Minecraft aids UN rebuild plans

26 November 2012 Last updated at 06:28 ET

Development plans for 300 places around the world are being modelled in Minecraft so residents can help decide how the locations will change.

Called Block by Block, the programme is part of a collaboration between Minecraft-maker Mojang and UN Habitat.

Urban locations will be recreated on computer using Minecraft allowing residents to take a virtual tour.

They will also be able to change the model and help decide how regeneration cash should be spent.

One of the first places modelled in Minecraft as part of a pilot for Block by Block is the Undugu playground - part of the Kibera slum region on the outskirts of Nairobi.

"We'll be putting it into the game so people can walk around and feel like it's as real life as possible," Lydia Winters, community liaison manager at Mojang told the BBC.

Undugu has been recreated on computer by Minecraft modelling firm Fyre UK. Soon those who live around the playground will be able visit it to see the UN's plans to regenerate it.

Virtual visits

Minecraft is set in a world built of cubes, each one of which is made of a different virtual material - dirt, stone, iron ore, diamond and so on. Playing the game involves stacking the cubes to build structures or breaking them down into their raw materials to create objects and artefacts.

The ease with which the real world can be modelled in Minecraft led UN Habitat to approach Mojang to help with its urban regeneration plans, said Ms Winters.

By 2016, 300 of the areas UN Habitat plans to remodel will be recreated in Minecraft allowing the people who live in those places to be involved in how their locale will change.

"It's bringing decision makers together with the youth to all decide on this common ground for public spaces around the world," said Ms Winters.

Details about the project were revealed at the Minecon conference held in Paris from 24-25 November,

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YouView sued over name dispute

26 November 2012 Last updated at 09:41 ET

UK internet TV provider YouView has been sued for trademark infringement in a dispute over the product's name.

Gloucestershire-based telecoms company Total had registered the name YourView for one of its products in June 2009.

Earlier this month the High Court upheld a ruling that the name was "confusingly similar" to YouView, prompting the action.

YouView, a joint venture involving BBC, ITV, BT and others, said it had "no intention of changing its name".

The spokeswoman added: "This matter is complex and subject to a number of ongoing legal actions and will be settled in the courts."

'Without regard'

The YouView name was registered with the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) nine months after Total registered YourView, a name it had given to an online portal for its customers.

Total's managing director Stuart Baikie said: "Despite the recent vindication of our position in the appeal proceedings we believe that YouView has continued to act without regard to our registered mark and business interests.

"We have had no choice but to issue infringement proceedings and we are confident of success."

As well as seeking a financial settlement, Total wants an injunction which would prevent YouView from using its name.

The company would not speculate on the level of damages it expected to receive.

Catch-up

Launched in July this year, YouView is a joint venture involving the BBC, ITV, BT, Channel 4, Channel 5, TalkTalk and media services firm Arqiva.

It offers viewers access to 70 live Freeview channels and a seven-day catch-up service.

The project had originally been set to launch in 2010 - but the project was hit by numerous delays.

YouView, which has been supported by a large national advertising campaign, has been criticised by analysts who said the technology came too late, and was too expensive.

Since launch, the price of the service's set-top box has dropped from £299 to £248.

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Sex offender's Facebook challenge

26 November 2012 Last updated at 11:32 ET

A convicted sex offender has launched a legal bid to force Facebook to remove a page set up to monitor paedophiles in Northern Ireland.

The man, who cannot be identified, is also seeking an injunction to stop his photograph and details from appearing on the social networking site.

He claims the case is urgent because he is at real and immediate risk.

Proceedings were brought before the High Court over the Facebook page, 'Keeping our kids safe from predators'.

The man, known only as XY, as he was granted anonymity in court, is currently out on licence after serving a prison sentence for sexual offences.

Following his release he discovered his photo and threatening comments had been posted online.

The judge hearing the case, Mr Justice McCloskey, said: "He deposes to fear and anxiety. He avers that there is a marked change of attitude on the part of his neighbours."

