US bots flagged Ebola before outbreak announced

US bots flagged Ebola before outbreak announced

Reuters 

WASHINGTON — The plot of the Amazon-Hachette battle over ebook prices just acquired a strange literary twist.
Amazon is asking readers to help in its running dispute with Hachette Book Group by emailing Hachette's CEO. But it may have missed the mark when it picked on English writer George Orwell to make its point.
In a message from the Amazon Books Team on a website on Friday evening, Amazon.com Inc reiterated its arguments for cheaper ebooks, and suggested people email Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch. The company published Pietsch's email address and listed key points people might want to make.
In its message, also emailed to writers who publish directly on its Kindle e-readers, Amazon compared the advent of ebooks to the arrival of paperback books in the 1930s. It said many in the literary establishment and book trade were similarly suspicious about cheaper reading and the assault on hardback books. It put Orwell into the anti-paperback camp.

"If 'publishers had any sense, they would combine against them (paperbacks) and suppress them.' Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion," Amazon's message said.
However, as the New York Times pointed out on Saturday, the internet retail giant seems to have misread Orwell, who was famed for his anti-totalitarian views and unlikely to seriously advocate suppressing books.
Orwell's suggestion appears ironic — he was implying that paperbacks were doing so well that publishers not selling them were bound to be upset.

Amazon took its Orwell quote from a review of Penguin paperbacks in the New English Weekly in March 1936, in which the author said, "Penguin Books are splendid value for sixpence. So splendid that if the other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them."

Orwell, best known for the novels "1984" and "Animal Farm," was not completely sold on cheaper reading. He noted that paperbacks were good for readers but not good for the book trade or for writers. "In my capacity as reader I applaud the Penguin Books; in my capacity as writer I pronounce them anathema."
Officials at Amazon and Hachette did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Amazon says pricing ebooks at $14.99 or $19.99 is too expensive and unjustifiable in most cases. It argues that lower priced ebooks sell more and so ultimately generate more revenue, and more royalties for authors.
In its dispute, Amazon has delayed deliveries and cut discounts on some books published by Hachette, the fourth-largest U.S. book publisher, owned by France's Lagardere.

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Israel resume fire after 3-day Gaza truce

Israel resume fire after 3-day Gaza truce

Israel launched at least 10 airstrikes  One hit the backyard of a mosque and killed a 10-year-old boy, Palestinian..

one airstrike struck the backyard of the Nour al-Mohammadi Mosque in the Gaza City neighborhood of Sheik Radwan.
Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said a 10-year-old boy was killed and five boys were wounded, one of them critically.

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Russia demands Internet users show ID to access public Wifi

Russia demands Internet users show ID to access public Wifi

Reuters

The decree, signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on July 31 but published online on Friday, also requires companies to declare who is using their web networks. The legislation caught many in the industry by surprise and companies said it was not clear how it would be enforced.

A flurry of new laws regulating Russia's once freewheeling Internet has been condemned by President Vladimir Putin's critics as a crackdown on dissent, after the websites of two of his prominent foes were blocked this year.

Putin, who alarmed industry leaders in April by saying the Internet is "a CIA project", says the laws are needed to fight "extremism" and "terrorism."

Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said that demanding ID from Internet users was normal. "Identification of users (via bank cards, cell phone numbers, etc.) with access to public Wifi is a worldwide practice," he tweeted.

A pro-Kremlin lawmaker said the measure was needed to prevent Cold War-style propaganda attacks against Russia.

"It's about security. An information war is under way. Anonymous access to the Internet in public areas allows illegal activities to be carried out with impunity," Vadim Dengin, deputy chair of parliament's information technology committee, was quoted by state newspaper Izvestia as saying.
Alexei Venediktov, editor of the popular Ekho Moskvy radio, lampooned the decree, saying the government's next step would be to embed a chip in people's chests "to automatically detect potential sellers of information to the enemy."

UNEXPECTED
Industry experts said vague wording in the decree did not define exactly what state who would have to comply with the law or what methods would be needed to authenticate users' identity.
The Communications Ministry said in a statement that a "direct obligation to present identity documents" would only be required at "collective access points" such as post offices where the government provides public access to Wifi.

State newspapers Izvestia and Rossiskaya Gazeta said the law required users to provide their full names, confirmed by an ID, at public Wifi access points including cafes and public parks. The personal data would be stored for at least six months.

An official with the Moscow city government, Artem Yermolaev, said user identification could be carried out by registering a telephone number and receiving Wifi logins by SMS.
Internet companies said they knew little about the new law. "It was unexpected, signed in such a short time and without consulting us," said Sergei Plugotarenko, head of the Russian Electronic Communications Association.

