about its new privacy changes is allowed.