How Blockchain Technology Is Being Used in Healthcare

The healthcare sector is always looking for new ways to innovate. But the innovation doesn’t always come from medical advances. Blockchain technology is regularly touted as revolutionary, as a technology that’s going to change the world—and the healthcare sector has taken notice.

There are several blockchain-based healthcare startups. Most focus on the privacy, security, tracking, and access to patient health records. At a time when technology is changing so much, how is blockchain technology being applied in the healthcare sector?

Understanding Blockchain in Healthcare

For all the talk of blockchain underpinning financial transactions, its ability to create an immutable, decentralized, contiguous and transparent transaction record is the shining feature. The blockchain is also the feature that has healthcare technology providers and developers most interested.

The first port of call for blockchain healthcare applications is patient healthcare records. Your GP has probably already switched to digital records. How about your dentist, chiropractor, chiropodist, OB/GYN, and all the other departments and medical practitioners? In truth, your medical records are spread out between numerous locations, and even in the age of digitization, medical departments don’t have direct access to other institutions’ data. (Understandable, as it could present a huge data risk.)

In an interview with Forbes, John Halamka, Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and Editor-in-Chief of academic journal Blockchain in Healthcare Today, stated that:

“Just using blockchain in healthcare because it’s cool doesn’t make sense […] Blockchain is not meant for storage of large data sets. Blockchain is not an analytics platform. Blockchain has very slow transactional performance. However, as a tamperproof public ledger, blockchain is ideal for proof of work. Blockchain is highly resilient.”

How Providers Use Blockchain in Healthcare

There are several main areas where blockchain will make waves in healthcare.

Medical records: Each medical record is signed by the healthcare provider and added to the blockchain. The blockchain shows exactly which party last accessed the record as well as any changes. Patient health information remains secure, protecting both patient and healthcare providers.

Sharing medical data: Also, blockchain technologies come with other advantages, such as the exclusion of third-parties from medical data sharing. Healthcare providers can use blockchain to verify data in transition, prove the integrity of clinical research results (no alterations to fit paid-for clinical trials, for instance), and enforce industry-wide data compliance.

Data sharing consent: The patient’s preference for sharing data between healthcare providers and third-party entities could record to the blockchain patient record so as to never be confused or misused.

Drug monitoring (internal): Drug suppliers register products using a private, internal blockchain. Drugs are tracked from manufacturer to patient, verifying and securing the entire chain.

Insurance: Insurance providers and patients have an immutable and therefore trusted series of events regarding patient health before creating new policies. Insurance providers could create smart contracts to ensure patients receive payments.

Positive health reinforcement: Healthcare apps and services linked to blockchain technology that provide tokenized incentives to engage in healthy activities, including exercise, eating and fitness regimes, and so on.

This is a sample of potential uses for blockchain in healthcare. The reality is that when the ball gets rolling, the applications for blockchain technology will continue to expand, but I would expect strong resistance from established profitable third-party healthcare services—country dependent, of course.

Examples of Blockchain in Healthcare

Even though the blockchain in healthcare industry is young, there are already some notable examples.

Medicalchain: Medicalchain is a blockchain healthcare startup that enables transparent patient record exchange between patients and doctors. Medicalchain’s pilot blockchain application began in July 2018. Patients create a wallet to hold their medical data with only approved clinicians able to “read and write” to the patient record. Clinicians can also hold online consultations with access to patient records, a bonus over other telemedicine services.

MyPCR: Enterprise blockchain developer, Guardtime, in conjunction with Instant Access Medical and Healthcare Gateway, launched MyPCR. MyPCR is a blockchain-based patient record access system currently in use for over 30 million UK NHS patients. The platform allows patients to access their healthcare records, healthcare pathways, and find medication adherence support through their smartphone (Guardtime estimate this alone with bring at least £800 million in savings to the NHS). Furthermore, MyPCR interfaces with all three major UK NHS GP systems for longitudinal coverage.

The MediLedger Project: The MediLedger Project, led by supply chain consulting group, The LinkLab, and smart supply chain solution provider, Chronicled, brings blockchain technology to pharmaceutical manufacturers, wholesalers, and the drug supply chain. The MediLedger Project will use blockchain technology to further isolate and remove counterfeit prescription medicines from supply chains. Furthermore, The MediLedger Project can track “live” substances, too: think blood, organs, and so on.

EncrypGen: The rise of private DNA testing and ancestry tracing websites presides over a 21^st-century problem: who keeps hold of your DNA afterward? After all, it’s extremely private data. EncrypGen runs the nattily-named Gene-Chain (fantastic, right?!) which allows for the storage and access of genome data. Access is granted on a case by case basis by individuals to scientists, governments, universities, businesses, and so on. On the flipside, those entities can request specific genomic data and pay the individuals using the Gene-Chain platform token, DNA (also rather well named, no?).

Clinicoin: Our final blockchain healthcare startup offers a different service to the others on the list. Clinicoin rewards its users for taking part in healthy activities such as exercising, physical activities (such as walking), nutrition, and more. Almost anything that helps create a healthier you can receive CLIN tokens. Furthermore, healthy users can take part in surveys, specialized tasks, and other Clinicoin research activities to gain more tokens.

Humanitarian Blockchain Healthcare Startups

Blockchain in healthcare startups aren’t innovating in just “regular” healthcare facilities. Healthcare blockchain technology is also rolling out in places where keeping proper medical records are extremely difficult, but where having one could be life-changing.

