Google announces new privacy requirements for Chrome extensions

Google today announced two major changes to how it expects Chrome extension developers to protect their users’ privacy. Starting this summer, extension developers are required to only request access to the data they need to implement their features — and nothing more. In addition, the company is expanding the number of extension developers who will have to post privacy policies.

In addition, the company is also announcing changes to how third-party developers can use the Google Drive API to provide their users access to files there.

Google announces new privacy requirements for Chrome extensions

All of this is part of Google’s Project Strobe, an effort the company launched last year to reconsider how third-party developers can access data in your Google account and on your Android devices. It was Project Strobe, for example, that detected the issues with Google+’s APIs that hastened the shutdown of the company’s failed social network. It also extends some of the work on Chrome extensions the company announced last October.

“Third-party apps and websites create services that millions of people use to get things done and customize their online experience,” Google Fellow and VP of Engineering Ben Smith writes in today’s announcement. “To make this ecosystem successful, people need to be confident their data is secure, and developers need clear rules of the road.”

With today’s announcements, Google aims to provide these rules. For extension developers, that means that if they need multiple permissions to implement a feature, they have to access the least amount of data possible, for example. Previously, that’s something the company recommended. Now, it’s required.

Previously, only developers who write extensions that handle personal or sensitive data had to post privacy policies. Going forward, this requirement will also include extensions that handle any user-provided content and personal communications. “Of course, extensions must continue to be transparent in how they handle user data, disclosing the collection, use and sharing of that data,” Smith adds.

As for the Drive API, Google is essentially locking down the service a bit more and limiting third-party access to specific files. Apps that need broader access, including backup services, will have to be verified by Google. The Drive API changes won’t go into effect until next year, though.

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Alibaba pumps $100 million into Vmate to grow its video app in India

Chinese tech giant Alibaba is doubling down on India’s burgeoning video market, looking to fight back local rival ByteDance, Google, and Disney to gain its foothold in the nation. The company said today that it is pumping $100 million into Vmate, a three-year-old social video app owned by subsidiary UC Web.

Vmate was launched as a video streaming and sharing app in 2016. But in the years since, it has added features such as video downloads and 3-dimensional face emojis to expand its use cases. It has amassed 30 million users globally, and will use the capital to scale its business in India, the company told TechCrunch. Alibaba Group did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions about its ownership of the app.

The move comes as Alibaba revives its attempts to take on the growing social video apps market, something it has missed out completely in China. Vmate could potentially help it fill the gap in India. Many of the features Vmate offers are similar to those by ByteDance’s TikTok, which currently has more than 120 million active users in India. ByteDance, with valuation of about $75 billion, has grown its business without taking money from either Alibaba or Tencent, the latter of which has launched its own TikTok-like apps with limited success.

Alibaba remains one of the biggest global investors in India’s e-commerce and food-tech markets. It has heavily invested in Paytm, BigBasket, Zomato, and Snapdeal. It was also supposedly planning to launch a video streaming service in India last year — a rumor that was fueled after it acquired majority stake in TicketNew, a Chennai-based online ticketing service.

UC Web, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, also counts India as one of its biggest markets. The browser maker has attempted to become a super app in India in recent years by including news and videos. In the last two years, it has been in talks with several bloggers and small publishers to host their articles directly on its platform, many people involved in the project told TechCrunch.

UC Web’s eponymous browser rose to stardom in the days of feature phones, but has since lost the lion’s share to Google Chrome as smartphones become more ubiquitous. Chrome ships as the default browser on most Android smartphones.

The major investment by Alibaba Group also serves as a testament to the growing popularity of video apps in India. Once cautious about each megabyte they spent on the internet, thrifty Indians have become heavy video consumers online as mobile data gets significantly cheaper in the country. Video apps are increasingly climbing up the charts on Google Play Store.

In an event for marketers late last year, YouTube said that India was the only nation where it had more unique users than its parent company Google. The video juggernaut had about 250 million active users in India at the end of 2017. The service, used by more than 2 billion users worldwide, has not revealed its India-specific user base since.

T Series, the largest record label in India, became the first YouTube channel this week to claim more than 100 million subscribers. What’s even more noteworthy is that T-Series took 10 years to get to its first 10 million subscribers. The rest 90 million subscribers signed up to its channel in the last two years. Also fighting for users’ attention is Hotstar, which is owned by Disney. Earlier this month, it set a new global record for most simultaneous views on a live streaming event.

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Alibaba pumps $100 million into Vmate to grow its video app in India

Chinese tech giant Alibaba is doubling down on India’s burgeoning video market, looking to fight back local rival ByteDance, Google, and Disney to gain its foothold in the nation. The company said today that it is pumping $100 million into Vmate, a three-year-old social video app owned by subsidiary UC Web.

Vmate was launched as a video streaming and sharing app in 2016. But in the years since, it has added features such as video downloads and 3-dimensional face emojis to expand its use cases. It has amassed 30 million users globally, and will use the capital to scale its business in India, the company told TechCrunch. Alibaba Group did not respond to TechCrunch’s questions about its ownership of the app.

The move comes as Alibaba revives its attempts to take on the growing social video apps market, something it has missed out completely in China. Vmate could potentially help it fill the gap in India. Many of the features Vmate offers are similar to those by ByteDance’s TikTok, which currently has more than 120 million active users in India. ByteDance, with valuation of about $75 billion, has grown its business without taking money from either Alibaba or Tencent, the latter of which has launched its own TikTok-like apps with limited success.

Alibaba remains one of the biggest global investors in India’s e-commerce and food-tech markets. It has heavily invested in Paytm, BigBasket, Zomato, and Snapdeal. It was also supposedly planning to launch a video streaming service in India last year — a rumor that was fueled after it acquired majority stake in TicketNew, a Chennai-based online ticketing service.

UC Web, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, also counts India as one of its biggest markets. The browser maker has attempted to become a super app in India in recent years by including news and videos. In the last two years, it has been in talks with several bloggers and small publishers to host their articles directly on its platform, many people involved in the project told TechCrunch.

UC Web’s eponymous browser rose to stardom in the days of feature phones, but has since lost the lion’s share to Google Chrome as smartphones become more ubiquitous. Chrome ships as the default browser on most Android smartphones.

