Facebook Staffers Once Brainstormed Ways to Sell User Data: Report

TechNewsWorld

Facebook Staffers Once Brainstormed Ways to Sell User Data: Report

Facebook at one time considered charging companies for access to its user data, according to a report based on three pages of unredacted material from a document showing portions of some internal Facebook emails, mainly from 2012 to 2014. The documents are linked to a lawsuit, Six4Three LLC v. Facebook Inc., filed in California Superior Court. Six4Three, the developer of Pikini, a now-defunct app for locating photos of users' friends in swimsuits, filed a complaint in 2015 alleging that Facebook's data policies were anticompetitive.

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Apple Music Lands on Amazon Echo, as Apple Branches Out

Two bitter tech rivals get along for a change, making your streaming life a lot less complicated.

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Instagram 'Close Friends': What It Is and How to Use It

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Instagram 'Close Friends': What It Is and How to Use It

The photo-sharing platform now offers the ability to post photos and stories that are only visible to a tight circle of followers of your choosing.

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8 Best Cheap iPhones and Android Smartphones ($180-$550)

The absolute best Android and iOS phones you can buy for under $550.

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BBC News - Technology

Ex-Autonomy boss Mike Lynch charged with fraud in the US

Founder of UK software giant is charged with fraud seven years after the firm's sale to Hewlett-Packard.

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TechNewsWorld

Amazon Comprehend Medical Makes Sense of Scattered Healthcare Data

Amazon has announced Amazon Comprehend Medical, a language processing service that lets users gather information -- such as a patient's medical condition and medication dosage, strength and frequency -- from sources including doctors' notes, clinical trial reports, hospital admission notes and patient health records. Most health and patient data -- such as medical notes, prescriptions, audio interview transcripts, and pathology and radiology reports -- currently is stored as unstructured medical text.

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DJI Osmo Pocket Camera Gimbal: Price, Specs, Release Date

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DJI Osmo Pocket Camera Gimbal: Price, Specs, Release Date

For YouTubers and video influencers, this tiny face-tracking video camera might be the best thing since, well, the previous Osmo—and rival the GoPro.

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BBC News - Technology

Serkis on Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle visual effects

Andy Serkis has directed the new movie Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle using performance capture methods.

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Massage app exposes 'sex pest' clients

BBC News - Technology

Massage app exposes 'sex pest' clients

Urban Massage left thousands of customer records exposed, including complaints about its clients.

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Huawei: NZ bars Chinese firm on national security fears

Concerns about espionage risks has sparked global scrutiny of telecoms gear made by China's Huawei.

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Cyber Monday 2018: 40 Extended Deals You Can Still Buy

These are our favorite Cyber Monday deals that were extended, but they may go quick, including Roku, Echo Dot, and more.

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Gifts for Apple Lovers: Headphones, Cases, and More

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Gifts for Apple Lovers: Headphones, Cases, and More

Here’s what to get for that person who’s still casually throwing out Steve Jobs quotes on a regular basis.

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TechNewsWorld

Tesla vs. Jaguar: The First Real Electric Car Track Shootout

I'm a longtime Jaguar fan. I've owned a ton of them over the years, and I've had both good and bad experiences with the cars. Currently I own two -- a 1970 XKE and a 2014 F-Type -- and they are about to get a sibling. I've ordered a new Jaguar I-Pace, which is the first legitimate challenger to Tesla, which surprised the automotive industry much like Apple surprised the mobile phone industry. Tesla was first to build a decent electric car for this century. Not only that -- its Model S set records in terms of safety and reliability.

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Mars InSight: Inside Nasa's mission control

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Mars InSight: Inside Nasa's mission control

As Nasa prepares to land on Mars, Victoria Gill has been to the centre of operations and found out about an unusual tradition.

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Facebook documents seized by UK MPs

Rarely used parliamentary powers were invoked to demand the documents from a US executive.

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Cyber Monday 2018: The Absolute Best Tech Deals Online

Don't bother trudging to the store. We’ve gathered the best online Cyber Week tech deals for 2018, from smart speakers to fitness trackers and more.

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Residents revolt over Facebook group 'sale'

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Residents revolt over Facebook group 'sale'

A London community Facebook group is furious after the administration rights were sold on by one of its members.

