Wednesday 31 January 2018

ECT News Network Weekly Newsletter

ECT News Network Weekly Newsletter: Wednesday -- January 31, 2018

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This Week's Top News Headlines From the E-Commerce Times

Apple May Be Gearing Up to Crack E-Books
(Posted 31-Jan-18)
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/85098.html

Don't Pay the Hackers
(Posted 30-Jan-18)
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/85095.html

Google's Ad Mute Option Could Be a Valuable Messaging Tool
(Posted 26-Jan-18)
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/85090.html

AT&T Raises Eyebrows With Call for Internet Bill of Rights
(Posted 25-Jan-18)
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/85091.html

This Week's Top News Headlines From TechNewsWorld

Alphabet's New Chronicle Promises to Speed Threat Data Analysis
(Posted 30-Jan-18)
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/85096.html

The Ironic Weirdness of Apple and Intel vs. Qualcomm
(Posted 29-Jan-18)
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/85092.html

NYC Data Science Academy CTO Vivian Zhang: Do the Difficult Things First
(Posted 26-Jan-18)
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/85058.html

Apple Spotlights Key iOS 11.3 Features
(Posted 25-Jan-18)
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/85085.html

Intel Reports Progress on Patch-Related Performance Issues
(Posted 25-Jan-18)
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/85089.html

This Week's Top News Headlines From CRM Buyer

The Top 20 CRM Blogs of 2017: Countdown, Part 2
(Posted 31-Jan-18)
http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/85097.html

Self-Service AI Aims to Grease the Wheels for B2B Sales Teams
(Posted 26-Jan-18)
http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/85093.html

This Week's Top News Headlines From LinuxInsider

Free Linux Tool Monitors Systems for Meltdown Attacks
(Posted 27-Jan-18)
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/85094.html

SolydXK Plasma Rewards Effort With Stunning Results
(Posted 25-Jan-18)
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/85088.html

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The Morning After: Super Moon Xtreme Championship Edition

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Wednesday, January 31, 2018.

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

As we bid farewell to cold, frosty January and welcome slightly-less-cold February, we’re banging our heads against earnings season. Samsung and Nintendo both have good news for shareholders and fans, and there’s a special Super Blue Blood Moon lunar eclipse happening this morning -- tune in live to see its peak at 8:29 AM ET.

Like everyone expected, but in half the time.

Nintendo Switch sales have surpassed the Wii U

Nintendo had a stellar holiday quarter, shifting 7.23 million Switch consoles and bringing lifetime sales to 14.86 million already. In short, the company almost doubled its user-base in a single three-month period. The Wii U, for comparison, sold 13.56 million total -- a paltry sum in comparison to the Wii's 101.63 million units.

In light of these results, Nintendo has revised its forecast for the financial year: It expects to make 160 billion yen ($1.47 billion). That's a 33.3 percent increase on its previous profit forecast -- and it seems pretty viable. The company just has to keep the hit games coming.

AI-generated porn is just the beginning.

Fake porn is the new fake news, and the internet isn’t ready

Ever since Facebook finally admitted to having a fake news problem, it's been trying to fix it. It hired thousands of people to help block fake ads, pledged to work with third-party fact-checking organizations and is busy building algorithms to detect fake news. But even as it attempts to fight back against fraudulent ads and made-up facts, another potential fake-news threat looms on the horizon: artificially generated fake video.

Motherboard recently uncovered a disturbing new trend on Reddit, where users create AI-generated pornographic clips by transferring other people's faces on to porn stars. The outlet first reported on the phenomenon a month ago when Reddit user deepfakes posted a video of Gal Gadot's face swapped on to a porn star's body (he's since created more fake porn with other celebrities). The video was created with machine learning algorithms, easily accessible open-source libraries and images from Google, stock photos and YouTube videos. It’s a worrying new development.

It looks, smells and feels great, but...

Azio's Retro Classic keyboard is luxurious, but imperfect

Senior editor Daniel Cooper has an unusual love for ostentatious mechanical keyboards. The madder the design and the louder its keys, the more he wants it. So here’s Azio's latest offering: The Retro Classic is a USB or Bluetooth-equipped input device styled to make a steampunk faint in admiration. So he had to have it.

Monitor your home – anytime, from anywhere

It wasn't an accidental click as initially claimed.

