Month: March 2018

New story in Technology from Time: Lindsay Lohan’s Lawsuit Against Grand Theft Auto 5 Was Just Shot Down

Lindsay Lohan’s case against Take-Two Interactive over a Grand Theft Auto 5 character was rejected by New York state’s highest court.

Lohan’s suit claimed that the Grand Theft Auto 5 character Lacey Jonas, who appears in an in-game event, was an unlawful use of her likeness.

A New York Supreme Court judge ruled against Lohan, Polygon reported, which was upheld by the Court of Appeals. The question came down to whether Lacey Jones, which was also heavily featured on promotional materials the box and disc art for the game, could be considered a portrait of Lohan. The courts ultimately decided that it did not noting that the characterization was “indistinct, satirical representations of the style, look, and persona of a modern, beach-going young woman that are not reasonably identifiable as plaintiff.”

However, the ruling does note that video game characters can serve as a likeness, similar to photographs and other depictions, even if the Lacey Jones character did not apply to Lohan.

Lohan has the option to appeal to the United State Supreme Court, Polygon notes, but she would have to prove that the state’s privacy laws conflict with Constitutional law or precedent.

New story in Technology from Time: Mark Zuckerberg Defends Facebook After a Controversial Memo Called for Growth At All Costs

A controversial memo written by a top Facebook insider is causing a ruckus inside and outside the company as it continues to deal with the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its handling of users’ personal information more broadly.

The memo, written by Facebook Vice President Andrew “Boz” Bosworth in 2016 and titled “The Ugly,” argues that Facebook’s goal should be connecting people even if it “costs a life by exposing someone to bullies” or “someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.” The memo, originally viewable only to Facebook employees, was obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg quickly responded to the memo’s publication, arguing its contents do not reflect the company’s true ethos.

“We’ve never believed the ends justify the means,” Zuckerberg said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “We recognize that connecting people isn’t enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together. We changed our whole mission and company focus to reflect this last year.”

Zuckerberg also said the Bosworth is “a talented leader who says many provocative things,” and that the memo is something “that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly.”

Bosworth himself walked back the memo, saying in a tweet that “I don’t agree with the post today and I didn’t agree with it even when I wrote it.” Instead, he characterized the note as an effort to surface “hard topics” for internal discussion among Facebook employees.

Bosworth’s memo was first published one day after a Chicago man was shot and killed in an incident streamed on Facebook Live, the company’s livestreaming platform.

New story in Technology from Time: Review: Apple’s New, Cheaper iPad Is Perfect If You Don’t Need the Pro

The good: Apple Pencil support, Affordable price, Good performance
The bad: Screen isn’t as nice as the iPad Pro’s, Fingerprint sensor sometimes feels slow
Who it’s for: Those who want an affordable tablet for entertainment or have been interested in the Apple Pencil but aren’t willing to splurge on the iPad Pro.

If the iPad Pro is the computer Apple hopes will replace your laptop, its newest iPad is for everything else.

On March 27, Apple unveiled a new iPad at an education-focused event held at a high school in Chicago. During the event, Apple pitched the iPad as a tool for students, showcasing new digital tools for teachers and educational augmented reality apps. But you’d be remiss for thinking it’s just for the classroom: Apple’s new tablet is an upgraded version of the $329 9.7-inch iPad it sells alongside the iPad Pro and iPad mini.

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The biggest difference between this new iPad and its 9.7-inch predecessor is the addition of Apple Pencil support; the company’s stylus tool was previously only usable with Apple’s more expensive iPad Pro tablets. The updated iPad also includes a faster A10 chipset, which is the same processor that powers the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, whereas the last model used an older A9.