The requirement for businesses to declare who was using their Internet networks would be the "biggest headache," he said.
"We will hope that this restrictive tendency stops at some point because soon won't there be anything left to ban."

Another law, which took affect on Aug. 1, requires bloggers with more than 3,000 followers to register with the government and comply with the same rules as media outlets.

Websites are also required to store their data on servers located in Russia from 2016 - a move some believe would cut Russian users off from many international online services.

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Zayn Malik heartbreak as his tiny cousin with brain tumour fights for her life

Zayn Malik heartbreak as his tiny cousin 

with brain tumour fights for her life

The Malik family faces an agonising wait as three-year-old Arshiya is given a 1% chance of survival and doctors say there's nothing more they can do

Heartbroken Zayn Malik's three-year-old cousin is fighting for her life in intensive care.

Little Arshiya Malik has been placed on life support after undergoing a brain tumour operation where she was given just a 1per cent chance of survival.

The One Direction star has so far stayed silent on Twitter, despite being inundated by thousands of messages offering prayers for her recovery under the hashtag #PrayForArshiya.

Now, the family has been dealt a fresh blow after doctors broke the devastating news that there's nothing more they can do.

His cousin Aaroosha, 17, wrote on Instagram: “Please can everyone pray for ­Arshiya as much as you can as her MRI scan didn’t come out good

"Doctors are saying there’s nothing they can do and have put her on life support machines now."

Meanwhile Zayn's Muslim family, including his 23-year-old sister Doniya, continued to ask fans for prayers – called “dua” in Arabic.

Doniya wrote: “Thank you every1 hu did dua for arshiya, but she still need ur duas. She had 1% chance! Just shows there is a god and prayers work.”

As the next few days prove critical, the family is now praying to Allah to save Arshiya.

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China refutes claim of government ban on Apple purchases

China refutes claim of government ban on Apple purchases

By Gerry Shih and Paul Carsten

Reuters

According to a Bloomberg News report published on Wednesday, 10 Apple products, including MacBook laptops and iPad tablets, were taken off a government list of approved hardware due to security concerns.
The Central Government Procurement Centre, as well as the finance ministry and Apple, said the company never applied to be on the list in the first place.
The list that created the confusion this week involves energy-saving products, and is just one of a multitude of government procurement lists in China. Apple has never been on that list, the company said in emailed comments on Friday, declining to give more details.

"Even though Apple has the certification for energy-saving products... it has never provided the necessary verification material and agreements according to the regulations," said a Finance Ministry fax sent to Reuters on Thursday evening, a statement closely mirrored by the Central Government Procurement Centre in their own announcement on Friday.

The government can still purchase Apple products, even if they are not on the energy-saving list, according to the Central Government Procurement Centre website.
This week, many of the products mentioned were available for purchase on the website, except for a brief period late Thursday when sales were temporarily halted for a monthly price adjustment.
Multiple suppliers, who declined to be identified because they did not want to damage their business with the government, told Reuters that the price adjustments were routine. They said they did not believe the stoppages were due to national security concerns based on their conversations with the central procurement agency.

"They didn't say once that it had anything to do with national security," said an employee at a Beijing-based government supplier.
The government website resumed selling Apple products including laptops as of Friday afternoon. The most popular model was bought 23 times between Thursday and Friday.
"Every month we have one price adjustment to make sure the prices are aligned with market prices," said a person familiar with the procurement process, who attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding. "We'll stop purchases and then restart after they're aligned."
The uncertainty and speculation surrounding Apple's procurement status reflects the heightened anxiety among foreign technology firms in China amid what they perceive as a multi-pronged, official campaign to curb their business.

Mutual suspicions between China and the United States over hacking have escalated over the past year following revelations by Edward Snowden that U.S. intelligence planted "backdoor" surveillance tools on U.S.-made hardware. The U.S. Justice Department, meanwhile, indicted five Chinese military officers in May on counts of extensive industrial espionage.