The man, who said he was in poor health, wants Facebook Ireland Ltd to terminate the accounts of anyone operating the page.

His lawyers argue that the company should also be restrained from permitting those responsible from publishing, distributing, broadcasting or disseminating any further information about him on the site.

Monitor

Human rights legislation dealing with privacy and inhumane and degrading treatment is intrinsic to the case.

Facebook has already removed the man's photograph and comments made about him. A lawyer for the company argued that the further relief being sought was neither necessary nor proportionate.

But counsel for the plaintiff confirmed he still wanted the entire page removed. She said the litigation would also try to identify the "mischief makers" before deciding how to proceed against them.

"The case we are making is that Facebook should undertake to monitor," she said.

"The plaintiff recognises that is somewhat onerous, but we would seek a final injunction with regard to that."

Mr Justice McCloskey will hear full arguments from both sides in court in Belfast later this week.

"The court, in consideration and determination of a case of this kind, will obviously have at the forefront of its mind the operation of well-established laws including the law of defamation and the provisions of the Human Rights Act," he said.

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Robot uprising risk to be studied

26 November 2012 Last updated at 13:28 ET

Cambridge researchers are to assess whether technology could end up destroying human civilisation.

The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) will study dangers posed by biotechnology, artificial life, nanotechnology and climate change.

The scientists said that to dismiss concerns of a potential robot uprising would be "dangerous".

Fears that machines may take over have been central to the plot of some of the most popular science fiction films.

Perhaps most famous is Skynet, a rogue computer system depicted in the Terminator films.

Skynet gained self-awareness and fought back after first being developed by the US military.

'Reasonable prediction'

But despite being the subject of far-fetched fantasy, researchers said the concept of machines outsmarting us demanded mature attention.

"The seriousness of these risks is difficult to assess, but that in itself seems a cause for concern, given how much is at stake," the researchers wrote on a website set up for the centre.

The CSER project has been co-founded by Cambridge philosophy professor Huw Price, cosmology and astrophysics professor Martin Rees and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn.

"It seems a reasonable prediction that some time in this or the next century intelligence will escape from the constraints of biology," Prof Price told the AFP news agency.

"What we're trying to do is to push it forward in the respectable scientific community."

He added that as robots and computers become smarter than humans, we could find ourselves at the mercy of "machines that are not malicious, but machines whose interests don't include us".

Survival of the human race permitting, the centre will launch next year.

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US 'sees biggest Cyber Monday'

26 November 2012 Last updated at 22:04 ET

The US is projected to have had its biggest ever online shopping day, according to analysts.

Research firm Comscore said consumers would have spent $1.5bn (£0.9bn) on so-called Cyber Monday, up 20% from last year.

Online-sales tracker IBM Benchmark put the internet shopping rise even higher - up nearly 27% compared with the Monday after Thanksgiving last year.

Smartphone and tablet computer sales rose 10.2%, said IBM Benchmark.

"Online's piece of the holiday pie is growing every day, and all the key dates are growing with it," Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru told Associated Press news agency.

"The web is becoming a more significant part of the traditional brick-and-mortar holiday shopping season."

Online sales also jumped sharply on so-called Black Friday, which is the day after Thanksgiving.

Comscore said internet shopping rose by a quarter last Friday to break the $1bn mark for the first time, while it was up by a third on Thanksgiving itself.

There was also a jump in consumer spending this Thanksgiving weekend compared with last year, retailers say.

A record 247 million people visited stores and websites between Thursday and Sunday, spending a total of $59.1bn, 13% more than last year, the National Retail Federation (NRF) said.

The average shopper spent $423 over the weekend, up from $398 last year.

Despite the jump in sales over the weekend, there are concerns that the rise in spending over the festive period as a whole will be weaker this year.

The NRF has forecast a 4.1% increase in retail sales during November and December, less than the 5.6% jump recorded last year.