The major investment by Alibaba Group also serves as a testament to the growing popularity of video apps in India. Once cautious about each megabyte they spent on the internet, thrifty Indians have become heavy video consumers online as mobile data gets significantly cheaper in the country. Video apps are increasingly climbing up the charts on Google Play Store.

In an event for marketers late last year, YouTube said that India was the only nation where it had more unique users than its parent company Google. The video juggernaut had about 250 million active users in India at the end of 2017. The service, used by more than 2 billion users worldwide, has not revealed its India-specific user base since.

T Series, the largest record label in India, became the first YouTube channel this week to claim more than 100 million subscribers. What’s even more noteworthy is that T-Series took 10 years to get to its first 10 million subscribers. The rest 90 million subscribers signed up to its channel in the last two years. Also fighting for users’ attention is Hotstar, which is owned by Disney. Earlier this month, it set a new global record for most simultaneous views on a live streaming event.

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Google’s Indigo subsea cable is now online

Google and its partners today announced that the 5,600-miles-long INDIGO subsea cable, which connects Sydney and Perth with Jakarta and Singapore, is now ready for service. To build the cable, which will significantly strengthen the connectivity between Australia and Southeast Asia, Google partnered with AARnet, Indosat, Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra.

The cable, which features about 110 repeaters, will have a total design capacity of 36 terabits per second with the option to expand in the future. Google says that’s more than enough to handle a few million simultaneous Hangout (or Meet) video chats between Singapore and Sydney.

The cable was first announced in 2016, when it was still called APX-West and didn’t include the extension to Sydney, which is now called Indigo Central. Google joined the efforts in early 2017 and construction started in 2018.

Indigo is a good example of Google’s expanding network of submarine cables. Typically, the company builds those with partners — and even occasionally competitors — but last year, for example, it also announced that it would build its own cable between the U.S. and France, the company’s fourth private cable.

Quite a few of the cables Google invested in in recent years are scheduled to go online in 2019, so chances are we’ll hear a bit more about the company’s efforts in this area in the coming months.

 

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Two years after Essential’s launch, still no Home hub or second phone

This morning’s Moto Z4 news was good cause to go back and reassess the state of the modular phone. Three years after the line launched, the concept hasn’t exactly ignited the market — in fact there are really just a handful of scattered competitors to show for it. Essential is among the most prominent with the PH-1’s clever two pin connector.

By sheer coincidence, it turns out today is the two year anniversary of the company’s debut. Founder Andy Rubin took to the stage at Code 2017 with big ideas and two products. One, the Ph-1 has come and gone, launching a couple of months late in August 2017 before being discontinued late last year. The other, the Essential Home hub never appeared at all.

The day the products were announced, then COO Niccolo de Masi (who appears to have since moved on to Honeywell spinoff, Resideo), spoke of a the company’s ten-year plan. It was an acknowledgement that it had a tough road ahead, as it planned to take on big names like Apple and Samsung. But the company certainly had the money. A $300 million raise helped the startup achieve unicorn status not long after taking the stage at the conference

But the intervening two years have been plagued with bad news. In spite of positive reviews,  the company reportedly only shipped 88,000 phones in 2017. The PH-1 got a massive price drop and its first modular accessory, a 360 camera, was discounted to $19, down from $250.

Last May, rumors surfaced that the company had gone up for sale and its followup phone had been canceled. And in October, it laid off nearly a third of its staff. Founder Andy Rubin has been laying low in the meantime. That same month, The New York Times published an explosive story about a $90 Million Google pay off in the wake of sexual misconduct claims, causing him to take leave from Essential.

All the while, however, the company has firmly denied claims that it’s going away. I spoke to a rep and the company recently who said things are in the works, without revealing any specifics. There have been ton of patent filings that appear to point to some future handset. It announced a new mod for the PH-1 in June and even acquired a company in December. Hell, earlier this month, it issued a new security patch, holding to its promise of monthly updates — a hell of a lot more than many more successful smartphone makers have offered.

That’s part of what makes the Essential story so frustrating. The PH-1 was a novel device, among the first to go with a camera notch display. Its $699 price (later reduced to $499) also predated Samsung/Apple/Google’s move into budget flagships. But even with a unicorn valuation, hardware is hard. And Essential may have entered the market at the worst possible time, as smartphone sales were beginning to flag for the first time ever.

Two years after launch, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Essential’s time may have come and gone. For now, however, the company appears to simply be biding its time before announcing what comes next.

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LEGO celebrates Apollo 11 with a lovely, bricky Lunar Lander

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the first lunar landing is approaching, and there will be no shortage of fanfare — so why shouldn’t LEGO get in on the fun? This Lunar Lander set looks like a great way to celebrate the missions of the space program’s past, while the space station and launch sets celebrate its present and future.

The Apollo 11 set looks like a real treat for both space-loving kids and parents — and grandparents — who remember or otherwise venerate the historic missions. LEGO worked with NASA to put together a replica Eagle lander that’s a lot like the original, though slightly smaller, of course.

There are two astronauts, a crater, and a flag — just like the real landing. And the detailed ascender module actually detaches and fits two minifigs inside. And, inquiring LEGO enthusiasts will want to know, there are some cool new gold-colored bricks that will surely make for lovely additions to your other brick-based space projects.

Apollo is what we’re celebrating, but Artemis is what’s ahead of us. The next moon mission will involve quite a few interesting pieces of hardware, though nothing is finalized yet — so you can excuse LEGO for improvising a bit. (I feel sure the Shuttle design has been ruled out, though.)

[gallery ids="1834260,1834255,1834261,1834258"]

The launch control set looks great: an actual mission control area, an astronaut-delivery rail car, and a convincing rocket that could be the Space Launch System. There’s also a fairly realistic space station setup with segments you can connect in various ways and a cool airlock I would have loved to have when I was an avid builder.

I like that these aren’t huge — kids shouldn’t get the wrong idea about space travel. It’s like crawling into a hot can and being rolled down a hill, then you live in the can for months constantly smelling the other astronauts’ breath. At the end of it, you’re at Mars, sure — but it’s not exactly first class.

