Gaza-Israel games cause controversy

5 August 2014 Last updated at 12:47

Several games relating to the Israel-Gaza conflict have been removed from Google's Android store and Facebook, but others remain.

Bomb Gaza - in which players control an Israeli military jet that attacks missile-firing Palestinian militants - is no longer available on the sites.

But Rocket Pride - which sees players attempt to outmanoeuvre Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system - is still available on Google Play.

An advocacy group criticised the games.

"Games that glorify violence or normalise conflict when referring to an actual conflict that is happening as we speak are deeply problematic and deeply distasteful," Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab British Understanding, told the BBC.

"Google, Facebook or any other company that host such games, should be reviewing their policies and making absolutely all efforts to ensure that such games are not hosted on their platforms."

A spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said it needed to look into the titles in question before commenting.

'Resistance missiles'

The Daily Dot was one of the first news sites to bring attention to the phenomenon when it named several Android games relating to the conflict on Monday.

Many of the titles that are still online were released in the past few weeks and involve the player taking control of Israel's Iron Dome system to destroy incoming missiles.

"Intercept the rockets launched by Hamas by clicking on them and activating the Iron Dome. Hurry up, civilians are threatened and you will be held responsible if anything happens," reads the description of Iron Dome by gamytech.

Apple's iOS store features a similar title - Iron Dome Missile Defense, released by Simon Rosenzweig on 30 July - however, its description is more vague, referring instead to an unnamed "enemy".

Google Play also features Rocket Pride by Best Arabic Games, in which the player is tasked with "supporting heroes besieged in the Gaza Strip from an oppressive occupier" by "controlling the resistance missiles and hitting the objectives assigned to them".

Google has, however, removed:

• Gaza Assault: Code Red, in which the player controls an Israeli drone that drops bombs on people and buildings from above
• Whack the Hamas, in which the gamer is told to target members of Hamas as they emerge from tunnels and is described by its developer as "for fun and relaxation, for the people who are being killed every day by a terrorist group"
• Bomb Gaza, in which the player attempts to kill militants but avoid civilian casualties, while listening to "Israel's theme music"

The games had attracted negative reviews from some other Android device owners before being deleted.

A spokeswoman for Google would not discuss specific apps, but said: "We remove apps from Google Play that violate our policies."

The firm's developer's terms and conditions ban apps that advocate "against groups of people based on their race or ethnic origin", and/or are judged to threaten other users.

A spokesman for Facebook was unable to provide comment or confirm who was responsible for removing Bomb Gaza from its platform.

Curated stores

Other titles relating to the conflict - including Raid Gaza, a Flash-based game - have also been released to run on desktop computers.

One industry watcher suggested the major mobile app store owners were relatively well positioned to tackle complaints.

"The difference between Google Play and Apple iOS is that on the Apple's store apps are vetted before they are listed, while on Play, Google curates but only takes things down after they are published," said Ian Fogg, a tech analyst at the IHS consultancy.

"But in both examples they are managed experiences, which makes them better at handling this kind of thing than random websites that allow an app to be downloaded to a PC."

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Blood app 'can detect diseases'

5 August 2014 Last updated at 14:46

A team has developed an app and small lens add-on that allows blood-cell analysis via a smartphone

The app, called Athelas, won a prize at a coding event held by the prestigious start-up hub Y Combinator.

The team says it can detect diseases such as malaria and cancers in seconds, through so-called predictive cell counting.

But experts warned of the difficulty of reproducing the quality of medical labs results using just a smartphone.

Users take a picture of their blood using the lens attachment, which is then sent to the app's servers, and the results are then sent back to them.

Team leader Tanay Tandon said in his submission: "For more than two centuries, cell morphology - or the practice of viewing/analysing a person's blood in order to diagnose conditions - has been the primary way to approach medicine.

"Yet, despite the critical nature of blood analysis to the medical industry - the process has hardly changed from its long, expensive form for 150 years."

Mr Tandon added that in "rural areas, the tech will really shine, providing previously unavailable diagnostic skills through the power of artificial intelligence and computer vision".

'Create more confusion'

But experts in the field are not so convinced by the reality of using a smartphone to detect and diagnose.

"This app will create more confusion then alleviate anxiety," Dr Amar Safdar, the director of transplant medical diseases at New York University's Langone Medical Center, told the BBC.

