At CES 2017, Honda’s theme will be a “cooperative mobility ecosystem,” a confluence of last year’s two showstoppers: autonomous driving and the rise of artificial intelligence. These arenas could foster mass adoption of differential privacy. Data aggregation is critical to the success of autonomous driving, and the AI-centric, newly coined notion of autonomous living, but this collection requires user buy-in. With nearly half of all Internet users expressing that privacy and security concerns are limiting their use of the Internet, new means of protecting user data will be a key theme throughout CES. Continue reading CES Will Showcase Differential Privacy for Autonomous Living

In September, Yahoo revealed a 2014 security breach that involved 500,000 of its users’ accounts. Now the company has announced an even larger data breach from 2013 involving more than one billion accounts, including those of more than 150,000 government and military employees. “The two attacks are the largest known security breaches of one company’s computer network,” reports The New York Times. “The newly disclosed 2013 attack involved sensitive user information, including names, telephone numbers, dates of birth, encrypted passwords and unencrypted security questions that could be used to reset a password.” Continue reading Yahoo: Second Data Breach Involves 1 Billion User Accounts

Google unveiled Android Things yesterday, currently available as a developer preview. The comprehensive IoT platform was designed to help developers build smart devices to work with Android APIs and Google services. According to TechCrunch, the platform “combines Google’s earlier efforts around Brillo with its Android developer tools like Android Studio, the Android SDK, Google Play Services and Google’s cloud computing services.” A future developer preview will include “support for Weave, Google’s IoT communications platform that (together with Brillo) makes up Google’s answer to Apple’s HomeKit.” Continue reading Android Things: Google Rolls Out IoT Platform for Developers

Alphabet recently unveiled a system of tools called Conversation Actions, designed to help developers create chatbots that work with Google Assistant. The move is the latest by Google to compete in the emerging digital assistant space with companies such as Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook that are investing heavily in artificial intelligence. Google’s virtual assistant “is the strategic centerpiece of an effort to keep its lucrative Web search business relevant in an age of mobile devices and wearable gadgets,” reports Bloomberg. “Just like its search engine sent people to the right places on the Web, the company’s assistant should connect users to the most relevant and useful services.” Continue reading Google Tools Encourage Developers to Create More Chatbots

With the launch of Bluetooth 5, Internet connectivity is expected to be greatly improved. According to the Bluetooth SIG, which oversees the standard first announced earlier in 2016, Bluetooth 5, in its low-energy format, will enjoy twice the speed and up to four times the distance of today’s version. Manufacturers are just beginning to develop Bluetooth 5-compliant devices, which will be introduced into the market in the next two to six months, with the added prediction that “major products” could debut by the end of 2017. Continue reading Bluetooth 5 Aims to Increase Speed, Reliability of IoT Devices

Hulu has joined Netflix and Amazon in offering select titles in 4K. Subscribers with a Microsoft Xbox One S or Sony PlayStation 4 Pro console (and a minimum connection speed of 13 megabits per second) can now enjoy James Bond films and original Hulu series in the Ultra HD format. Netflix and Amazon also offer select high dynamic range content. Meanwhile, YouTube — which first introduced 4K support to its video-sharing site in 2010 — is now bringing the same capability to live streaming of 4K and 360 videos. The feature should help the site compete with Facebook and Twitter in the live streaming space. Continue reading Hulu Launches Ultra HD, YouTube Supports 4K Live Streaming

A future ambient business model would change the way we think about screens, mobile and IoT in a post-device world — an emerging reality that we expect to see illustrated at CES 2017. Recently, a look at what it means for businesses to operate in a post-device world has surfaced in forward-thinking analyses. Specifically, some reports have examined how Apple continues to prosper as customers increasingly do almost everything on anything. At UBS, analyst Steve Milunovich thinks Apple is already moving towards an ambient (present on all sides) paradigm, with a proliferation of devices that increasingly allow you to interoperate seamlessly across a full range of digital formats. In this new paradigm, the real growth will likely be extensions of services. Continue reading Ambient Paradigm Has Implications for Media & Entertainment

