Facebook Bans White Nationalist's Account Over Hate Speech

Facebook has joined other online platforms and has banned Christopher Cantwell's accounts. according to Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja who spoke to AP.

The platform also removed several pages connected to the white nationalist movement on grounds of violating the company's hate speech/organizations policies.

“I’m not surprised by almost any of this because the whole thing we are complaining about here is that we are trying to express our views, and everybody is going through extraordinary lengths to make sure we are not heard,” Cantwell told AP in a phone interview from an undisclosed location.

“Frankly, whatever you think of my views, that is very scary to me,” he said. “Facebook and Instagram is one thing but not being able to participate in the financial system because of your political opinions is something that, you know, people should worry about in America.”

Daily Stormer Kicked Off Godaddy and then Google ... Now Hosted in Russia

The white supremacist website was first dropped from Godaddy (who was the domain registrar), and they switched to Google for that service, but Google then dropped them too, all following the Charlottesville, Virginia riot this week.

The site then moved to the dark net briefly. And is now based in Russia

Google Announces Hate Crime News Index

Although the YouTube version of removing hate crime videos hasn't worked very well (they've accidentally flagged documentaries about war crimes, too), Google News is going to have a "hate crime" addition.

The News lab at the company is working with Pitch Interactive and ProPublica to use machine learning to track and report on hate crimes around the country.

This will make it easier for people to find stories about their hate crime of choice.

89% of Newspaper Reading is Still in Print, Researchers Find

That's compared with 7% of the news-reading time spent on mobile devices and 4% on computers, even though online publishers reach 2 or 3 times the amount of people print publishers do. The study used UK data, but it's likely not far off what North Americans do.

The time-spent-reading numbers also reflect revenues for the publishers. The brands studied took in 88% of their revenues from print, 12% from digital.

The research was the first ever done to comprehensively account for the time spent reading news.

According to the scientist, "My research shows that while print newspapers are read for an average of 40 minutes per day, online visitors to the websites and apps of those same newspapers spend an average of just 30 seconds per day. Scale those numbers up and you can see why newspapers still rely on print for the vast majority of the attention they receive."

Putin Tightening Internet Restrictions with Law

Two new laws were signed by Putin this week: one ordered internet providers to block websites that offer VPNs; the other orders instant messaging services to establish user IDs by using phone numbers, and also allows the government to order operators to restrict internet users if the government decides the users are disseminating illegal content.

The Russian government wants less anonymity on the internet. It says the steps are taken in order to prevent extremist materials and ideas.

However, there are questions about how these laws are used: Already, a Russian blogger was given 3 1/2 years (later reduced to 1 year) suspended sentence for posting videos deemed by the Russian courts to incite hatred and insult religious believers' feelings. He was seen playing Pokemon Go in a church in one of his videos. He was also added to the "terrorists and extremists" list.

Google Starts Removing Private Medical Records from Search

Google updated their policy for personal info, adding 'private medical records' to the things they remove from search results.

What else have they excluded so far? National or government issued identification numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers and images of signatures.

The concern is that the information, which can be highly damaging if mistreated, can be leaked, hacked, or subject to errors.

UK Parliament Hit by Cyber Attack

A spokeswoman said from the National Cyber Security Centre said that "unauthorised attempts to access accounts of parliamentary networks users" were discovered.

"Parliament has robust measures in place to protect all of our accounts and systems, and we are taking the necessary steps to protect and secure our network. As a precaution we have temporarily restricted remote access to the network."

As part of the fix, networks were limited and MPs could not use their emails.

19 Year Old Woman Charged with Rape of Baby Daddy

A woman in Hollywood, Alabama met a fellow at a McDonald's after being introduced by a mutual friend, and a relationship followed in which she would pick the guy up and they would drive out to a secluded area and hook up.

The woman said they had sex around 20 times since December when they started up. They also exchanged racy photos of each other. She became pregnant.

However, she was 19 and he was 14, and when she went to apply for Medicaid for the unborn baby, the health officials responded to her listing the baby daddy's name. She was charged with with rape, sex abuse, enticing a child for immoral purposes, traveling to meet a child for an unlawful sex act, possession of child pornography, and dissemination of child pornography.

