Facebook's controversial Messenger Kids app is heading outside the U.S. to Canada and Peru. From a report: As part of the expansion, the social networking giant said Friday that it would also debut Spanish and French language versions of the children's messaging app that are now available in all three countries where the service is available. Facebook introduced Messenger Kids in December, pitching it as a safer way for children under 13 to chat with friends while sending them silly GIFs, emoji, and other goofy digital imagery. Unlike the core Facebook social networking service or other messaging apps, Facebook said that Messenger Kids does not display any online ads or allow kids to buy things within the app.

In an effort to promote tourism, the southern tropical Chinese island of Hainan will no longer censor its internet. "Visitors to select areas of Hainan will be able to access Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, according to a new plan authorities have put together to turn the province into a free trade port by 2020," reports The Verge. "It's not clear if other banned platforms will be uncensored." From the report: The three-year action plan was published on Thursday, but removed from the local government website by Friday, as spotted by the South China Morning Post. For Hainan, China will lift part of its censorship system, or what's known as the Great Firewall, that blocks access to most foreign social media and news sites. Tourists will be able to enter designated zones in Hainan's two major cities to access Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Other banned foreign social media platforms, like Google, Instagram, or WhatsApp, haven't been mentioned.

Ironically, China appears to be censoring people's reactions to the news that some censorship is being lifted. One user on Weibo commented that people weren't allowed a chance to provide any feedback on the new tourism plan. "Thousands of comments have since been deleted. As if censoring people solved the problem."

In data-hungry, tech-happy chain restaurants, customers are rating their servers using tabletop tablets, not realizing those ratings can put jobs at risk, an investigation by BuzzFeed News has found. From the report: When the Smokey Bones restaurant in Dayton, Ohio, where Nicole Bishop waits tables introduced Ziosk tabletop tablets, she wasn't too worried about them. Ziosks are designed to increase restaurant efficiency by allowing customers to order drinks, appetizers, and desserts, and pay their bill from the table without talking to a server. But, as Bishop soon discovered, they also prompt customers to take a satisfaction survey at the end of every meal, the results of which are turned into a score that's used to evaluate the server's performance. One day not long after the Ziosks appeared, Bishop found that her work schedules had been cut short in half, a change she estimated would cost her between $200 and $400 a week. The report documents stories of several other waiters, all of whom have been affected by the tablet. It adds: Ziosk tablets sit atop dining tables at more than 4,500 restaurants across the United States -- including most Chili's and Olive Gardens, and many TGI Friday's and Red Robins. Competitor E La Carte's PrestoPrime tablets are in more than 1,800 restaurants, including most Applebee's. Tens of thousands of servers are being evaluated based on a tech-driven, data-oriented customer feedback system many say is both inaccurate and unfair. And few of the customers holding the reins are even aware their responses have any impact on how much servers earn.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Tempe, Arizona, police have released a massive report on the fatal Uber vehicle crash that killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in March. The report provides more evidence that driver Rafaela Vasquez was distracted in the seconds before the crash. "This crash would not have occurred if Vasquez would have been monitoring the vehicle and roadway conditions and was not distracted,'' the report concludes. Police obtained records from Hulu suggesting that Vasquez was watching "The Voice," a singing talent competition that airs on NBC, just before the crash. Hulu's records showed she began watching the program at 9:16pm. Streaming of the show ended at 9:59pm, which "coincides with the approximate time of the collision," according to the police report.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Adobe, certainly aware of how complicit its software is in the creation of fake news images, is working on artificial intelligence that can spot the markers of phony photos. In other words, the maker of Photoshop is tapping into machine learning to find out if someone has Photoshopped an image. Using AI to find fake images is a way for Adobe to help "increase trust and authenticity in digital media," the company says. That brings it in line with the likes of Facebook and Google, which have stepped up their efforts to fight fake news.

Whenever someone alters an image, unless they are pixel perfect in their work, they always leave behind indicators that the photo is modified. Metadata and watermarks can help determine a source image, and forensics can probe factors like lighting, noise distribution and edges on the pixel level to find inconsistencies. If a color is slightly off, for instance, forensic tools can flag it. But Adobe wagers that it could employ AI to find telltale signs of manipulation faster and more reliably.

