Selasa, 29 November 2016

Erasing GPS Data From Photos

Erasing GPS Data From Photos

When you take a photo, the phone’s camera can record all kinds of technical details about the image, which are stored in the file’s EXIF(Exchangeable Image File Format) data. Along with any location information embedded by a phone or camera, the EXIF data can include a wealth of facts about the image, including the date and time it was taken, the camera’s settings and the model of camera used.

To get started, right-click on one of the picture files you want to scrub and choose Properties from the contextual menu. When the Properties box opens, select the Details tab. At the bottom of the box, click the link for “Remove Properties and Personal Information.” In the Remove Properties box that appears, you can choose to create a copy of the photo that wipes as much information as possible from the file. You can also opt instead to use the original file and delete data selectively.

If you stick with the original file, go down the list of properties in the box and select the information you want to remove from the file. Click the O.K. button when you are finished.

Repeat the process for each photo you want to edit. If you have a large number of pictures to change, third-party EXIF-editing programs may help speed things up. Mac users can find similar software, like Exif Remover and other data-stripping tools available around the web.


Under pressure from investors, Samsung Electronics might restructure its vast operations as a way to unlock shareholder value.


Under pressure from investors, Samsung Electronics might restructure its vast operations as a way to unlock shareholder value.The family-controlled South Korean electronics giant said it would consider creating a holding company and listing its operations on international exchanges. Samsung will begin a review of its options that will take at least six months, it said.

The review comes after an American hedge fund, Elliott Management, called for the company to take steps to bolster its share price. Those steps included creating a holding company and a listing on an American exchange by one of its arms.

A Samsung move to restructure could ease some of those concerns, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, a research and brokerage firm.

Although that effort won the backing of international investors, it also earned Elliott the moniker “vulture capitalist” within South Korea, where large family-run companies, known as chaebol, often fiercely resist outside intervention.

This time, however, things could be different. The company has taken a softer tone, and in the announcement on Tuesday, Samsung seemed to have addressed most of the points in Elliott’s letter, though it stopped short of committing to a full-on restructuring. Instead it said that it had “retained external advisers to conduct a thorough review of the optimal corporate structure,” which would take six months.

In its letter, Elliott argued that the company should divide itself into two publicly traded companies: a holding company that serves as the Lee family’s main ownership vehicle, and a separate company that would hold the electronics business.

Alt-Right or Alt-Wrong

Alt-Right or Alt-Wrong

When The Washington Post published a profile last week of Richard B. Spencer, a prominent leader of the so-called alt-right, readers were quick to respond. By Monday, the article had drawn more than 2,600 comments.

Many of them had a similar message.

“Please, please stop referring to a white Christian supremacist movement as the ‘alt-right’ — a phrase that sounds like a subgenre of rock music,” one reader wrote.

Another was more pointed: “STOP CALLING THEM ‘ALT-RIGHT.’ THEY ARE RACISTS, WHITE SUPREMICISTS, NAZIS.”

Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have increased the intensity of debates over language and broadened their audience. That could prompt news organizations to more quickly examine the words they use, said Joshua Benton, the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab.

“Journalists who are on Twitter are seeing the negative reaction to a word choice, a headline choice, whatever it may be,” he said, adding that he expected to see more rapid action from news organizations in response to such criticism.

But while it is inevitable that certain terms, especially ones that may be politically charged, will provoke some level of debate, the solution, many journalists say, is to describe rather than label.

Parsing a term heavy with connotations is “hard work” said Cameron Barr, a managing editor at The Washington Post. But he added: “It’s incumbent upon us to provide clear and dispassionate definitions of what these things mean.”


Facebook Fact-Check

Facebook Fact-Check

We can all agree that Facebook should do much more to make sure that blatantly fabricated claims that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote or received the pope’s endorsement don’t spread and are, at a minimum, labeled fakes.

Facebook admits, and my sources confirm, that it can do a better job of this by helping users flag dubious articles and predicting fakes based on data it has for search. This doesn’t have to involve humans: Facebook could decide to label content as suspected as fake if it was flagged a certain number of times and if it displayed other questionable attributes. Such a move would not mean Facebook’s taking broad responsibility for what’s true.