Since the new $329 iPad is now compatible with the Apple Pencil, you may be left wondering what makes it different from the $649 iPad Pro of a similar size. Visually, the most obvious discrepancies between the two tablets are the sizes of their screens: The new cheaper iPad has a 9.7-inch display, whereas the Pro has a slightly larger 10.5-inch screen with a thinner border. And while the new 9.7-inch iPad works with the Apple Pencil, it does not support Apple’s Smart Keyboard — to type on a physical keyboard using the new iPad, you’ll need to purchase a third-party Bluetooth keyboard.

The other differences are in the details. The iPad Pro has a faster A10X Fusion processor and a more advanced display that can show a wider range of colors; it also includes Apple’s TrueTone technology, which adjusts the screen’s color temperature based on the surrounding lighting. The more expensive iPad Pro also has sharper cameras than the new 9.7-inch iPad and can shoot 4K video. There are only two speakers on the 9.7-inch iPad, while the Pro has four.

Read more: Why Classrooms Are Apple, Microsoft, and Google’s Next Big Battleground

How much those differences actually matter in daily use is debatable, and will depend on what you intend to do with your iPad. After using the new iPad alongside the 10.5-inch Pro for two days, the biggest difference I noticed was in the screen. The iPad Pro’s TrueTone technology gives off a look that’s generally warmer and is sometimes easier on the eyes when reading, sometimes making the 9.7-inch iPad’s screen look washed out in comparison. The iPad Pro offers more contrast that’s noticeable when looking at backgrounds that are dark or white, probably thanks in part to its wider color gamut. That’s not to say the 9.7-inch iPad’s screen is poor; it just looks noticeably different than the iPad Pro’s by comparison in certain scenarios. Those who intend to use their iPad for basic tasks like playing mobile games, reading, and watching Netflix probably won’t mind this trade-off. That being said, the Pro is significantly louder than the non-Pro version because of its extra speakers, which can be important if you frequently listen to music or watch movies on your iPad without headphones.

On a device like the iPad, one could argue that the front-facing camera is more important than the main camera, considering you’re more likely to use a tablet for video chatting than taking photos. That’s why I was apprehensive when I discovered the new iPad would only have a 1.2-megapixel selfie camera, which sounded like it would be a significant step down from the iPad Pro’s 7-megapixel camera. Self-portraits taken on the new iPad had more grain than those shot on the iPad Pro, but that was only truly noticeable when zooming in on the picture.

Read more: The 3 Biggest Things Apple May Be About to Announce

You may not be snapping photos with your iPad very often, but Apple has made it clear that the camera on its new tablet will have another important job: Powering augmented reality apps. During its presentation, Apple demonstrated how education-oriented augmented reality apps could be used on the iPad to closely examine works of art or digitally dissect a frog. Although the iPad Pro has a better camera and a more advanced processor, I didn’t notice any difference in performance when using augmented reality apps on the iPad Pro versus the new 9.7-inch iPad. On both tablets, apps like LEGO AR Studios and WWF Free Rivers (which provides a three-dimensional landscape for learning about the environment) looked just about identical. The iPad Pro may sometimes feel a bit snappier when switching between apps and home screens, but there weren’t any noticeable performance dips. The only somewhat noticeable difference in performance was in the new iPad’s home button, which sometimes felt a bit sluggish compared to the Pro’s since it uses Apple’s older technology.

Overall, Apple’s newest iPad is worth considering if you don’t want to splurge on the iPad Pro and simply want a decent tablet for reading, browsing the web, checking emails, and streaming video. One of the biggest sacrifices you would have made by opting for the standard model over the Pro no longer exists now that Apple has added support for the Apple Pencil. Yes, there are little compromises here and there: The screen isn’t as nice as that of the iPad Pro, the speakers aren’t as loud, and you’ll have to settle for a Bluetooth keyboard if you’re planning to get any work done. But for all of the most common reasons you may want an iPad, Apple’s new model checks all the right boxes.

4 out of 5 stars. Buy Now: Apple iPad, $329 and up, Apple

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New story in Technology from Time: Under Armour Data Breach Exposes 150 Million MyFitnessPal Accounts

Under Armour notified users of its MyFitnessPal app of a security breach affecting 150 million users on Thursday.