Blockchain healthcare startup, Iyro, deployed a trial electronic health record for refugees and migrants in a refugee camp in Jordan. Refugees and migrants don’t always have access to a permanent computer. But many have smartphones they can use to control their medical record. Iyro plans to roll out their “global healthcare” product to migrants and refugees in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Djibouti, and more locations within Jordan.

Blockchain in Healthcare Is the Future

The US market is proving difficult for blockchain healthcare startups to crack—and for good reason (or bad, depending on how you look at it). The incumbent healthcare providers profit from their healthcare facilities and the technologies they permit those facilities to use.

The heavily regulated and financially incentivized US healthcare system is one of the primary targets for a blockchain-based shakeup, but patients won’t see the benefits any time soon. Not until an incumbent provider figures out how to maximize profit from blockchain technology in the healthcare setting.

It isn’t just bureaucratic red tape that is slowing down blockchain healthcare startups. The actual incentive of finalizing a product just isn’t there for some startups.

Gem Health grabbed attention with its ideas of moving the boundaries of healthcare providers, patients, and insurers closer to reduce inefficiencies in patient reimbursements. But Gem Health, with their GemOS platform, found that replacing legacy EMR systems from the major providers (Epic, Cerner, Meditech, Allscripts, and so on) was, in reality, an incredibly difficult task.

Before long, Gem realized that cracking healthcare markets, even outside the US, is an incredibly hard ask. And that’s without trying to implement new technology at the same time. Furthermore, Gem Health is far from the only example of blockchain healthcare startup that tried to make the leap from Fintech, only to find healthcare too vast an industry to challenge, even after receiving venture capital backing.

Blockchain does have a strong future in the healthcare industry, that’s certain. But as Edward Bukstel, CEO of Clinical Blockchain says, “Tackling healthcare with a blockchain solution is gonna [sic] take all the help and innovation that people can muster […] we cannot afford to lose any more companies.”

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JBL’s smart display combines Google smarts with good sound

If you’re looking for a smart display that’s powered by the Google Assistant, you now have two choices: the Lenovo Smart Display and the JBL Link View. Lenovo was first out of the gate with its surprisingly stylish gadget, but it also left room for improvement. JBL, given its heritage as an audio company, is putting the emphasis on sound quality, with stereo speakers and a surprising amount of bass.

In terms of the overall design, the Link View isn’t going to win any prizes, but its pill shape definitely isn’t ugly either. JBL makes the Link View in any color you like, as long as that’s black. It’ll likely fit in with your home decor, though.

The Link View has an 8-inch high-definition touchscreen that is more than crisp enough for the maps, photos and YouTube videos you’ll play on it. In using it for the last two weeks, the screen turned out to be a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but you’d expect that given that I put it on the kitchen counter and regularly used it to entertain myself while waiting for the water to boil.

At the end of the day, you’re not going to spend $250 on a nice speaker with a built-in tablet. What matters most here is whether the visual side of the Google Assistant works for you. I find that it adds an extra dimension to the audio responses, no matter whether that’s weather reports, a map of my daily commute (which can change depending on traffic) or a video news report. Google’s interface for these devices is simple and clear, with large buttons and clearly presented information. And maybe that’s no surprise. These smart speakers are the ideal surface for its Material Design language, after all.

As a demo, Google likes to talk about how these gadgets can help you while cooking, with step-by-step recipes and videos. I find that this is a nice demo indeed, and thought that it would help me get a bit more creative with trying new recipes. In reality, though, I never have the ingredients I need to cook what Google suggests. If you are a better meal planner than I am, your mileage will likely vary.

What I find surprisingly useful is the display’s integration of Google Duo. I’m aware that the Allo/Duo combo is a bit of a flop, but the display does make you want to use Duo because you can easily have a video chat while just doing your thing in the kitchen. If you set up multiple users, the display can even receive calls for all of them. And don’t worry, there is a physical slider you can use to shut down the camera whenever you want.

The Link View also made me appreciate Google’s Assistant routines more (and my colleague Lucas Matney found the same when he tried out the Lenovo Smart Display). And it’s just a bit easier to look at the weather graphics instead of having the Assistant rattle off the temperature for the next couple of days.

Maybe the biggest letdown, though (and this isn’t JBL’s, fault but a feature Google needs to enable) is that you can’t add a smart display to your Google Assistant groups. That means you can’t use it as part of your all-house Google Home audio system, for example. It’s an odd omission for sure, given the Link View’s focus on sound, but my understanding is that the same holds true for the Lenovo Smart Display. If this is a deal breaker for you, then I’d hold off on buying a Google Assistant smart display for the time being.

You can, however, use the display as a Chromecast receiver to play music from your phone or watch videos. While you are not using it, the display can show the current time or simply go to blank.

Another thing that doesn’t work on smart displays yet is Google’s continued “conversation feature,” which lets you add a second command without having to say “OK, Google” again. For now, the smart displays only work in English, too.

When I first heard about these smart displays, I wasn’t sure if they were going to be useful. Turns out, they are. I do live in the Google Assistant ecosystem, though, and I’ve got a few Google Homes set up around my house. If you’re looking to expand your Assistant setup, then the Link View is a nice addition — and if you’re just getting started (or only need one Assistant-enabled speaker/display), then opting for a smart display over a smart speaker may just be the way to go, assuming you can stomach the extra cost.