This week, an alarmed developer contacted TechCrunch, informing us that their Facebook App Analytics weekly summary email had been delivered to someone outside their company. TechCrunch: It contains sensitive business information, including weekly average users, page views and new users. Forty-three hours after we contacted Facebook about the issue, the social network now confirms to TechCrunch that 3 percent of apps using Facebook Analytics had their weekly summary reports sent to their app's testers, instead of only the app's developers, admins and analysts. Testers are often people outside of a developer's company. If the leaked info got to an app's competitors, it could provide them an advantage. At least they weren't allowed to click through to view more extensive historical analytics data on Facebook's site. Facebook tells us it has fixed the problem and no personally identifiable information or contact info was improperly disclosed.

Blue Origin expects to start flying people on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle "soon" and start selling tickets for commercial flights next year, a company executive said June 19, according to a report on SpaceNews.com. From the report: Speaking at the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit here, as the keynote of a half-day track on earth and space applications, Blue Origin Senior Vice President Rob Meyerson offered a few updates on the development of the company's suborbital vehicle. "We plan to start flying our first test passengers soon," he said after showing a video of a previous New Shepard flight at the company's West Texas test site. All of the New Shepard flights to date have been without people on board, but the company has said in the past it would fly its personnel on the vehicle in later tests. He also offered a timetable for selling tickets. "We expect to start selling tickets in 2019," he said, but did not disclose a price. Further reading: Gizmodo.

Canonical introduced Ubuntu Hardware/Software Survey in Ubuntu 18.04 and has since been collecting data (it is optional, and users' consent is taken; Ubuntu says 67 percent users opted in to the survey). Now for the first time, it is revealing the stats, shedding light on how Ubuntu users like things around. The takeaways from the result: Installation Duration: The average install of Ubuntu Desktop takes 18 minutes. Some machines out there can install a full desktop in less than 8 minutes!
Installer Options: Another interesting fact is that the newly introduced Minimum Install option is being used by a little over 15% of our users. This is a brand new option but is already attracting a considerable fanbase.
CPU Count: A single CPU is most common, and this is not very surprising. We haven't broken this down to cores but is something we will look in to.
Disk Partitioning Schemes: Most people choose to wipe their disks and reinstall from scratch. The second most common option is a custom partition table.
Display: Full HD (1080p) is the most popular screen resolution, followed by 1366 x 768, a common laptop resolution. HiDPI and 4k are not yet commonplace.

Engineers at the University of Michigan have created the world's smallest computer -- again. From a report: The University held the record for the smallest computer after it created its 2x2x4mm Michigan Micro Mote in 2014. The Micro Mote (or M3) is fully functional and able to retain its programming and data even when it loses power. But after IBM debuted an even tinier "computer" in February, a 1mm x 1mm chip with "several hundred thousand" transistors.

Engineers at the University of Michigan were not about to be one-upped, and quickly created an even smaller computer, so small it could fit on the tip of a grain of rice. However, the engineers quibbled over whether IBM's machine and the new Michigan design could really be called computers, since the data gets wiped as soon as it's turned off. You can find more details on the university's website.

daveschroeder writes: The Supreme Court on Friday said the government generally needs a warrant if it wants to track an individual's location through cell phone records over an extended period of time. The ruling [PDF] is a major victory for advocates of increased privacy rights who argued more protections were needed when it comes to the government obtaining information from a third party such as a cell phone company. The 5-4 opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the four most liberal justices. It is a loss for the Justice Department, which had argued that an individual has diminished privacy rights when it comes to information that has been voluntarily shared with someone else.

Chinese raids of U.S. intellectual property have helped China build a solid high-tech economy. But the U.S. semiconductor industry is still far ahead -- and China is desperate to catch up. From a report: Semiconductor manufacturers are fighting to protect IP from the Chinese, fearing that, without coherent action from the Trump administration, Beijing could bulldoze their industries. Three weeks ago, Micron and South Korean chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix all reported that the Chinese government had launched antitrust probes into their firms, and accused them of setting artificially high prices for memory chips. American companies and the U.S. government have long been suspicious about the link between China's anti-monopoly policies and its industrial goals. "They want access to the intellectual property. They need us to teach them how to do it. Once they have the industry, they want to push us out," an industry source familiar with China's investigation into Micron tells Axios. The price hikes, the source says, are largely due to a boom in demand for memory chips in everything from smartphones to autonomous vehicles. China's investigation is "a clear indication that they're not ready to make [semiconductors] work," says the source. The New York Times has a story which also details the lawsuit of how a Fujian govt-backed chipmaker allegedly stole secrets from Micron. Then Micron got sued for patent infringement in Fujian.