Under Armour learned on March 25 that “an unauthorized party acquired data associated with MyFitnessPal user accounts in late February 2018,” the company said in a release. Four days later, Under Armour contacted MyFitnessPal users through email and the app’s messaging system. The company is requiring users to change their passwords and recommended they do so as soon as possible.

Users’ usernames, email addresses and passwords were affected, but Under Armour says no payment information was affected by the data breach because it is collected and processed separately.

How to Change Your MyFitnessPal Password

To change your MyFitnessPal password, go to the app or website, click the “My Home” tab, then “Settings” and then “Change password.”

Users who have forgotten their password and want to change it can go to “Forgot password or username” at the sign in screen on the app and website. This will also change the user’s password on MapMyFitness and other apps from the company.

Users’ usernames, email addresses and passwords were affected, but Under Armour says no payment information was affected by the data breach because it is collected and processed separately.

New story in Technology from Time: Airbnb Will Start Sharing Guest Data in China With Chinese Authorities

Planning to book an Airbnb on your next trip to China? Now the Chinese government will know where you stay.

Airbnb told its hosts in China this week that it would start sharing user data with Chinese government agencies to comply with the country’s regulations, Reuters reports. China requires all hotels to report guest information to the police, and travelers staying in private homes are supposed to register that information within 24 hours of arriving in the country.

With its new policy, Airbnb will automatically send data, including passports and booking dates, to the Chinese government instead of relying on individual hosts to submit guest information, according to Bloomberg. The announcement came in an email to hosts this week.

“Like all businesses operating in China, Airbnb China must comply with local laws and regulations, including privacy and information disclosure laws,” the company said in the email.

It added that the data collection is “similar to other hospitality companies that do business in China.”

Airbnb has faced tough competition from rivals like Tujia.com and Xiaozhu.com as it expands in China. Those companies also comply with the country’s strict rules.

In recent years, Airbnb has taken other steps to follow China’s regulations and succeed there. In 2016, it created a new business entity in China to handle its operations there and began storing data locally, which the country requires.

Other companies have made similar moves, with Apple announcing last month that it would transfer iCloud accounts registered in China to Chinese-run servers at the end of February.

Airbnb has been growing in China, with 150,000 active listings, according to Bloomberg. And while some users are likely to have concerns about data privacy under its new policy, the company said it is doing what it needs to do to continue operating in China.

New story in Technology from Time: Apple Is Releasing a New Battery Tool to Fix Your Slow iPhone

Apple incited outrage — and a U.S. Department of Justice investigation — late last year when it confirmed that it had been slowing down aging iPhones in an effort to preserve battery life and prevent unexpected shutdowns.

Now, a new function included in the company’s upcoming operating system, iOS 11.3, will allow you to de-throttle your phone if you so choose.

The Battery Health tool, which is currently available in the operating system’s beta release, will tell you how well your battery functions and whether the speed-slowing power management feature has been activated on your device, according to an announcement from Apple. If that feature is on, you’ll be given the option to turn it off — though CNET notes that it will automatically reactivate if your phone does begin to turn itself off due to battery health issues.

apple-battery-health
Image via Apple

The new performance management deature will default to off when devices update to iOS 11.3, according to Apple support, though it will turn back on if there is a subsequent unexpected shutdown.

Battery Health will be available on any model later than the iPhone 6, and can be found in the “Battery” section of the “Settings” menu. But the service is currently only available in beta, and user who want it will have to install that version of the software.

And if Battery Health reveals that your aging iPhone’s power source is on the wane, you can restore some of its function with Apple’s $29 battery fix, which the company rolled out during last year’s phone-slowing saga.

New story in Technology from Time: All the Celebrities and Companies Cutting Ties With Facebook Because of Privacy Concerns

The #DeleteFacebook movement is expected to pick up another high-profile member by the end of this week when famous funny man Will Ferrell quits the social network.

