Disney Plus launched early Tuesday, and users are already complaining of service failures. From a report: So far, Disney Plus complaints are clustered in big cities in the Eastern US and Canada, lining up with the the areas likely to experiencing peak demand early Tuesday morning, according to outage tracker DownDetector. The tracker also showed complaints in the Netherlands, where Disney Plus launched as a subscription service Tuesday after operating as a free beta app for weeks. Disney said that demand for Disney Plus has exceeded its "high expectations."

"We are pleased by this incredible response and are working to quickly resolve the current user issue. We appreciate your patience," the company said in a statement. The complaints run a gamut of errors, including difficulties logging in, inability to stream, app failures, shows and movies disappearing from the library and other problems.

When you're scrolling through Facebook's app, the social network could be watching you back, in more ways than just your data, concerned users have found. Multiple people have found and reported that their iPhone cameras were turned on in the background while looking at their feed. From a report: The issue came to light with several posts on Twitter, showing that their cameras were activated behind Facebook's app as they were watching videos or looking at photos on the social network. After clicking on the video to full screen, returning it back to normal would create a bug where Facebook's mobile layout was slightly shifted to the right. With the open space on the left, you could now see the phone's camera activated in the background. This was documented in multiple cases, with the earliest incident on November 2.

First, Instagram killed Snapchat when it cribbed its Stories feature. Now, the social media platform is reportedly gunning for TikTok with a new format called Reels. From a report: Reels is currently being rolled out in Brazil. Available on both iOS and Android, the feature lets users record 15-second clips that can then be set to music. Users can adjust speed, as well as borrow audio from other videos to remix and riff content. It also appears Instagram is adding video editing tools, like the ability to add timed captions and ghost overlays for transitions. Once a user is finished editing, the video can then be posted to their Stories -- and may also be shared to a new "Top Reels" section in the Explore tab. At the moment, there's no concrete timeline for when we might see Reels stateside. An Instagram spokesperson told Gizmodo that the company is simply excited to test the feature in Brazil for now, and "incorporate learnings and feed back from the community as [it] goes."

The U.S. military may have finally found a way to fix a glitch with the world's most high-tech helmet used by pilots flying the most expensive fighter jet in history. From a report: A bug in the $400,000 helmet display screen used by F-35 aviators caused a green glow when flying in very low-light conditions and is now expected to be overcome by using a different type of semiconductor illumination. The distracting green glow was deemed so critical that restrictions were imposed on some night landings on aircraft carriers, and the fault was classified as a "Priority One" fix by the Pentagon's test office. Jittery lines were also visible to some pilots. Defense giant Lockheed Martin has been contracted by the F-35 Joint Program Office for the redesign, modifying headpieces by installing new organic light-emitting diodes to replace traditional liquid crystal displays. "In partnership with the F-35 Joint Program Office and our U.S. Navy customer, we've been working to transition the helmet technology from a traditional LCD to an Organic LED system," Program Manager Jim Gigliotti said by email. Lockheed Martin did not provide a figure for the number of helmets requiring modification or the upgrade cost.

Socguy writes: In late October, at Honda's "Electric Vision" event in Amsterdam, the company said it was "electrifying" its entire product line, which mostly means hybrids. "We will bring further battery-electric products to the market," they said. At the same time it would seem, diesel and hydrogen are on the way out. Katsushi Inoue, Honda Europe's president, said: "Maybe hydrogen fuel cell cars will come, but that's a technology for the next era. Our focus is on hybrid and electric vehicles now." Diesel is also on the way out as in September, Honda said it would phase out all diesel cars by 2021. In addition to the all-electric Honda E, which is launching in Europe next year, the company will introduce a second EV that's expected to be revealed by 2022.

Work on Tesla's Shanghai factory, dubbed Gigafactory 3, is just about finished, and the company is weeks away from beginning large-scale manufacturing. Ars Technica reports: According to Bloomberg, Tesla chairman Robyn Denholm said last week that Tesla is waiting for manufacturing certification from local government. The company hopes that will happen before the end of the year. Tesla recently posted images of some of the first Chinese-made Model 3s on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform similar to Twitter. Tesla allowed Chinese reporters to take additional photos of the vehicle. There are a couple of obvious differences from the American model.

The back of the car has Chinese characters on the left and "Model 3" on the right. Like the cars Tesla is currently shipping to China, these new Model 3s also sport dual charging ports. One port is for the European Type 2 charging standard, while the other is for a Chinese charging standard. Tesla will initially use batteries from Panasonic in its Chinese-made cars, just as it does in the United States. Bloomberg recently reported that Tesla is negotiating a deal to start using batteries from Chinese battery maker CATL starting next year. Tesla is aiming to produce at least 1,000 vehicles per week at its Chinese factory before the end of the year. That could help Tesla achieve its overall goal to deliver at least 360,000 vehicles for the calendar year.