"The major limitation for this approach is that most viruses require electron microscopic exams to see them."

Using the example of the current outbreak of Ebola - which has killed more than 800 people in western Africa and is spreading partly through air travel - Dr Safdar said that patients in the early stages of illness might not have large enough quantities of the Ebola virus in their peripheral blood to be diagnosed.

The threat of false positives, or incorrect results, was another concern.

"I've no problem with it in principle - but in reality, these need to be carefully calibrated around the right type of diseases," Dr Mike Chapman, of the University of Cambridge's Department of Haematology, told the BBC, adding that some diseases were easier to detect than others.

"In a laboratory diagnosis, there is a lot of regulation that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that your results are meaningful."

Dr Chapman added that he was aware of instances where people took a smartphone picture of a microscopic image of their blood and sent it to an expert.

The Athelas app won a prize as Y Combinator held its first "hackathon" last weekend, where teams come together and are invited to create software together in a limited amount of time.

Mr Tandon won an interview with YC to be in its next batch of start-ups. The California-based accelerator counts billion-dollar start-ups such as Airbnb, Reddit, and Dropbox among its alumni.

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Wikipedia link 'hidden from Google'

4 August 2014 Last updated at 12:25 By Joe Miller Technology reporter

A Wikipedia entry has been removed from certain Google search results, under the new EU "right to be forgotten" law.

The landmark ruling, passed in May, allowed Europeans to ask for links to "irrelevant" and outdated personal data to be removed from search engines.

The Wikipedia incident, first reported in The Observer, marks the first time an entry on the online encyclopaedia has been targeted, the BBC understands.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has expressed his opposition to the law.

The "right to be forgotten" ruling has been the subject of much controversy since the decision by European Union Court of Justice (ECJ).

While the law has been welcomed by some privacy advocates, many groups have said it contravenes the right to free speech, with some even calling it censorship.

Last week, the Lords Home Affairs EU Sub-Committee said it was wrong to give search engines such as Google the job of deciding what should be removed, and called the law unreasonable.

More than 90,000 removal requests have been received by Google in the months since the law was imposed, and other search engines, such as Bing, have also implemented procedures to accept public requests.

In July, an article written by the BBC's Robert Peston was removed from Google search results, and links to articles on the Guardian, Telegraph and Independent news sites have also been taken down.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has long expressed his concerns about the "right to be forgotten".

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme in July, Mr Wales said: "The law as it stands right now is quite confusing.

"We have this one ruling of the ECJ which is very open-ended and very hard to interpret.

"I would say the biggest problem we have is that the law seems to indicate Google needs to censor links to information that is clearly public - links to articles in legally published, truthful news stories.

"That is a very dangerous path to go down, and certainly if we want to go down a path where we are going to be censoring history, there is no way we should leave a private company like Google in charge of making those decisions."

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

GCHQ unveils 'cyber spy' degrees

2 August 2014 Last updated at 16:34

Intelligence agency GCHQ has accredited six UK universities to teach specialist master's degree courses to future internet security experts.

The degrees form part of the UK's cyber security strategy published in 2011.

The strategy recognised that education was key to improving defences against hackers and online fraud.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said internet cyber security was a "crucial part" of the government's long-term plan for the British economy.

He said the courses would help to make the "UK one of the safest places in the world to do business online".

He said: "Through the excellent work of GCHQ, in partnership with other government departments, the private sector and academia, we are able to counter threats and ensure together we are stronger and more aware."

UK universities were invited to submit their master's degree courses for certification.

The universities now running GCHQ-approved programmes in cyber security are Edinburgh Napier University, Lancaster University, the University of Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London.

GCHQ has also given provisional accreditation to Cranfield University's cyber defence and information assurance course, and the University of Surrey's information security course.

A spokesman for GCHQ said the universities "were judged to provide well-defined and appropriate content, delivered to the highest standard".

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Quick video games 'benefit children'

4 August 2014 Last updated at 05:16 By Smitha Mundasad Health reporter, BBC News

Playing video games for a short period each day could have a small but positive impact on child development, a study by Oxford University suggests.

Scientists found young people who spent less than an hour a day engaged in video games were better adjusted than those who did not play at all.

