Year: 2018

The InSight Mars lander accomplished a perfect landing last week on the Elysium Planitia region of the planet, where it is hard at work preparing to drill into the surface (and taking selfies, of course). But one “unplanned treat” is a recording of the wind rolling across the Martian plains — which you can listen to right here.

Technically the lander isn’t rigged to detect sound, at least in the way you’d do it if you were deliberately trying to record it. But the robotic platform’s air pressure sensor and seismometer are both capable of detecting the minute variations as the wind rolls over it. The air pressure sensor, inside that silver dome you see above, produced the most normal-sounding signal, though it still had to be adjusted to be more like what you’d hear if you were there.

“The InSight lander acts like a giant ear,” explained InSight science team member Tom Pike in a NASA news release. “The solar panels on the lander’s sides respond to pressure fluctuations of the wind. It’s like InSight is cupping its ears and hearing the Mars wind beating on it.”

Curious what it sounds like? The resulting recording can be listened to on Soundcloud or below:

Sounds a lot like regular wind, right? Well, what were you expecting? Like so many aspects of space exploration, the prosaic nature of the thing itself — a rock, a landscape feature, a breath of wind — is offset by the fact that it’s occurring millions of miles away on an alien world and relayed here by a high-tech robot. Wind on Mars might not sound much different than wind on Earth — but surely that’s not the point!

We’ll have more recordings soon, I’m sure, so you can use it as noise to fall asleep to. But even better sounds are forthcoming: the Mars 2020 rover will have actual high-quality microphones on board, and will record the sounds of its landing as well as the Martian ambience.

At a bail hearing today, new details emerged surrounding Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver, Canada over the weekend.

The daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei is accused of fraud with a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison, according to journalists present at the hearing. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges Meng allowed SkyCom, an unofficial Huawei subsidiary, to do business in Iran, violating U.S. sanctions against the country and misleading American financial institutions in the process.

Tensions between U.S. authorities and Huawei have been high since 2016, aggravated by an ongoing U.S.-China trade war. The U.S. has long viewed Huawei and its close ties to the Chinese government as a threat to national security. Speaking on CNBC today, Larry Kudlow, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said the U.S. had given Huawei several warnings.

“We’ve warned them for quite some time of violating the Iranian sanctions … We have these sanctions on Iran, it runs against our policy, why shouldn’t we enforce that,” he said.

The Canadian Justice Department argued today against granting Meng bail, claiming she has incentive to flee Canada. Her lawyer, on the other hand, said “Meng would not embarrass her father by breaching a court order,” according to The AP.

Meng may be extradited to the U.S., a process that can take several weeks to months to complete. The United States Justice Department has 60 days to make the extradition request, which then must be approved by the Canadian court.

In a statement provided to TechCrunch days after Meng’s arrest, a spokesperson for Huawei said the company was “not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng.”

“The company has been provided very little information regarding the charges and is not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng. The company believes the Canadian and U.S. legal systems will ultimately reach a just conclusion. Huawei complies with all applicable laws and regulations where it operates, including applicable export control and sanction laws and regulations of the UN, US and EU.”

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign affairs has firmly requested Meng’s release, meanwhile, a spokesperson for which has said that her detention needed further explanation to “effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of the person concerned,” per reports.

Huawei, headquartered in Shenzhen, China, is the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer and second-largest smartphone maker.

Huawei did not respond to our request for comment.

Artificial intelligence systems and creators are in dire need of direct intervention by governments and human rights watchdogs, according to a new report from researchers at Google, Microsoft and others at AI Now. Surprisingly, it looks like the tech industry just isn’t that good at regulating itself.

In the 40-page report (PDF) published this week, the New York University-based organization (with Microsoft Research and Google-associated members) shows that AI-based tools have been deployed with little regard for potential ill effects or even documentation of good ones. While this would be one thing if it was happening in controlled trials here and there, instead these untested, undocumented AI systems are being put to work in places where they can deeply affect thousands or millions of people.

I won’t go into the examples here, but think border patrol, entire school districts and police departments, and so on. These systems are causing real harm, and not only are there no systems in place to stop them, but few to even track and quantify that harm.

“The frameworks presently governing AI are not capable of ensuring accountability,” the researchers write in the paper. “As the pervasiveness, complexity, and scale of these systems grow, the lack of meaningful accountability and oversight – including basic safeguards of responsibility, liability, and due process – is an increasingly urgent concern.”

Right now companies are creating AI-based solutions to everything from grading students to assessing immigrants for criminality. And the companies creating these programs are bound by little more than a few ethical statements they decided on themselves.