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Hotel burglars 'exploit lock bug'

27 November 2012 Last updated at 07:12 ET

Burglars seem to be exploiting a bug in widely used electronic door locks to steal from hotels.

The bug was first publicised at a hacker conference in July, showing how a simple electronic device could unlock doors in seconds.

A series of thefts from hotels in Texas are being traced to a burglar who unlocked doors with the same technique.

Insurance firms said they expected to be "hit hard" as knowledge of the hack spread among professional thieves.

Glue fix

Independent security researcher Cody Brocious detailed the technique for defeating locks used to secure more than four million doors, at the Black Hat hacker conference in July.

Since his discovery, the technique has been refined by other security researchers, with one squeezing all the electronics to unlock a door into the body of a marker pen.

Forbes reports that burglaries of a few rooms at the Houston Hyatt and three other unnamed hotels in Texas have been traced to thieves exploiting the loophole Mr Brocious discovered.

A letter from the Hyatt to one of the victims revealed that the locks had been picked with a "digital tool".

Mr Brocious' technique involved inserting a digital probe into a small hole on the door lock mechanism that lets an attacker discover the combination for the lock and open it.

A man has been arrested and charged over the burglaries at the Hyatt hotel, but no suspect is in custody for the other thefts.

The Hyatt Houston said it had taken steps to harden doors against attack by filling the tiny hole with thick glue.

Before now Onity, which makes the locks attacked by Mr Brocious, said it was working with customers around the world to remove or replace locks vulnerable to attack. Onity has not released any statement about the latest attacks.

Insurance brokers interviewed by Forbes said they expected knowledge of the vulnerability to spread quickly even though many users of Onity locks have replaced or fixed their locks.

"We're going to get hit hard over the next year," Todd Seiders, a spokesman for Petra Risk Solutions, told Forbes.

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Privacy groups lobby Facebook

27 November 2012 Last updated at 07:21 ET

Two US privacy groups have asked Facebook to reconsider proposed changes to its terms of service that they say violate commitments to protect users.

The social network plans to end user voting on its privacy policy, and allow the sharing of information across its services.

Facebook is also planning to get rid of a setting for users to control who can contact them on its email system.

So far the proposed changes have garnered more than 18,000 comments.

In a letter to founder Mark Zuckerberg, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy said that the changes could be in contravention of a deal Facebook struck with US regulator, the Federal Trade Commission,

"Facebook's proposed changes implicate the user privacy and the terms of a recent settlement with the Federal Trade Commission," the letter said.

In April, Facebook settled with the Federal Trade Commission over claims that it had deceived users and made them share more information than they had intended.

Under the settlement, Facebook is required to obtain users' consent for certain changes to its privacy settings, as well as commit to 20 years of independent audits.

On proposed changes to email controls, the letter suggested: "By removing users' ability to prevent strangers from sending unwanted messages, the proposed changes are likely to increase the amount of spam that users receive."

And it likened plans to share data from Facebook and Instagram to Google's decision to unify data across its services.

This led to objections from privacy organisations, members of Congress and European data protection authorities.

Lobbying government

Facebook has so far issued no comment in response to queries from the BBC. It is understood that it is in dialogue with regulators about the proposed changes.

UK privacy groups have also criticised the changes.

Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group, said: "Facebook is lobbying the UK government to weaken new data protection laws and reduce our legal rights.

"It claims that the right to have our data back or to destroy it would be unworkable. But then Facebook go and show exactly why UK citizens need new, stronger personal data laws."

As the changes have not yet been enforced, they will be subject to the voting process. If the proposals generate more than 7,000 public comments during a seven-day period, it will trigger a vote by users to approve the changes.

However the vote is only binding if at least 30% of users take part. Two previous votes failed to garner that level of support.

To counteract criticisms of the changes, Facebook is also launching a new feature on its privacy page that lets users submit questions to its chief officer of policy, Erin Egan.

Users wanting to comment on the proposed Facebook changes have until Wednesday, 28 November.