But children who used consoles for more than three hours reported lower satisfaction with their lives overall.

The research is published in the journal Pediatrics.

Experimental psychologist Dr Andrew Przybylski analysed British surveys involving 5,000 young people aged 10 to 15 years old.

Social interactions

Some 75% of those questioned said they played video games daily.

Children were asked to quantify how much time they spent gaming on a typical school day - using consoles or computers.

They then rated a number of factors, including:

Continue reading the main story

Being engaged in video games may give children a common language"

End Quote Dr Andrew Przybylski University of Oxford

• Satisfaction with their lives

• How well they got on with peers

• How likely they were to help people in difficulty

• Levels of hyperactivity and inattention

The answers were combined to assess levels of psychological and social adjustment.

When compared with all other groups, including those who played no video games at all, young people reporting under an hour of play each day were most likely to say they were satisfied with their lives and showed the highest levels of positive social interactions.

The group also had fewer problems with emotional issues and lower levels of hyperactivity.

According to the results, people who spent more than three hours playing games were the least well adjusted.

'Digital world'

Dr Przybylski says there may be numerous reasons behind this.

He told the BBC: "In a research environment that is often polarised between those who believe games have an extremely beneficial role and those who link them to violent acts, this research could provide a new, more nuanced standpoint.

"Being engaged in video games may give children a common language.

"And for someone who is not part of this conversation, this might end up cutting the young person off."

He argues that policies and guidelines that impose limits on the use of this technology need to take such evidence into account.

Dr Przybylski points out that though the effect of video games on children is statistically significant in this study, factors such as the strength of family relationships play a larger role.

Dr Iroise Dumontheil, of Birkbeck, University of London, who was not involved in the research, said: "Other studies have shown that playing first-person shooter games, but not other types, can lead to increased visuospatial processing and memory abilities.

"Further research would help to determine whether particular types of game help or hinder adolescents as they adjust to the changes they experience during development."

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Microsoft sues Samsung over Android

4 August 2014 Last updated at 13:25

Microsoft is suing Samsung in a dispute over Android patent fees.

Microsoft says the South Korean firm failed to pay it on schedule for the use of its inventions and has begun legal action in New York.

In a blog, the US firm said Samsung had used Microsoft's takeover of Nokia's handset unit "as an excuse to breach its contract".

Samsung has said: "We will review the complaint in detail and determine appropriate measures in response."

The case marks the first time that Microsoft has launched legal action against Samsung.

The two companies have a long-running partnership, due to the Asian manufacturer's sale of Windows PCs and Windows Phone handsets.

Nokia deal

Although Microsoft is best known for its own Windows operating system, it also claims ownership to hundreds of patents relating to Google's Android OS.

It has pursued many Android device-makers for related licence fees and to date has struck deals with more than 25 companies, including HTC, Acer, ZTE and Nikon.

Samsung agreed to Microsoft's demands in September 2011 and made its first year's payment the following year.

But a censored copy of court papers filed by Microsoft's lawyer, and posted online by news site Geekwire, indicate that Samsung blocked a second payment after learning of the Nokia deal in September 2013.

Although the documents state that Samsung later paid the fee in November 2013, Microsoft claims it is still owed money to cover the interest on the sum over the period it was not paid.

In addition the US company is unhappy that Samsung is reserving the right not to make future payments.

It also complains that Samsung has asked the Korean competition authorities to intervene to eliminate the need for future fees - a matter that Microsoft says would be outside the regulators' authority.

Furthermore, the papers suggest Samsung has threatened Microsoft with its own patent infringement claims relating to the Nokia takeover.

"Microsoft values and respects our partnership with Samsung and expects it to continue. We are simply asking the court to settle our disagreement, and we are confident the contract will be enforced," wrote David Howard, deputy general counsel for Microsoft, on the firm's blog.

Samsung declined to discuss any of the specific claims.

Microsoft has never disclosed how much it makes from its Android patents, but analysts have estimated the figure is between $1bn (£595m) to $2bn a year.

One company watcher said Microsoft would be keen to avoid a precedent that other firms might try to make use of to cancel their own payments.

"The fear would be that this case could develop into a revenue stream leakage that would be difficult to tap," said Windsor Holden, research director at Juniper Research.