Microsoft said on Monday that it would honor the "core rights" provided to Californians through the state's landmark data privacy law and expand that coverage across the entire United States. The Verge reports: In a Monday blog post, Julie Brill, Microsoft's chief privacy officer, said that the company will extend the main principles of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) across the U.S. just as it did with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) last year. The law goes into effect in California on January 1st, 2020. CCPA, which was approved in June 2018, is one of the fiercest and most sweeping data privacy regulations in the U.S. It's somewhat similar to GDPR. Under CCPA, companies must disclose to users what personal data of theirs is being collected, whether it is sold and to whom, and allow users to opt out of any sales. Users must also have access to their data and be able to request that a company delete it.

"Under CCPA, companies must be transparent about data collection and use, and provide people with the option to prevent their personal information from being sold," Brill wrote. "Exactly what will be required under CCPA to accomplish these goals is still developing." Brill continued, saying that Microsoft will closely monitor any changes to how the government asks companies to enforce the new transparency and control requirements under CCPA. "CCPA marks an important step toward providing people with more robust control over their data in the United States," Brill wrote. "It also shows that we can make progress to strengthen privacy protections in this country at the state level even when Congress can't or won't act."

Oxis Energy, of Abingdon, UK, says it has a battery based on lithium-sulfur chemistry that can greatly increase the ratio of watt-hours per kilogram, and do so in a product that's safe enough for use even in an electric airplane. Specifically, a plane built by Bye Aerospace, in Englewood, Colo., whose founder, George Bye, described the project in this 2017 article for IEEE Spectrum. From a report: The two companies said in a statement that they were beginning a one-year joint project to demonstrate feasibility. They said the Oxis battery would provide "in excess" of 500 Wh/kg, a number which appears to apply to the individual cells, rather than the battery pack, with all its packaging, power electronics, and other paraphernalia. That per-cell figure may be compared directly to the "record-breaking energy density of 260 watt-hours per kilogram" that Bye cited for the batteries his planes were using in 2017.

This per-cell reduction will cut the total system weight in half, enough to extend flying range by 50 to 100 percent, at least in the small planes Bye Aerospace has specialized in so far. If lithium-sulfur wins the day, bigger planes may well follow. [...] One reason why lithium-sulfur batteries have been on the sidelines for so long is their short life, due to degradation of the cathode during the charge-discharge cycle. Oxis expects its batteries will be able to last for 500 such cycles within the next two years. That's about par for the course for today's lithium-ion batteries. Another reason is safety: Lithium-sulfur batteries have been prone to overheating. Oxis says its design incorporates a ceramic lithium sulfide as a "passivation layer," which blocks the flow of electricity -- both to prevent sudden discharge and the more insidious leakage that can cause a lithium-ion battery to slowly lose capacity even while just sitting on a shelf. Oxis also uses a non-flammable electrolyte.

As we approach the November 19th launch date of Stadia, Google has revealed there will be just 12 games available to start. ExtremeTech reports: Stadia is similar to GeForce Now and Microsoft's upcoming xCloud service. Instead of downloading a game or buying a physical copy, Stadia renders the games on a Google server and streams the video down to your devices. Companies have been trying to figure this out for almost a decade, ever since OnLive began offering cloud gaming services in 2010. Even if Stadia works perfectly, it won't matter if it lacks content. The initial launch lineup has a little of everything, but the emphasis is on little. Here's the list of games you'll be able to buy on November 19th: Assassin's Creed Odyssey; Destiny 2: The Collection; GYLT; Just Dance 2020; Kine; Mortal Kombat 11; Red Dead Redemption 2; Rise of the Tomb Raider; SAMURAI SHODOWN; Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition; Thumper; and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition.

Google has, of course, announced other games for Stadia. Anything previously announced like Darksiders Genesis and Borderlands 3 will come later. Google promises the latter will launch on Stadia in 2019 along with more titles like Rage 2, Grid, and Metro Exodus. Stadia launches on November 19th exclusively for players who ordered the Founder's Edition starter kit. That comes with three months of Stadia Pro ($10 per month after), a limited edition controller, a Chromecast Ultra, and a copy of Destiny 2. The base version of Stadia, which lacks 4K support will be available early next year. That one doesn't include a monthly fee, but you still have to pay for the games.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: SpaceX launched another 60 of its internet satellites on Monday morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in a mission that set two new company records for reusing its rockets. Starlink represents SpaceX's ambitious plant to create an interconnected network of as many as 30,000 satellites, to beam high-speed internet to consumers anywhere in the world. This was the second full launch of Starlink satellites, as SpaceX launched the first batch of 60 in May. The company sees Starlink as a key source of funding while SpaceX works toward its goal of flying humans to and from Mars.

