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Netflix promises to remove real-life rail tragedy clips from ‘Bird Box’

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Netflix and the people behind the hit movie came under fire for using real footage of the 2013 rail disaster to depict a nuclear attack on London. The tragedy claimed the lives of 47 individuals in the Quebec town when a 74-car freight train carrying crude oil derailed, resulting in an explosion. Dozens of homes and buildings had to be demolished, as well.

Lac-Mégantic Mayor Julie Morin vowed to make sure Netflix removes the footage — she also wanted the company to look through its catalog for shows using images of the event. A motion was even passed in Canada’s House of Commons, asking the company to remove the images and pay the town compensation. In addition, Quebec’s Ministre de la Culture Nathalie Roy urged the streaming service’s CEO in a letter to have the clips deleted.

“Yes, there was a delay,” Morin said, “but in the end, the most important thing is that people came to the conclusion that the situation was significant enough to settle.” Netflix is expected to replace the footage worldwide with outtakes from a TV series over the next few weeks.



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Here is the Tesla crossover

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Very quick, no weird doors.
Tesla unveils its Model Y crossover

According to Roberto Baldwin, “With a zero to 60 potential of 3.5 seconds, the dual-motor variant of the vehicle they drove us in was quick.” Elon Musk promised the Model Y could deliver sports-car feel in a crossover, and we’ll need more time inside one to find out if that’s true. It shares many attributes with the Model 3, even with additional storage space and up to three rows of seating. Several versions are scheduled to go on sale near the end of 2020, but you’ll have to wait until 2021 for a crack at the cheapest version, a Standard model with 230 miles of range, which costs $39,000.

Oops.
Facebook’s massive outage was the result of a server configuration change

An outage that took down Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram for much of Wednesday was apparently the result of a server configuration change. The social-networking giant said the issue has since been fixed and all of its products and services are accessible once again. “We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone’s patience,” the company said.

It’s three times faster than WD’s SATA SSD without breaking the bank.WD brings cheap high-speed NVMe SSD performance to creators

Sizing up the storage market, Western Digital is aiming its incoming WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSDs at those on a budget. The new 500GB stick packs around half the read and write speeds of Samsung’s 960 Evo (1,700MB/s and 1,450MB/s respectively) but, at $78, costs roughly half the price.

If you need a graphics upgrade but don’t need ray tracing yet, try this one.NVIDIA’s GTX 1660 lowers the high-performance gaming price barrier

NVIDIA has unveiled its cheapest Turing-based card yet, the $219 GeForce GTX 1660. Much like the $279 GTX 1660 Ti, it offers Turing performance that bests the GTX 1060 by around 15 to 30 percent. It has slightly slower memory than the Ti models and aims squarely at gamers with last-generation GTX 900-series hardware who can upgrade without needing a new power supply.

She used the power of cloud computing.Google’s Emma Haruka Iwao breaks the world record for calculating pi

A Google employee has broken the Guinness World Record for the most accurate value of pi. Emma Haruka Iwao and her colleagues used the power of the company’s cloud computing to calculate for 31,415,926,535,897 digits of pi. That’s 9 trillion digits more than the previous record and a whole novel longer than the 3.14 value most of us know.

Because that black dot is taking up valuable real estate.
Samsung imagines full-screen phone with a camera hidden under the display

Samsung is working on a “perfect full-screen” phone that will be 100 percent display, with no notches, bezels or cut-outs. According to Yang Byung-duk, the company’s display R&D vice president, “Technology can move to the point where the camera hole will be invisible, while not affecting the camera’s function in any way.”

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Facebook and YouTube rush to remove New Zealand shooting footage

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Facebook has confirmed that local law enforcement “alerted it to a video on Facebook shortly after the livestream commenced.” It said it had removed the unverified video along with the shooter’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. “We’re also removing any praise or support for the crime and the shooter or shooters as soon as we’re aware,” said Mia Garlick, a Facebook spokesperson in New Zealand. “We will continue working directly with New Zealand Police as their response and investigation continues.” In a tweet, YouTube said: “Please know we are working vigilantly to remove any violent footage.”

Despite taking swift action, stopping the spread of unverified content may prove to be a tough challenge for Facebook and YouTube. By their very nature the two platforms are geared to spread viral content, putting moderators on the backfoot once something gets shared.