Review: Lenovo’s Google Smart Display is pretty and intelligent

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JBL’s smart display combines Google smarts with good sound

If you’re looking for a smart display that’s powered by the Google Assistant, you now have two choices: the Lenovo Smart Display and the JBL Link View. Lenovo was first out of the gate with its surprisingly stylish gadget, but it also left room for improvement. JBL, given its heritage as an audio company, is putting the emphasis on sound quality, with stereo speakers and a surprising amount of bass.

In terms of the overall design, the Link View isn’t going to win any prizes, but its pill shape definitely isn’t ugly either. JBL makes the Link View in any color you like, as long as that’s black. It’ll likely fit in with your home decor, though.

The Link View has an 8-inch high-definition touchscreen that is more than crisp enough for the maps, photos and YouTube videos you’ll play on it. In using it for the last two weeks, the screen turned out to be a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but you’d expect that given that I put it on the kitchen counter and regularly used it to entertain myself while waiting for the water to boil.

At the end of the day, you’re not going to spend $250 on a nice speaker with a built-in tablet. What matters most here is whether the visual side of the Google Assistant works for you. I find that it adds an extra dimension to the audio responses, no matter whether that’s weather reports, a map of my daily commute (which can change depending on traffic) or a video news report. Google’s interface for these devices is simple and clear, with large buttons and clearly presented information. And maybe that’s no surprise. These smart speakers are the ideal surface for its Material Design language, after all.

As a demo, Google likes to talk about how these gadgets can help you while cooking, with step-by-step recipes and videos. I find that this is a nice demo indeed, and thought that it would help me get a bit more creative with trying new recipes. In reality, though, I never have the ingredients I need to cook what Google suggests. If you are a better meal planner than I am, your mileage will likely vary.

What I find surprisingly useful is the display’s integration of Google Duo. I’m aware that the Allo/Duo combo is a bit of a flop, but the display does make you want to use Duo because you can easily have a video chat while just doing your thing in the kitchen. If you set up multiple users, the display can even receive calls for all of them. And don’t worry, there is a physical slider you can use to shut down the camera whenever you want.

The Link View also made me appreciate Google’s Assistant routines more (and my colleague Lucas Matney found the same when he tried out the Lenovo Smart Display). And it’s just a bit easier to look at the weather graphics instead of having the Assistant rattle off the temperature for the next couple of days.

Maybe the biggest letdown, though (and this isn’t JBL’s, fault but a feature Google needs to enable) is that you can’t add a smart display to your Google Assistant groups. That means you can’t use it as part of your all-house Google Home audio system, for example. It’s an odd omission for sure, given the Link View’s focus on sound, but my understanding is that the same holds true for the Lenovo Smart Display. If this is a deal breaker for you, then I’d hold off on buying a Google Assistant smart display for the time being.

You can, however, use the display as a Chromecast receiver to play music from your phone or watch videos. While you are not using it, the display can show the current time or simply go to blank.

Another thing that doesn’t work on smart displays yet is Google’s continued “conversation feature,” which lets you add a second command without having to say “OK, Google” again. For now, the smart displays only work in English, too.

When I first heard about these smart displays, I wasn’t sure if they were going to be useful. Turns out, they are. I do live in the Google Assistant ecosystem, though, and I’ve got a few Google Homes set up around my house. If you’re looking to expand your Assistant setup, then the Link View is a nice addition — and if you’re just getting started (or only need one Assistant-enabled speaker/display), then opting for a smart display over a smart speaker may just be the way to go, assuming you can stomach the extra cost.

Review: Lenovo’s Google Smart Display is pretty and intelligent

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Facebook unveils “SapFix” AI auto-debugger and AI chip partners like Intel

Facebook has quietly built and deployed an artificial intelligence programming tool called SapFix that scans code, automatically identifies bugs, tests different patches, and suggests the best ones that engineers can choose to implement. Revealed today at Facebook’s @Scale engineering conference, SapFix is already running on Facebook’s massive code base and the company plans to eventually share it with the developer community.

“To our knowledge, this marks the first time that a machine-generated fix — with automated end-to-end testing and repair — has been deployed into a codebase of Facebook’s scale” writes Facebook’s developer tool team. “It’s an important milestone for AI hybrids and offers further evidence that search-based software engineering can reduce friction in software development.” SapFix can run with or without Sapienz, Facebook’s previous automated bug spotter. It uses them in conjunction with SapFix suggesting solutions to problems Sapienz discovers.

These types of tools could allow smaller teams to build more powerful products, or let big corporations save a ton on wasted engineering time. That’s criticalfor Facebook isince it has so many other problems to worry about.

Glow AI Hardware Partners

Meanwhile, Facebook is pressing forward with its strategy of reorienting the the computing hardware ecosystem around its own machine learning software. Today it announced that its Glow compiler for machine learning hardware acceleration has signed up the top silicon manufacturers like Cadence, Esperanto, Intel, Marvell, and Qualcomm to support Glow. The plan mirrors Facebook’s Open Compute Project for open sourcing server designs and Telecom Infra Project for connectivity technology.

“Hardware accelerators are specialized to solve the task of machine learning execution. They typically contain a large number of execution units, on-chip memory banks, and application-specific circuits that make the execution of ML workloads very efficient” Facebook’s team writes. “To execute machine learning programs on specialized hardware, compilers are used to orchestrate the different parts and make them work together . . . Hardware partners that use Glow can reduce the time it takes to bring their product to market.”