Google VS Terrorism

Google's now going to be doing new things to reduce terrorist videos.

They'll be using a new algorithm to automatically find terrorism images, and will have more people working to monitor videos.

It will also effect educational and other videos that are about terrorism or include images that promote subjugation of religions or races. They'll have warnings now, and they won't have commenting available. This means that they will also have less engagement and will be harder to find.

CIA Infecting Wi-Fi Routers for Last 10 Years

Wikileaks has released more CIA spying information as part of their Vault7 series, which earlier included the CIA hack that was used by the EternalBlue group to create the WannaCry pandemic.

According to the recent leak, 25 models of routers, including Linsys and DLinks, can be controlled by the CIA. It is suspected that small modifications would allow the tech to take control of 100 more models, too.

It's called CherryBlossom. It turns the router into a tool the CIA can use to monitor and manipulate all traffic, as well as infect all connected devices with malware (plant their own programs on computers to do what they want with them).

The documents leaked by Wikileaks date to 2007.

Verizon Buys Yahoo

Verizon now owns Yahoo, ending its 20 years as an independent company.

Yahoo will now be combined with AOL and other Verizon services under a new subsidiary called "Oath" headed by former AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.

Yahoo cost Verizon $4.48b.

Click Farm Raided in Asia, 347,200 SIM Cards Found

A group of Chinese have been arrested in Thailand for operating a "click farm."

They were using hundreds of cellphones and thousands of SIM cards to run up "likes" and views on WeChat (the Chinese version of Facebook plus more).

Chinese Brand Enters Top 10 Most Valuable, Along With 9 American Brands

Who is Tencent? It's the largely unknown (maybe because it's pretty media shy) parent company of China's ubiquitous WeChat social media app.

Their market cap is $330b, more than JPMorgan Chase.

500m people in China (of 650m total) use WeChat for communicating, finding goods and services, getting directions, and paying for things.

Who else is on the top 10 list?

Google is still #1, for the last 11 years. It's market cap is around 600b.

After that, there's Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, AT&T, Visa, Tencent at #8, IBM, and McDonald's.

A Global Anti-Hoax Mechanism?

This was the idea advocated by a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson at this years SPIEF economic forum. She was speaking at the "Hoax vs. Truth: challenges of the modern information world" session.

"We are trying to somehow spur a discussion regarding the creation of a certain global mechanism, an instrument that would counteract the spread of false information," she said. She gave some details about the projects, saying it would involve the collaboration of journalists and news organizations with outreach in various parts of the world.

She said that Russia also advocated working on some kind of framework for snuffing out fake information when it attended the UN's information committee 2 months ago, but that the U.S. had opposed it.

However, Russia is not known for reliable information coming from its state-run and state-dominated media, and the chief of Germany’s DPA news agency commented that such a program might lead to further censorship and a new "Ministry of Truth."

Russian Gov Wants Control of Big Data

Big Data is the "new oil" of the digital economy, according to speakers at Russia's 2017 SPIEF economic forum.

In order to prevent uncontrolled sales of this valuable and important info, the government should streamline and oversee it, according to the participants.

The chips haven't yet settled in the global understanding of how we should treat Big Data. Is it private information or public domain? is one of the most pressing questions around which laws and regulations will be made.

"Right now we are undergoing a major revolutionary upheaval in the society," noted residential aide Igor Shchegolev, "not only a technological revolution, but a revolution of moral standards as well." He said that sometimes ordinary citizens don't understand what they're doing, and inadvertently give away too easily things like personal information.

"Maybe some of the users will do what Native Americans did, when they traded their land for glass beads, unaware of its true value," he added.

"Today, a vast amount of Internet companies offer software for free, but collect Big Data on users in return," commented Alexander Zharov, the head of Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor. "Currently, the Russian legislation and international laws do not mention the notion of Big Data. We need to codify approaches toward the processing of Big Data, terms of its storage, transfer and secondary use."