Google, for instance, recently made a big deal about setting some “AI principles” after that uproar about its work for the Defense Department. It said its AI tools would be socially beneficial, accountable and won’t contravene widely accepted principles human rights.

Naturally, it turned out the company has the whole time been working on a prototype censored search engine for China. Great job!

So now we know exactly how far that company can be trusted to set its own boundaries. We may as well assume that’s the case for the likes of Facebook, which is using AI-based tools to moderate; Amazon, which is openly pursuing AI for surveillance purposes; and Microsoft, which yesterday published a good piece on AI ethics — but as good as its intentions seem to be, a “code of ethics” is nothing but promises a company is free to break at any time.

The AI Now report has a number of recommendations, which I’ve summarized below but really are worth reading in their entirety. It’s quite readable and a good review, as well as smart analysis.

• Regulation is desperately needed. But a “national AI safety body” or something like that is impractical. Instead, AI experts within industries like health or transportation should be looking at modernizing domain-specific rules to include provisions limiting and defining the role of machine learning tools. We don’t need a Department of AI, but the FAA should be ready to assess the legality of, say, a machine learning-assisted air traffic control system.
• Facial recognition, in particular questionable applications of it like emotion and criminality detection, need to be closely examined and subjected to the kind of restrictions as are false advertising and fraudulent medicine.
• Public accountability and documentation need to be the rule, including a system’s internal operations, from data sets to decision-making processes. These are necessary not just for basic auditing and justification for using a given system, but for legal purposes should such a decision be challenged by a person that system has classified or affected. Companies need to swallow their pride and document these things even if they’d rather keep them as trade secrets — which seems to me the biggest ask in the report.
• More funding and more precedents need to be established in the process of AI accountability; it’s not enough for the ACLU to write a post about a municipal “automated decision-making system” that deprives certain classes of people of their rights. These things need to be taken to court and the people affected need mechanisms of feedback.
• The entire industry of AI needs to escape its engineering and computer science cradle — the new tools and capabilities cut across boundaries and disciplines and should be considered in research not just by the technical side. “Expanding the disciplinary orientation of AI research will ensure deeper attention to social contexts, and more focus on potential hazards when these systems are applied to human populations,” write the researchers.

They’re good recommendations, but not the kind that can be made on short notice, so expect 2019 to be another morass of missteps and misrepresentations. And as usual, never trust what a company says, only what it does — and even then, don’t trust it to say what it does.

Though many people still scratch their head at the idea of watching people play video games, Twitch and its content creators have proven that the platform is attractive (even beloved) to tens of millions of people.

Got a friend or loved one who believes they have the skill, personality and wide open schedule to be successful on Twitch? The right gift might get the ball rolling.

(Note: It should go without saying that there is one piece of gear that a Twitch streamer truly needs, and that’s a computer or console to play the game on. Generally, this will either be a gaming PC, a Playstation 4, or an Xbox One. Chances are if someone wants to stream games, they’ve already got a platform of choice, so we’re not going to go into detail on what type of PC or console to buy.)

Microphones

The best place to start when investing in a streaming set up is the mic. Yes, webcams are important (and we’ll get to that) but it’s really taxing to listen to poor audio for any lengthy amount of time, and most gaming headphones just won’t cut it.

Our top choice for a reasonably priced, high quality mic is the Blue Yeti Pro ($250). It’s a relatively simple plug-and-play product that sounds great. It supports both USB and XLR, giving users plenty of flexibility if they want to use it for multiple purposes (like, say, podcasting) or across various audio interfaces.

It’s not cheap — the Blue Yeti Pro costs $250 on Amazon — so folks looking for a less flexible mic that will simply work with a PC or console, the stepped-down Blue Mics Yeti ($130) should get the job done.

Webcams

While the point of streaming is arguably to watch the game, and not the gamer, there is something special about seeing someone’s reactions to the game or to the Twitch chat on a stream.

General consensus among the community points to the Logitech C922 HD Pro Stream ($99). It captures 1080p/30fps or 720p/60fps video and offers a 78-degree field of view, with particularly good low-light capabilities and solid autofocus. Oddly, streaming under the blue light of the monitor in complete darkness is pretty common, and this webcam can handle just that. As a bonus, the C922 offers background replacement, letting users green screen out everything behind the streamer to show even more of the game. The lower-cost alternative is the Logitech HD Pro C920 ($79), which doesn’t offer background replacement or some other bonus features like 720p/60fps capture, or autofocus.

The C922 also comes with a three-month free trial of XSplit (broadcasting software that will likely be necessary for PC gamers/streamers, but is less necessary for console streamers.)