Essentially, Facebook needs help in the silicon department. Instead of isolating itself and building its own chips like Apple and Google, it’s effectively outsourcing the hardware development to the experts. That means it might forego a competitive advantage from this infrastructure, but it also allows it to save money and focus on its core strengths.

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Introducing the Unrestricted Adversarial Examples Challenge

Posted by Tom B. Brown and Catherine Olsson, Research Engineers, Google Brain Team

Machine learning is being deployed in more and more real-world applications, including medicine, chemistry and agriculture. When it comes to deploying machine learning in safety-critical contexts, significant challenges remain. In particular, all known machine learning algorithms are vulnerable to adversarial examples — inputs that an attacker has intentionally designed to cause the model to make a mistake. While previous research on adversarial examples has mostly focused on investigating mistakes caused by small modifications in order to develop improved models, real-world adversarial agents are often not subject to the “small modification” constraint. Furthermore, machine learning algorithms can often make confident errors when faced with an adversary, which makes the development of classifiers that don’t make any confident mistakes, even in the presence of an adversary which can submit arbitrary inputs to try to fool the system, an important open problem.

Today we're announcing the Unrestricted Adversarial Examples Contest, a community-based challenge to incentivize and measure progress towards the goal of zero confident classification errors in machine learning models. While previous research has focused on adversarial examples that are restricted to small changes to pre-labeled data points (allowing researchers to assume the image should have the same label after a small perturbation), this contest allows unrestricted inputs, allowing participants to submit arbitrary images from the target classes to develop and test models on a wider variety of adversarial examples.

Adversarial examples can be generated through a variety of means, including by making small modifications to the input pixels, but also using spatial transformations, or simple guess-and-check to find misclassified inputs.

Structure of the Contest
Participants can submit entries to the contest in one of two roles: as a defender, by submitting a classifier which has been designed to be difficult to fool, or as an attacker, by submitting arbitrary inputs to try to fool the defenders' models. In a “warm-up” period before the contest, we will present a set of fixed attacks for participants to design networks to defend against. After the community can conclusively beat those fixed attacks, we will launch the full two-sided contest with prizes for both attacks and defenses.

For the purposes of this contest, we have created a simple “bird-or-bicycle” classification task, where a classifier must answer the following: “Is this an unambiguous picture of a bird, a bicycle, or is it ambiguous / not obvious?” We selected this task because telling birds and bicycles apart is very easy for humans, but all known machine learning techniques struggle at the task when in the presence of an adversary.

The defender's goal is to correctly label a clean test set of birds and bicycles with high accuracy, while also making no confident errors on any attacker-provided bird or bicycle image. The attacker's goal is to find an image of a bird that the defending classifier confidently labels as a bicycle (or vice versa). We want to make the contest as easy as possible for the defenders, so we discard all images that are ambiguous (such as a bird riding a bicycle) or not obvious (such as an aerial view of a park, or random noise).

Examples of ambiguous and unambiguous images. Defenders must make no confident mistakes on unambiguous bird or bicycle images. We discard all images that humans find ambiguous or not obvious. All images under CC licenses 1, 2, 3, 4.

Attackers may submit absolutely any image of a bird or a bicycle in an attempt to fool the defending classifier. For example, an attacker could take photographs of birds, use 3D rendering software, make image composites using image editing software, produce novel bird images with a generative model, or any other technique.

In order to validate new attacker-provided images, we ask an ensemble of humans to label the image. This procedure lets us allow attackers to submit arbitrary images, not just test set images modified in small ways. If the defending classifier confidently classifies as "bird" any attacker-provided image which the human labelers unanimously labeled as a bicycle, the defending model has been broken. You can learn more details about the structure of the contest in our paper.

How to Participate
If you’re interested in participating, guidelines for getting started can be found on the project on github. We’ve already released our dataset, the evaluation pipeline, and baseline attacks for the warm-up, and we’ll be keeping an up-to-date leaderboard with the best defenses from the community. We look forward to your entries!

Acknowledgements
The team behind the Unrestricted Adversarial Examples Contest includes Tom Brown, Catherine Olsson, Nicholas Carlini, Chiyuan Zhang, and Ian Goodfellow from Google, and Paul Christiano from OpenAI.

YouTube Kids adds a whitelisting parental control feature, plus a new experience for tweens

YouTube Kids’ latest update is giving parents more control over what their kids watch. Following a change earlier this year that allowed parents to limit viewing options to human-reviewed channels, YouTube today is adding another feature that will give parents the ability to explicitly whitelist every channel or video they want to be available to their children through the app.

Additionally, YouTube Kids is launching an updated experience to serve the needs of a slightly older demographic: tween viewers ages 8 through 12. This mode adds new content, like popular music and gaming videos.

The company had promised in April these changes were in the works, but didn’t note when they’d be going live.

With the manual whitelisting feature, parents can visit the app’s Settings, go to their child’s profile, and toggle on an “Approved Content Only” option. They can then handpick the videos they want their kids to have access to watch through the YouTube Kids app.

Parents can opt to add any video, channel, or collection of channels they like by tapping the “+” button, or they can search for a specific creator or video through this interface.

Once this mode is enabled, kids will no longer be able to search for content on their own.

While this is a lot of manual labor on parents’ part, it does serve the needs of those with very young children who aren’t comfortable with YouTube Kids’ newer “human-reviewed channels” filtering option, as mistakes could still slip through.

A “human-reviewed” channel means that a YouTube moderator has watched several videos on the channel, to determine if the content is generally appropriate and kid-friendly, but it doesn’t mean every single video that is later added to the channel will be human-reviewed.