A 28-year-old man has been charged with murder and will appear in court on Saturday morning, police confirmed. Three other suspects, two men and one woman, have also been taken into custody, according to the police. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison described the alleged gunman, who has Australian citizenship, as an “extremist, right-wing” terrorist. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden also labeled it a “terrorist attack.”

The alleged gunman identified himself online ahead of the shooting on a now-removed Twitter account, according to the Guardian. His tweets included numerous photos of machine gun magazines and a link to an alleged manifesto for his actions, which was also shared on 8chan, a highly-controversial messageboard platform. New Zealand Police have not confirmed if Tarrant is the man charged with murder.

The suspect’s social media activity and subsequent livestream of the attack suggest he wanted to draw attention to himself and his actions. His manifesto mentions Fortnite and Spyro the Dragon and conservative pundit Candace Owens, according to The Verge, indicating that he was trying to form a narrative around the shooting. Video games have incorrectly been linked to violence in the wake of mass shootings in the past.

The gunman can also be heard saying “remember, lads, subscribe to Pewdiepie,” near the start of the 17-minute clip of the attack, a reference to the popular YouTube creator Felix Kjellberg, who has drawn criticism for making anti-semitic comments in the past.

Kjellberg has taken to Twitter to condemn the shootings. “Just heard news of the devastating reports from New Zealand Christchurch. I feel absolutely sickened having my name uttered by this person. My heart and thoughts go out to the victims, families and everyone affected by this tragedy,” he said in a tweet.

Kjiellberg’s YouTube channel has the most subscribers at 89 million, but is currently facing competition from the T-Series channel. PewDiePie’s most devout fans have been carrying out stunts, including hacking printers and the Wall Street Journal website, to help him retain the top spot.



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Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles cleared of embezzlement charges

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When Karpeles claimed to have recovered a fourth of the 850,000 lost bitcoins, authorities questioned the accuracy of his statements. He was then indicted on a slew of charges — he’s been on trial for embezzlement since 2017 — with prosecutors calling for at least 10 years of jail time. Now, the Tokyo District Court has determined that the former chief acted without ill intent: he apparently used his personal finances to tamper with the exchange’s accounts and hide the fact that Mt. Gox lost a massive amount of money to hackers.

While the court didn’t find evidence of embezzlement against Karpeles, it still reminded him in its ruling that what he did was a “massive harm to the trust of his users.” The court’s decision added: “There is no excuse for the defendant, who is an engineer with expert knowledge, to abuse his status and authority to perform clever criminal acts.”

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Apple says Spotify wants ‘the benefits of a free app without being free’

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Spotify’s main argument was that Apple’s own music service, Apple Music, isn’t subject to the same restrictions of its own app. “[A]pps should be able to compete fairly on the merits, and not based on who owns the App Store,” wrote CEO Daniel Ek. “We should all be subject to the same fair set of rules and restrictions — including Apple Music.” It added that Apple had often stymied it on app updates and locked it out of Apple services, “such as Siri, HomePod and Apple Watch.” Finally, it noted that Apple had blocked communication with its own customers on things like special offers.

In response, Apple addressed each complaint point by point, while criticizing Spotify’s treatment of musicians and artists. It said that it has approved nearly 200 app updates, and “the only time we have requested adjustments is when Spotify has tried to sidestep the same rules that every app follows.”

Just this week, Spotify sued music creators after a decision by the US Copyright Royalty Board required Spotify to increase its royalty payments. This isn’t just wrong, it represents a real, meaningful and damaging step backwards for the music industry.

Apple notes that it has reached out to Spotify about Siri and Airplay, “they’ve told us they’re working on it, and we stand ready to help them when we can.” It added that Spotify is “deeply integrated” into Carplay, and that its developers can access the same tools as anyone else.

The company expressed surprise about Spotify’s Watch app claim, saying “we reviewed and approved it with the same process and speed with which we would any other app. In fact, the Spotify Watch app is currently the No. 1 app in the Watch Music category.”

With regard to the 30 percent charge on in-app digital content in the App Store, Apple notes that 84 percent of apps pay nothing, including Spotify’s own ad-supported app. As such “only a tiny fraction of their subscriptions fall under Apple’s revenue-sharing model. Spotify is asking for that number to be zero.”

It added that “Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they’re leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that’s wrong.” (Spotify has 96 million paid subscribers next to Apple’s 50 million.)