Monitors

Most people think of a couch and a TV when they think of playing video games, but that is most certainly not ideal for a streamer. For one, where does the webcam go? Secondly, your vision just isn’t as good from 10 feet away on a 40-inch+ screen. Many pros tend to use a 24- to 27-inch monitor roughly two feet away from the face — so sitting at a desk is often preferred.

Super high-performance gaming monitors are very expensive, and there are very real trade-offs each time the price comes down. But the ASUS VG245H ($190) is a solid contender at a reasonable price point, managing to pack a punch where it counts.

The 24-inch monitor comes with a TN type panel (which can wash out colors more than ISP) but has a 144Hz refresh rate at a 1920×1080 resolution. At $190 on Amazon, this monitor is a bargain.

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Beyond strictly streaming equipment, there are plenty of gadgets that can take a skilled gamer to the next level. Here are a few suggestions:

Inputs

A gamer that dominates the competition with entry-level inputs (be it a mouse or controller) will absolutely crush it with a gaming-specific mouse or controller.

There are many schools of thought when it comes to PC gaming mice — some think customization is king, while others are drawn to RGB lighting or wireless functionality. At the end of the day, personal preference plays a huge role. For folks switching over from a standard mouse, the best option might be the Finalmouse Ultralight Pro ($70).

It acts and feels like a standard mouse, but happens to be just 67 grams, with the Pixart pmw3360 eSports sensor, integrated illumination, enhanced tracking and a higher framerate. And as a bonus, this is the same mouse that streaming star Ninja uses. If it’s good enough for him, it’s probably good enough for your dear recipient.

For console gamers, there is a clear favorite if you’re looking to upgrade beyond the standard Xbox or Playstation controller. Scuf Gaming controllers (starting at $150) allow players to use paddles on the underside of the controller. This means that gamers can use their middle and ring fingers instead of multitasking with their thumbs, meaning their thumbs never leave the joysticks.

Headset

Switching from standard headphones to high-quality gaming headphones feels like cheating. Suddenly, you can hear everything around you. I’ve personally played with a wide variety of headphones, and my favorite by a mile is the Astro A50 wireless headset with base station ($300). Tech specs aside, these are some of the most comfortable headphones out there, perfect for those hours-long streaming sessions.

For folks looking for something more affordable, Turtle Beach also has a nice selection of wireless headphones including the Stealth 700 ($150).

Smaller Stuff

Once they’re streaming, then what? The best thing you can do for your new favorite streamer is interact with their new channel. Subscribe. Watch the broadcast and chat in the stream. And if you have a little extra cash to spare, gift subs to the channel so folks who show up and want to subscribe have no barrier to entry when they get there.

Leica’s pricey — but sexy — CL camera is the closest thing you can get to an original portable luxury shooter without spending more than a used Toyota Corolla. The CL, which launched last year, is essentially a pared-down M series camera that has gotten rave reviews over the past year. Now, in time for Noel, Leica is offering a Street Kit that includes the CL along with a Leica Summicron-TL 23 mm f/2 lens. This flat pancake lens gives you a “tried and true 35 mm equivalent focal length for the quintessential reportage style of shooting” and should suffice for street shots taken on the wing while wandering the darkened alleyways of certain Central European cities.

Now for the bad news. Leica is traditionally some of the most expensive and best-made camera gear on the market, and this is no different. While you get a camera that should last you well into the next millennium, you’ll pay a mere $4,195 for the privilege, making it considerably less than the M series but considerably more than the camera on your phone. The package saves you a little over $800 if you purchased each item separately.

That said, it’s nice to see a bundle like this still exists for a solid, beautifully wrought camera, a nice lens and even a leather carrying strap. Besides, isn’t the creation of photographic art worth the price of admission? As noted Leica lover Henri Cartier-Bresson said, “Au fond, ce n’est pas la photo en soi qui m’interesse. Ce que je veux c’est de capter une fraction de seconde du reel.” Preach, brother.

It appears that most mobile carriers, including O2 and SoftBank, have recovered from yesterday’s cell phone network outage that was triggered by a shutdown of Ericsson equipment running on their networks. That shutdown appears to have been triggered by expired software certificates on the equipment itself.

While Ericsson acknowledged in their press release yesterday that expired certificates were at the root of the problem, you may be wondering why this would cause a shutdown. It turns out that it’s likely due to a fail-safe system in place, says Tim Callan, senior fellow at Sectigo (formerly Comodo CA), a U.S. certificate-issuing authority. Callan has 15 years of experience in the industry.