Instead, future uploads to the channel will only go through YouTube’s algorithmic layers of security, the company has said.

Unfortunately, while there is now a whitelisting option, there’s still no option to blacklist videos or channels to block them from the app.

That’s a problem because there are videos that are perfectly “kid-safe” that parents just want to limit for other reasons. “How to make slime” videos come to mind – something that parents everywhere likely want to block at scale after having their houses destroyed by the goo. (Thanks YouTube. Thanks Katrina Garcia.)

YouTube Kids expands to tweens

The other new feature now arriving will update YouTube Kids for an older audience who’s beginning to outgrow the preschool-ish look-and-feel of the app, and the way it sometimes pushes content that’s “for babies,” as my 8-year old would put it.

Instead, parents will be able to turn on the “Older” content level setting that opens up YouTube Kids to include less restricted content for kids ages 8 to 12.

According to the company, this includes music and gaming videos – which is basically something like 90% of kids’ YouTube watching at this age. (Not an official stat. Just what it feels like over here.)

The “Younger” option will continue to feature things like sing-alongs and other age-appropriate educational videos, but YouTube Kids’ “Older” mode will let kids watch different kinds of videos, like music videos, gaming video, shows, nature and wildlife videos, and more.

YouTube stresses to parents that its ability to filter content isn’t perfect – inappropriate content could still slip through. It needs parents to participate by blocking and flagging videos, as that comes up.

It’s best if kids continue to watch YouTube while in parents’ presence, of course, and without headphones, or on the big screen in the living room where you can moderate kids’ viewing yourself.

But there are times when you need to use YouTube as the babysitter or a distraction so you can get things done. The new whitelisting option could help parents feel more comfortable letting their kids loose on the app.

Meanwhile, older kids will appreciate the expanded freedom. (And you won’t be constantly begged for your own phone where “regular YouTube” is installed, as a result.)

YouTube says the parental controls are rolling today globally on Android and coming soon to iOS. The “Older” option is rolling out now in the U.S. and will expand globally in the future.

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Why Your Teenagers Love Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube

Why You Shouldn’t Buy Huawei Phones If You Care About Privacy

What would you say if I said that your Huawei phone could be spying on you? You’d probably call me a conspiracy theorist. But would you believe that the United States intelligence community feels the same way?

Whether you’ve had previous concerns, or are worried about the privacy of your own Huawei phone, here’s what you need to know.

Are Anti-Huawei Claims Protectionism?

Early in 2018, the head of six major US intelligence agencies issued a warning at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. They warned that US citizens shouldn’t use any commercial products offered by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE.

Numerous tech media outlets dismissed claims from the intelligence community as nothing more than “protectionism”. Tech journalists claimed that there was no solid evidence supporting those claims.

In January of 2018, Motherboard tech journalist Karl Bode wrote that there’s no evidence to support the claims against Huawei:

“The problem: nobody has provided a shred of hard evidence that the company has done anything wrong, raising the question of whether this is glorified protectionism hiding behind the banner of national security.”

However, the US intelligence community isn’t the only government intelligence community to issue such warnings.

Governments Warn Against Huawei

Also in 2018, the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre advised telecommunication companies in the U.K. to avoid technology offered by Chinese firm ZTE. The reason? That state-owned ZTE presents a “risk to U.K. national security that could not be mitigated effectively or practicably.”

In 2016, an immigration officer at the Hong Kong consulate in Canada denied immigration applications for two Chinese Huawei employees. The consulate implied that there was evidence of espionage not available to the public. The denial letter stated:

“…there are reasonable grounds to believe that you are a member of the inadmissible class of persons described in section 34(1)(f) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.”

Are these warnings really based on nothing at all? Or are they founded upon real intelligence evidence? History shows that there is reason to believe that Huawei phones are a very real personal and national security risk.

Huawei and the Communist Party

In the 2018 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, FBI Director Chris Wray explained that much of the concern relates to the very unsettling relationship between all Chinese companies and the Chinese Communist Party.

Wray stated that the government was:

“…deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks.”

The statement “beholden to foreign governments” is a reference to a Communisty Party law that requires all Chinese companies to work for State intelligence agencies if requested. The Communist Party often writes itself into company law, and there’s nothing the company or investors can do about it.

This means that if Huawei were to acquire control over a large part of the telecommunications market in the Western world, the Chinese intelligence community could potentially have access to user data. It could also intercept, or even shut down, all communications from those devices.

The risk is apparently high enough that the Pentagon bans the sale or use of Huawei or ZTE phones on US military bases. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Dave Eastburn hinted that intelligence communities have substantial evidence of a serious threat. He told Fox News, “For security reasons, I can’t get into the technical aspects of potential threats.”

The Canadian government may not be as vocal as the US intelligence community on the matter. But according to Global News, these same devices are also banned from use on Canadian military bases.