Monday's launch also represented the fourth mission for this SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster, which landed and was reused after three previous launches, making this the first time the company landed a rocket booster four times. The booster, the large bottom portion of the rocket, previously launched satellites and then landed successfully for missions in July 2018, October 2018 and February 2019. Additionally, SpaceX used a fairing (the rocket's nosecone) that the company fished out the Atlantic Ocean after a mission in April -- the first time a company has refurbished and used that part of a rocket again. The company has been working to catch the fairing halves in a net strung above the decks of two boats, using parachutes and onboard guidance systems to slowly fly the fairings back into the nets. SpaceX caught its first fairing half on a boat in June. "We deployed 60 more Starlink satellites. This puts us one step closer to being able to offer Starlink internet service to customers across the globe, including people in rural and hard to reach places who have struggled to access high speed internet," SpaceX engineer Lauren Lyons said on the webcast.

Twitter is proposing a handful of new features designed to help its users spot "synthetic" or "manipulated" media, including deepfake videos. From a report: The social networking giant last month announced plans to implement a new policy around media assets that have been altered to mislead the public. Today heralds Twitter's first draft proposal, alongside a public consultation period, as it works to refine the rules and how they will be enforced. "When you come to Twitter to see what's happening in the world, we want you to have context about the content you're seeing and engaging with," said Twitter VP of trust and safety Del Harvey in a blog post. "Deliberate attempts to mislead or confuse people through manipulated media undermine the integrity of the conversation."

A large-scale academic study that analyzed more than 53,000 product pages on more than 11,000 online stores found widespread use of user interface "dark patterns" -- practices meant to mislead customers into making purchases based on false or misleading information. from a report: The study -- presented last week at the ACM CSCW 2019 conference -- found 1,818 instances of dark patterns present on 1,254 of the ~11K shopping websites (~11.1%) researchers scanned. "Shopping websites that were more popular, according to Alexa rankings, were more likely to feature dark patterns," researchers said. But while the vast majority of UI dark patterns were meant to trick users into subscribing to newsletters or allowing broad data collection, some dark patterns were downright foul, trying to mislead users into making additional purchases, either by sneaking products into shopping carts or tricking users into believing products were about to sell out. Of these, the research team found 234 instances, deployed across 183 websites.

Is it the web page that's slow or is it your network connection? In the future, Google's Chrome web browser may have an answer for you. From a report: Google announced today a plan to identify and label websites that typically load slowly by way of clear badging. The company says it may later choose to identify sites that are likely to be slow based on the user's device and current network conditions, as well. Google hasn't yet determined how exactly the slow websites will be labeled, but says it may experiment with different options to see which makes the most sense. For example, a slow-loading website may show a "Loading..." page that includes a warning, like a caution icon and text that reads "usually loads slow." Meanwhile, a fast website may display a green progress indicator bar at the top of the page instead of a blue one. And for links, Chrome may use the context menu to help users know if the site will be slow so you can decide whether or not you want to click.

An anonymous reader writes: At Chrome Dev Summit in San Francisco today, Google shared its latest vision for the web. First, the company is trying to make loading disappear via instantaneous experiences. The company demoed Web Bundles, a new platform primitive that lets developers distribute their content across any format without a constant connection, and Portals, an experimental API that lets developers instantly give users access to their web experiences. Secondly, Google wants to have Chrome offer native app-like experiences. The Background Sync API will proactively cache web content and SMS Retriever adds two factor SMS functionality to web apps.

Google is teaming with one of the country's largest health-care systems on a secret project to collect and crunch the detailed personal health information of millions of Americans across 21 states, WSJ reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter and internal documents. From the report: The initiative, code-named "Project Nightingale," appears to be the largest in a series of efforts by Silicon Valley giants to gain access to personal health data and establish a toehold in the massive health-care industry. Amazon.com, Apple and Microsoft are also aggressively pushing into health care, though they haven't yet struck deals of this scope. Google launched the effort last year with St. Louis-based Ascension, the country's second-largest health system. The data involved in Project Nightingale includes lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, complete with patient names and dates of birth.