Making spaceships out of LEGO is a highlight of my childhood, and one in which I still indulge now and then, but I never felt particularly constrained by reality. I think it’s great that these sets provide that option — even if they’re fantasy, they’re definitely quasi-realistic and when kids see the Lunar Gateway in a few years they’ll think, huh, looks a lot like what I built a while back. So far that hasn’t happened with any of my ships.

Head over to the LEGO Shop to grab your own set.

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How to Create an Online Photo Frame Using Photoshop

You can do so many cool things with Photoshop it’s difficult to know where to begin. In this article we show you how to create an online photo frame using Photoshop. One which you can use across websites and apps, whether surrounding your avatar or in the header of your blog.

Step 1: Set Up Your File

Before we start this tutorial, you’ll need to know the basics of the Custom Shape Tool. To do so, check out our article detailing how to use the Custom Shape Tool in Photoshop.

Next, open up Photoshop to set up your document. For this tutorial, let’s say the picture frame you’re creating is a social media avatar. Avatars are usually equal dimensions on all sides, regardless of whether they are circle-shaped or square.

With this in mind, set your document size to at least 1000×1000 pixels, although you can go larger. These dimensions will act as a guide for your picture frame.

Step 2: Set Up Your Custom Shape Tool

After your file is set up, create a new layer in your Layers panel—this is where your frame will go.

Next, make sure your Custom Shape Tool is active. Then check the colors for your Custom Shape in the Fill and Stroke sections.

At the moment I currently have the default color palette active. I don’t want to use those colors on my picture frame, however, so I’m going to switch them out.

To switch these colors, go to your Swatches panel. Click on the icon for the dropdown menu. Choose a pre-built palette from Adobe’s list of options.

You can also load a custom color palette if you’ve already created one. If you haven’t made one before, check out our tutorial explaining how to create a custom color palette in Photoshop.

Now that the new palette is loaded, go back to your Fill and Stroke options for your Custom Shape Tool. Choose the colors that you want to use.

After that, go to your Shape dropdown menu and pick the design that will be best suited for your picture.

For this tutorial, scroll down until you find the hollow circle and square shapes. Pick the hollow circle to use as your picture frame, seen here in red.

While Adobe does have a lot of pre-build frames, they’re a bit too fancy for our purpose. This circle should do the trick.

Step 3: Draw Your Shape

After you’ve picked your shape, click and drag your cursor across the page to create it.

If you’ve accidentally drawn your image off the page—like I have—don’t worry. You can either use the Path Selection Tool or the Move Tool to center your frame. It’s been highlighted here in red.

Step 4: Apply a Layer Style

Once you have your frame centered, you might want to apply an effect to it, to make it look more “3D”.

To do this, go to your Layer panel and double-click on the layer that contains your shape. A box will pop up that says Layer Style.

Under Blending Options, you’ll see Bevel & Emboss. Click on this option to activate it, and make sure the checkbox next to the name is filled.

Once that checkmark is active, you’ll see that your photo frame has taken on a more 3D quality.

Under the Structure section, you can choose what type of bevel to apply to your shape, the depth of the bevel, the size, and how much you want to soften its edges.

Under Shading, you’ll be able to change how your highlights look. You can change the angle that the light hits the object, and how the light interacts with the object, too.

Once you have all your settings fixed to your satisfaction, click OK.

Step 5: Rasterize Your Layer

After you finish your bevel, you’ll want to select your frame to create a “frame selection”. This will allow you to call up the “shape” at a later date and easily apply a color fill in the shape of that selection—just in a different layer.

Think of it like a shortcut to editing.

When you select your Magic Wand Tool, make sure your image is currently set to 16 Bits. You’ll get a warning from Photoshop if it’s not.

If it isn’t, click on Image > Mode > 16 Bits. Because you’re working in different layers, Photoshop will ask you if you want to merge these layers when you reduce your document depth.

Click Don’t Merge. You still want these layers separate.

After you change the depth of your image, you’ll still need to “rasterize” your layer in order to use your Magic Wand. This means you’re converting a vector graphic into a pixel-based one.

To rasterize your layer, right-click on the layer that contains your photo frame, and choose Rasterize Layer Style.

Step 6: Make a Selection

Next, go back to your Magic Wand Tool and select the empty space on the inside and outside of your picture frame.

When those two areas are selected, right-click on the empty space, and choose Select Inverse. Photoshop will select the shape of your frame instead.

This might seem like a convoluted step, but there’s a good reason to do the selection in this order.

If you try to click on your 3D frame directly, Photoshop will only select the colors with the exact same value and hue—not the whole thing.

With Select Inverse, you now have a clean selection of your frame.

To save this selection for further use, go to your menu bar at the top of your workspace. Click Select > Save Selection.

Give your selection a meaningful name, then click OK.

Step 7: Adjust the Color

Now that you’ve created your online photo frame, you might want to adjust the color of it.

To adjust the color, go to your Layers panel, and create a new layer on top of the layer that holds your picture frame. Then click Select > Load Selection.

From the Channel dropdown list, choose the selection that you made of your picture frame.

Once the selection is active, go over to your Paint Bucket or Gradient tool, and apply some color to that layer. It will stay within the confines of that selection.

After you have your color down, you’ll want it to interact with the picture frame beneath it.

To do this, click on the Blending Mode dropdown menu in your Layers panel. Choose an effect.

As you can see, this effect brightens my frame while also picking up the light and dark hues of the 3D bevel beneath.

Step 8: Add Your Picture

After you’re done with the picture frame, you’ll probably want to place a picture inside it. To demonstrate this part, I’ve used a headshot of myself.

To bring this headshot into your frame, select the Move tool, then click and drag your headshot to the file tab for your picture frame along the top. I’ve highlighted the tab in red.

Once you drag the headshot to the tab, Photoshop will bring the headshot into your picture frame workspace.

Release the file. Photoshop will automatically place the headshot in a new layer in your Layers panel.

Once this headshot is in a new layer, move that headshot layer beneath your picture frame layer. The frame needs to be visible on top.

If needed, adjust the headshot to better fit your frame by going Edit > Free Transform. Drag the anchor points inward to make it smaller.