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Google 'reveals child porn user'

4 August 2014 Last updated at 15:19

Google has revealed the identity of a user after discovering child abuse imagery in the man's Gmail account in Houston, Texas, according to a local news report.

It alerted a child protection agency, which notified the police and the man was arrested, KHOU 11 News reported.

Google told the BBC it would not comment on individual accounts.

The arrest raises questions over the privacy of personal email and Google's role in policing the web.

Police in Houston told the local news station that Google detected explicit images of a young girl in an email being sent by John Henry Skillern. After the existence of the email was referred to them by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the police obtained a search warrant and arrested the man.

The 41-year-old is a convicted sex offender. He has been charged with possessing child pornography, it was reported.

"I can't see that information, I can't see that photo, but Google can," Detective David Nettles said.

Emma Carr, the acting director of privacy lobby group Big Brother Watch, told the BBC: "With the rate that Gmail messages are scanned, and the fact that all US companies are bound by US law to report suspected child abuse, it is hardly surprising that this individual has found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

"However, Gmail users will certainly be interested to know what action Google proactively takes to monitor and analyse Gmail messages for illegal content, including details of what sorts of illegal activity may be targeted. Google must also make themselves very clear about what procedures and safeguards are in place to ensure that people are not wrongly criminalised."

The BBC understands that Google does not search Gmail accounts for other forms of illegal activity, such as pirated content or hate speech.

'Proactively identifying'

David Drummond, the chief legal officer for Google, has previously said that Google helps fund the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which is tasked with "proactively identifying child abuse images that Google can then remove from our search engine".

Google works with the IWF and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children extensively, he said, adding: "We have built technology that trawls other platforms for known images of child sex abuse. We can then quickly remove them and report their existence to the authorities."

Google automatically scans email accounts to provide ads within Gmail, which has more than 400 million users worldwide.

In April, Google updated its terms and conditions to say: "Our automated systems analyse your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customised search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored."

This occurred after a class-action lawsuit against the company over email scanning was dismissed earlier this year. At the time, Google said that "a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties".

In April Google also stopped scanning more than 30 million Gmail accounts linked to an educational scheme following reports that the scans might have breached a US privacy law.

Facebook has also faced a similar class-action lawsuit over message scanning.

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Dell develops mood-reading tech

5 August 2014 Last updated at 01:03 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

The head of Dell's new research and development division has said the company could release a mood-reading application as soon as 2017.

Jai Menon told the BBC that Dell Research was working on software for existing brain activity headsets that would accurately identify a wearer's emotional states.

He added that he believed such tech had uses in both the office and home.

But some experts are sceptical about the project.

"I think the potential for these things is astronomical, but we've been told this technology has been five years away for decades," said Dr Bernie Hogan, a human-computer interaction expert from the University of Oxford.

Distraction killer

Mr Menon, however, is more optimistic.

He said a team of two researchers were working with headsets made by Neurosky and other manufacturers - which cost between £60 to £120 - to see if they could be used to give a reliable indication of whether the wearer was happy, sad, bored or frustrated.

"If I can sense the user is working hard on a task, an intuitive computer system might then reduce distractions, such as allowing incoming phone calls to go directly to voicemail and not letting the user be disturbed," he suggested.

"Similarly, if they've been concentrating [for] a long time, maybe it could suggest a break."

He added that the kit could also be adapted for gamers - a market Dell already targets with its Alienware PCs.

"If someone is playing a game and it senses they are bored, it could ratchet up the level of challenge automatically. If it senses they are frustrated, maybe it's time to offer them a clue about how to proceed."

Dell is not the only major tech company to investigate the idea.

Microsoft has announced a series of mood-reading research projects, including Moodscope - software to infer a user's mental state from their smartphone use - and a "smart bra" that monitors heart and skin activity to detect stress and emotions.

IBM has tested uses for brain-monitoring gear at its research base in Hursley, England.

And the video games company Valve also experimented with building sensors into a controller that would adapt gameplay to the player's body state, but later abandoned the idea.

'Intrusive' tech

Mr Menon said the current version of the software being tested was only able to correctly identify a headset wearer's mood about half of the time, but added he expected the figure would improve.

"We're trying to push the accuracy of our software into the 90% or better range, and if we can get there then the product starts to make sense.