Huawei Is Not an Innocent Victim

Tech journalists writing that animosity toward Huawei is unfounded are overlooking the history. There is in fact evidence that justifies avoiding the use of Huawei, KTE, or any other Chinese-made telecommunication products:

• The CEO and founder of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, joined the Communist Party in 1978. He was also a high ranking member in the engineer corps for China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
• In 2016, numerous Chinese phones, including one branded as “Blu”, were infected with third-party firmware from Shanghai Adups Technology. That software transmitted user data back to Chinese servers.
• In 2012, a group of former intelligence officers known as the Langley Intelligence Group Network (LIGNET) published a surpising report. According to the group, “a sensitive LIGNET source associated with Huawei” reported that Huawei had used an “undisclosed electronic backdoor that allowed it remote access to the company’s equipment without permission.”
• In 2014, a Huawei engineer was caught hacking a mobile tower in Andhra Pradesh. This compromised the Indian government owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam’s (BSNL) network.
• A 2015 FBI intelligence report indicated that Huawei had been subsidized by the Chinese government to the tune of $100 billion. This begs the question, what does the Chinese government get in return for that substantial investment?
• Huawei has been accused of stealing trade secrets from numerous major US companies like Motorola, Cisco, and T-Mobile.

In fact, some claim that the Chinese government’s real interest isn’t national security, but obtaining trade secrets from Western companies. So the real risk of a private citizen owning a Hauwei phone may be if that citizen works for a major US corporation.

Sending and receiving company information over that phone could put trade secrets at risk.

How to Protect Yourself

It is true that you face threats to your privacy and security from other sources that have nothing to do with China. There’s NSA spying, Facebook security failures, and constant phishing threats.

But the threat of Huawei and other Chinese companies tied so closely to the Chinese Government is an entirely different beast. It’s unnerving to think that yet another government might be trying to view your communications and your web usage. Because the malware is baked right into the firmware, it’s nearly impossible for a regular user to identify that it exists.

But what’s more disturbing is the risk that involves your day job.

Consider a scenario where you may use a Hauwei or KTE phone to have a conversation with a friend or a work colleague. It could be a discussion about a business deal, a programming project you’re working on, or important business meetings. You could inadvertently pass along proprietary information to a foreign government without even realizing it.

What global intelligence communities are hinting to the world is that there is enough evidence in their posession to warrant banning these phones from military bases and governments. Even if you don’t believe them, history has turned up enough wrongdoing by these companies to justify very real concern.

Avoiding phones made by Chinese manufacturers is a good start. But don’t forget that there are many other things you need to do to protect the security of your personal data.

Read the full article: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Huawei Phones If You Care About Privacy

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Facebook rolls out photo/video fact checking so partners can train its AI

Sometimes fake news lives inside of Facebook as photos and videos designed to propel misinformation campaigns, instead of off-site on news articles that can generate their own ad revenue. To combat these politically rather than financially-motivated meddlers, Facebook has to be able to detect fake news inside of images and the audio that accompanies video clips. Today its expanding its photo and video fact checking program from four countries to all 23 of its fact-checking partners in 17 countries.

“Many of our third-party fact-checking partners have expertise evaluating photos and videos and are trained in visual verification techniques, such as reverse image searching and analyzing image metadata, like when and where the photo or video was taken” says Facebook product manager Antonia Woodford. “As we get more ratings from fact-checkers on photos and videos, we will be able to improve the accuracy of our machine learning model.”

The goal is for Facebook to be able to automatically spot manipulated images, out of context images that don’t show what they say they do, or text and audio claims that are provably false.

In last night’s epic 3,260-word security manifesto, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that “The definition of success is that we stop cyberattacks and coordinated information operations before they can cause harm.” That means using AI to proactively hunt down false news rather than waiting for it to be flagged by users. For that, Facebook needs AI training data that will be produced as exhaust from its partners’ photo and video fact checking operations.

Facebook is developing technology tools to assist its fact checkers in this process. “we use optical character recognition (OCR) to extract text from photos and compare that text to headlines from fact-checkers’ articles. We are also working on new ways to detect if a photo or video has been manipulated” Woodford notes, referring to DeepFakes that use AI video editing software to make someone appear to say or do something they haven’t.

Image memes were one of the most popular forms of disinformation used by the Russian IRA election interferers. The problem is that since they’re so easily re-shareable and don’t require people to leave Facebook to view them, they can get viral distribution from unsuspecting users who don’t realize they’ve become pawns in a disinformation campaign.

Facebook could potentially use the high level of technical resources necessary to build fake news meme-spotting AI as an argument for why Facebook shouldn’t be broken up. With Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp combined, the company gains economies of scale when it comes to fighting the misinformation scourage.

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Facebook rolls out photo/video fact checking so partners can train its AI

Sometimes fake news lives inside of Facebook as photos and videos designed to propel misinformation campaigns, instead of off-site on news articles that can generate their own ad revenue. To combat these politically rather than financially-motivated meddlers, Facebook has to be able to detect fake news inside of images and the audio that accompanies video clips. Today its expanding its photo and video fact checking program from four countries to all 23 of its fact-checking partners in 17 countries.

“Many of our third-party fact-checking partners have expertise evaluating photos and videos and are trained in visual verification techniques, such as reverse image searching and analyzing image metadata, like when and where the photo or video was taken” says Facebook product manager Antonia Woodford. “As we get more ratings from fact-checkers on photos and videos, we will be able to improve the accuracy of our machine learning model.”

The goal is for Facebook to be able to automatically spot manipulated images, out of context images that don’t show what they say they do, or text and audio claims that are provably false.

In last night’s epic 3,260-word security manifesto, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that “The definition of success is that we stop cyberattacks and coordinated information operations before they can cause harm.” That means using AI to proactively hunt down false news rather than waiting for it to be flagged by users. For that, Facebook needs AI training data that will be produced as exhaust from its partners’ photo and video fact checking operations.