He indicated that while he didn’t have specific information on this outage, it would be consistent with industry best practices to shut down the system when encountering expired certificates “We don’t have specific visibility into the Ericsson systems in question, but a typical application would require valid certificates to be in place in order to keep operating. That is to protect against breach by some kind of agent that is maliciously inserted into the network,” Callan told TechCrunch.

In fact, Callan said that in 2009 a breach at Heartland Payments was directly related to such a problem. “2009’s massive data breach of Heartland Payment Systems occurred because the network in question did NOT have such a requirement. Today it’s common practice to use certificates to avoid that same vulnerability,” he explained.

Ericsson would not get into specifics about what caused the problem.”Ericsson takes full responsibility for this technical failure. The problem has been identified and resolved. After a complete analysis Ericsson will take measures to prevent such a failure from happening again.”

Among those affected yesterday were millions of O2 customers in Great Britain and SoftBank customers in Japan. SoftBank issued an apology in the form of a press release on the company website. “We deeply apologize to our customers for all inconveniences it caused. We will strive to take all measures to prevent the same network outage.”

As for O2, they also apologized this morning after restoring service, tweeting:

Our 4G network was restored earlier this morning. Our technical teams will continue to monitor service performance closely and we’re starting the full review to understand what happened. We are really sorry for the issues yesterday.

— O2 in the UK (@O2) December 7, 2018

Google is by no means perfect when it comes to issues relating to gender, but it’s clear the company is trying. Google recently made some important changes to its Translate tool — reducing gender bias by providing both masculine and feminine translations for gender-neutral words. Previously, Google would default gender-neutral words to the masculine form.

This comes after Google has been specifically called out for its biases in translate and autocomplete. Back in February, Forbes reported how examples of gender bias in Translate began popping up on social media.

“So when the model produced one translation, it inadvertently replicated gender biases that already existed,” Google Translate Product Manager James Kuczmarski wrote on the company blog. “For example: it would skew masculine for words like ‘strong’ or ‘doctor,’ and feminine for other words, like ‘nurse’ or ‘beautiful.'”

Now, Google will offer both feminine and masculine translations for single words when translating from English to French, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish, as well as when translating from Turkish to English. Down the road, Google says it does plan to address non-binary gender in translations. Google will also eventually bring this to its iOS and Android apps, and address gender biases in auto-complete.

Netflix just broke new records on consumer spending in its mobile apps, according to new data app intelligence firm Sensor Tower has shared with TechCrunch. In November, Netflix pulled in an estimated $86.6 million in worldwide consumer spending across its iOS and Android apps combined — a figure that’s 77 percent higher than the $49 million it generated last November. That’s a new record.

Before, the biggest month Netflix had to date was July 2018, when it grossed an estimated $84.7 million. At the time, that was the most it had made on mobile since it began monetizing on mobile in September 2015.

To date, Netflix has grossed more than $1.58 million on mobile.

The firm didn’t speculate as to what, specifically, drove Netflix to break records again in November, but there are probably a few factors at play, including the trend toward cord cutting and shift toward streaming services for traditional “TV” viewing.

But most notably is the increasing revenue coming to Netflix from its international markets.

Sensor Tower did point out that Netflix’s U.S. app revenue grew 43 percent year-over-year in November, but other countries contributing more than $1 million in gross revenue were higher. For example, Germany grew 48 percent, Brazil was 49 percent, South Korea was 52 percent and Japan was 64 percent.

However, the U.S. still accounts for the majority of Netflix’s in-app subscription revenue, at 57 percent in November. But with Netflix’s international expansion, its share is declining. When Netflix first began offering subscriptions in fall 2015, the U.S. then accounted for 71 percent of its revenue.

Netflix in recent weeks has been doubling down on mobile. The company is now testing a mobile-only subscription aimed at making its service more affordable in Asia and other emerging markets.

In Q3, the company gained nearly 7 million new subscribers, with 5.87 million of those coming from international markets.

Image credit: Sensor Tower 

Netflix just broke new records on consumer spending in its mobile apps, according to new data app intelligence firm Sensor Tower has shared with TechCrunch. In November, Netflix pulled in an estimated $86.6 million in worldwide consumer spending across its iOS and Android apps combined — a figure that’s 77 percent higher than the $49 million it generated last November. That’s a new record.

Before, the biggest month Netflix had to date was July 2018, when it grossed an estimated $84.7 million. At the time, that was the most it had made on mobile since it began monetizing on mobile in September 2015.

To date, Netflix has grossed more than $1.58 million on mobile.

The firm didn’t speculate as to what, specifically, drove Netflix to break records again in November, but there are probably a few factors at play, including the trend toward cord cutting and shift toward streaming services for traditional “TV” viewing.

But most notably is the increasing revenue coming to Netflix from its international markets.