Next, go to your picture frame layer. Activate your Magic Wand tool, then select the space around the outside of your frame.

Once the area outside of your frame is selected, go back to your headshot layer. Go to the menu at the top of your screen, then click Edit > Cut.

This will quickly remove the rest of your picture outside of your frame, creating that “picture-like” effect.

Step 9: Save Your File for the Web

Now that your headshot is inserted and your picture frame is done, you’re ready to save.

Before you save, make sure the background layer in your file is turned off. Your picture frame is round and there will be some transparency around it. If you keep this background layer on, this transparency won’t take affect.

After your background is turned off, go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy). Save your file as a PNG. And there you have it. You’re done.

Customizing Your Online Presence

Now that you know how to create a digital photo frame you can use it to customize your online presence, giving you a consistent look across various sites and apps.

However, don’t stop your Photoshop education there. We recommend learning how to create a custom gradient using Photoshop next.

Read the full article: How to Create an Online Photo Frame Using Photoshop

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How to Sync Your iPhone to iTunes and Back

iTunes is necessary to sync your iPhone and back up your data to your PC. It’s still the easiest route to transfer information that hasn’t come from Apple’s walled gardens.

The good news is that iTunes is no longer the only bridge. Streaming apps are the new norm for delivering media to your device. You can choose to use iCloud or pick from the many alternatives to sync music to your iPhone or iPad if it’s stored on your PC.

But iTunes is free. Alternative syncing software might not be. That’s why you should know how to sync your iPhone to iTunes and back.

Configure Settings to Sync Your iPhone to iTunes

There are two ways to sync your iPhone to iTunes:

1. Sync iPhone to iTunes with a Lightning cable.
2. Sync iPhone to iTunes over the same Wi-Fi connection.

Both methods differ somewhat in the initial setup, though the final syncing process with iTunes is the same. Let’s connect and sync with a Lightning cable first.

Plug the USB-A end of the cable into a USB port on your Mac or Windows computer, and the other into the Lightning port on the bottom of your iPhone. iTunes should open; if it doesn’t, then launch it manually. Allow your computer to access your iPhone by entering the iPhone’s login password (if it has one) on your device.

Once connected, the iPhone icon displays at the top-left of the iTunes screen. Click this icon to display the Summary screen of your iPhone.

The iTunes Summary Section

The Summary screen is the control center for all backup and sync settings. Tend to the backup settings first, as it will save you a lot of bother if you lose your data and need to sync everything back to your iPhone and restore it.

As you can see in the screenshot below, in the Summary settings, you can choose to automatically back up to iCloud or store the backup locally on your PC. Backing up your critical content to the cloud helps when you are away from your PC.

iCloud allows you to automatically back up from anywhere with an internet connection, and you don’t need a cable. But you may need to purchase additional iCloud space to fit all your data. iTunes gives you a bit more control, but you have to remember to do it.

Follow our guide showing you how to back up your iPhone and iPad and protect yourself from data loss.

The iTunes Options Section

As it says, this section has a lineup of settings that allow you to control how everything will sync from your PC to the iPhone. Let’s take them one by one:

• Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected: If enabled, syncing will trigger every time you connect your iPhone to the computer. But you should uncheck this if you find it annoying, use multiple computers with your phone, or prefer manual sync.
• Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi: Your iPhone will sync automatically when on the same Wi-Fi network as your computer. You don’t have to carry around a cable. Connect both devices to the same network and open iTunes on the computer to start syncing.
• Sync only checked songs and videos: Select this when you do not want to import every song or video from your PC. This is a good idea if you have a large music collection, as your iPhone storage is limited and it holds other kinds of data too. Reducing the list also shortens the time taken to sync.
• Prefer standard definition videos: Tick this option if you have both HD and standard-definition versions of a video, and you want only standard-definition videos to sync. Of course, this saves storage space. Also, you should check this if you notice too much of a difference in the smaller iPhone Retina displays.
• Convert higher bit rate songs to 128/192/256 kbps AAC: Again, this option helps conserve space if your songs are encoded in other audio formats or at higher bit rates, which can be larger in size. Songs bought on iTunes or Amazon Music have higher bit rates.
• Manually manage music and videos: Disables automatic syncing and allows you to manually sync videos and songs to your iPhone.
• Reset Warnings: You may have dismissed warnings (for instance, a song transfer failure) earlier by clicking the checkbox to never see the message again. See them again by clicking this button.

If you make any changes to these settings, the Sync button will change to Apply. Click Apply > Done to sync your phone. If you haven’t made any changes, just click on Done.

How to Sync iPhone to iTunes

Instead of grabbing everything, you can be selective about what you sync. The left panel in iTunes displays the different content types that can be a part of any two-way sync. Apple explains that you can sync these content types:

1. Photos and videos
2. Albums, songs, playlists, movies, TV shows, podcasts, books, and audiobooks
3. Device backups that you made using iTunes
4. Contacts and calendars

Once you understand which setting to select or unselect, the syncing process is simple to control. Let’s take the example of syncing music to your iPhone with iTunes.

How to Sync Music From iTunes to iPhone

First, connect your iPhone to your computer with a Lightning cable. Open iTunes if it does not launch automatically, then allow the trust permissions between the two devices. Next, click the iPhone icon at the upper-left corner of the iTunes window.

Go through the list of content types under Settings on the left side of the iTunes window. Select the Sync checkbox to turn on syncing for each content type, then choose the type of content that you want to sync or remove.

For instance, in the image below, I have selected a few specific playlists, artists, albums, and genres while keeping everything else unselected.

Click the Apply button in the lower-right corner of the screen. Syncing will start and you can see the progress at the top of the screen.

For syncing songs, there is one additional option you can consider. The Automatically fill free space with songs setting fills unused storage on your iPhone with music that you haven’t already synced.

Do note that you can only sync your iOS device with one iTunes library at a time. If you’ve synced your iPhone with iTunes on another computer, then you will see a message. You can replace that data with the new content on your current computer. Just click on the blue Erase and Sync button that’s in the message dialog.