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Desktop-sized laser supercomputers could be coming by 2020

Desktop-sized laser supercomputers could be coming by 2020

Steve Dent

Engadget

Small, eco-friendly optical supercomputers may soon be crunching quadrillions of calculations per second (exaflops) if a company called Optalysys has its way. It claims to be months away from demonstrating a prototype optical computer that will run at 346 gigaflops to start with -- not as fast as the best supercomputers, but pretty good for a proof-of-concept. Here's how it works: low-intensity lasers are beamed through layers of liquid crystal grids, which change the light intensity based on user inputted data. The resulting interference patterns can be used to solve mathematical equations and perform other tasks. By splitting the beam through multiple grids, the system can compute in parallel much more efficiently than standard multi-processing supercomputers (as shown in the charming Heinz Wolff-hosted video below).
It also uses very low amounts of power, with exascale-level systems capable of running for mere thousands of dollars a year, compared to millions a year for the Tinanhe-2, the current supercomputer champ. After launching the prototype system, the company plans to build two products: a "big data" optical co-processor that can work with existing supercomputers, and a standalone optical solver supercomputer. It expects the latter to launch as a product in 2017 at 9 petflops, with up to 17.1 exaflops (17,100 petaflops) by 2020. By way of contrast, the Tianhe-2 does about 34 petaflops. It all sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky at this point, but we should have a better idea of the feasibility when the prototype arrives in January.

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Google’s lawyers are having their busiest summer ever

Google’s lawyers are having their busiest summer ever

Leo Mirani

Quartz 

So it’s official. A week after Reuters first broke the story, the Wall Street Journal today confirmed (paywall) that the European Union’s regulators are preparing an antitrust investigation into Google’s Android mobile platform. Investigators are sending out questionnaires, seen by both Reuters and the Journal, asking:whether there was a requirement set by Google, written or unwritten, that they not pre-install apps, products or services on mobile devices that compete with Google software like its search engine, app store and maps.

According to the Journal, lawyers are speculating that a separate investigation into Google’s search practices “could be rolled [into] the Android probe, creating one mammoth investigation—and headache—for Google.” That would be on a par with the EU’s investigations into Microsoft, which started in 1998 and rolled on, and on, and on.But that’s just Google’s latest headache. Here’s what else has been keeping its lawyers occupied this summer:

In February, it seemed like a long-running investigation into Google’s “sponsored results,” or ads, was finally at an end. The EU’s antitrust chief, Joaquín Almunia, announced an agreement that would have the search giant show competitors’ results along with its ads. Alas, it was not to be. In June Alumunia said in a letter to his fellow commissioners, seen by the New York Times (paywall) that the deal could still be modified. Moreover, he signaled the Commission’s willingness to look into “many allegations, the various practices that they cover, and the new types of markets that are affected.” This month, it is looking likelier than ever that the deal will fall through (paywall).Then there’s the whole fracas over the so-called “right to be forgotten.” The EU’s top court ruled in May that people can ask Google to censor search results for information about them if it’s irrelevant, outdated, or otherwise inappropriate.

 But Google first raised a big stink about the ruling, noisily removing links, then reinstated some. Then it convened a council of elders to give its actions some independent credibility, and finally explained itself after European data-

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San Francisco Is On Its Way To Legalizing And Regulating Airbnb-Style Housing

San Francisco Is On Its Way To Legalizing And Regulating Airbnb-Style Housing

Business Insider 

In a Thursday city hall meeting, San Francisco gave a tentative proposal that will allow landlords to lease out their properties for short-term rentals. The ruling came at the end of a 4-hour long hearing where many Airbnb users testified, KCBS reports.
Part of an effort to begin regulating the short-term rentals that are already so prevalent throughout the city, residents will have to register before they begin renting their properties out, the station reports.
Airbnb itself has recently joined forces with activist group Fair to Share San Francisco, which supports the proposal. It would allow residents to lease out their homes for up to 90 days each year as long as the rest of the time they're occupying them. The new law would not apply to single-room occupancies, Curbed writes.
The proposal could be passed officially as early as next month, when the city's Board of Supervisors returns from recess, KCBS reports. The Board of Supervisors President David Chiu leads the proposal.

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Judge rejects $324.5 million settlement over Apple, Google hiring

Judge rejects $324.5 million settlement over Apple, Google hiring

By Dan Levine

Reuters 

SAN FRANCISCO - Four Silicon Valley companies including Apple and Google failed to persuade a U.S. judge to sign off on a $324.5 million settlement to resolve a lawsuit by tech workers, who accused the firms of conspiring to avoid poaching each other's employees.
In a ruling on Friday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, said the class action settlement was too low, given the strength of the case against the companies. Intel and Adobe were also part of the proposed deal.

There is "substantial and compelling evidence" that late Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs "was a, if not the, central figure in the alleged conspiracy," Koh wrote. The judge provided details in evidence of anecdotes involving Jobs and other Valley executives to show why she thought the workers deserved more.
Representatives for Apple and Google Inc declined to comment. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said the company is disappointed Koh rejected an agreement "that was negotiated at arm's length over many months," but appreciates that Koh provided additional information on her views.

