Jurang Tayo

Jumat, 19 April 2019

A look at the Samsung Galaxy Fold phone features, before it broke - CNBC

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https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/04/18/a-look-at-the-samsung-galaxy-fold-phone-features-before-it-broke.html

2019-04-19 14:59:52Z
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BlackBerry Messenger is shutting down in May - Engadget

BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for consumers is shutting down for good on May 31st. When Indonesia-based media conglomerate Emtek took over its development in 2016, it redesigned the app with modern features in hopes that it can better compete with more popular chat applications these days. Unfortunately, its efforts failed to drum up enough interest in the new BBM.

Part of Emtek's statement reads:

"We poured our hearts into making this a reality, and we are proud of what we have built to date.
The technology industry however, is very fluid, and in spite of our substantial efforts, users have moved on to other platforms, while new users proved difficult to sign on."

According to CrackBerry, one of the reasons why Emtek's BBM failed was because it became a bit too bloated with games, channels and ads -- extra features the enterprise version doesn't have. Now, to make up for the consumer version's shutdown, BlackBerry is making its enterprise-grade encrypted Messenger (BBMe) available for personal use.

BBMe is now available for Android devices, including the BlackBerry KEY2 Red Edition, through the Google Play Store. It will also land on Apple's App Store "soon." The application is free for the first year and will set users back $2.49 for a six-month subscription afterward -- it remains to be seen whether people will find it good enough to pay for when they have a plethora of messaging apps to choose from.

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/19/blackberry-messenger-consumers-shutdown/

2019-04-19 13:38:26Z
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BlackBerry Messenger is shutting down in May - Engadget

Part of Emtek's statement reads:

"We poured our hearts into making this a reality, and we are proud of what we have built to date.
The technology industry however, is very fluid, and in spite of our substantial efforts, users have moved on to other platforms, while new users proved difficult to sign on."

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/19/blackberry-messenger-consumers-shutdown/

2019-04-19 13:27:26Z
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Samsung Galaxy Fold review: after the break - The Verge

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7WpRzSnNAU

2019-04-19 13:00:07Z
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Facebook AI turns real people into controllable game characters - Engadget

Facebook's AI Research team has created an AI called Vid2Play that can extract playable characters from videos of real people, creating a much higher-tech version of '80s full-motion video (FMV) games like Night Trap. The neural networks can analyze random videos of people doing specific actions, then recreate that character and action in any environment and allow you to control them with a joystick.

The team used two neural networks called Pose2Pose and Pose2Frame. First, a video is fed into a Pose2Pose neural network designed for specific types of actions like dancing, tennis or fencing. The system then figures out where the person is compared to the background, and isolates them and their poses. Then, Pose2Frame takes the person, along with their shadow and any objects they're holding, and inserts them into a new scene with minimal artifacts. You can then control their movement, based on poses from the video, using a joystick or keyboard.

It only took a few short videos of each activity -- fencing, dancing and tennis -- to train the system. It was able to filter out other people and compensate for different camera angles. The research resembles Adobe's "content-aware fill" that also uses AI to remove elements from video, like tourists or garbage cans. Other companies, like NVIDIA, have also built AI that can transform real-life video into virtual landscapes suitable for games.

The motion is a bit screwy, with the characters looking like they're playing on ice, a problem in 3D animation known as "foot slide." On top of that, the range of motion is a bit limited. However, they do appear fairly realistic against the backgrounds compared to previous efforts at character extraction. It's still early days for the research, so hopefully the team can solve the motion issues.

Facebook's Vid2Game synthesis could make gaming more personal, letting you insert your own character, or favorite YouTube personality into games. "[It] addresses a computational problem not previously fully met, together paving the way for the generation of video games with realistic graphics," the team wrote. "In addition, controllable characters extracted from YouTube-like videos can find their place in the virtual worlds and augmented realities."

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https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/19/facebook-ai-game-characters-from-video/

2019-04-19 12:01:50Z
CAIiEHkntBysS6Rv7qdKdB7a3dYqGAgEKg8IACoHCAowwOjjAjDp3xswicOyAw

Google to block sign-in attempts from embedded Chrome pages - Android Police

Most of us have way more usernames and passwords than we can remember. Thankfully, our browsers can store these for us, but using single sign-on is even more convenient, as it avoids creating credentials for each and every site we visit. The most popular one around is Google's solution, which lets you use your Gmail username and password to connect to any website that supports it. However, as the solution is widely used, some malicious sites embed login pages which can capture the user's credentials and even their 2FA token. To protect users from such attacks, Google is now blocking sign-in attempts from embedded pages.

This phishing attack is known as MITM (Man in the middle), where the actual login page is embedded inside another one that acts as a relay. What this means it the first one can not only capture your username and password, but get access to your authentication token even if you used two-factor authentication to log in. From there on, the attacker will be able to copy your cookies and impersonate you.

Unlike more traditional malicious sites, this method doesn't try to replicate the authentication page, but instead uses the actual one and acts as a proxy to capture the exchanged data packets, which makes it much harder to spot. The safest way to know if you're on the actual sign-in page is by looking at URL you're on, and not the green lock icon, which merely indicates whether the site uses an SSL connection. Because embedded pages do not display the web address, Google is now preventing users from logging into its service from embedded pages.

While this makes the process more secure for Gmail users, bear in mind the phishing process can be used with any site, so you should always check the address before entering your credentials. For example, a site could impersonate Outlook's login page using a similar-looking URL like 0utlook.com (the first character being a zero instead of an O), so it's essential to pay close attention to the address bar when signing in, even if you're using 2FA.

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https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/04/19/google-to-block-sign-in-attempts-from-embedded-chrome-pages/

2019-04-19 11:50:00Z
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Facebook Security Problems Continue As 1.5M Users Inadvertently Upload Email Contacts - BeInCrypto

Privacy concerns for Facebook, the social networking megalith, have been raised once again. Reports indicate that the email contacts of 1.5M users have been uploaded to the site without their permission or knowledge.

The glitch occurred at the new account page where users were required to enter their email password. This allowed for access to the full contact list of users. Facebook has promised to delete the email contact information and inform affected users.

“We’ve fixed the underlying issue and are notifying people whose contacts were imported. People can also review and manage contacts they share with Facebook in their settings.”

What Gives?

This news only adds to the already sordid privacy record of the tech giant’s past. Political manipulation and security breaches affecting more than 30 million users have already led to plummeting user confidence.

The problems bring attention to the concerning perspective of major tech corporations regarding their users. With user data being the source of massive income and profits, users become highly commoditized. This brings increasing temptation for companies to use private data for corporate growth—something disturbing for most users.

Because Facebook is highly centralized, its user base has little or no say regarding such policies. In fact, as with the current admission, most of these data breaches occur without users’ awareness or permission.

facebook privacy

Blockchain Fix-it

Facebook has promised to delete the data, but the answer to the problem may be more systemic. The only thing that will truly change the trajectory of such companies is a shift away from corporate control and profiteering toward increased user control.

Blockchain technology is already being used for data control and privacy. Offering users peer-to-peer control of social connections would reduce corporate profit, but would also increase privacy. Furthermore, in a blockchain-based model, data is no longer held by the centralized corporation, making data protection a community effort.

While Facebook has already considered utilizing blockchains and a native digital currency, the issue that must be solved is corporate governance. Until a more decentralized approach is taken, such breaches will likely continue.

Do you think Facebook’s privacy issues reveal a need to move toward decentralization, or will simple solutions like deleting data fix the problems? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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https://beincrypto.com/facebook-security-problems-continue-as-1-5m-users-inadvertently-upload-email-contacts/

2019-04-19 10:08:20Z
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