But did the F.B.I. reopen the Hillary Clinton email investigation? That’s a little tougher. Although major news outlets like CNN said that it had, the agency did not in fact reopen the inquiry, which would have been a far more significant move than what it did do (which was to take a look at newly discovered emails to see if it should reconsider its decision to close the case). Erroneous reporting by established organizations is a bigger threat than fabricated stories, and far more rampant.

If you don’t believe that Facebook’s policies could sway the news industry, you haven’t been paying attention over the past five years. Publications have been suckered into tweaking their content and their business models to try to live off the traffic Facebook sends them. They’ve favored Facebook clicks over their core readers, and are no closer to addressing plummeting print revenues. What would happen if the distribution of their articles on Facebook was tied to submitting data about their sources or conforming to some site-endorsed standards about what constitutes a trustworthy news source?

My fellow reporters and editors will argue that I am letting Facebook off too easy. While my husband did work there for a brief period, my position isn’t a defense of the company, which I have covered critically for years. I simply don’t trust Facebook, or any one company, with the responsibility for determining what is true.


Non-Mac Alternative to Microsoft

Non-Mac Alternative to Microsoft

If you do not care for Windows 10 but want to stick with Microsoft Office, the Mac and the macOS version of Office would probably provide the most familiarity. But if the Mac option is too expensive and you dislike Windows 10 enough to avoid it completely, you might consider switching to an alternative operating system, like a computer running Linux or a Google Chromebook. These systems often have the advantage of being less expensive than standard PC or Mac hardware, but they may require an internet connection to perform many functions.

Other office-software suites are available, too. If you absolutely want to install the programs on your computer and not have to rely on browser-based versions, LibreOffice is available for many Linux variations (like Ubuntu and Linux Mint), as is Apache OpenOffice. Both suites can open, edit and save files in Microsoft Office formats, although you may see some quirks with document conversions.


right to be forgotten from Google search results

right to be forgotten from Google search results

European Court of Justice ruled that Google (and other companies that profit from personal information collected from their users) had to obey requests from those users to remove outdated or irrelevant personal information from search listings. This concept is known as the “right to be forgotten,” but that particular legal decision applies only to citizens of the European Union; other countries, including Indonesia, are passing similar legislation.

Contacting Google to request that a page be blocked from appearing in search results is not the same thing as having the page removed from the web entirely. The company suggests first asking the webmaster of the site hosting the page to take it down. If that approach does not work, read this article on removing information from Google to learn what types of content might be considered for exclusion from search results — and how to make your removal request.


Nostalgia With Nintendo’s New Console

Nostalgia With Nintendo’s New Console

When she heard that Nintendo was planning to reproduce its iconic Nintendo Entertainment System video game console for the holiday season, Emily Bradbury put a note on her calendar and set an alarm on her phone.

She was not interested in buying it for her children. She wanted it for her husband.

“He’s 40 years old and grew up with a Nintendo,” Ms. Bradbury said. “It’s a nostalgia thing.”

Since its release on Nov. 11, the NES Classic Edition, a smaller version of the original console introduced to North America in 1985, has become one of the hottest gift items of the year. It has struck a chord especially among older millennials and younger members of Generation X, who may have found in it a video game system to share with their children — if they don’t just keep it for themselves.

Amanda Schluer, of Rocklin, Calif., had the foresight in July to set an alert on Amazon for one minute before the release date. Then she watched the seconds tick down.

“I’ve sat and waited for Garth Brooks tickets the same way,” Ms. Schluer said. “Just wait until the second they go on sale and push the button.”

By acting quickly, Ms. Schluer, 38, managed to buy a console. She and her husband even took their NES to Los Angeles to play with family over Thanksgiving.

“We have a Wii, and my kids never play it,” said Ms. Schluer of her two daughters, ages 6 and 10.

“That’s the good thing about the old retro games,” Ms. Schluer added. “They are fun, they’re age-appropriate, and it’s something we can all play together.”