"My forecast is that a law on the issue will inevitably appear," maybe in 2018 or 2019, he told reporters on the sidelines of the forum.

BC Trials to Take Place in Digital Small Claims Court Now

In an attempt to increase citizens' access to justice and make small claims faster, cheaper and easier, the province has launched its online Civil Resolution Tribunal.

The new online tribunal is the first in Canada where these types of disputes (contracts, debts, personal injury, personal property and consumer issues for values under $5000) can be filed, negotiated, and resolved almost all online, with simple explainers of options and procedures.

B.C. has already been letting condo owners settle strata disputes online since last year.

The Ministry of Justice also raised the jurisdiction of B.C. small claims to $35,000, up from $25,000.

Microsoft Obtains Patent to Use for Detecting Pirated Content

The company was granted a patent for technology that scans items users have stored on the cloud when they are shared. 

Microsoft envisions using software based on the patent for services like Google Drive, Dropbox and other storage services, social networks, and pirate sites. 

A summary of how the patent is understood: "When objects are shared by one user with another user, prohibited content, if identified as such, can be blocked from being shared, while the remainder of the shared objects can be accessed by the other user."

Microsoft intends that people who share copyrighted content can be banned.

It is illegal to share copyrighted content, although not illegal to store it on the cloud. 

FCC Vote, 'One Step Closer to a Closed Internet' Says Mozilla

This week the FCC voted to move forward with repealing and replacing net neutrality protections enacted in 2015.

The issue is public access to an open, equal internet. The laws from 2015 placed providers (the companies that pipe internet into your house or phone) in a special category of communications. The laws made it so that internet providers couldn't increase or decrease internet speeds for whatever content, apps, or services they wanted to prioritize. Citizens feared this would lead to service providers throttling content and apps they didn't profit from while boosting stuff they could profit from.

While recent polling suggests the majority of Americans want net neutrality, the argument was given voice by Mozilla (who makes the Firefox browser). Mozilla summarized:

"Today’s FCC vote to repeal and replace net neutrality protections brings us one step closer to a closed internet.  Although it is sometimes hard to describe the 'real' impacts of these decisions, this one is easy: this decision leads to an internet that benefits Internet Service Providers (ISPs), not users, and erodes free speech, competition, innovation and user choice."

Mozilla blog

Microsoft Blaming NSA for WannaCry Malware Pandemic

Microsoft President Brad Smith complained that various governments "stockpile vulnerabilities."

In other words, governments and agencies find weaknesses in technology and then keep that information to themselves in case they want to use it.

Smith said the current WannaCry malware event was a very rare one, combining a piece of very sophisticated software (to do the exploit) with a simpler piece (to do the ransom), conducted by a criminal organization.

To accusations Microsoft didn't do enough to alert people about the danger, Smith said, "Microsoft has the first responsibility." He called it a "wake-up call for us," and that "we should all learn from this."

In response to questions about whether the NSA told Microsoft they had a tool that exploited the vulnerability, Smith said, "I don't want to go into the specifics about how we learned this particular problem, or by whom or when. It is a public record that we provided a patch in March. There wasn't a public statement until April.

"But what I think is also important: We need the global community to come together."

Hacker News Upgrade Demonstrates Computer Understanding ... Tagger News

Users of the sharing and discussion board Hacker News are this week discussing whether the recent TechCrunch Disrupt New York Hackathon team's improvements to the ycombinater site are really improvements, but are generally impressed with the work.

The team sought to boost the user experience of Hacker News by adding tags to posts in order to make it easier to discover content on the site. They created Tagger News (a copy of Hacker News, but with tags added).

Most interesting to coders is the way they added the tags. They used Random Forests to analyze 25,000 Hacker News titles and automatically deduce the subjects of the articles based on the combinations of words found in the articles.

Also of note: The team of 4 (Daniel and David Robinson, Nathan Gould and Chris Riederer) came up with the idea and did their work in only 24 hours. Three of their computers were used to collect data using the Hacker News API, and one was used to build the Tagger News site.

Link: Tagger News project notes