False rumour

The announcement of the changes generated a flurry of comments on the social network, including a hoax copyright protection notice that suggested the changes would mean users no longer owned the copyright to the content they post on the site.

The hoax document, which users were urged to post as a status update, read: "In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details. For commercial use of the above, my written consent is needed at all times."

The post quickly went viral, causing Facebook to publish a statement, quashing the false rumour.

"Anyone who uses Facebook owns the controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms," the statement read.

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Meow meow 'is posted to users'

27 November 2012 Last updated at 08:20 ET

Drug dealers based overseas are posting potentially lethal illegal drugs to users, BBC Wales has found.

Mephedrone, also known as meow meow or MCAT, has become more popular in Wales than anywhere else in Britain, since it was made illegal two years ago.

Week In Week Out went undercover to expose how the drug is getting onto the streets via online dealers.

The programme was offered wholesale quantities of the drug, which is enough for thousands of street deals.

One online dealer boasted how regular shipments of mephedrone - classified as a Class B substance - are being sent to the UK.

The programme ordered a small quantity of mephedrone online and within a week, a white crystal-like powder arrived from China disguised as a food supplement.

Continue reading the main story

We'd have to say that this drug is probably worse in some ways, in terms of the violence, than some of the other drugs like cocaine and heroin"

End Quote Michael McCabe Consultant, Morriston Hospital, Swansea

But Dr Alun Hutchings, head of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board's toxicology laboratories at Llandough Hospital, said the powder, enough for ten hits, could kill if used as a food supplement and if taken all at once.

Week In Week Out examines the human cost of the mephedrone trade on the streets and meets users and ex-users who warn the drug is having a devastating impact in Wales.

Rachel Wood, 20, became addicted and ended up homeless and on the streets of Newport, where she and others were easy prey to dealers.

She said: "They try and make out they are doing you a favour. More than anything they always say 'oh, do this - we'll do two for this price and we'll do it as a favour for you and be your friend' up until a time you've got nothing.

"When you owe them money, they'll make sure they get the money, no matter how they get it. But they know that you'll keep going back."

She said: "You see young kids now, 13, 14 on it, but they think it's all right because it was legal at one point."

She is convinced that if she had not stopped taking it, the consequences could have been dire: "I would be dead by now if I was still on it."

At Morriston Hospital, Swansea, accident and emergency consultant Mr Michael McCabe said staff had been attacked by users who had no idea what they were doing under the influence.

Neurological problems

He added: "We'd have to say that this drug is probably worse in some ways, in terms of the violence, than some of the other drugs like cocaine and heroin."

He said mephedrone users had shown a range of neurological problems.

"These are people who are fit and healthy - in fact people who have never come across the radar in terms of drug abuse in terms of agencies the police or the NHS.

"We don't know what the long-term effect is going to be."

In July 2012 the drug was linked to the death of David Thomas, from Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, who died after spending two days on a life-support machine.

His sister Nicola is calling for the drug to be re-classified.

She said: "I think when it comes to MCAT, 'fert' or whatever they call it, it should be an automatic prison sentence and if they don't end up doing this they ain't going to stop it."

Supt Rhiannon Kirk, of the crime task force Operation Tarian's regional intelligence unit, says police have heard of dealers offering children "tasters" of the drug for as little as £1.

She told the programme: "There's a real ruthlessness about this that is to exploit children and to get people hooked so that they are then their market for the future.

Week In Week Out is on BBC One Wales on Tuesday 27 November at 22:35 GMT

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App reviews shift to Google+ IDs

27 November 2012 Last updated at 08:30 ET

Google has made it obligatory for Google+ account details to be displayed alongside new reviews of Android apps on its Play store.

Previously posts could be submitted anonymously.

The move means the reviewer's name and profile photo - if they have one - will appear alongside their entry.

One developer said the change should help address the problem of fake reviews. It may also boost use of the search giant's social network.

When users attempt to post a review, they will be presented with a pop-up box notifying them of the new policy.

