An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The Federal Trade Commission, in what could be considered a prelude to new regulatory action, has issued an order to several major internet service providers requiring them to share every detail of their data collection practices. The information could expose patterns of abuse or otherwise troubling data use against which the FTC -- or states -- may want to take action. The letters requesting info went to Comcast, Google, T-Mobile, and both the fixed and wireless sub-companies of Verizon and AT&T. These "represent a range of large and small ISPs, as well as fixed and mobile Internet providers," an FTC spokesperson said. I'm not sure which is mean to be the small one, but welcome any information the agency can extract from any of them.

To be clear, the FTC already has consumer protection rules in place and could already go after an internet provider if it were found to be abusing the privacy of its users -- you know, selling their location to anyone who asks or the like. (Still no action there, by the way.) But the evolving media and telecom landscape, in which we see enormous companies devouring one another to best provide as many complementary services as possible, requires constant reevaluation. As the agency writes in a press release: "The FTC is initiating this study to better understand Internet service providers' privacy practices in light of the evolution of telecommunications companies into vertically integrated platforms that also provide advertising-supported content." The report provides this example as to the kind of situation the FTC is concerned about: "If Verizon wants to offer not just the connection you get on your phone, but the media you request, the ads you are served, and the tracking you never heard of, it needs to show that these businesses are not somehow shirking rules behind the scenes."

"For instance, if Verizon Wireless says it doesn't collect or share information about what sites you visit, but the mysterious VZ Snooping Co (fictitious, I should add) scoops all that up and then sells it for peanuts to its sister company, that could amount to a deceptive practice," TechCrunch adds. "Of course it's rarely that simple (though don't rule it out), but the only way to be sure is to comprehensively question everyone involved and carefully compare the answers with real-world practices."

UPS has partnered with autonomous drone company Matternet and hospital WakeMed in Raleigh, North Carolina, to test a new drone delivery service for transporting medical samples to nearby facilities. The FAA is overseeing the program. CNBC reports: UPS said the service will utilize Matternet's M2 "quadcopter" drone, which can carry medical samples of up to 5 pounds as far as 12.5 miles. The program will begin with "numerous planned daily revenue flights at the WakeMed Raleigh campus," UPS said. The drone delivery service aims to replace WakeMed's reliance on a fleet of courier cars, which currently transports most of the hospital's medical samples. Using a UPS "secure drone container," WakeMed employees can load medical specimens like blood samples and send them quickly to a nearby WakeMed facility.

Matternet has completed "more than 3,000 flights for healthcare systems in Switzerland," UPS added. The WakeMed program is also under the FAA's broader effort called the "Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Pilot Program," which "aims to test practical applications of drones by partnering local governments with private sector companies."

The concept of the hyperlink was first outlined over 70 years ago and eventually became a central part of the web. But 30 years since the invention of the world wide web, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon have skewed the original ambitions for hyperlinks, who they are for and how far they can lead you. From a feature story: The impact that Google's PageRank algorithms have had on how the commercial web chooses to deploy hyperlinks can be seen in just about any SEO (search engine optimisation) blog. Publishers and businesses are encouraged to prioritize internal links over external links that may boost the competition in Google's rankings. "Since the very moment Google came on the scene, links moved from being the defining characteristic of the web, to being a battleground. Google's core insight was that you could treat every link as, essentially, a vote for the site," says Adam Tinworth, a digital publishing strategist. Tinworth explains that Google tries to minimize the effect of these 'unnatural linking patterns', which includes comment spam and 'guest posts', but it remains part of "how the shadier side of the SEO industry operates."

With clear, financial incentives to serve Google's web spiders, which regularly 'crawl' website content to determine its placement in searches, a common strategy involves placing hyperlinks on specific 'anchor text' -- the actual words that you click on -- that benefit that site's PageRank for keywords rather than tailor links to readers. That's not inherently a problem but research from the University of Southampton, published in February, suggests it doesn't go unnoticed. [...] In the cases of Apple and Facebook, the question isn't so much how we link and how we react to them, as where we can link to and where we can follow links to. Apple News, Facebook's Instant Articles and Google AMP all propose variations on limited systems of linking back to sources of information. As for Instagram, it's based on a two-tier system: users can't add external links to posts (#linkinbio) unless they buy adverts whereas accounts with a large number of followers are able to add external links to Stories.