How to Sync iPhone to iTunes Over Wi-Fi

If both devices are on the same network, then you can sync your iPhone and iTunes with Wi-Fi. You just need to change one simple setting.

1. Connect your iOS device to your computer with a USB cable.
2. Click the iPhone icon in iTunes. Then, go to Summary on the left sidebar of the iTunes window.
3. Scroll down to the Options. Check to select Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi.
4. Click Apply.

You have to use your Lightning cable only once to set up this method. Once the setting is enabled, the iPhone icon will always appear in iTunes when your PC and phone are on the same Wi-Fi network.

Sometimes your iPhone won’t sync with iTunes. If you have this problem, Apple has a short iTunes troubleshooting support page for the most common issues.

iPhone Syncing Made Easy

iTunes gets some bad rep for its design. But it gives you pretty solid granular control over what you want to sync. It’s not only a syncing platform, but also a failsafe for the precious assets on your phone. And there are ways to make iTunes easier to use and muffle a few of its annoyances.

Read the full article: How to Sync Your iPhone to iTunes and Back

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This 130-Hour Data Science Training Is 60% Off Today

From self-driving cars to financial forecasts, big data is the driving force behind a lot of emerging technology. And for obvious reasons, many companies are hiring data scientists. The good news is that you don’t need a degree to get into this lucrative field — just some knowledge and some certificates. The 2019 Certified Data Scientist Architect Bundle helps you acquire both, with over 130 hours of video tutorials working towards certification. You can get the training now for just $49 via MakeUseOf Deals — plus you can save an additional 60% off today with code WEEKEND60.

Data Science Education

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The training is split into six separate courses, each covering a different topic. Along the way, you learn how to work with professional data tools, including Tableau, SAS, Hadoop, MapReduce, and Apache Spark. You should come away with the skills to find your first data-related role.

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Read the full article: This 130-Hour Data Science Training Is 60% Off Today

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The latest modular Moto Z has a beefy battery and improved low-light camera

When it arrived in 2016, the Moto Z felt revolutionary — or, at the very least, novel. Motorola soon announced it was making the Moto Z its flagship device. In the intervening three years, the line has yet to set the world on fire.

It’s seemingly been a decent seller for the company, but with rare exceptions (as it happens, today is the second anniversary of the Essential announcement) the rest of the smartphone industry has yet to embrace the modular handset revolution.

It’s not for lack of trying, of course. Motorola’s released a wide range of Mods, including, most notably, a 5G unit, marking the first time that technology was widely available in North America. This morning the Lenovo-owned brand just announced the availability of the Moto Z4 (though not before the product accidentally went on sale at at least one retail location).

As ever, the latest version of the line points to one of the peculiarities of the modular phone concept, with upgraded base specs on a phone whose features rely largely on peripherals. Of course, the reasonable $499 starting price certainly cushions the blow a bit.

The base specs are a mixed bag. It’s got a 6.39-inch display, coupled with a middling Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 and a beefy 3,600mAh battery that the company rates at two days. The phone also adds a night-vision mode to the rear-facing 48 megapixel sensor.

The gray version of the handset starts shipping June 13, with a white model arriving over the summer. The unlocked version ships with a free Moto 360. Verizon’s also making the 5G Mod available for $200 (down from $350) for a limited time.

I’ll be spending more time with the phone in the near future — for now, however, it feels like Motorola’s most intriguing and promising handset is beginning to feel more and more like a middle of the road device.

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UK Internet attitudes study finds public support for social media regulation

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has published a new joint report and stat-fest on Internet attitudes and usage with the national data protection watchdog, the ICO — a quantitative study to be published annually which they’re calling the Online Nation report.

The new structure hints at the direction of travel for online regulation in the UK, following government plans set out in a recent whitepaper to regulate online harms — which will include creating a new independent regulator to ensure Internet companies meet their responsibilities.

Ministers are still consulting on whether this should be a new or existing body. But both Ofcom and the ICO have relevant interests in being involved — so it’s fitting to see joint working going into this report.

“As most of us spend more time than ever online, we’re increasingly worried about harmful content — and also more likely to come across it,” writes Yih-Choung Teh, group director of strategy and research at Ofcom, in a statement. “ For most people, those risks are still outweighed by the huge benefits of the internet. And while most internet users favour tighter rules in some areas, particularly social media, people also recognise the importance of protecting free speech – which is one of the internet’s great strengths.”

While it’s not yet clear exactly what form the UK’s future Internet regulator will take, the Online Nation report does suggest a flavor of the planned focus.

The report, which is based on responses from 2,057 adult internet users and 1,001 children, flags as a top-line finding that eight in ten adults have concerns about some aspects of Internet use and further suggests the proportion of adults concerned about going online has risen from 59% to 78% since last year (though its small-print notes this result is not directly comparable with last year’s survey so “can only be interpreted as indicative”).

Another stat being highlighted is a finding that 61% of adults have had a potentially harmful online experience in the past year — rising to 79% among children (aged 12-15). (Albeit with the caveat that it’s using a “broad definition”, with experiences ranging from “mildly annoying to seriously harmful”.)

While a full 83% of polled adults are found to have expressed concern about harms to children on the Internet.

The UK government, meanwhile, has made child safety a key focus of its push to regulate online content.

At the same time the report found that most adults (59%) agree that the benefits of going online outweigh the risks, and 61% of children think the internet makes their lives better.

While Ofcom’s annual Internet reports of years past often had a fairly dry flavor, tracking usage such as time spent online on different devices and particular services, the new joint study puts more of an emphasis on attitudes to online content and how people understand (or don’t) the commercial workings of the Internet — delving into more nuanced questions, such as by asking web users whether they understand how and why their data is collected, and assessing their understanding of ad-supported business models, as well as registering relative trust in different online services’ use of personal data.

The report also assesses public support for Internet regulation — and on that front it suggests there is increased support for greater online regulation in a range of areas. Specifically it found that most adults favour tighter rules for social media sites (70% in 2019, up from 52% in 2018); video-sharing sites (64% v. 46%); and instant-messaging services (61% v. 40%).

At the same time it says nearly half (47%) of adult internet users expressed recognition that websites and social media platforms play an important role in supporting free speech — “even where some people might find content offensive”. So the subtext there is that future regulation of harmful Internet content needs to strike the right balance.