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Best Amazon Black Friday Deals (2018): Echo, Kindle, Fire HD

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Best Amazon Black Friday Deals (2018): Echo, Kindle, Fire HD

Kindles, Fire Tablets, Fire TVs, and Echo speakers are on sale for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

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D&G: China shopping sites pull products in ad backlash

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D&G: China shopping sites pull products in ad backlash

The controversy over an ad campaign risks alienating the firm from one of the world's biggest luxury markets.

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Black Friday 2018: Best Laptop, Tablet, and Phone Deals

Our favorite deals on iPhones, Surface, and Chromebooks for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

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15 Early Black Friday (2018) Tech Deals: Echo, Dyson, OLED

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15 Early Black Friday (2018) Tech Deals: Echo, Dyson, OLED

Whet your appetite for holiday shopping with some of our favorite early Black Friday picks, from TVs and tablets to vacuums and more.

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BBC News - Technology

Loot box spending 'creates problem gamblers'

'Loot-box' spending in video games creates problem gamblers, a study finds.

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Human Rights Groups Sound Alarm Over 'Killer Robot' Threat

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Human Rights Groups Sound Alarm Over 'Killer Robot' Threat

Leaders from Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic have issued a dire warning that nations around the world haven't been doing enough to ban the development of autonomous weapons -- so-called "killer robots." The groups issued a joint report that calls for a complete ban on these systems before such weapons begin to make their way to military arsenals and it becomes too late to act. Other groups, including Amnesty International, joined in those urgent calls for a treaty to ban such weapons systems.

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Overcoming Your Terror of Arch Linux

A recent episode of a Linux news podcast I keep up with featured an interview with a journalist who had written a piece for a non-Linux audience about giving it a try. It was surprisingly widely read. The writer's experience with some of the more popular desktop distributions had been overwhelmingly positive, and he said as much in his piece and during the interview. However, when the show's host asked whether he had tried Arch Linux, the journalist immediately and unequivocally dismissed the idea, as if it were obviously preposterous.

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How to Watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV and Online

Enjoy the Thanksgiving tradition from the comfort of your own home.

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How to See How Much Time You Spend on Facebook and Instagram

Facebook has released its "Your Time on Facebook" tool, which lets you see how much of your life is spent buried in the News Feed.

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BBC News - Technology

The tech that could make water use sustainable

Scientists in Finland and the UK have built a computer model that visualises groundwater levels in real time.

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Online Shopping: The Complete Wired Guide

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Online Shopping: The Complete Wired Guide

Everything you ever wanted to know about Amazon, data privacy, and those weird new register-free retail stores.

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Gadget Lab Podcast: Can Magic Leap Stand Out from the AR Pack?

We sat down with Magic Leap's Brenda Freeman to discuss the future of immersive media when it means wearing AR goggles on your face.

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BBC News - Technology

Airbnb removes Israeli West Bank settlement listings

The US firm says it will take home rentals in Israeli settlements on occupied land off its website.

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TechNewsWorld

10 Ways to Avoid Losing Your Retirement to a Scam

Several years ago, my wife and I invested in a project called "Sanctuary Belize" and, like many of the investors, we were incredibly excited about the prospect of retiring in paradise. After a time, things just weren't adding up. The company supposedly put controls in place to reverse course, but we exited the project. As it turned out, those controls either were not put in place or failed. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission last week announced that it had shut the thing down, and highlighted it as one of the largest scams in its history.

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Energy firms likely to miss smart meter deadline, warns Which?

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Energy firms likely to miss smart meter deadline, warns Which?

Which? says suppliers would have to triple their installation rate to reach the 2020 deadline.

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Parents struggle to handle children's tech habits

Curbing excessive gadget use among children is hard, say parents asked for survey.

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Best Cookbooks (Fall 2018): José Andrés, Anissa Helou, Simone Klabin

This year's best food books reflect the importance of community, whether it's about saving the world or just understanding it a little better.

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Black Friday 2018: Best Gaming Deals on PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and More

The best deals on consoles, controllers, headsets, and other gaming gear for Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo fans.

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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds: Imams divided over video game fatwa

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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds: Imams divided over video game fatwa

Some imams in Kurdistan have officially banned a hugely popular video game – but others are hitting back.