A reader shares a report from Engadget: ASUS may have inadvertently pushed malware to some of its computers through its update tool, but it at least it has a fix ready to go. The PC maker has released a new version of its Live Update software for laptops that addresses the ShadowHammer backdoor attack. It also promised "multiple security verification mechanisms" to reduce the chances of further attacks, and started using an "enhanced end-to-end encryption mechanism." There are upgrades to the behind-the-scenes server system to prevent future attacks, ASUS added.

The company simultaneously reiterated the narrow scope of ShadowHammer, noting that the malware targeted a "very small and specific user group." It's believed to be an Advanced Persistent Threat -- that is, a state-backed assault against organizations rather than everyday users. Other ASUS devices weren't affected, according to a notice. While the fix is reassuring, it also raises questions as to why the systems weren't locked down earlier. Update tools are prime targets for hackers precisely because they're both trusted and have deep access to the operating system -- tight security is necessary to prevent an intruder from hijacking the process.

Google announced today that it has formed an external advisory group -- dubbed the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC) -- that is tasked with "considering some of the most complex challenges in AI," including facial recognition and fairness in machine learning. From a report: The council, which is slated to publish a report at the end of 2019, includes technology experts, digital ethicists, and people with public policy backgrounds, Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president for global affairs, said at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology conference. The group is meant to provide recommendations for Google and other companies and researchers working in areas such as facial recognition software, a form of automation that has prompted concerns about racial bias and other limitations. "We want to have the most informed and thoughtful conversations we can," Walker said on stage at the MIT Technology Review event in San Francisco. "We want to sit down with the council and see what agenda they want to set."

Google today officially launched AMP for Email, its effort to turn emails from static documents into dynamic, web page-like experiences. From a report: AMP for Email is coming to Gmail, but other major email providers like Yahoo Mail, Outlook and Mail.ru will also support AMP emails. It's been more than a year since Google first announced this initiative. Even by Google standards, that's a long incubation phase, though there's also plenty of backend work necessary to make this feature work.

The promise of AMP for Email is that it'll turn basic messages into a surface for actually getting things done. "Over the past decade, our web experiences have changed enormously -- evolving from static flat content to interactive apps -- yet email has largely stayed the same with static messages that eventually go out of date or are merely a springboard to accomplishing a more complex task," Gmail product manager Aakash Sahney writes. "If you want to take action, you usually have to click on a link, open a new tab, and visit another website." With AMP for Email, those messages become interactive. That means you'll be able to RSVP to an event right from the message, fill out a questionnaire, browse through a store's inventory or respond to a comment -- all without leaving your web-based email client.

Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift, shares his thoughts on the recently unveiled Oculus Rift S: Rift S is very cool! It takes concepts that have been around for years and puts them into a fully functional product for the first time. Sure, sure, I see people complaining about how Rift S is worse than CV1 concerning audio quality, display characteristics, and ergonomics -- some of the tradeoffs are real, some are imaginary, and people should really wait for it to come out before passing final judgement. [...] My IPD (interpupillary distance, the distance between my eyes) is a hair under 70mm and slightly skewed to the right side of my face. One of my best friends has an IPD of 59mm. I don't know what your IPD is, but both of us were perfectly served by the IPD adjustment mechanism on Rift CV1, a mechanism that was an important part of our goal to be compatible with male and female users from 5th to 95th percentile. Anyone within the supported range (about 58mm to 72mm) got a perfect optical experience -- field curvature on the focal plane was matched, geometric distortion was properly corrected, world scale was at the right size, and pupil swim was more or less even.