Or as the Times reporter describes it, "This is how you lose a major tech company. First, a Beijing-backed buyout offer. Then friendly Chinese partnership proposals. Then the tech gets stolen. Then when you file a complaint in court, you get hit with investigations in China, your biggest market."

As security webcams, security cameras, and pet and baby monitors become part of our lives, their underlying technology is increasingly receiving scrutiny from researchers. Many of these devices are woefully insecure, and an attacker could -- and in some cases, has -- take over these devices to perform internet scans, among other things. BleepingComputer's Catalin Cimpanu dives into the subject: In the last nine months, two security firms have published research on the matter. Both pieces of research detail how the camera vendor lets customers use a mobile app to control their device from remote locations and view its video stream. The mobile app requires the user to enter a device ID, and a password found on the device's box or the device itself. Under the hood, the mobile app connects to the vendor's backend cloud server, and this server establishes connections to each of the user's device in turn, based on the device ID and the last IP address the device has reported from.

Facial recognition technology is making its way into schools, raising privacy concerns among parents and officials. The New York Civil Liberties Union issued a report on the matter that focuses on one public school district in particular: Western New York's Lockport School District. "News reports indicate the district plans to have the invasive and error-prone technology installed by next school year," reports NYCLU. The Union sent a letter (PDF) to the New York State Education Department urging it to consider students' and teachers' privacy in reviewing the use of surveillance technology by school districts. They also "sent a freedom of information request to the district seeking details of how and where the technology will be used as well as who will have access to the sensitive data that gets collected."

The report highlights some of the concerns/negatives of such a system. For starters, it costs millions of dollars (Lockport spent almost $4 million), which could be used for things like Wi-Fi, new computers, or 3D printers. It has the "potential to turn every step a student takes into evidence of a crime." The databases could include those used for immigration enforcement, making parents of immigrant students afraid to send their children to school for fear that they or their children could end up on ICE's radar. Last but not least, since facial recognition is notoriously inaccurate, "innocent students are likely to be misidentified and punished for things they didn't do."

Of course, it isn't all bad. Proponents of the system say it can be used to alert officials to whenever sex offenders, suspended students, fired employees, suspected gang members, or anyone else placed on a school's "blacklist" enters the premises. Do you think facial recognition cameras belong in schools?

An anonymous reader writes: An experimental reader mode will ship in the next version of GNOME Web, aka Epiphany. The feature is already available to try in the latest development builds of the GTK Webkit-based web browser, released this week as part of the GNOME 3.29.3 milestone. Reader mode (also known as "reader view") is a toggle option that strips a web page down to its bare text. All bespoke styling, background images, buttons, branding and page ephemera is removed. You get a distraction-free, text version of a web page. Because reader mode use its own custom .css to present web content it is (sometimes) possible to adjust a page's text size, background color, and/or layout for improved readability. There's no indication (yet) of customisation options being available in GNOME Web's version.

The Car Connectivity Consortium, a mix of major smartphone and automotive brands, has posted a Digital Key 1.0 standard that will let you download a virtual key that can unlock your vehicle, start the engine and even share access with other drivers. Engadget reports: Unsurprisingly, the technology focuses on security more than anything else. Your car manufacturer uses an existing trusted system to send the digital key to your phone, which uses close-range NFC to grant access to your ride. You can't just unlock your car from inside your home, then, but this would also force would-be thieves to be physically present with your phone when trying to unlock your car. Apple, LG and Samsung are among the phone brands in the group, while car brands including BMW, Hyundai and the Volkswagen group are also onboard. There's also talk of a version 2.0 spec that will promise more interoperability between cars and mobile devices in the first quarter of 2019.