Google and Facebook Aiming Fake News Sites

Google and Facebook Aiming Fake News Sites

Google kicked off the action when the Silicon Valley search giant said it would ban websites that peddle fake news from using its online advertising service. Hours later, Facebook, the social network, updated the language in its Facebook Audience Network policy, which already says it will not display ads in sites that show misleading or illegal content, to include fake news sites.

“We have updated the policy to explicitly clarify that this applies to fake news,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. “Our team will continue to closely vet all prospective publishers and monitor existing ones to ensure compliance.”

Facebook has been at the epicenter of that debate, accused by some commentators of swinging some voters in favor of President-elect Donald J. Trump through misleading and outright wrong stories that spread quickly via the social network. One such false story claimed that Pope Francis had endorsed Mr. Trump.

Google did not escape the glare, with critics saying the company gave too much prominence to false news stories. On Sunday, the site Mediaitereported that the top result on a Google search for “final election vote count 2016” was a link to a story on a website called 70News that wrongly stated that Mr. Trump, who won the Electoral College, was ahead of his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, in the popular vote.

Facebook’s ad policy update will not stem the flow of fake news stories that spread through the news feeds that people see when they visit the social network.

It remains to be seen how effective Google’s new policy on fake news will be in practice. The policy will rely on a combination of automated and human reviews to help determine what is fake. Although satire sites like The Onion are not the target of the policy, it is not clear whether some of them, which often run fake news stories written for humorous effect, will be inadvertently affected by Google’s change.

Mark Zuckerberg Considering Ways to Combat Facebook Fake News

Mark Zuckerberg Considering Ways to Combat Facebook Fake News

Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chairman and chief executive, broadly outlined some of the options he said the company’s news feed team was looking into, including third-party verification services, better automated detection tools and simpler ways for users to flag suspicious content.

“The problems here are complex, both technically and philosophically,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “We believe in giving people a voice, which means erring on the side of letting people share what they want whenever possible.”

Facebook initially tried to play down concerns about the issue, with Mr. Zuckerberg calling the notion that the company swayed the election “a pretty crazy idea” at a technology conference on Nov. 10. In a follow-up Facebook post, he said that less than 1 percent of the news posted to Facebook was false.

“We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or mistakenly restricting accurate content,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties.”

Facebook Against German Hate Speech Laws

Facebook Against German Hate Speech Laws

It was the 78th anniversary of the Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi pogrom against Jews, and the Berlin restaurant owned by Mr. Feinberg, a 35-year-old Israeli, had been included without his knowledge on a map of the city that a far-right group had published on Facebook.

The social media post listed the names and addresses of local Jewish institutions and Israeli-owned businesses under the banner “Jews Among Us,” in bright yellow Gothic script. Mr. Feinberg soon received anonymous phone calls telling him, “I hate Jews.”

“I have reported things to Facebook at least 20 times,” he explained over coffee at his restaurant in a residential neighborhood in western Berlin. “And 100 percent of the time, they have refused to take it down. Facebook doesn’t do anything.”

Others identified in the map did complain. At first, Facebook did not remove the map, saying it complied with the company’s “community standards,” or guidelines for what it deems within the bounds of free speech.

But within 48 hours, after an outcry on social media, in local newspapers and from German lawmakers, Facebook relented. It deleted the far-right group’s entire page, including the post that had listed the Jewish institutions and businesses across Berlin.

While his complaint may be dismissed, Mr. Jun says the roughly 450 hate speech cases that he has collected, more than half of them aimed at refugees, show that Facebook is not complying with German law. Despite its global size, he insists, the company cannot skirt its local responsibilities.

“I know Facebook wants to be seen as a global giant,” Mr. Jun said. “But there’s no way around it. They have to comply with German law.”