Sharp imagery from edge to edge of your field of view was the norm. The small handful of people with an IPD outside that range would not get a perfect experience, but at least they would be in the right ballpark. IPD skews in different directions by gender, race, and age, but we managed to cover almost everyone, and we were proud of that. This is not the case with Rift S. Like Oculus Go, it uses two lenses that are set about 64mm apart, perfect for a perfectly average person. Everyone who fits Cinderella's shoe will get a perfect experience, anyone close will deal with minor eyestrain problems that impact their perception of VR at a mostly subconscious level. Everyone else is screwed, including me. Imagery is hard to fuse, details are blurry, distortion is wrong, mismatched pupil swim screws up VOR, and everything is at the wrong scale. "Software IPD adjustment" can solve that last bit, but not much else -- it adjusts a single variable that happens to be related to IPD, but is not comparable in any way to an actual IPD adjustment mechanism. This is the main reason I cannot use my Oculus Go, even after heavy modification on other fronts.

A computer system that airlines use for check-in kiosks, booking and more was experiencing issues on Tuesday, apparently affecting multiple air carriers. From a report: There were widespread reports on social media of air passengers inconvenienced by the outage, with long lines at airports across the country. Sabre Airline Solutions released this statement shortly before noon Eastern Time: "We are aware of the issues facing some of our customers. Recovery is in progress. We apologize for the inconvenience." The company was tweeting that statement to people who took note of the outage. American Airlines flagged the issue, saying in a statement that Sabre was "experiencing a technical issue that is impacting multiple carriers, including American Airlines. Sabre is working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and we apologize to our customers for the inconvenience." American later said that the issue with Sabre's system "has been resolved."

If you're a Firefox true believer, or even just a Firefox user, your password struggles just got a little easier with the release of Firefox Lockbox for Android devices. From a report: The password manager, based on login information already in Firefox, makes it easier to sign into apps as well. It integrates with login autocomplete systems in both Apple's iOS and Google's Android software, Mozilla said. It's not as fancy as password managers like LastPass, BitWarden, 1Password and Dashlane, and the only browser it works with is Firefox. On the other hand, if you're already in the Firefox world, it's basically already set up for you. There's no migration process as with dedicated password managers.

EU lawmakers today endorsed an overhaul of the bloc's two-decade old copyright rules, which will force Google and Facebook to pay publishers for use of news snippets and make them filter out protected content. From a report: The set of copyright rules known as the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, but more succinctly as the EU Copyright Directive, has been debated and discussed for several years. While it is broadly uncontroversial in many regards, there are two facets to the directive that has caused the internet to freak out. Article 11, which has been dubbed the "link tax," stipulates that websites pay publishers a fee if they display excerpts of copyrighted content -- or even link to it. This obviously could have big ramifications for services such as Google News. Then there is Article 13, dubbed the "upload filter," which would effectively make digital platforms legally liable for any copyright infringements on their platform, which has stoked fears that it would stop people from sharing content -- such as GIF-infused memes -- on social networks. In a statement, EFF said, "In a stunning rejection of the will five million online petitioners, and over 100,000 protestors this weekend, the European Parliament has abandoned common-sense and the advice of academics, technologists, and UN human rights experts, and approved the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive in its entirety."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Following the livestreamed New Zealand mosque shooting that left 50 dead in Christchurch, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is looking to crack down on extremist content on social media. Morrison will on Tuesday meet with Australian executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google to discuss extremist content legislation that would punish these companies' executives with jail time, the Australian Financial Review reports. Local internet service providers will also be present at the meeting.

Details of the proposed legislation aren't yet known. However, Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies to any company operating in the continent, showed that tech companies can change their global practices to appease local legislation. News of Morrison's meeting with tech executives comes on the same day that his government announced increased punishment for companies misusing user information. Maximum penalties for misuse of private data was raised from AU$2.1 million to AU$10 million -- or 10 percent of the company's domestic revenue, or three times the value gained from that misuse of data.

HTC has debuted their new virtual-reality headset called the Vive Focus Plus. Starting at $799, the headset functions similarly to the Oculus Quest, which starts shipping this spring at half the cost, but has improved specifications and is geared towards the business market. HTC says the Vive Focus Plus would be available to developers on April 15. UploadVR reports: The Vive Focus Plus will ship in most markets with an enterprise license. The headset is said to launch with 250 Vive Wave applications while its Viveport Infinity subscription program claims to include "over 70 premium titles." [Some of the specifications include a 3K AMOLED (2880x1600) display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 75Hz frame rate, 110-degree field of view, and inside-out tracking.]