The nicknames that used to appear alongside previous entries have all been deleted and replaced with "A Google User".

Facebook's app centre already requires users to reveal their "real" Facebook identity alongside entries.

But Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry and Amazon's equivalents all allow reviewers to use pseudonyms.

Google+'s terms and conditions state that profile names must match "the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you".

Fake reviews

In October, Google announced there were more than 700,000 apps in its store.

With so many to choose from, many consumers base their picks on whether the software has a high star rating and the number of people who have reviewed it,

One industry watcher said this had given developers an incentive to "game" the results.

"It's very easy to have apps that have nothing but fake high-scoring reviews," Mark Mulligan, editor of the Media Industry Blog, said,

"It's only once many people have fallen victim to that and have added their real reviews that the tactic stops working. This is definitely a good move in solving the problem."

Ian Wharton, creative director of Zolmo - the firm behind Jamie Oliver's 20 Minute Meals app - also welcomed Google's change in policy.

"We've seen companies release an app and then hundreds of their own employees end up rating them, which is a very disingenuous way to go about things.

"It's a good thing that there's now a face and a name. App stores are becoming so saturated with content that any effort to strip away falseness and make them more transparent can only make it easier to find good content.

"If Apple did something similar it could only make our life better."

Social network support

The move may help the fortunes of Google's social network,

Android is the most commonly used smartphone system. Device owners had previously needed a Google Account to download apps from its store and use some of its other services - but this had not involved setting up a Google+ profile.

They now have an extra incentive to do so. It follows an earlier announcement that Google had decided to allow users to link their YouTube and Google+ profiles.

"Facebook is still clearly the dominant social network player, but Google+ does have momentum and there is plenty to suggest it could make up a lot of further ground," said Mr Mulligan.

"One of the key tools Google has to its advantage is all the bits of its own ecosystem - it can promote the service by making it the glue that binds together all of its assets."

He noted that this kind of move represented a growing trend, with another example being the way Microsoft had tied its Xbox Live product into its new Windows Phone 8 operating system via its Xbox Music Store.

However, companies need to be careful about the extent to which they cross-pollinate their offerings.

The EU is already carrying out an investigation into the Google's placing of its services in its own search results, and reports suggest US watchdog the Federal Trade Commission is considering its own probe.

Google has denied manipulating the results to favour its own products.

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Nintendo Wii mini's Canada launch

27 November 2012 Last updated at 10:19 ET

Electronics firm Nintendo is to launch a pared-down version of its Wii console in time for Christmas - although it will only be available in Canada.

The launch of the Wii mini, pictures of which were published on its website today, had been widely anticipated in the technology press.

The console will go on sale from 7 December for C$99.99 (£62).

It comes just days before its next generation console, the Wii U, launches in the UK.

The Wii mini will have no internet capabilities and is designed to play only Wii games, meaning there will be no compatibility with earlier GameCube games.

It is, as the name suggests, smaller than the original Wii and comes in black with a red border.

"Wii mini is a great gift for the holidays that bring everyone in the family together to play. Wii Mini has a mini-price, but it's all about big fun," said Ron Bertram, Nintendo Canada's vice president and general manager.

It is unclear when the device will be available in other countries or why it is being launched exclusively in Canada at this time.

"It might be that it will only launch in Canada and Nintendo will see how demand goes," said Michael French, editor-in-chief at games industry news site MCV.

"It is also in the middle of manufacturing the Wii U, so it may only be able to make a certain amount," he added.

The Wii U device, which comes with a handheld touchscreen tablet-like controller, sold 400,000 units in the first week of sales in the US - lower than the 600,000 Wii consoles sold in the first eight days when that device launched six years ago.

The president of Nintendo America said that it was a stock issue rather than reflecting the popularity of the device.

Initial reviews of the Wii U have been mixed, with some unhappy that it was shipped with key features promised by Nintendo missing.

A social and interactive TV programming guide is due to be added in December, as will video-streaming apps from Netflix.

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