FCC: Officer behind Hawaii false missile alert thought it was real

The FCC has published the preliminary findings of its investigation into Hawaii's false missile alert, and it suggests the story didn't play out as you might have heard. The FCC said the officer fully intended to send the alert -- after misinterpreting a mangled message. The midnight shift supervisor had apparently played a standard recording that included both the usual "exercise, exercise, exercise" language and the text from a real Emergency Alert System message, which includes "this is not a drill." Although other officers saw this was a drill, the one who clicked the alert was convinced it was real.

For better or worse, policy still heavily impacts the energy industry.

The state of solar installers after Trump’s tariff

Two days after President Donald Trump signed hefty tariffs on imported solar panels, a five-man team was hauling slabs of them up the outside of a brownstone in Brooklyn's Sunset Park. The team from Brooklyn SolarWorks, an installation company with 21 full-time employees, finished the job around sunset. The contract cost about $27,000. But James Luria, a media consultant who has only owned the house for six months, expects to pay around $3,000 for the installation. "It was the obvious thing to do," Luria said.

Among the reasons for the cut price: a 30 percent federal tax credit, 25 percent New York state credit, 20 percent off property tax in New York City and a net-metering policy that allows homes to sell their excess solar power back to the grid.

What scandal?

Samsung sets record Q4 profits ahead of Galaxy S9 launch

Samsung's head honcho was found guilty of bribery last year, and its vice-chairman stepped down due to an "unprecedented crisis," but that didn't affect the Korean conglomerate's cashflow at all. In fact, the company did very well in the fourth quarter of 2017 and the year as a whole: It posted a $14 billion operating profit for the quarter and $50 billion for 2017, thanks mostly to its strong chip and display business. That dwarfs its $8 billion operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2016, though that year's earnings were admittedly tainted by the Note 7 fiasco.

But wait, there's more...

1. EA delays 'Anthem' until 2019

2. Mazda says next-gen gasoline engine as clean as an EV, well-to-wheels

3. Get a glimpse of Netflix's latest sci-fi movie, 'Mute'

4. Missouri wants to bring Hyperloop to the midwest

5. Amazon gets into healthcare with Warren Buffet and JPMorgan

The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you'll miss if you don't subscribe.

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Tuesday 30 January 2018

The Morning After: Waymo loads up on self-driving vans

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Tuesday, January 30, 2018.

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

It’s Tuesday. We have a patch to unpatch your patch, and Dell might reverse-merger itself back into existence as a publicly-traded company. Yeah, you read that correctly.

Please apply to the damaged area.

Microsoft's new Windows 10 Spectre patch disables Intel's fix

Unfortunately, Intel’s recent patch for the Spectre CPU issue caused spontaneous reboots, so now Microsoft has released a Windows patch that essentially undoes the fix. If you’ve already applied Intel’s update, it should solve the rebooting problem until Intel applies a new, better patch.

You know what a reverse merger is, right?

Dell may sell itself to VMware

The thing is, Dell owns 80 percent of VMware. If the company takes this path, then it would let Dell become a public company again without having to go through an IPO.

Like Uber, but without the human interaction.

Waymo orders thousands of Chrysler vans for self-driving taxi service

Alphabet’s self-driving-car arm already picked up 600 autonomous-ready Pacificas from Fiat-Chrysler, and last night the two announced a deal for “thousands” more. The new vans will be deployed in cities across the US later this year to support “the world’s first driverless ride-hailing service.”

Monitor your home – anytime, from anywhere

The definitive super multi breakdown.

What is a game-of-the-year edition, anyway?

What, exactly, does it mean to be a game of the year? And according to who, exactly? Is there a regulating body that protects consumers from games that were not, in fact, that good? You might think of the ‘Game of the Year’ term as an implication of quality, right? It turns out that -- like most marketing -- it's largely meaningless.

Everyone thinks this is a bad idea, including, apparently, the White House.

Trump team considered a government-run 5G network

A couple of days ago, documents leaked showing the Trump administration's national security team had a plan for a government-created 5G network. Now, sources tell Recode that those documents were outdated and are no longer under consideration. In between those reports, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai came out against the plan-that-apparently-isn’t. As you were.

Set your alarm.

NASA will stream Wednesday’s rare blue-moon lunar eclipse

On Wednesday, parts of the US will get to view a very special lunar eclipse -- this one combines a total eclipse with a supermoon and a blue moon. However, only Hawaii, Alaska and the west coast will get to see the eclipse since it will reach totality at 8:29 AM ET, so NASA will stream video of the event online from locations in California and Arizona.

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