Lawyers for the workers, along with an Adobe representative, were not immediately available to comment.
In their 2011 lawsuit, the tech employees said the conspiracy had limited their job mobility and, as a result, kept a lid on salaries. The case has been closely watched because of the possibility of big damages being awarded and for the opportunity to peek into the world of some of America's elite tech firms.
The case was based largely on emails in which Apple's Jobs, former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt and some of their rivals hatched plans to avoid poaching each other's prized engineers.

PARIS BLUES
Koh referred to one email exchange which occurred after a Google recruiter solicited an Apple employee. Schmidt told Jobs that the recruiter would be fired. Jobs then forwarded Schmidt's note to a top Apple human resources executive with a smiley face.
Koh also disclosed a 2006 exchange over Google's plans to open an engineering center in Paris. Google sought to hire three former Apple engineers for the project, but Jobs objected. Jobs wrote that his company would "strongly prefer that you not hire these guys." Google then told Jobs it had scrapped plans for the Paris center, "based on your strong preference."

The four companies agreed to settle with the workers in April shortly before trial. The plaintiffs had planned to ask for about $3 billion in damages at trial, which could have tripled to $9 billion under antitrust law.
Plaintiff attorneys argued Koh should approve the deal because the workers faced serious risks on appeal had the case gone forward. Some tech workers filed objections to the settlement, however, saying both sides should go back to the negotiating table in the hopes of obtaining a larger amount.

Daniel Girard, a lawyer for one of the objectors, said he is "very pleased that the court agreed with his position." It is unclear whether objectors would be included in any future settlement negotiations.
In her ruling, Koh repeatedly referred to a related settlement last year involving Disney and Intuit. Apple and Google workers got proportionally less in the latest deal compared to the one involving Disney, Koh wrote, even though plaintiff lawyers have "much more leverage" now than they did a year ago.

To match the earlier settlement, the latest deal "would need to total at least $380 million," Koh wrote.
The judge also said the plaintiffs had strong evidence to prove how the no-poaching deals impacted wages. In response to hiring pressure from Facebook, Google co-founder Sergey Brin announced a policy in 2007 of making counteroffers "within one hour" to any Google employee approached by the social networking company.
Google then tried to entice Facebook into a no-poaching deal, Koh wrote, but Facebook refused. The Facebook threat eventually led Google to alter its salary structure and increase all salaries by 10 percent, Koh wrote.

A further hearing in the case is scheduled for September 10.
The case is In Re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California 11-cv-2509.

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Smartphone camera makers see next opportunity in cars

Smartphone camera makers see next opportunity in cars

South Korean smartphone camera makers are tapping the surging yet more technologically demanding market for vehicle cameras to dull the impact of slowing growth in global handset sales.

High-end cars can carry as many as eight cameras to visually aid parking or trigger emergency brakes. That number could reach 12 when cameras replace side-view mirrors, according to Mcnex Co Ltd, a phone camera supplier of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Korea's biggest car camera maker.
As the technology reaches mid- and lower-end cars, the market for vehicle cameras could grow seven-fold from 2011 to nearly $6.6 billion in 2018, said Techno Systems Research.
That amount can only rise with regulation such as compulsory rear cameras in the United States from 2018 to stop drivers backing into pedestrians. Also adding to demand will be the spread of camera-laden self-driving vehicles like those of Google Inc.
"We expect the vehicle camera market to experience explosive growth," Lee Hyo-cheol, a principal research engineer at Korean auto parts maker Hyundai Mobis Co Ltd, told Reuters.
But cameras have to be far more robust for cars than phones. They must withstand tests that include days of submersion in water and 1,000 hours of temperatures shifting within seconds between minus 40 degrees and plus 85 degrees Celsius.
"Vehicle cameras are completely different from mobile cameras in terms of specifications," Lee said. Phone camera makers have had to face a steep learning curve, he said.
Cameras for cars are priced around $32 each compared with $4 for phones, according to Mcnex, which earned 19 percent of revenue last year from car cameras versus 2 percent in 2007. Prices could fall, however, as volume grows.
About 83 million car cameras are likely to be sold in 2020, five times more than in 2012, said researcher IHS Automotive. By comparison, shipments of smartphones - which generally feature two cameras - will likely grow 6 percent in 2018 from 39 percent last year, according to researcher IDC.