Minggu, 27 November 2016

Here's how to pick the right MacBook for you



Here's how to pick the right MacBook for you


Buying a new Apple laptop isn’t as simple as deciding between an Air or a Pro anymore.
The MacBook Pro is generally a better choice for shoppers who plan to use their laptop for more than just basic word processing and web browsing. Professionals using processor-intensive software like Adobe Photoshop or Final Cut Pro may need the snappier performance the Pro offers. No matter which Pro model you choose, you’ll be getting a speedier processor, an option to add more memory (15-inch Pro models only come with the 16GB memory option, double that of the Air), and a sharper screen than the Air.
The MacBook Air, starting at $999 and only available new in a 13-inch size, is now the cheapest option in Apple’s laptop lineup. With its long battery life, lightweight design, and solid performance, it’s still the best option for most people. But the question is: For how long will that be true? During Apple’s most recent Mac event, the company gave no indication that it plans to update the Air any further. Buying the Air may make sense now, but if Apple doesn’t upgrade it soon, that advice may change.
Apple’s 12-inch MacBook is its most portable and slimmest laptop, but it’s also very expensive for the level of performance it provides, starting at $1,299. Unlike Apple’s other laptops, the MacBook runs on one of Intel’s less powerful Core M processors, rather than its Core I lineup. These processors are designed to generate less heat, helping companies like Apple and others make extremely thin and light fan-less computers. This advantage is especially evident in the 12-inch MacBook, which is elegantly designed and highly portable. Carrying around the notebook, which weighs just over two pounds, feels more like toting around an iPad. It also includes a gorgeous screen as well as Apple’s new butterfly mechanism keyboard and Force Touch trackpad, similar to those on the latest MacBook Pro models.
There are major differences to consider, though. Most notably, the iPad Pro runs on iOS rather than macOS, so you’re not getting a full desktop experience. Nor does the iPad Pro include any ports other than its Lightning charging slot and a headphone jack. Its official keyboard accessory, meanwhile, isn’t as sturdy as the keyboards on Apple’s laptops. But it may be worth a look if you want something more affordable that’s easy to carry around for jotting down notes, watching Netflix and doing some light photo or video editing.

How Amazon Is Taking On Netflix

How Amazon Is Taking On Netflix

Netflix has had the global streaming-video market more or less to itself for some time now, apart from a few tentative steps made by smaller players such as HBO. But now it is getting a major competitor, and one with even deeper pockets. Amazon is said to be close to rolling out its Prime Video service worldwide.
The Wall Street Journal said that the e-commerce giant is expected to expand its video offering into about 200 countries. It is currently only available in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Austria, and Japan.
Netflix NFLX expanded its global reach in January, launching simultaneously in 130 countries for a total of more than 190 nations and territories. China is one of the only major markets where the service is unavailable. The online rental giant recently announced that it would license its content to Chinese services because the regulatory environment in that country is too hostile to outsiders.

Amazon has shown that it is more than happy to lose money for years in pursuit of a market that it believes is worth the investment. And it has a massive source of cash in its Amazon Web Services data-hosting platform, which generates roughly $10 billion in revenue every year.
As the e-commerce giant steps up the competition, Netflix could feel increasing pressure to find an acquirer with deep pockets to help it grow. Both Apple and Disney DIS -1.04% have been reported as potential buyers, although at $50 billion, it would be a large mouthful for either one.

Apple is offering a free battery replacements on some of its iPhone 6s models

Apple is offering a free battery replacements on some of its iPhone 6s models


The company said Sunday that it has started the free repair program to address the fault in a “small number” of its 6s devices. “Apple has determined that a very small number of iPhone 6s devices may unexpectedly shut down” Apple said in a statement.