HTC is a company that appears to be in technological transition -- with the Vive Focus Plus the latest example. HTC's first generation Vive headset debuted in 2016 for $$799, a full $200 more than the Rift with a wider feature set. That system relied on Valve's SteamVR Tracking technology to operate. All headsets HTC released since 2016, except for the Vive Pro, don't rely on this technology. It should still be possible for some HTC systems to interact with SteamVR content but we've yet to test that sort of of functionality in a home setting. While Vive Focus Plus is HTC's current standalone headset the company is also planning the convertible Vive Cosmos as well. It is hard to get a full picture right now of how different Vive Focus Plus and Oculus Quest are from another in actual real-world use. HTC is trying to gear the headset to the business market but it is not clear how the headset or its business license will outperform Oculus Quest for business use cases.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: About 1.5 million workers in Britain are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation, according to government estimates, with women and those in part-time work most affected. Supermarket checkout assistants have already borne the brunt of the phenomenon, the Office for National Statistics found, with 25.3% of jobs disappearing between 2011 and 2017. Other jobs where automation has taken its toll include laundry workers, farm workers and tyre fitters, among which numbers have dropped by 15% or more, said the ONS, as machines have replaced labor.

Women are most likely to lose out, said the ONS. "The analysis showed a higher proportion of roles currently filled by women are at risk of automation; in 2017, 70.2% of high-risk jobs were held by women." It named Tamworth, Rutland and South Holland in Lincolnshire as the areas most exposed to automation -- partly reflecting a relatively high level of farm workers -- while Camden in north London has the workers least at risk. But the ONS analysis also found many workers -- especially those in their mid to late 30s and who work in London and the south-east -- have little to fear from the rise of the robots. Those with higher levels of education appear to be better protected. "The ONS said that, of the jobs at risk, 39% were held by people whose educational attainment level was GCSE or below, while 1.2% were held by those who had been through higher education or university," the report says.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Mention McDonald's to someone today, and they're more likely to think about Big Mac than Big Data. But that could soon change: The fast-food giant has embraced machine learning, in a fittingly super-sized way. McDonald's is set to announce that it has reached an agreement to acquire Dynamic Yield, a startup based in Tel Aviv that provides retailers with algorithmically driven "decision logic" technology. When you add an item to an online shopping cart, it's the tech that nudges you about what other customers bought as well. Dynamic Yield reportedly had been recently valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars; people familiar with the details of the McDonald's offer put it at over $300 million. That would make it the company's largest purchase since it acquired Boston Market in 1999.

A new study suggests that instead of the traditional four sleep stages we generally understand the brain moves through, there are in fact at least 19 different identifiable brain patterns transitioned through while sleeping. New Atlas reports: Traditionally scientists have identified four distinct stages our brain transitions through in a general sleep cycle -- three non-REM sleep phases (N1-3) that culminate in an REM phase. The four stages have been classically determined and delineated using electroencephalographic (EEG) brainwave recordings. The new research set out to more comprehensively record whole-brain activity in a number of subjects by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study began by studying 57 healthy subjects in an fMRI scanner. Each subject was asked to lie in the scanner for 52 minutes with their eyes closed. At the same time, each subject was tracked using an EEG. This allowed the researchers to compare traditional brainwave sleep cycle data with that from the fMRI.