While Apple charges 30 percent digital revenue in the first year, it’s 15 percent after that, it said, noting that Spotify has a double-standard about revenue-sharing. “A significant portion of Spotify’s customers come through partnerships with mobile carriers. This generates no App Store contribution, but requires Spotify to pay a similar distribution fee to retailers and carriers.”

Finally, Apple implied that Spotify hasn’t exactly been great for artists, having recently sued music creators after the US Copyright Royalty Board ordered it to boost royalty payments. “Underneath the rhetoric, Spotify’s aim is to make more money off others’ work. And it’s not just the App Store that they’re trying to squeeze — it’s also artists, musicians and songwriters,” it said.

However, Apple didn’t really address Spotify’s primary argument that its own streaming app, Apple Music, isn’t subject to the same restrictions it imposes on Spotify (much of this is detailed in Engadget’s explainer on the complaint).

That’s key, because in the past, the EU has ruled against like tech giants like Microsoft. In that landmark case, it said the company leveraged its Windows ecosystem to promote its own browser ahead of other apps. In a similar case, it also hit Google with a $5 billion fine for abusing its Android platform to support its own Chrome and Search services.

Whether it will see the Apple and Spotify situation in a similar light remains to be seen. With its latest rebuttal, though, Apple has drawn the battle lines and showed how it plans to fight the complaint.

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Face Recognition Privacy Act aims to protect your identifying info

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The Senators have conjured up the bill because while facial recognition has been used for security and surveillance for decades, it’s “now being developed at increasing rates for commercial applications.” They argue that a lot of people aren’t aware that the technology is being used in public spaces and that companies can collect identifiable info to share or sell to third parties — similar to how carriers have been selling location data to bounty hunters for years.

In addition to prohibiting companies from redistributing or disseminating data, the bill would also require them to notify customers whenever facial recognition is in use. FR technologies also need to undergo third-party testing prior to implementation to address accuracy and bias issues, seeing as they tend to have higher error rates when it comes to women and people of color. Finally, facial recognition makers and providers need to meet the data security standards set by the Federal Trade Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Blunt and Schatz have found a powerful ally in Microsoft, which is now throwing its weight behind the bill. Company President Brad Smith said in a statement:

“Facial recognition technology creates many new benefits for society and should continue to be developed Its use, however, needs to be regulated to protect against acts of bias and discrimination, preserve consumer privacy, and uphold our basic democratic freedoms. Senators Blunt and Schatz’s bill has started an important conversation in Congress about the responsible use of this technology. We’re encouraged by their efforts, applaud their leadership and look forward to working with them to develop balanced policy.”

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Riding in Tesla’s very quick Model Y crossover

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The newest Tesla didn’t disappoint off the line. With a zero to 60 potential of 3.5 seconds, the dual-motor variant of the vehicle they drove us in was quick. It kept me glued to my seat as it burned through electrons. There’s no ludicrous mode, but its acceleration should keep its future owners happy. Because I was in the rear passenger seat instead of behind the wheel, it’s tough to gauge how well it handles. But there was no overt body roll during a short slalom test and I suspect once we get our hands on one, it’ll slot somewhere between the Model 3 and Model S when hitting up mountain switchbacks.

The electric crossover shares many of the same attributes as the Model 3. In addition to the battery pack, the interior is almost exactly the same. It even shares the seats found in the sedan. It’s almost completely devoid of knobs and buttons. To control most aspects of the car you either use the controls on the steering wheel, the two stalks on the steering column or the massive 15-inch touchscreen in the middle of the dashboard. Unlike the Model 3, it sits horizontally and at night is the only illuminated item in the cabin.

Tesla Model Y

The seats felt comfortable and are more utilitarian than those in other Tesla’s. The back seats are split folding and enlarge the rear cargo space to 66 cubic feet according to Tesla. While the Model X was all about the future, the Model Y needs to be about what people are expecting from their cars right now. Lots of room for people, stuff and a higher sitting position.

The Model Y hits those needs with the usual Tesla eye towards the future.

Starting at $39,000 the standard range Model Y (which is expected to arrive in Spring 2021) is competing directly with the impressive Hyundai Kona EV. But between now and Fall 2020 when the rest of the line up (rear-wheel long range and dual-motor performance and long range) when the car is slated to be delivered to customers, a lot could happen in the EV world. Tesla no longer has the benefit of being the only real player in the EV world. There are new cars being announced by automakers every few months and by time the Model Y is here, it’s going to be a crowded space.