orchestrated creation of fake news stories in online hoax factories

orchestrated creation of fake news stories in online 
hoax factories

How Facebook Should Handle Its Fake News Problem


Depending on whom you believe, the problem of fake news on Facebook is either one of the most important issues facing mankind, or an over-blown controversy pumped up by the mainstream media. And in a way, that dichotomy itself points out the problem with defining—let alone actually getting rid of—”fake news.”
When someone uses that term, they could be referring to one of a number of different things: It might be a story about how Bill and Hillary Clinton murdered several top-level Washington insiders, or it might be one about how Donald Trump’s chief adviser is a neo-Nazi, or it might be one about how the most important election issue was Clinton’s emails.
A large part of the reason why people get their news from Facebook in the first place, or from alternative sources like Breitbart News or dozens of others sites, is that they don’t really trust mainstream outlets. Many seem to see them as gatekeepers, who pretend to know what the “real” news is. So replacing one gatekeeper with another isn’t likely to work.
Is there anything out there that could provide a model for how Facebook and the rest of the media could approach this problem? In a way, Mark Zuckerberg came close to a potential solution in his recent blog post, in which he talked about working with third-party verification services.
If Facebook itself starts to label or hide “fake news,” based on some kind of algorithmic filtering or quality measure, there are going to be inevitable accusations that the social network is deciding what people should read or believe. And the same problem would occur if the company hired a journalist, or even a number of journalists, to make those decisions. It also wouldn’t scale.
The best approach to this conundrum, I think, is to take advantage of the principles that make the Internet so powerful as a form of networked media (powerful in both a positive and a negative sense, it must be admitted). And that is to not just have one public editor or verification node, but to have thousands, or even tens of thousands of them.
There is an existing entity that takes this approach, and it’s called Wikipedia. It has a number of flaws, and it is rightly criticized for them, but it is also the best model we have when it comes to user-contributed information flow.
If Facebook could somehow either tap into or recreate the kind of networked fact checking that Wikipedia does on a daily basis, using existing elements like the websites of Politifact and others, it might actually go some distance towards being a possible solution.

Google’s Translation App can now translate entire sentences at a time, rather than just single words

Google’s Translation App can now translate entire sentences at a time, rather than just single words



Google is improving its language translation service with a new approach that interprets whole sentences at a time rather than phrases piece-by-piece, the search giant announced Tuesday. The firm says that should make translations from the service, called Google Translate, easier to understand.
“It uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then arranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar,” Barak Turovsky, product lead for Google Translate, wrote in a new blog post.
This new version of Google Translate is powered by neural machine translation, which is a new method of teaching computers to translate human languages, according to the Association for Computational Linguistics. Google published updates regarding its research into this fieldin September; it’s now integrating the technique directly into Google Translate.

Driverless car makes street track debut

Driverless car makes street track debut


The autonomous "DevBot #1" took a giant leap forward in Morocco recently, making its debut on a street track at the Formula E Marrakech ePrix. The battery-powered prototype is being tested for Roborace -- a proposed race series where driverless cars will compete on temporary city circuits. "It's the first time we've run the Devbot in driverless mode on a Formula E track in the middle of a city street," Roborace's Justin Cooke told CNN.
"It's so exciting for the team who put hours and hours of work in. These guys were up to 1-2 a.m. in the morning developing a technology that no one else in the world is able to do at this speed and in these complicated environments."

ICON A5, a two-seater amphibious plane that looks like a sports car

ICON A5, a two-seater amphibious plane that looks like a sports car


Nevertheless, as we swoop over Florida's Tampa Bay on a gorgeous November morning, I enthusiastically take over the controls of the ICON A5, a two-seater amphibious plane that looks like a sports car, maneuvers like a jet ski and is so intuitive, the company says that even a novice can learn to fly it in less than 30 hours.
At 23 feet long and weighing in a 1,510 pounds, it's known as a sea light-sport aircraft.
Designed to help you focus on the freedom of flying without worrying if the plane will react unpredictably, there's nothing else quite like it on the market.
Now that I'm in control, my whole body tenses for a good five minutes. Am I really ready to pilot this shiny new machine all by myself? I'm not entirely sure.
However, I take comfort in the fact that the A5 was built specifically for people like me, and it was designed to drive like a car.
We glide smoothly through the air at about 1,000 feet, and I'm comfortable enough to take in the sights. Lovely Fort De Soto Park doesn't disappoint.


Google Fiber is pausing its expansion into new markets

Google Fiber is pausing its expansion into new markets


Google Fiber is pausing its expansion into new markets, losing its top executive and planning a round of layoffs. It is the clearest signal yet that the ambitious effort may be on life support.