Due to the limited duration of the fMRI data, no subjects were found to enter REM sleep, however, 18 subjects did completely transition from wakefulness through the three non-REM sleep phases according to the EEG data. Highlighting the complexity of brain activity during our wake-to-sleep cycle the researchers confidently chronicled 19 different recurring whole-brain network states. Mapping these whole-brain states onto traditional EEG-tracked sleep phases revealed a number of compelling correlations. Wakefulness, N2 sleep and N3 sleep all could be represented by specific whole brain states. The range of different fMRI-tracked brain states did reduce as subjects fell into deeper sleep phases, with two different fMRI brain states correlating with N2 sleep, and only one with N3. However, N1 sleep as identified by EEG data, the earliest and least clearly defined sleep phase, did not consistently correspond with any fMRI brain state. The researchers conclude from this data that N1 is actually a much more complex sleep phase than previously understood. This phase, a strange mix of wakefulness and sleep, seemed to encompass a large range of the 19 different whole-brain network states identified in the fMRI data. The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Almost all of Gmail's IFTTT routines and actions will stop working at the end of the month as Google alters the Gmail API to make it more secure. The only functionality of IFTTT-Gmail integration will be sending yourself an email and sending an email to someone else. TechSpot reports: The roots of this problem reach back to a breathless report in the Wall Street Journal in the summer of 2018 that claimed Gmail app developers have been reading your email. What it actually meant was that Gmail's OAuth account access was too simple -- if you allowed an application to access to Gmail, it had access to all of it. Even apps that didn't need the full text of emails for their intended function would have access to that after you signed in. Google began tightening access to Gmail content for third-party apps, and that's where IFTTT comes in.

As of March 31, Google is placing new restrictions on Gmail apps. Apps can no longer read, create, or modify message bodies. None of IFTTT's seven Gmail triggers will work anymore after the new API rules go into effect. In conversations with Google, IFTTT was able to keep two of the Gmail actions: sending yourself an email and sending an email to someone else. However, the trigger needs to be from another service. You can log into your IFTTT account to see which of your Applets are affected by the change. The new API rules only affect Gmail. Other G Suite services like Google Drive and Assistant will remain operating normally.

The music industry is suing Charter Communications, claiming that the cable Internet provider profits from music piracy by failing to terminate the accounts of subscribers who illegally download copyrighted songs. The lawsuit also complains that Charter helps its subscribers pirate music by selling packages with higher Internet speeds. Ars Technica reports: While the act of providing higher Internet speeds clearly isn't a violation of any law, ISPs can be held liable for their users' copyright infringement if the ISPs repeatedly fail to disconnect repeat infringers. The top music labelsâ"Sony, Universal, Warner, and their various subsidiariesâ"sued Charter Friday in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Colorado. While Charter has a copyright policy that says repeat copyright infringers may be disconnected, Charter has failed to disconnect those repeat infringers in practice, the complaint said: "Despite these alleged policies, and despite receiving hundreds of thousands of infringement notices from Plaintiffs, as well as thousands of similar notices from other copyright owners, Charter knowingly permitted specifically identified repeat infringers to continue to use its network to infringe. Rather than disconnect the Internet access of blatant repeat infringers to curtail their infringement, Charter knowingly continued to provide these subscribers with the Internet access that enabled them to continue to illegally download or distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted works unabated. Charter's provision of high-speed Internet service to known infringers materially contributed to these direct infringements."

The complaint accuses Charter of contributory copyright infringement and vicarious copyright infringement. Music labels asked for statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work infringed or for actual damages including any profit Charter allegedly made from allowing piracy. The complaint focuses on alleged violations between March 24, 2013 and May 17, 2016. During that time, plaintiffs say they sent infringement notices to Charter that "advised Charter of its subscribers' blatant and systematic use of Charter's Internet service to illegally download, copy, and distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted music through BitTorrent and other online file-sharing services." The music industry's complaint repeatedly focused on BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks, saying that "online piracy committed via BitTorrent is stunning in nature, speed, and scope."

Researchers behind a large-scale independent study of pre-installed Android apps "unearthed a complex ecosystem of players with a primary focus on advertising and 'data-driven services' -- which they argue the average Android user is likely to be unaware of (while also likely lacking the ability to uninstall/evade the baked in software's privileged access to data and resources themselves)," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The study, which was carried out by researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the IMDEA Networks Institute, in collaboration with the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at Berkeley (USA) and Stony Brook University of New York (US), encompassed more than 82,000 pre-installed Android apps across more than 1,700 devices manufactured by 214 brands, according to the IMDEA institute. "The study shows, on the one hand, that the permission model on the Android operating system and its apps allow a large number of actors to track and obtain personal user information," it writes. "At the same time, it reveals that the end user is not aware of these actors in the Android terminals or of the implications that this practice could have on their privacy. Furthermore, the presence of this privileged software in the system makes it difficult to eliminate it if one is not an expert user."