On managing personal data, the report found most Internet users (74%) say they feel confident to do so. A majority of UK adults are also happy for companies to collect their information under certain conditions — vs over a third (39%) saying they are not happy for companies to collect and use their personal information.

Those conditions look to be key, though — with only small minorities reporting they are happy for their personal data to be used to program content (17% of adult Internet users were okay with this); and to target them with ads (only 18% didn’t mind that, so most do).

Trust in online services to protect user data and/or use it responsibly also varies significantly, per the report findings — with social media definitely in the dog house on that front. “Among ten leading UK sites, trust among users of these services was highest for BBC News (67%) and Amazon (66%) and lowest for Facebook (31%) and YouTube (34%),” the report notes.

Despite low privacy trust in tech giants, more than a third (35%) of the total time spent online in the UK is on sites owned by Google or Facebook.

“This reflects the primacy of video and social media in people’s online consumption, particularly on smartphones,” it writes. “Around nine in ten internet users visit YouTube every month, spending an average of 27 minutes a day on the site. A similar number visit Facebook, spending an average of 23 minutes a day there.”

And while the report records relatively high awareness that personal data collection is happening online — finding that 71% of adults were aware of cookies being used to collect information through websites they’re browsing (falling to 60% for social media accounts; and 49% for smartphone apps) — most (69%) also reported accepting terms and conditions without reading them.

So, again, mainstream public awareness of how personal data is being used looks questionable.

The report also flags limited understanding of how search engines are funded — despite the bald fact that around half of UK online advertising revenue comes from paid-for search (£6.7BN in 2018). “[T]here is still widespread lack of understanding about how search engines are funded,” it writes. “Fifty-four per cent of adult internet users correctly said they are funded by advertising, with 18% giving an incorrect response and 28% saying they did not know.”

The report also highlights the disconnect between time spent online and digital ad revenue generated by the adtech duopoly, Google and Facebook — which it says together generated an estimated 61% of UK online advertising revenue in 2018; a share of revenue that it points out is far greater than time spent (35%) on their websites (even as those websites are the most visited by adults in the UK).

As in previous years of Ofcom ‘state of the Internet’ reports, the Online Nation study also found that Facebook use still dominates the social media landscape in the UK.

Though use of the eponymous service continues falling (from 95% of social media users in 2016 to 88% in 2018). Even as use of other Facebook-owned social properties — Instagram and WhatsApp — grew over the same period.

The report also recorded an increase in people using multiple social services — with just a fifth of social media users only using Facebook in 2018 (down from 32% in 2018). Though as noted above, Facebook still dominates time spent, clocking up way more time (~23 minutes) per user per day on average vs Snapchat (around nine minutes) and Instagram (five minutes).  

A large majority (74%) of Facebook users also still check it at least once a day.

Overall, the report found that Brits have a varied online diet, though — on average spending a minute or more each day on 15 different internet sites and apps. Even as online ad revenues are not so equally distributed.

“Sites and apps that were not among the top 40 sites ranked by time spent accounted for 43% of average daily consumption,” the report notes. “Just over one in five internet users said that in the past month they had used ‘lots of websites or apps they’ve used before’ while a third (36%) said they ‘only use websites or apps they’ve used before’.”

There is also variety when it comes to how Brits search for stuff online, and while 97% of adult internet users still use search engines the report found a variety of other services also in the mix. 

It found that nearly two-thirds of people (65%) go more often to specific sites to find specific things, such as a news site for news stories or a video site for videos; while 30% of respondents said they used to have a search engine as their home page but no longer do.

The high proportion of searches being registered on shopping websites/apps (61%) also looks interesting in light of the 2017 EU antitrust ruling against Google Shopping — when the European Commission found Google had demoted rival shopping comparison services in search results, while promoting its own, thereby undermining rivals’ ability to gain traffic and brand recognition.

The report findings also indicate that use of voice-based search interfaces remains relatively low in the UK, with just 10% using voice assistants on a mobile phone — and even smaller percentages tapping into smart speakers (7%) or voice AIs on connected TVs (3%).

In another finding, the report suggests recommendation engines play a major part in content discovery.

“Recommendation engines are a key way for platforms to help people discover content and products — 70% of viewing to YouTube is reportedly driven by recommendations, while 35% of what consumers purchase on Amazon comes from recommendations,” it writes. 

In overarching aggregate, the report says UK adults now spend the equivalent of almost 50 days online per year.

While, each week, 44 million Brits use the internet to send or receive email; 29 million send instant messages; 30 million bank or pay bills via the internet; 27 million shop online; and 21 million people download information for work, school or university.

The full report can be found here.

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UK Internet attitudes study finds public support for social media regulation

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has published a new joint report and stat-fest on Internet attitudes and usage with the national data protection watchdog, the ICO — a quantitative study to be published annually which they’re calling the Online Nation report.

The new structure hints at the direction of travel for online regulation in the UK, following government plans set out in a recent whitepaper to regulate online harms — which will include creating a new independent regulator to ensure Internet companies meet their responsibilities.

Ministers are still consulting on whether this should be a new or existing body. But both Ofcom and the ICO have relevant interests in being involved — so it’s fitting to see joint working going into this report.

“As most of us spend more time than ever online, we’re increasingly worried about harmful content — and also more likely to come across it,” writes Yih-Choung Teh, group director of strategy and research at Ofcom, in a statement. “ For most people, those risks are still outweighed by the huge benefits of the internet. And while most internet users favour tighter rules in some areas, particularly social media, people also recognise the importance of protecting free speech – which is one of the internet’s great strengths.”

While it’s not yet clear exactly what form the UK’s future Internet regulator will take, the Online Nation report does suggest a flavor of the planned focus.

The report, which is based on responses from 2,057 adult internet users and 1,001 children, flags as a top-line finding that eight in ten adults have concerns about some aspects of Internet use and further suggests the proportion of adults concerned about going online has risen from 59% to 78% since last year (though its small-print notes this result is not directly comparable with last year’s survey so “can only be interpreted as indicative”).