On Tuesday, Ferrell made an announcement—on Facebook, somewhat ironically—that he would be deleting his profile within 72 hours. Ferrell wrote that he “always had an aversion to social media,” and that he was quitting Facebook because of revelations that the social media platform allegedly allowed a company called Cambridge Analytica to improperly gather users’ data for political purposes.

“I know I am not alone when I say that I was very disturbed to hear about Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of millions of Facebook users’ information in order to undermine our democracy and infringe on our citizens’ privacy,” wrote Ferrell, best known for performances on Saturday Night Live and in movies like Anchor Man and Elf. “I can no longer, in good conscience, use the services of a company that allowed the spread of propaganda and directly aimed it at those most vulnerable.”

As the Cambridge Analytica scandal has grown, and the responses of Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg have failed to satisfy users, the #DeleteFacebook hashtag has gone viral. Investors have soured on Facebook as well, hence the steep drop in Facebook shares and the personal net worth of Zuckerberg.

Thus far, no major politicians have quit Facebook—and it seems highly unlikely that any will. While many political leaders have criticized the social network recently, and have called Zuckerberg to testify before Congress, political candidates and incumbents probably won’t delete their accounts because they find Facebook “virtually indispensable,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “On a basic, public level, Facebook serves as an online bulletin board for campaign events and a way for supporters—and potential supporters—to weigh in on issues. It helps campaigns recruit volunteers and get voters to the polls on election day.”

Still, when Ferrell officially deletes his account, he will be joining a growing list of celebrities and brands that are deciding to cut ties with Facebook due to the alleged data breaches. Here are some of the stars and brands who have quit Facebook entirely, as well as a few that have stopped advertising on the social network:

Jim Carrey

The actor and comedian was ahead of the curve with his decision in early February to delete his Facebook page and sell his stock in the company. (In retrospect, the latter was a very wise move—Facebook stock has since fallen more than 15%.)

Elon Musk, Tesla, and Space X

Tesla and Space X founder Musk was called out on Twitter last week to delete his company’s Facebook pages—and then Musk promptly responded by doing just that.

Cher

The actress and singer admitted that it was hard for her to quit Facebook, but said that it was the right thing to do. Apparently, she must be talking about her personal Facebook account, because the professional Facebook page where information is posted about Cher concerts and merchandise is very much alive.

Playboy

Cooper Hefner, the son of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and current chief creative officer of the company, said on Wednesday that Playboy was suspending all activity on Facebook.

Pep Boys

The auto parts retailer announced earlier this week that it would suspend advertising on Facebook in the wake of the data breach scandal. “We are concerned about the issues surrounding Facebook and have decided to suspend all media on the platform until the facts are out and corrective actions have been taken,” Pep Boys chief marketing officer Danielle Porto Mohn said in a statement.

Mozilla

The software firm Mozilla, perhaps most best known for its Firefox browser, announced last week that it was “pressing pause” on Facebook advertising due to growing concern about the social network’s privacy policies. “While we believe there is still more to learn, we found that its current default settings leave access open to a lot of data—particularly with respect to settings for third party apps,” a statement from Mozilla said.

Sonos

In a blog post, the wireless sound system firm Sonos said that it is suspending advertising this week not only on Facebook, but Instagram, Google, and Twitter as well. “The Cambridge Analytica scandal, like many recent headlines coming out of Silicon Valley, raises questions about whether Big Tech is doing enough to balance its own interests with one of its biggest responsibilities: Safeguarding your privacy,” the company said. Instead of spending money on advertising, Sonos said it’s making a donation to RightsCon, a conference focused on defending the rights of everyone in the digital age.

New story in Technology from Time: As Facebook Struggles With Privacy, Adobe Announces It’s Helping Companies Track People Across Devices

Some 60 companies including such leading brands as Subway, Sprint and the NFL are joining forces to help each other follow you around online.