Speaking of YouTube and moderation, the Google-owned video service is rolling out updated terms of service on December 10th, and a new line acts as a reminder that the company doesn't have to keep any video up that it doesn't want to. From a report: "YouTube is under no obligation to host or serve content," the new terms of service policy reads. It's another way of saying that just because YouTube is a relatively open platform, it doesn't mean that the company is required to keep videos up. YouTube has faced criticism from all sides over its video removal process. Some critics argue that YouTube could do more to take down videos that butt up against the company's rules but don't outright violate them; others argue that YouTube ought to be a fully open platform and shouldn't control what remains up and what doesn't. Executives have long defended the platform as a champion of free speech, but have started to clamp down on the type of videos allowed to circulate.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has said that he doesn't recall Mark Zuckerberg ever discussing the Iraq War during the early days of the company, contradicting recent comments from the CEO tying the war to his views on free speech. From a report: "I had never heard that before, and the internet had never heard that before," Hughes said an event with the Bay Area Chapter of the American Constitution Society. "I don't remember ever talking about that with Mark." Last month, Zuckerberg told an audience at Georgetown University that discussion about the Iraq War at Harvard, where he was a student, and on Facebook in its embryonic days, played a key role in his controversial positions on policing speech. Unlike other social media companies, Facebook has said it won't ban political advertising nor will it play the role of fact-checker. In claiming that Facebook was meant to promote dialogue about the Iraq War, which began in 2003, Zuckerberg took a departure from the well-known origin tale that includes the development of Facemash, a predecessor to Facebook where students could compare females at the college and decide who was more attractive. [...] "I was at protests protesting the Iraq War," Hughes said. "I did not go to any with Mark Zuckerberg."

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told "Axios on HBO" that the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was "a mistake" by the Saudi government, and then he compared it to Uber's self driving accident in which a woman died. From a report: An hour later, Khosrowshahi called Axios to express regret for the language he used. The next day he sent the following statement: "I said something in the moment that I do not believe. When it comes to Jamal Khashoggi, his murder was reprehensible and should not be forgotten or excused."

"Android has a bit of a malware problem," argues Wired, noting that " malware-ridden apps sneak into the official Play Store with disappointing frequency..."

"After grappling with the issue for a decade, Google is calling in some reinforcements." This week, Google announced a partnership with three antivirus firms -- ESET, Lookout, and Zimperium -- to create an App Defense Alliance. All three companies have done extensive Android malware research over the years, and have existing relationships with Google to report problems they find. But now they'll use their scanning and threat detection tools to evaluate new Google Play submissions before the apps go live -- with the goal of catching more malware before it hits the Play Store in the first place.

"On the malware side we haven't really had a way to scale as much as we've wanted to scale," says Dave Kleidermacher, Google's vice president of Android security and privacy. "What the App Defense Alliance enables us to do is take the open ecosystem approach to the next level. We can share information not just ad hoc, but really integrate engines together at a digital level, so that we can have real-time response, expand the review of these apps, and apply that to making users more protected."

"Microsoft's Bing search engine reportedly still served up child porn, nearly a year after the tech giant said it was addressing the issue," reports CNET: The news comes as part of a Saturday report in The New York Times that looks at what the newspaper says is a failure by tech companies to adequately address child pornography on their platforms.... [A] former Microsoft executive told the Times that it now looks as if the company is failing to use its own tools. The Times' Saturday report notes that 10 years ago, Microsoft helped create software called PhotoDNA that "can use computers to recognize photos, even altered ones, and compare them against databases of known illegal images." But, the Times said, Bing and other search engines that use Bing's results are serving up imagery that doesn't pass muster with PhotoDNA....

The Bing news is part of a larger story from the Times about how various tech companies are dealing with child porn on their platforms.
The Times criticizes a tech industry which they say is looking the other way: Amazon, whose cloud storage services handle millions of uploads and downloads every second, does not even look for the imagery. Apple does not scan its cloud storage, according to federal authorities, and encrypts its messaging app, making detection virtually impossible. Dropbox, Google and Microsoft's consumer products scan for illegal images, but only when someone shares them, not when they are uploaded. And other companies, including Snapchat and Yahoo, look for photos but not videos, even though illicit video content has been exploding for years. (When asked about its video scanning, a Dropbox spokeswoman in July said it was not a "top priority." On Thursday, the company said it had begun scanning some videos last month.)

The largest social network in the world, Facebook, thoroughly scans its platforms, accounting for over 90 percent of the imagery flagged by tech companies last year, but the company is not using all available databases to detect the material. And Facebook has announced that the main source of the imagery, Facebook Messenger, will eventually be encrypted, vastly limiting detection.