"In the cities where we've launched or are under construction, our work will continue," Barratt said. But for additional cities that were in talks to receive Google Fiber, "we're going to pause our operations and offices while we refine our approaches."
Barratt also said Google Fiber will be "reducing our employee base." A source familiar with the matter said Google Fiber would cut 9% of staff, or more than 100 employees.
Google's parent company Alphabet reported losing $859 million in the June quarter from its "other bets" division, which includes moonshot projects like Fiber. The Internet effort was said to be the main driver of capital expenditures for the unit.
"It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that building digital infrastructure is an incredibly costly undertaking, and it also shouldn't be a surprise that it's not a terribly profitable one," says Craig Moffett, a telecom analyst with MoffettNathanson. "These kind of enterprises generally end in tears."
The source familiar with the matter confirmed that Google is focusing on wireless, but said that the use of fiber cables "is not going away."
Alphabet will report third-quarter earnings on Thursday after the bell, which may offer a clearer picture of what's next for Fiber. For now, analysts are hesitant to write off the service for dead. As Rich Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG Research, put it, "I continue to believe we haven't heard the end yet."



Pixar Is Another Steve Job's Big Success

Pixar Is Another Steve Job's Big Success 



Before Jobs became Apple CEO again, he was the CEO and owner of Pixar. Today Pixar is a household name, but in the mid-'90s it was still working on its first feature film (Toy Story) and struggling financially. Jobs, tired of funding the company himself, recruited Levy to be Pixar's CFO and turn the business around.
Levy's book shows how he worked closely with Jobs to focus Pixar's business, build an iconic brand and ultimately guide it toward a successful IPO and later an acquisition by Disney.
But for those interested in all things Apple, the book provides something more: a detailed account of how Pixar finally helped Jobs escape what is typically referred to as his "wilderness years." That's the decade or so between his firing from Apple and his return.
When Levy first met Jobs, the Apple founder's reputation was in doubt. He had been ousted from Apple. His followup company, NeXT computer, was struggling. And Pixar, the business he bought from Lucasfilm for its animation technology, was bleeding money with little to show for it.
For starters, Jobs learned how to be more "collaborative" and cede some control to others, according to Levy. "He wasn't the product maker at Pixar," he told CNNMoney. "He wasn't a filmmaker."
And it was through Pixar that Jobs got his first true taste of the entertainment industry. (In one particularly endearing moment in the book, Jobs is nearly ecstatic to learn that an A-list Hollywood exec he's meeting with has to duck out to take a call from Robert Redford.)
"We literally learned the entertainment industry together there," Levy told CNNMoney. "We literally shuttled back and forth to Hollywood to learn it."
The knowledge and relationships he cultivated in that industry would prove useful as he pushed to turn Apple around with products in the entertainment space like the iPod, iTunes Store and Apple TV.

Full Article From CNN


You don't need to bring a ticket, get your hand stamped or flash a driver's license for admission to one tourist destination in China

You don't need to bring a ticket, get your hand stamped or flash a driver's license for admission to one tourist destination in China


Baidu, a Chinese tech company, began testing facial recognition technology last week in Wuzhen, a historic town with classic canals and architecture. The area receives millions of visitors each year.
The technology has shortened wait times and added convenience for guests. So far feedback has been positive, according to Baidu (BIDU, Tech30) and the Wuzhen Tourism Co.
When a visitor arrives, their photo is taken and uploaded to a database. When he or she attempts to access certain parts of the town, a tablet attached to the entry gates records video. It then send a few frames to the cloud, where artificial intelligence identifies if the pers

on seeking access is authorized. This all happens in 0.6 of a second, according to Baidu. The technology is accurate 99.77% of the time. When you buy a ticket to an event, organizers could require an image of your face and then verify it when you attempt to enter the venue.

Another way Baidu is using the tech: to help Chinese partners grant loans to customers via smartphones. The company uses facial recognition technology to confirm who is using the phone, rather relying on a password.