Facebook is reportedly working on a new feature, dubbed Collections, that presents curated content from publishers in News Feed. Collections is similar to Snapchat’s Discover section, where selected news outlets can showcase news stories, videos and other content. The move is seen both as another way that Facebook is copying rival Snapchat, and, at the same time, battling the scourge of fake news that came to the fore during the U.S. presidential election. Facebook did not comment on the development. Continue reading Facebook to Enable Curated News Collections for News Feed

Facebook, which is currently ranked second in Internet advertising, is reaching saturation with its ads, prompting chief financial officer David Wehner to declare that the company’s revenue growth will “meaningfully” slow in 2017. That’s forcing Facebook to experiment with more creative ways to boost ad revenue than simply pushing quantity. To that end, the company is experimenting with targeting customized ads based on the Facebook profiles tied to the IP addresses streaming shows to peoples’ Roku or Apple TV boxes. Continue reading Facing Ad Saturation, Facebook Is Now Forced to Get Creative

Amazon Web Services just unveiled AWS Shield, a service to protect its customers against distributed denial-of-service attacks, which push websites offline by overwhelming them with junk data. Last month, such cyberattacks made numerous popular websites unavailable. Amazon is offering two levels of service, Standard and Advanced, both of which are available now. The Standard option is a default service to AWS customers at no extra charge, and the Advanced service costs $3,000 per month plus data-related charges. Continue reading AWS Shield Aims to Protect Against Denial-of-Service Attacks

An international team of law enforcement agencies and security firms just took down “Avalanche,” a botnet that has been engaged in phishing attacks and at least 17 different malware families since at least late 2009. The team took offline more than 221 servers and more than 800,000 domain names used by Avalanche, and conducted searches and arrests in five countries, according to a statement released by the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice. Avalanche malware impacted victims in over 180 countries. Continue reading International Law Enforcement Takes Down Avalanche Botnet

Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s powerful cloud-computing network, has been a leader in moving massive amounts of data from customers’ data centers into the cloud, posting more than $12 billion in revenue in 2016. Now, Amazon is proposing a surprisingly low-tech way of moving that data from customers’ data centers: trucks. At its annual customer conference in Las Vegas, Amazon unveiled a big rig with a 45-foot shipping container, dubbed Snowmobile, that holds 100 petabytes of data (a petabyte equals about 1 million gigabytes). Continue reading Amazon Trucks Data to the Cloud and Introduces AI Solutions

Copyright infringement on the Internet is surging. Over the last year, copyright holders asked Google to remove more than one billion links from its search engine results. That makes a total of two billion that Google has received over the years. But whereas the first billion accumulated over several years, the second billion took a mere 12 months. Of the 1,007,741,143 infringing links, Google removed more than 90 percent, which comes to 908,237,861. The remaining links were either not valid, not infringements or duplicates. Continue reading Big Surge in Pirated Links Brings DMCA Efficacy into Question

Dish’s Sling TV is launching a cloud DVR feature, to better compete with Sony PlayStation Vue and other companies that already offer that capability. The new feature will allow consumers to record TV shows and movies for later viewing, and is slated to go into beta in December, according to Sling. The beta test is at first only available to those accessing Sling TV through Roku devices. To sweeten the deal, Sling says its recordings will not expire after 28 days, the length of time that PlayStation Vue saves them. Continue reading Dish’s Sling TV Introduces Beta Test of a Cloud DVR Feature

Warner Bros. announced its plan to purchase the rest of gamer-centric YouTube network Machinima, which the studio first invested in two years ago. The digital media company will join the recently created Warner Bros. Digital Networks arm to help the studio develop new digital and over-the-top offerings. “With Machinima now wholly under its control, Warner Bros. hopes to tap deeper into the network’s loyal audience of young consumers who devour video game-related programming — especially content related to Warner’s own franchises including DC,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Machinima also “provides video programming for services including Playstation Vue, Amazon Prime and the CW network.” Continue reading Warner Bros. Acquires Machinima for Digital Networks Division