"If an individual device doesn't give us that accuracy then we will also add additional inputs - a pulse oximeter [to monitor the level of oxygen in a patient's blood] or ECG (electrocardiogram - a heart rhythm monitor) or other readings, to see if multiple inputs help the software get to the correct value."

Brain-monitoring hardware is already used to let people with severe disabilities control computers and wheelchairs with thought.

In addition, a London-based start-up recently paired a Neurosky headset with Google Glass to let wearers use their brainwaves to make the eyewear take photos.

But one academic suggested that identifying moods would prove more difficult.

"Taking a picture is a fairly simple thing, it's like an on-off switch," said Dr Simone Stumpf from the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction at City University London.

"With moods or emotional states, you have a range of states.

"The headsets are fairly intrusive as well, especially if you want ones with lots of reliable inputs.

"And with some of them to get a good connection you need to use saline solution on the pads - imagine wearing that for 12 hours, it's not really feasible."

Even if a mood-reading product did prove effective, Dr Hogan suggested many workers would prove resistant.

"The rights to my internal mind-state would be up for grabs," he said.

"Will it be a condition of my job that I wear something that monitors my mood? That's extremely scary and very different from a brain-control interface, which is more compelling."

Mr Menon stressed that Dell Research was only trialling mood-reading tech at this stage, and not designing a product for market.

But he added that he still believed his firm could release a software solution soon.

"My goal is to work on interesting things and then persuade the rest of the company to build the products," he said.

"But I suspect that within a three-year timeframe, if the experiments are successful, then such products can certainly be available."

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

LinkedIn in $6m labour settlement

5 August 2014 Last updated at 01:42

LinkedIn has agreed to pay $6m (£3.6m) in wages and damages after regulators found it failed to account for all the hours worked by its employees.

This includes $3.3m in unpaid wages and $2.5m in damages to be paid to 359 former and current employees.

It also agreed to provide compliance training and distribute its policy on overtime work to all applicable staff.

The firm said talent was its "number one priority" and it was eager to "rectify the situation".

"This was a function of not having the right tools in place for a small subset of our sales force to track hours properly," said Shannon Stubo, vice president of corporate communications at LinkedIn.

'Great integrity'

According to the US Department of Labor, the affected employees worked at the firm's offices in California, Illinois, Nebraska and New York.

"Off the clock hours are all too common for the American worker. This practice harms workers, denies them the wages they have rightfully earned and takes away time with families," said Susana Blanco, of the US Labor Department.

However, the regulator added that LinkedIn had cooperated with the investigation and had agreed to take proactive steps to prevent future violations.

"This company has shown a great deal of integrity by fully cooperating with investigators and stepping up to the plate without hesitation to help make workers whole," said David Weil, administrator of the Wage and Hour Division.

"We are particularly pleased that LinkedIn also has committed to take positive and practical steps towards securing future compliance."

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sony gives up on selling e-readers

5 August 2014 Last updated at 15:44

Sony has given up selling its line of Reader devices for e-books after failing to find a big enough market.

"We do not have plans to develop a successor Reader model at this time," the Japanese firm told the BBC.

The PRS-T3 was the last version made and will exist as long as supplies remain in Europe.

Earlier this year, Sony pulled out of selling e-books and directed its users in the US and Europe to the e-bookstore of rival Kobo.

North American customers using Sony Readers have been directed to buy books from Kobo since February this year, and European and Australian customers since May, a Sony spokeswoman said.

But users in Japan, Sony's home country, can continue to still get its line of Readers and access Sony's Reader Store.

The news was first reported by German site Lesen.

The dominance of Amazon's range of Kindles and the growing smartphone, tablet and so-called phablet market have made it hard for Sony's suite of e-readers and rivals like Nook to carve out a niche for themselves. According to The Bookseller, Amazon has around 90% of the dedicated e-reader market in the UK.

Canadian firm Kobo was bought by Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, which is looking to grow its business globally in a bid to challenge Amazon.

The global market in dedicated e-readers peaked in 2011 with 23 million devices sold, but is expected to fall to 10 million by 2017 as phones and tablets eat into the overall market, according to the research consultancy Gartner.

Still, the sale of printed books will be outstripped by e-books by 2018, a report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers suggested.

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More