Facebook is developing technology tools to assist its fact checkers in this process. “we use optical character recognition (OCR) to extract text from photos and compare that text to headlines from fact-checkers’ articles. We are also working on new ways to detect if a photo or video has been manipulated” Woodford notes, referring to DeepFakes that use AI video editing software to make someone appear to say or do something they haven’t.

Image memes were one of the most popular forms of disinformation used by the Russian IRA election interferers. The problem is that since they’re so easily re-shareable and don’t require people to leave Facebook to view them, they can get viral distribution from unsuspecting users who don’t realize they’ve become pawns in a disinformation campaign.

Facebook could potentially use the high level of technical resources necessary to build fake news meme-spotting AI as an argument for why Facebook shouldn’t be broken up. With Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp combined, the company gains economies of scale when it comes to fighting the misinformation scourage.

10 critical points from Zuckerberg’s epic security manifesto

 

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How to Fix the Machine Check Exception BSOD in Windows 10

A Machine Check Exception is a critical Windows system error. The result? A blue screen of death. Unfortunately, a Machine Check Exception error isn’t usually a one-off. Some users report being plagued by Machine Check Exception errors, having to trial a long list of potential fixes before arriving at the promised land.

This article gathers those fixes that are found to work and compiles them in a nice list. Here’s how you fix your Machine Check Exception error for good.

What Is a Machine Check Exception Error?

A Machine Check Exception (MCE) is typically a fault relating to your system hardware. Unfortunately, the resulting stop codes don’t always provide a clear picture as to what is wrong. The Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA) does its best to pinpoint where the error is, but even the WHEA can have its own failures.

Still, you can boil an MCE error down to a few base causes:

• System errors relating to hardware
• Issues and overstress due to overclocking
• Memory related issues
• Physical hardware issues
• Out of date or corrupt drivers

That’s quite the range, isn’t it? Machine Check Errors can come from almost anywhere because they deal with hardware and almost everything else. Not to worry; read on to fix your Machine Check Exception error.

1. Update Drivers

One of the most common Machine Check Exception error fixes is updating outdated system drivers. Outdated drivers are becoming rarer on Windows 10 machines as Microsoft automatically handles driver updates. However, that doesn’t mean outdated drivers cannot and will not happen. Windows 10 lists the drivers it updates in the Update & Security section of the Settings panel.

Press Windows Key + I to open the Settings panel, then select Update & Security > View update history. You can find any driver updates here. Now, type device manager in the Start menu search bar and select the best match. Head down the list and check for an error symbol. If there is nothing, your driver status is likely not the source of the issue.

That said, you can use a third-party tool to update all of your system drivers simultaneously. Check out this list of free tools you can use to fix the majority of Windows problems. The first two options—IOBit’s Driver Booster and Snappy Driver Installer—do exactly this.

2. Physical Hardware Check

Next up, perform a quick physical hardware check. Is all your RAM seated properly? Is your CPU heatsink in place? Has your GPU shifted out of place? A Machine Check Exception error closely relates to your system hardware. Have you installed a new component or switched some hardware around?

And, while you’re inside your case, give it a little clean. That means removing dust and buildup from your fans. If you have some compressed air, give your fans a little toot, as well as your GPU fans. Otherwise, some good old deep breaths and powerful blows have a similar effect (albeit less effective).

3. Reset System Overclocking

Overclocking is another strain on system hardware. Done correctly, you squeeze some extra performance from your system hardware. Overclocking has never been easier too. There are countless guides for almost every bit of hardware and online forums are full of other users overclocking experiences.

Overclocking, however, does place additional strain on your hardware—even if it is within the reasonable confines of the advertised hardware limits. Resetting any overclocking may help clear your Machine Check Exception errors.

Chances are, you need to enter your system BIOS or UEFI menu. To do this, turn off your system. Next, turn your system back on, pressing your BIOS/UEFI menu access key (usually F2, but other common keys include F1, F10, DEL, and ESC).

BIOS and UEFI settings vary by manufacturer, but menu titles are usually similar. You are looking for an Overclocking option. For the most part, overclocking options are found under the Advanced, Performance, Frequency, or Voltage menu.

Find the menu and reset your overclocking options. Resetting will return your system to its out-of-box state—but could also remove the Machine Check Exception error in the process.

Reset Your BIOS/UEFI Settings

If clearing your BIOS/UEFI overlock settings doesn’t solve the problem, try resetting your entire BIOS. Somewhere amongst the BIOS menu, there is an option to complete a full BIOS settings reset. Find the option and select it.

4. Run CHKDSK

Windows Check Disk is an integrated Windows utility that you run from the Command Prompt. CHKDSK verifies your system files and fixes any issues along the way.

Type command prompt in your Start menu search bar, then right-click the best match and select Run as administrator. (Alternatively, press Windows key + X, then select Command Prompt (Admin) from the menu.)

Next, type chkdsk /r and press Enter. The command will scan your system for errors and fix any issues along the way.

5. Run SFC

Next up, run the System File Check (SFC). SFC is another Windows system tool that checks for missing and corrupt files. Sounds like CHKDSK, right? Well, SFC checks for Windows system files specifically, while CHKDSK scans your entire drive for errors.

But before running the SFC command, it is best to double-check that it is completely functional.

DISM stands for Deployment Image Servicing and Management. DISM is an integrated Windows utility with a vast range of functions. In this case, the DISM Restorehealth command ensures that our next fix will work properly. Work through the following steps.