Another stat being highlighted is a finding that 61% of adults have had a potentially harmful online experience in the past year — rising to 79% among children (aged 12-15). (Albeit with the caveat that it’s using a “broad definition”, with experiences ranging from “mildly annoying to seriously harmful”.)

While a full 83% of polled adults are found to have expressed concern about harms to children on the Internet.

The UK government, meanwhile, has made child safety a key focus of its push to regulate online content.

At the same time the report found that most adults (59%) agree that the benefits of going online outweigh the risks, and 61% of children think the internet makes their lives better.

While Ofcom’s annual Internet reports of years past often had a fairly dry flavor, tracking usage such as time spent online on different devices and particular services, the new joint study puts more of an emphasis on attitudes to online content and how people understand (or don’t) the commercial workings of the Internet — delving into more nuanced questions, such as by asking web users whether they understand how and why their data is collected, and assessing their understanding of ad-supported business models, as well as registering relative trust in different online services’ use of personal data.

The report also assesses public support for Internet regulation — and on that front it suggests there is increased support for greater online regulation in a range of areas. Specifically it found that most adults favour tighter rules for social media sites (70% in 2019, up from 52% in 2018); video-sharing sites (64% v. 46%); and instant-messaging services (61% v. 40%).

At the same time it says nearly half (47%) of adult internet users expressed recognition that websites and social media platforms play an important role in supporting free speech — “even where some people might find content offensive”. So the subtext there is that future regulation of harmful Internet content needs to strike the right balance.

On managing personal data, the report found most Internet users (74%) say they feel confident to do so. A majority of UK adults are also happy for companies to collect their information under certain conditions — vs over a third (39%) saying they are not happy for companies to collect and use their personal information.

Those conditions look to be key, though — with only small minorities reporting they are happy for their personal data to be used to program content (17% of adult Internet users were okay with this); and to target them with ads (only 18% didn’t mind that, so most do).

Trust in online services to protect user data and/or use it responsibly also varies significantly, per the report findings — with social media definitely in the dog house on that front. “Among ten leading UK sites, trust among users of these services was highest for BBC News (67%) and Amazon (66%) and lowest for Facebook (31%) and YouTube (34%),” the report notes.

Despite low privacy trust in tech giants, more than a third (35%) of the total time spent online in the UK is on sites owned by Google or Facebook.

“This reflects the primacy of video and social media in people’s online consumption, particularly on smartphones,” it writes. “Around nine in ten internet users visit YouTube every month, spending an average of 27 minutes a day on the site. A similar number visit Facebook, spending an average of 23 minutes a day there.”

And while the report records relatively high awareness that personal data collection is happening online — finding that 71% of adults were aware of cookies being used to collect information through websites they’re browsing (falling to 60% for social media accounts; and 49% for smartphone apps) — most (69%) also reported accepting terms and conditions without reading them.

So, again, mainstream public awareness of how personal data is being used looks questionable.

The report also flags limited understanding of how search engines are funded — despite the bald fact that around half of UK online advertising revenue comes from paid-for search (£6.7BN in 2018). “[T]here is still widespread lack of understanding about how search engines are funded,” it writes. “Fifty-four per cent of adult internet users correctly said they are funded by advertising, with 18% giving an incorrect response and 28% saying they did not know.”

The report also highlights the disconnect between time spent online and digital ad revenue generated by the adtech duopoly, Google and Facebook — which it says together generated an estimated 61% of UK online advertising revenue in 2018; a share of revenue that it points out is far greater than time spent (35%) on their websites (even as those websites are the most visited by adults in the UK).

As in previous years of Ofcom ‘state of the Internet’ reports, the Online Nation study also found that Facebook use still dominates the social media landscape in the UK.

Though use of the eponymous service continues falling (from 95% of social media users in 2016 to 88% in 2018). Even as use of other Facebook-owned social properties — Instagram and WhatsApp — grew over the same period.

The report also recorded an increase in people using multiple social services — with just a fifth of social media users only using Facebook in 2018 (down from 32% in 2018). Though as noted above, Facebook still dominates time spent, clocking up way more time (~23 minutes) per user per day on average vs Snapchat (around nine minutes) and Instagram (five minutes).  

A large majority (74%) of Facebook users also still check it at least once a day.

Overall, the report found that Brits have a varied online diet, though — on average spending a minute or more each day on 15 different internet sites and apps. Even as online ad revenues are not so equally distributed.

“Sites and apps that were not among the top 40 sites ranked by time spent accounted for 43% of average daily consumption,” the report notes. “Just over one in five internet users said that in the past month they had used ‘lots of websites or apps they’ve used before’ while a third (36%) said they ‘only use websites or apps they’ve used before’.”

There is also variety when it comes to how Brits search for stuff online, and while 97% of adult internet users still use search engines the report found a variety of other services also in the mix. 

It found that nearly two-thirds of people (65%) go more often to specific sites to find specific things, such as a news site for news stories or a video site for videos; while 30% of respondents said they used to have a search engine as their home page but no longer do.

The high proportion of searches being registered on shopping websites/apps (61%) also looks interesting in light of the 2017 EU antitrust ruling against Google Shopping — when the European Commission found Google had demoted rival shopping comparison services in search results, while promoting its own, thereby undermining rivals’ ability to gain traffic and brand recognition.

The report findings also indicate that use of voice-based search interfaces remains relatively low in the UK, with just 10% using voice assistants on a mobile phone — and even smaller percentages tapping into smart speakers (7%) or voice AIs on connected TVs (3%).

In another finding, the report suggests recommendation engines play a major part in content discovery.

“Recommendation engines are a key way for platforms to help people discover content and products — 70% of viewing to YouTube is reportedly driven by recommendations, while 35% of what consumers purchase on Amazon comes from recommendations,” it writes. 

In overarching aggregate, the report says UK adults now spend the equivalent of almost 50 days online per year.

While, each week, 44 million Brits use the internet to send or receive email; 29 million send instant messages; 30 million bank or pay bills via the internet; 27 million shop online; and 21 million people download information for work, school or university.

The full report can be found here.