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Amazon Is Just the Tip of the AI Bias Iceberg

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Amazon Is Just the Tip of the AI Bias Iceberg

Amazon recently disclosed its 2015 decision to scrap a recruitment tool used to hire talent, after finding that it had a bias against women. While this story has been covered sufficiently, there is a much greater story still to tell: A substantial amount of the artificial intelligence technology that currently is used for recruitment and human resources purposes has been acting independently, without any form of regulation, for some time. Before exploring this, it will be helpful to understand why this happened with Amazon's software.

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Review: Battlefield V Mixes Fantastic Gameplay With Intense Realism

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Review: Battlefield V Mixes Fantastic Gameplay With Intense Realism

After taking the popular Battlefield series to "the beginning" with the First World War-based Battlefield 1, developers have returned the action to its World War II roots with Battlefield V. Anyone who's not familiar with this first-person shooter need know only that the original game, introduced in 2002 as Battlefield 1942, offers players the chance to control vehicles as well as soldiers. At the time of its introduction, that was a novel twist for the traditional FPS, and it helped propel the series to success.

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BBC News - Technology

EE and Virgin Media fined £13.3m for overcharging customers

The companies overcharged phone and broadband customers leaving their contracts early, Ofcom says.

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Microsoft Surface Studio 2 Review: A Brawny, Shape-Shifting PC

Microsoft's new workstation has everything you ever wanted in a creative desktop, and costs more than you probably ever wanted to spend.

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Whether Intended or Accidental, Internet Traffic Rerouting Can Be Costly

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Whether Intended or Accidental, Internet Traffic Rerouting Can Be Costly

An apparent prefix leak from an errant router misconfiguration caused Google to lose control of several million of its IP addresses for more than an hour on Monday. During the event, Internet traffic was misrouted to China and Russia from Nigeria. The incident initially sparked concerns that it might have been a malicious hijacking attempt. The mishap made Google's search and other services unavailable to many users intermittently. It caused problems for Spotify, Google cloud customers, G-Suite users and Youtube viewers, among others.

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Oracle, the Hardware Company

For all of the dazzle of its rapidly evolving software portfolio, which includes a self-monitoring and self-patching database that also configures itself, as well as numerous cloud applications, Oracle has begun showing its credibility as a hardware vendor. Hardware has commoditized and will not return to the prominence it had in the early days of the tech era. However, commoditization brings new opportunities simply because price-performance numbers work better. Under Oracle's tutelage, hardware has found a disciplined and important niche.

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BBC News - Technology

Will superfast 5G mobile be worth it?

Superfast 5G mobile promises lots of benefits, but will it be worth the money?

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MiSafes' child-tracking smartwatches are 'easy to hack'

Researchers find a way to reveal the locations of children wearing MiSafes watches and call them.

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AmazonBasics Microwave Review: It's a Little Undercooked

Amazon's voice assistant can do many things. Just don't ask it to defrost sausage.

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Star Explorer Mae Jemison: The Sky Connects Us

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Star Explorer Mae Jemison: The Sky Connects Us

Mae Jemison recently shared some illuminating recollections of her experiences as an astronaut, but they were neither the starting point nor the ending point of our conversation. This extraordinary woman's career is too packed with present and future endeavors to dwell very long on her stellar past. She currently leads 100 Year Starship, a nonprofit that aims to make interstellar travel a reality within the next hundred years. Jemison also leads Look Up, a movement that encourages people to connect with the sky above us on one day each year.

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Changing Up Your Linux Distro

It's common for Linux users to hop between distributions and survey the field, and I recently reached a point where I had to seriously rethink the one I was using most of the time. Between hardware compatibility issues with my old standby and some discouraging missteps with other go-to choices, I felt the time had come to reassess my pool of preferred distributions and repopulate it from scratch. As my journey progressed, I realized that as often as I've discussed the field of Linux-based systems, I had not addressed how to pick one out.

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BBC News - Technology

Deepfake: BBC newsreader 'speaks' languages he can’t

Artificial intelligence creates a computer generated video which manipulates the newsreader’s mouth.

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The face-mapping technology raising fears about fake news

Why face-mapping technology designed to improve TV dubbing is raising fears about fake news.

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11 Best Tablets for Every Budget (2018): iPad, Android, Fire HD, Surface

Whether you prefer Android, iOS, or Windows, these are the best tablets we've tried.

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