Adobe, a company better known for Photoshop and PDF files, says the new Device Co-op initiative it is organizing will help companies offer more personalized experiences and make ads less annoying by filtering out products and services you have already bought or will never buy. Under the initiative, Adobe can tell you’re the same person on a home PC, a work laptop, a phone and a tablet by analyzing past sign-ins with member companies.

The initiative comes amid heightened privacy sensitivities after reports that Facebook allowed a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, to harvest data on millions of Facebook users to influence elections. Facebook also has been criticized for collecting call and text logs from phones running Google’s Android system.

Adobe’s initiative underscores the role data plays in helping companies make money. Many of the initial uses are for better ad targeting.

The company timed Wednesday’s announcement to a digital marketing conference it is hosting this week in Las Vegas. Adobe executives said they believed their initiative offers strong privacy safeguards and weren’t worried about a backlash in light of the Facebook scandal.

“With this stuff coming out now around Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, the bar has to be so high in terms of privacy,” Adobe executive Amit Ahuja said.

Adobe says no personal data is being exchanged among participating companies, which also include Allstate, Lenovo, Intel, Barnes & Noble, Subaru and the Food Network. Adobe says the program links about 300 million consumers across nearly 2 billion devices in the U.S. and Canada.

The program would let Sprint, for instance, know that Bob is already a customer when he visits from a new device. Bob wouldn’t get a promotion to switch from another carrier, but might get instead a phone upgrade offer. Or if Mary has declared herself a Giants fan on the NFL’s app, she might see ads with Giants banners when visiting NFL.com from a laptop for the first time.

All this might feel creepy, but such cross-device tracking is already commonly done by matching attributes such as devices that from the same internet location, or IP address. Consumers typically have little control over it.

Adobe says it will give consumers a chance to opt out of such tracking. And it’s breaking industry practices in a few ways. Adobe says it will honor opt-out requests for all participating companies and for all devices at once. It’s more typical for such setups to require people do so one by one. All companies in the initiative are listed on Adobe’s website, a break from some companies’ practice of referring only to unspecified partners.

“We’re doing everything we can not letting brands hide themselves,” Ahuja said.

But in taking an opt-out approach, which is common in the industry, Adobe assumes that users consent. And it places the burden on consumers to learn about this initiative and to figure out how they can opt out of it.

New story in Technology from Time: Facebook Is Releasing a New Tool to Delete Your Data. Here’s How to Do It

Facebook Inc. said it will make it more straight-forward for users to change their privacy settings and delete data they’ve already shared with the social-media company.

The announcement is part of Facebook’s efforts to answer the firestorm of criticism that’s arisen in the wake of revelations that data from 50 million people was accessed by political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica without their permission. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg plans to testify in front of the U.S. Congress in the coming weeks, and the company has delayed unveiling a new home speaker product to reevaluate how it uses user data, according to people familiar with the matter.

Shares were up 1.9 percent in early trading at 7:36 a.m. in New York. The social-media giant’s stock has fallen 18 percent since the Cambridge Analytica news broke earlier this month.

Most of the security page updates have been in the works for some time, Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan and Deputy General Counsel Ashlie Beringer wrote in a statement Wednesday, “but the events of the past several days underscore their importance.” The new system will allow users to access settings from a single place instead of having to go to some 20 different screens.

Facebook has produced multiple iterations to its privacy settings pages over the years, often in response to criticism that the system is too complicated for most people to understand what they are and aren’t sharing. From the new setting page, people will be able to delete specific things they’ve shared or liked in the past, stopping advertisers from having access to that information.

Users still won’t be able to delete data that they had given third-party apps on the platform previously, even if it was used for reasons other than what users agreed to. That data, downloaded over years of Facebook users freely giving apps such as games and personality quizzes access to their information, is largely still stored outside of Facebook’s grasp by the private individuals and companies who built those applications.