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Tesla unveils its Model Y crossover

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With an estimated 300 mile range and current starting price of $42,700 (a 230 mile, $39,000 Standard will begin production in 2021), the Model Y buts up against offerings from Kia and Hyundai. But once you start stacking features into the vehicle, it starts bleeding into the range of Audi’s E-Tron and Jaguar’s I-Pace.

One thing it won’t have are those Falcon doors found on the Model X. They’ve been both polarizing to potential customers and created a headache for the company during manufacturing.

Model Y preorder page

Musk announced that pre-orders for the vehicle are open right now. The CEO also said that the Model Y should be coming off production lines in 2019. Tesla has had difficulty in the past delivering its EVs within its own announced timelines. So, it’s a good idea to remember that if you happen to be one of the folks plunking down deposits for the first Model Y crossovers, it might be late showing up in your garage.

Still, the company expects the Model Y to do well. During a conference call with investors back in January, Musk said he expects demand for the Model Y to be larger than that for the Model 3. Judging on US SUV sales overall, he might be right.

Model Y

While the Model 3 has largely been a sales success for the company, it’s also a sedan and that segment hasn’t been doing particularly well over the past few years with consumers opting for SUVs at an increasing rate. The Model Y gives Tesla the opportunity to tap into that growing market. Sure the Model X is an SUV, but its high price put it out of the reach of regular folks looking for an electric crossover. There’s also those doors.

With the Model Y, Tesla has finally unveiled the last vehicle in its “S3XY” roadmap. Get it; Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y? Yeah.

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Netflix cancels ‘One Day at a Time’

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The news was met with disappointment by the show’s legions of admirers, especially its Latinx fans who were treated to a rare reflection of their own families and lives on television. Created by Mike Royce and Jane the Virgin‘s Gloria Calderon Kellett, One Day at a Time told the story of nurse practitioner Penelope (Justina Machado), a single mother of two kids, the willful, feminist Elena (Isabella Gomez) and stubborn tween Alex (Marcel Ruiz). Penelope receives plenty of help — sometimes unwanted — from her mother Lydia (Rita Moreno) and upstairs neighbor Schneider (Todd Grinnell). The show didn’t shy away from tough topics such as illegal immigration, homosexuality, drugs or poverty.

The cancellation comes as Netflix seems to be axing more shows than it used to. It’s unclear whether this is to pave the way for more new material; the streaming service is also releasing more new original shows than ever before. Netflix isn’t tied to ratings in the same way that television networks are, which has allowed the streaming service to take more risks in its original content. Shows like Russian Doll, Orange is the New Black and One Day at a Time may not draw the masses but nonetheless have attracted sizeable, cult followings and generate cultural buzz. It’s hard to imagine many networks today that would run a show with an autistic protagonist (Atypical), a TV reboot of a Spike Lee drama (She’s Gotta Have It) or a Sunday variety talk show steered by a Muslim-American comedian (The Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj).

Such diverse and varied programming is usually reserved for Netflix, if not other streaming services like Hulu and Amazon, or a premium channel like HBO. These recent cancellations don’t necessarily mean that Netflix won’t continue to be a home for niche shows — but given the huge investment it is making in original content, it’s likely expecting bigger returns for the shows to last.



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Garmin’s adventure-based smartwatch line starts at $1,500

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If driving isn’t your sport, the collection includes the Aviator ($1,950), with a slide rule for calculating jet fuel usage; Captain ($1,850), which has wind speed, temperature and tide information; Expedition ($1,750), with an etched 360-degree compass bezel; and Athlete ($1,500), which can display your recovery time on the its face.

As Gizmodo points out, the smartwatches do a good job of looking like regular timepieces. In addition to hobby-specific tools, they share much of the smartwatch technology that Garmin already uses in its other wearables. That includes email and call notifications, a reflective display, music with Bluetooth streaming, NFC payments and an optical heart/pulse oximeter sensor.

This isn’t the first time Garmin has released high-end, niche watches. In 2016, its Fenix Chronos golf watch sold for $899. Given the MARQ collection’s high prices, these may go the way of the Apple Watch Edition, which was a luxury but was discontinued after three years. Basically, while these are for sale, they might also be for show.



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