1. Type Command Prompt (Admin) in the Start menu search bar, then right-click and select Run as administrator to open an elevated Command Prompt.
2. Type the following command and press Enter: DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
3. Wait for the command to complete. The process can take up to 20 minutes depending on your system health. The process seems stuck at certain times, but wait for it to complete.
4. When the process completes, type sfc /scannow and press Enter.

Check out the following video. The video offers fixes for the Windows System Service Exception error, but the section for the CHKDSK and SFC scans are the same.

6. Check Your RAM Using MemTest86

MemTest86 is a free, standalone memory testing tool for x86 machines. You boot MemTest86 from a USB flash drive (or bootable disc) and leave it to check your system RAM. Now, a MemTest86 RAM check takes a long time to complete; a single pass takes hours depending on the amount of RAM you have installed.

To get the full MemTest86 experience you should run at least two passes (that’s two complete cycles). However, by most reports, MemTest86 should expose a serious RAM issue after a short amount of time.

Head to the MemTest86 download page and download the Image for creating bootable CD (ISO format). Next, you need to write the MemTest86 ISO to a USB flash drive. Check out this list of ten free tools to make a bootable USB flash drive.

Burn MemTest86 using the tool of your choice, then shut-down your system. Reboot the system while pressing the button for your Boot Selection menu (usually F10, F11, DEL, or ESC), then select the bootable MemTest86 USB flash drive. The memory test will start automatically.

If it does return RAM errors, complete an Internet search for the error code and type to discover your next course of action.

7. Last Resort: Reset Windows 10

If nothing else works, you can use the Windows 10 Reset function to refresh your system files. Windows 10 Reset replaces your system files with a completely fresh set of files and will theoretically clear any lingering issues relating to your Machine Check Exception error while keeping the majority of your important files intact.

Head to Settings > Update and Security > Recovery, then under Reset this PC select Get started. Your system restarts as soon as you hit the button, so make sure you back up any important files beforehand. Your system will restart, then you may select Keep my files or Remove everything.

Machine Check Exception Error Eradicated!

You can now consign your Machine Check Exception error to the history books. MCE errors are never nice to deal with as they can stem from any part of your system hardware. The above fixes will find the root of your MCE issue and finally eradicate it from your system.

If you’re still struggling, another handy bluescreen error code tool is Nirsoft’s BlueScreenView. It helps you better understand the error codes so you can isolate issues much faster!

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Snapchat enlists 20 partners to curate Our Stories from submissions

Themed collections of user generated content chosen by news publishers for viewing on and off Snapchat are the teen social network’s next great hope for relevance. Today Snap launches Curated Our Stories with the help of 20 partners like CNN, Cosmopolitan, Lad Bible, and NowThis. Instead of sifting through and selecting submissions to Our Story all by itself around events, holidays, and fads, these publishers can create slideshows of Snaps about whatever they want. They’ll both be featured in Snapchat Discover that sees 75 million Our Stories viewers per month, but also on the publishers’ own properties thanks to Snap’s recently launched embeds.

To entice partners, Snap has built in monetization from day one, splitting revenue with publishers from ads run in the Our Stories they curate. That’s in sharp contrast to Snap’s work with independent creators, where it still won’t split revenue with them directly though at least it’s finally connecting them with brand sponsors.

Snap’s head of Stories everywhere Rahul Chopra tells me that in exchange for its cut, Snap provides a content management system that publishers can use to search through submitted Snaps using a variety of filters like keywords in captions and locations. A human at Snap will also moderate Curated Our Stories to ensure nothing objectionable slips through.

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The new revenue stream could help Snap offset its declining user count by squeezing more cash out of each user by exposing them to more content and ads, or score it new users through embedded Curated Our Stories on its partners’ apps and sites. Snap beat revenue expectations last quarter but it still lost $353 million, contributing to a share price decline that hit an all-time low yesterday.

Snap first created Our Stories in 2014 to let people get the perspectives of tons of different attendees to music festivals and sporting matches. With time it expanded to creating college-specific Our Stories and ones of more relatable activities like enjoying Fridays. Snapchat also lets users search its publicly submitted content, but seems to have found people are too lazy or unimaginative to do it, or the uncurated content isn’t high quality enough to be worth watching.

The full list of publisher partners is: Brut, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Daily Mail, Daquan, Dodo, Harper’s Bazaar, iHeart, The Infatuation, Jukin, Lad Bible, Love Stories TV, Mic, NBC News, NBC Sports, NBC, Today Show, New York Post, NowThis, Overtime, Refinery 29, Telemundo, The Tab, Viacom, Wave.TV, and Whalar. They run the gambit from traditional publishers to online news sources, and includes Snapchat’s Yellow startup accelerator portfolio company Love Stroies TV, plus CNN’s return to Discover after cancelling its daily anchored news show there.

The curation possibilities are infinite. Partners could create reels of reactions to major news stories or shots from people with eyes on the ground at the scene of the action. They could highlight how people use a certain product, experience a particular place, or use a certain Snapchat creative feature. The publishers might produce daily or weekly collections around a topic or try a wide range of one-offs to surprise their viewers. You could think of it as a little bit like YouTube playlists, but cobbled together from real-time short-form submissions that might be too brief to make an impact on their own.

This is the start of Snapchat crowdsourcing not only content but curation to dig out the best citizen journalism, comedy, and beauty shot on its app and turn it into easily consumable compendiums. Given that Snapchat lost three million users last quarter, it could use the help keeping viewers coming back. But like most everything it launches, if Curated Our Stories blows up, you can bet Facebook and Instagram will turn on their copying machines.

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