New story in Technology from Time: Why Classrooms Are Apple, Google and Microsoft’s Next Big Battleground

When Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed an eager crowd on March 27 to unveil his company’s next major product, he wasn’t standing on a stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, or even Apple’s own brand new Steve Jobs Theater. Rather, he was in a school in Chicago surrounded by dozens of students.

That’s because Apple’s newest gadget, a refreshed 9.7-inch iPad that’s compatible with the Apple Pencil, is designed with schools in mind. The entire event was meant to demonstrate how the new iPad can be used in the classroom, from educational augmented reality experiences to text annotations and book creation to a new Schoolwork app that teachers can use to distribute classwork to students.

Some would say Apple’s latest push into the education market is a return to its roots — Apple’s Macintosh lineup was a mainstay in classrooms nationwide through the ’90s, after all. But the iPad announcement is also indicative of a larger trend in Silicon Valley: Big tech firms see the classroom as their next major battleground.

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop, the first device of its kind the Windows maker created itself rather than through its hardware partners, was marketed toward college students when it was unveiled during an education-focused event last May. Earlier this year, Microsoft and its partners also debuted inexpensive new Windows PCs designed for the classroom. And just one day before Apple’s event, Google and Acer unveiled the first ever Chrome OS-powered tablet, a push by the search giant to maintain its lead in classrooms across the country. Google’s Chromebooks accounted for 59.6% of mobile computing shipments in the kindergarten through 12th grade market in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to Futuresource Consulting. By comparison, Windows accounted for 25.6% and iOS comprised 10.6% of shipments.

Among the reasons tech giants are scrambling to get their gadgets into schools: It’s a big business opportunity. The education technology market is expected to reach $252 billion by 2020, according to a report published by education-focused technology conference host EdTechXGlobal and advisory firm IBIS Capital. But there’s potential upside even after students leave the classroom and turn into fully-fledged consumers, too. “It gets people using your technology young,” says Avi Greengart, research director for consumer platforms and devices for GlobalData. “The hope is that they stick with it.”

Apple’s iOS devices may not be as widely used in schools as Google’s Chromebooks or Windows laptops. Still, Greengart believes the iPad’s Apple Pencil stylus integration could give the Cupertino, Calif.-based iPhone maker an advantage. With its newest iPad, Apple is showcasing how the Pencil can be used to sketch and handwrite in slideshow presentations and reports, among other tasks. “There are things you can do with a pencil that you can’t do with a keyboard,” says Greengart, such as digitally marking up students’ papers with the Pencil. “That may prove to be appealing because that mimics the way many teachers work today.”

The new iPad’s price could prove to be an obstacle for adoption within schools. Although Apple is offering its new iPad at just $299 for schools — notably cheaper than its iPad Pro tablets, which start at $649 — Chromebooks can still be a cheaper option for cash-strapped districts. These Google-powered laptops, some of which cost less than $300, already come with a keyboard attached. Those who want to use a keyboard with the new iPad will have to purchase a Bluetooth accessory separately, and the Pencil will also cost an extra $89. Google’s cloud-based Chromebooks also offer the benefit of making it easy to continue your work from any computer simply by logging into your Google account.

Apple’s success in the classroom will in part depend on whether or not schools invest in creative learning applications like the ones Apple demonstrated on stage this week, according to Ben Davis of Futuresource Consulting, which tracks mobile computer shipments in the education market. “Not all schools are invested in these activities at present,” Davis said via email. “So some schools have invested in devices to support other functions, like online testing, many at a lower cost than iPad solutions.”

Business interests aside, tech companies’ push into innovation might offer them a much-needed PR boost. As issues like privacy, cyberbullying and screen addiction continue to dominate the conversation around technology, pitching plans to help students learn could boost Silicon Valley’s stature in the eyes of many across the country. “The hope is that by working in education, your brand is associated with a positive cause,” says Greengart. That education is also a lucrative market means that the race among tech giants to reign supreme in schools will only get more intense moving forward.