Sensor Tower did point out that Netflix’s U.S. app revenue grew 43 percent year-over-year in November, but other countries contributing more than $1 million in gross revenue were higher. For example, Germany grew 48 percent, Brazil was 49 percent, South Korea was 52 percent and Japan was 64 percent.

However, the U.S. still accounts for the majority of Netflix’s in-app subscription revenue, at 57 percent in November. But with Netflix’s international expansion, its share is declining. When Netflix first began offering subscriptions in fall 2015, the U.S. then accounted for 71 percent of its revenue.

Netflix in recent weeks has been doubling down on mobile. The company is now testing a mobile-only subscription aimed at making its service more affordable in Asia and other emerging markets.

In Q3, the company gained nearly 7 million new subscribers, with 5.87 million of those coming from international markets.

Image credit: Sensor Tower 

A few days ago, Google removed popular Cheetah Mobile and Kika Tech apps from its Play Store following a BuzzFeed investigation, which discovered the apps were engaging in ad fraud. Today, as a result of Google’s ongoing investigation into the situation, it has discovered three malicious ad network SDKs that were being used to conduct of ad fraud in these apps. The company is now emailing developers who have these SDKs installed in their apps, and demanding their removal. Otherwise, the developers’ apps will be pulled from Google Play, as well.

To be clear, the developers with the SDKs (software development kits) installed aren’t necessarily aware of the SDKs’ malicious nature. In fact, most are likely not, Google says.

Google shared this news in a blog post today, but it didn’t name the SDKs that were involved in the ad fraud scheme.

TechCrunch has learned the ad network SDKs in question are AltaMob, BatMobi and YeahMobi.

Google didn’t share the scale to which these SDKs are being used in Android apps, but based on Google’s blog post, it appears to be taking this situation seriously – which points to the potential scale of this abuse.

“If an app violates our Google Play Developer policies, we take action,” wrote Dave Kleidermacher, VP, Head of Security & Privacy, Android & Play, in the post. “That’s why we began our own independent investigation after we received reports of apps on Google Play accused of conducting app install attribution abuse by falsely claiming credit for newly installed apps to collect the download bounty from that app’s developer,” he said.

The developers will have a short grace period to remove the SDKs from their apps.

The original BuzzFeed report had found that eight apps with a total of 2 billion downloads from Cheetah Mobile and Kika Tech had been exploiting user permissions as part of an ad fraud scheme, according to research from app analytics and research firm Kochava, which was shared with BuzzFeed.

Following the report, Cheetah Mobile apps Battery Doctor and CM Launcher were removed by Cheetah itself. The company additionally issued a press release aimed at reassuring investors that the removal of CM File Manager wouldn’t impact its revenue. It also said it was in discussions with Google to resolve the issues.

As of today, Google’s investigation into these apps is not fully resolved.

But it pulled two apps from Google Play on Monday: Cheetah Mobile’s File Manager and the Kika Keyboard. The apps, the report had said, contained code that was used for ad fraud  – specifically, ad fraud techniques known as click injection and click flooding.

The apps were engaging in app install attribution abuse, which refers to a means of falsely claiming credit for a newly installed app in order to collect the download bounty from the app developer. The three SDKs that Google is now banishing were found to be falsely crediting app installs by creating false clicks.

Combined, the two companies had hundreds of millions of active users, and the two apps that were removed had a combined 250 million installs.

In addition to removing the two apps from Google Play, Google also kicked them out of its AdMob mobile advertising network.

With Cheetah’s voluntary removal of two apps and Google’s booting of two more, a total of four of the eight apps that were conducting ad fraud are now gone from the Google Play store. When Google’s investigation wraps, the other four may be removed as well.

Even more apps could be removed in the future, too, given that Google is demanding that developers now remove the malicious SDKs. Those who fail to comply will get the boot, too.

One resource Google Play publishers, ad attribution providers, and advertisers, may want to take advantage of, going forward, is the Google Play Install Referrer API. This will tell them how their apps were actually installed.

Explains Google in its blog post:

Google Play has been working to minimize app install attribution fraud for several years. In 2017 Google Play made available the Google Play Install Referrer API, which allows ad attribution providers, publishers and advertisers to determine which referrer was responsible for sending the user to Google Play for a given app install. This API was specifically designed to be resistant to install attribution fraud and we strongly encourage attribution providers, advertisers and publishers to insist on this standard of proof when measuring app install ads. Users, developers, advertisers and ad networks all benefit from a transparent, fair system.

“We will continue to investigate and improve our capabilities to better detect and protect against abusive behavior and the malicious actors behind them,” said Kleidermacher.