In all 1,200 developers were identified behind the pre-installed software they found in the data-set they examined, as well as more than 11,000 third party libraries (SDKs). Many of the preloaded apps were found to display what the researchers dub potentially dangerous or undesired behavior. The data-set underpinning their analysis was collected via crowd-sourcing methods -- using a purpose-built app (called Firmware Scanner), and pulling data from the Lumen Privacy Monitor app. The latter provided the researchers with visibility on mobile traffic flow -- via anonymized network flow metadata obtained from its users. They also crawled the Google Play Store to compare their findings on pre-installed apps with publicly available apps -- and found that just 9% of the package names in their dataset were publicly indexed on Play. Another concerning finding relates to permissions. In addition to standard permissions defined in Android (i.e. which can be controlled by the user) the researchers say they identified more than 4,845 owner or "personalized" permissions by different actors in the manufacture and distribution of devices. So that means they found systematic user permissions workarounds being enabled by scores of commercial deals cut in a non-transparency data-driven background Android software ecosystem. The researchers address the lack of transparency and accountability in the Android ecosystem by suggesting the introduction and use of certificates signed by globally-trusted certificate authorities, or a certificate transparency repository "dedicated to providing details and attribution for certificates used to sign various Android apps, including pre-installed apps, even if self-signed." They also suggest Android devices should be required to document all pre-installed apps, plus their purpose, and name the entity responsible for each piece of software -- and do so in a manner that is "accessible and understandable to users."

Google has patched a Chrome bug that was being abused in the wild by tech support scammers to create artificial mouse cursors and lock users inside browser pages by preventing them from closing and leaving browser tabs. From a report: The trick was first spotted in September 2018 by Malwarebytes analyst Jerome Segura. Called an "evil cursor," it relied on using a custom image to replace the operating system's standard mouse cursor graphic. A criminal group that Malwarebytes called Partnerstroka operated by switching the standard OS 32-by-32 pixels mouse cursor with one of 128 or 256 pixels in size. A normal cursor would still appear on screen, but in the corner of a bigger transparent bounding box. [...] The "evil cursor" fix is currently live for Google Canary users, and is scheduled to land in the Chrome 75 stable branch, to be released later this spring.

Apple has unveiled a few different subscription services today at its "show time" event, including a new Apple Arcade game subscription service for titles that can be installed from the App Store. The company is aiming to curate some of the 300,000 games currently available from the App Store into this new ad-free subscription service. "There will be 100 new and exclusive games available on Apple Arcade, which will launch on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV," reports The Verge. From the report: These games won't be available on any other mobile platform or any subscription service other than Apple Arcade. Games will be downloaded and played straight from the App Store, and subscribers will be able to try games whenever they want and resume them across devices. All of the game features, content, and future updates will be included, and there will be no ads shown within the games.

SimCity creator Will Wright is also making a game for the service. Apple is promising games from Annapurna Interactive, Bossa Studios, Cartoon Network, Finji, Giant Squid, Klei Entertainment, Konami, Lego, Mistwalker Corporation, SEGA, Snowman, ustwo games, and more. Apple isn't just curating the games for Apple Arcade; it's actually planning to contribute to the development costs of creating them. Apple might not have announced its own game studio today, but it's certainly a big step toward that. Apple Arcade is launching this fall in more than 150 countries, but Apple is not yet revealing pricing for this subscription service. Apple does say that "access for up to six family members," will be available, suggesting you'll be able to share the subscription. While the full list of games isn't available yet, some of the titles revealed on Apple Arcade's website include: LEGO Brawls, HitchHiker, Kings of the Castle, Where Cards Fall, and Frogger in Toy Town. If you're a game developer, you can sign up for more information about the service here.