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Apple, Google, Microsoft, WhatsApp sign open letter condemning GCHQ proposal to listen in on encrypted chats

An international coalition of civic society organizations, security and policy experts and tech companies — including Apple, Google, Microsoft and WhatsApp — has penned a critical slap-down to a surveillance proposal made last year by the UK’s intelligence agency, warning it would undermine trust and security and threaten fundamental rights.

“The GCHQ’s ghost protocol creates serious threats to digital security: if implemented, it will undermine the authentication process that enables users to verify that they are communicating with the right people, introduce potential unintentional vulnerabilities, and increase risks that communications systems could be abused or misused,” they wrire.

“These cybersecurity risks mean that users cannot trust that their communications are secure, as users would no longer be able to trust that they know who is on the other end of their communications, thereby posing threats to fundamental human rights, including privacy and free expression. Further, systems would be subject to new potential vulnerabilities and risks of abuse.”

GCHQ’s idea for a so-called ‘ghost protocol’ would be for state intelligence or law enforcement agencies to be invisibly CC’d by service providers into encrypted communications — on what’s billed as targeted, government authorized basis.

The agency set out the idea in an article published last fall on the Lawfare blog, written by the National Cyber Security Centre’s (NCSC) Ian Levy and GCHQ’s Crispin Robinson (NB: the NCSC is a public facing branch of GCHQ) — which they said was intended to open a discussion about the ‘going dark’ problem which robust encryption poses for security agencies.

The pair argued that such an “exceptional access mechanism” could be baked into encrypted platforms to enable end to end encryption to be bypassed by state agencies would could instruct the platform provider to add them as a silent listener to eavesdrop on a conversation — but without the encryption protocol itself being compromised.

“It’s relatively easy for a service provider to silently add a law enforcement participant to a group chat or call. The service provider usually controls the identity system and so really decides who’s who and which devices are involved — they’re usually involved in introducing the parties to a chat or call,” Levy and Robinson argued. “You end up with everything still being end-to-end encrypted, but there’s an extra ‘end’ on this particular communication. This sort of solution seems to be no more intrusive than the virtual crocodile clips that our democratically elected representatives and judiciary authorise today in traditional voice intercept solutions and certainly doesn’t give any government power they shouldn’t have.”

“We’re not talking about weakening encryption or defeating the end-to-end nature of the service. In a solution like this, we’re normally talking about suppressing a notification on a target’s device, and only on the device of the target and possibly those they communicate with. That’s a very different proposition to discuss and you don’t even have to touch the encryption.”

“[M]ass-scale, commodity, end-to-end encrypted services… today pose one of the toughest challenges for targeted lawful access to data and an apparent dichotomy around security,” they added.

However while encryption might technically remain intact in the scenario they sketch, their argument glosses over both the fact and risks of bypassing encryption via fiddling with authentication systems in order to enable deceptive third party snooping.

As the coalition’s letter points out, doing that would both undermine user trust and inject extra complexity — with the risk of fresh vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers.

Compromising authentication would also result in platforms themselves gaining a mechanism that they could use to snoop on users’ comms — thereby circumventing the wider privacy benefits provided by end to end encryption in the first place, perhaps especially when deployed on commercial messaging platforms.

So, in other words, just because what’s being asked for is not literally a backdoor in encryption that doesn’t mean it isn’t similarly risky for security and privacy and just as horrible for user trust and rights.

“Currently the overwhelming majority of users rely on their confidence in reputable providers to perform authentication functions and verify that the participants in a conversation are the people that they think they are, and only those people. The GCHQ’s ghost protocol completely undermines this trust relationship and the authentication process,” the coalition writes, also pointing out that authentication remains an active research area — and that work would likely dry up if the systems in question were suddenly made fundamentally untrustworthy on order of the state.

They further assert there’s no way for the security risk to be targeted to the individuals that state agencies want to specifically snoop on. Ergo, the added security risk is universal.

“The ghost protocol would introduce a security threat to all users of a targeted encrypted messaging application since the proposed changes could not be exposed only to a single target,” they warn. “In order for providers to be able to suppress notifications when a ghost user is added, messaging applications would need to rewrite the software that every user relies on. This means that any mistake made in the development of this new function could create an unintentional vulnerability that affects every single user of that application.”

There are more than 50 signatories to the letter in all, and others civic society and privacy rights groups Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, Liberty, Privacy International and the EFF, as well as veteran security professionals such as Bruce Schneier, Philip Zimmermann and Jon Callas, and policy experts such as former FTC CTO and Whitehouse security advisor, Ashkan Soltani.

While the letter welcomes other elements of the article penned by Levy and Robinson — which also set out a series of principles for defining a “minimum standard” governments should meet to have their requests accepted by companies in other countries (with the pair writing, for example, that “privacy and security protections are critical to public confidence” and “transparency is essential”) — it ends by urging GCHQ to abandon the ghost protocol idea altogether, and “avoid any alternative approaches that would similarly threaten digital security and human rights”.

Reached for a response to the coalition’s concerns, the NCSC sent us the following statement, attributed to Levy:

We welcome this response to our request for thoughts on exceptional access to data — for example to stop terrorists. The hypothetical proposal was always intended as a starting point for discussion.

It is pleasing to see support for the six principles and we welcome feedback on their practical application. We will continue to engage with interested parties and look forward to having an open discussion to reach the best solutions possible.

Back in 2016 the UK passed updated surveillance legislation that affords state agencies expansive powers to snoop on and hack into digital comms. And with such an intrusive regime in place it may seem odd that GCHQ is pushing for even greater powers to snoop on people’s digital chatter.

Even robust end-to-end encryption can include exploitable vulnerabilities. One bug was disclosed affecting WhatsApp just a couple of weeks ago, for example (since fixed via an update).

However in the Lawfare article the GCHQ staffers argue that “lawful hacking” of target devices is not a panacea to governments’ “lawful access requirements” because it would require governments have vulnerabilities on the shelf to use to hack devices — which “is completely at odds with the demands for governments to disclose all vulnerabilities they find to protect the population”.

“That seems daft,” they conclude.

Yet it also seems daft — and predictably so — to suggest a ‘sidedoor’ in authentication systems as an alternative to a backdoor in encrypted messaging apps.

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