FROM APPLE TO BMW
Hyundai Mobis buys from compatriot phone and car camera makers Mcnex, LG Innotek Co Ltd, and Sekonix Co Ltd. It installs them into systems designed to aid parking, for instance, which it then sells to sister carmakers Hyundai Motor Co and Kia Motors Corp. Hyundai's top-end car Genesis sports five cameras, including cameras that sense whether the vehicle is veering out of lane.
LG Innotek, better known for the cameras in Apple Inc's iPhone, started making vehicle cameras last year and is in talks to supply luxury carmaker BMW, said a person familiar with the matter.
LG Innotek declined to comment. A BMW Korea spokeswoman said LG Innotek is among companies it is in talks with.
Sekonix, which sells lenses to leading phone maker Samsung, already supplies Hyundai Motor and General Motors Co through Hyundai Mobis and Delphi Automotive PLC, respectively.
Sekonix declined to comment. Audi said Gentex was a customer of Sekonix but could not confirm parts from Gentex featured Sekonix products. Gentex did not respond to an emailed request for comment and representatives at Volkswagen were not available.

ADDING COMPLEXITY
The market for vehicle cameras, largely limited to high-end models, is already crowded - particularly for suppliers of the complete cameras comprising lens, image sensor and circuitry.
Panasonic Corp and Sony Corp lead in parking cameras, according to IHS, and Continental AG, Robert Bosch GmbH [ROBG.UL] and Autoliv Inc dominate front cameras.
"It is very difficult to enter the automotive camera market from supplying mobile phone cameras, especially the complicated front camera market," IHS senior analyst Helena Perslow said by email.
Continental and Robert Bosch also install software for their front cameras to trigger brakes when 'seeing' an obstacle, for instance, adding a layer of complexity.
Further back in the supply chain, smartphone lens makers Haesung Optics Co Ltd and Kolen Co Ltd are also on the verge of branching out.
Haesung has started looking for its first customer for parking camera lenses, said an official who was not authorised to talk to the media.
Kolen, however, is not yet marketing lenses it developed for cars because there is so much competition that Kolen's entry could trigger a price war, said an official who also declined to be identified.
"The existing players will not sit still if we enter the market."
Neither Haesung nor Kolen were available for comment.

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Robotic helpers? Scientists tout cheap robot that assembles itself

Robotic helpers? Scientists tout cheap robot that assembles itself

By Richard Valdmanis

Reuters 

BOSTON - Scientists say they have developed a low-cost robot prototype made from paper and children's trinkets that can assemble itself and perform a task without human help.
The technology could eventually lead to affordable 'robotic helpers' for use in everything from household chores to exploring space, according to the team of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers who developed it.

"Getting a robot to assemble itself autonomously and actually perform a function has been a milestone we've been chasing for many years," said Rob Wood of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The prototype was jointly announced by Harvard and MIT on Thursday.
The team's robot prototype borrows mechanical principles from the ancient Japanese paper-folding art of origami, as well as from Shrinky Dinks - plastic children's toys that shrink into predictable shapes when heated.

The prototype was made from a flat sheet of composite paper, embedded with Shrinky Dink bits, hinges, motors, batteries, and a microcontroller. Once the batteries are placed in the robot, it begins to fold into shape and perform its task.

In this case, it crawls away at a speed of one-tenth of a mile per hour. But the engineers have high hopes the low-budget robots will eventually become more useful.
Wood said they could one day be printed on 3D printers, sold in stores for $100, and programed to do things such as sweep your porch or detect gas leaks in your neighborhood.
"You would be able to come in, describe what you need in fairly basic terms, and come back an hour later to get your robotic helper," Wood said.

They could also be used in space.
"Imagine a ream of dozens of robotic satellites sandwiched together so that they could be sent up to space and then assemble themselves remotely once they get there," said Sam Felton, a Harvard Ph. D student who co-authored the research. "They could take images, collect data, and more."
Felton said the prototype robots still have some problems, though, including a propensity to burn up before they have folded into shape. "There is a great deal that we can improve based on this foundational step," said Felton.

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This Is Microsoft's Very First Web Page ... Back In 1994

This Is Microsoft's Very First Web Page ... Back In 1994

Twenty years ago in 1994, the modern World Wide Web was born. That was the year the first Netscape browser was officially released (Mosaic Netscape 0.9), the year that Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (known as W3C), and the year Yahoo was founded, according to the Computer History Museum.

If you even had an email address, you used it via "dial-up" and a very slow modem. You would call the online service, download your email, and then hang up again. You couldn't use your phone to make a call if your computer modem was using the telephone line and you were charged by the minute for being connected.
In 1994 Microsoft published its first website, the Microsoft blog Fire Hose reports. 
Mark Ingalls, the first administrator of Microsoft.com, says at that time, using the slow dial-up connections of the era, this page would have taken awhile to load. “For most folks at home in that day and age, you would have been able to count to three or five before that picture showed up on your screen,” he says.
This was Microsoft's first web page.

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