Following years of accusations that it stifles right-wing speech, Facebook has published an audit failing to show any particular anti-conservative bias, and some conservatives are furious.
Law firm Covington & Burling LLP conducted the audit under the auspices of former Sen. John Kyl, a Republican who served in the US Senate representing Arizona from 1995-2013 and again for several months in 2018 following the death of Republican Sen. John McCain. The interim report (PDF), released today, seeks to reconcile the different ways Facebook sorts and presents content to its billions of users with users' perception of biased or quashed material.
Conservative politicians have for years been complaining that Facebook suppresses right-wing speech, despite nonpartisan data showing that conservative outlet Fox News is far and away the biggest English-language publisher on Facebook by user engagement. Fellow right-wing outlets Daily Wire and Breitbart also feature prominently among the top sites by engagement, mixed in among mainstream news outlets such as NBC, the BBC, CBS, and The New York Times.
“To look forward to the Moon, we need to learn from the past.”
Enlarge/ The surface of the Moon as seen from Apollo 11 while in lunar orbit.
(credit: NASA)
In the nearly five months that have passed since Vice President Mike Pence directed NASA to return humans to the Moon by 2024, the space agency has made significant progress toward that goal.
During this time and under the leadership of administrator Jim Bridenstine, the agency has let contracts for both the elements of the Lunar Gateway, the small space station that will follow a distant orbit around the Moon. NASA has also begun to solicit ideas from industry about their designs for a three-stage lunar lander, upon which construction could begin sometime in 2020. The agency is also soliciting cargo deliveries to the Moon.
These are big steps, and getting a large agency like NASA moving quickly is difficult. For all of this, however, there are storm clouds on the horizon. Most obviously, there is the matter of paying for the Artemis Program to put humans on the Moon—the US House did not including funding for this effort in its preliminary fiscal year 2020 budget, and the Senate has yet to draft a budget. If there is not additional funding, NASA cannot give industry funds to go and do the work.
Internet provider Cox Communications has asked a federal court in Virginia to preclude piracy tracking evidence from the liability lawsuit several music companies have filed. The case relies on evidence collected by MarkMonitor. However, according to Cox, the piracy tracking outfit destroyed crucial data that backs up these claims.
Last year, Cox ended its piracy liability lawsuit with music company BMG, agreeing to a “substantial settlement.”
The ISP is now in the clear, however, Cox is still caught up in another lawsuit filed by a group of major music companies, all members of the RIAA.
The music outfits, including Capitol Records, Warner Bros, and Sony Music, argue that Cox categorically failed to terminate repeat copyright infringers and that the ISP substantially profited from this ongoing ‘piracy’ activity. All at the expense of the record labels and other rightsholders.
Over the past several months, both parties have conducted discovery and the case is currently scheduled to go to trial in December. While there were talks of a potential settlement a few weeks ago, things look rather different now.
Last week we reported that the ISP canceled a scheduled settlement discussion. As a result, the music outfits called for sanctions, accusing the ISP of gamesmanship. Now, it’s Cox’s turn to ask for sanctions, this time with a formal request.
Cox submitted a motion for discovery sanctions at the Virginia federal court, where it accuses the plaintiffs of relying on unsubstantiated evidence.
The concerns relate to the piracy evidence which the music companies are relying on. This is the data that was used to send copyright infringement notices to Cox, pointing out how its subscribers allegedly shared infringing material. As such, it is the basis of the “repeat infringer” claims that are central to the lawsuit.
The data in question was collected by the anti-piracy firm MarkMonitor, which keeps a close eye on global BitTorrent activity. For the lawsuit, these infringement allegations were summarized in two spreadsheets. However, Cox notes that underlying evidence has since been deleted.
“MarkMonitor failed to retain critical portions of this evidence, and the document that Plaintiffs intend to rely on is, at best, a partial and inaccurate summary of these analyses,” Cox informs the Court.
As such, Cox requests sanctions. Specifically, it asks the court for a ruling that the piracy evidence in question can’t be used to back up any claims.
“Because Plaintiffs’ agent destroyed the underlying data, leaving no way to assess the accuracy of this summary, Cox respectfully requests that the Court enter discovery sanctions against Plaintiffs in the form of a preclusion order prohibiting Plaintiffs from relying on the incomplete and unreliable MarkMonitor evidence.”
According to Cox, MarkMonitor deleted data which showed that claimed copyright infringements were indeed linked to copyrighted files. These data concern the “matching” logs it received from the fingerprinting service Audible Magic.
During discovery, Cox learned that MarkMonitor used data from Audible Magic to reach its infringement conclusions. A subsequent subpoena explained how this worked, and a deposition of Audible Magic later revealed that MarkMonitor deleted the transaction logs.
“Ultimately, Cox learned in a deposition on the last day of discovery that MarkMonitor did not produce the transaction logs at issue or the relevant database because it had destroyed them,” Cox informs the Court.
The deleted data was crucial according to the ISP, as it’s the only way to prove that the alleged infringements detailed in the spreadsheet are correct. In addition, the routinely deleted data “strongly suggests” that MarkMonitor’s spreadsheet is inaccurate.
“The destroyed Audible Magic data was undeniably material and foundational to the MarkMonitor Spreadsheet,” Cox notes.
The ISP backs up its ‘inaccuracy’ claims in redacted parts of its memorandum, mentioning that it was a “coin flip” whether or not a claimed infringement actually took place.
Coin flip
Cox argues that the record labels withheld unfavorable information so sees no other option than to scrap the spreadsheets as evidence. In their current form, they can’t be backed up.
“Because Plaintiffs failed to preserve and produce the best and most complete—indeed, the only—evidence of the alleged direct infringements, the Court should preclude Plaintiffs from relying on the ‘236 and ‘431 Spreadsheets, and any derivative documents, which are merely incomplete and inaccurate summaries of what the data would have shown,” Cox concludes.
It the Court agrees with Cox and excludes the piracy data as evidence, the case could be severely impacted.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that Cox has complained about spoilt evidence. The company did the same a few years ago in the BMG case, after it found out that anti-piracy company Rightscorp destroyed older versions of its piracy tracking code.
At the time the Court ruled that sanctions were indeed appropriate. However, the copyright infringement claims were not disregarded and Cox’s request to dismiss the case in its entirety was denied.
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A copy of Cox’s memorandum in support of the motion for discovery sanctions and to preclude the MarkMonitor evidence is available here (pdf).
Lana Wachowski will helm with Cloud Atlas, Sense8 scribes; production begins in 2020.
Enlarge/ We assume the next Matrix film's title will be different than this. But will it be better? After "Reloaded" and "Revolutions," well, we don't know. (credit: Aurich Lawson)
It's official: the Matrix film series is coming back with a fourth numbered entry. And it will see the return of original trilogy stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss to their respective roles as Neo and Trinity.
Lana Wachowski, who served as co-writer and co-director for all three original trilogy films alongside sibling Lilly, has been confirmed as the sole Wachowski family member (so far) in the writer/director chair. Wachowski will be joined by Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell as co-writers, whose names will likely be familiar to Wachowski fans. Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas was eventually developed into a feature-length film by the Wachowskis, while Mitchell and Hemon co-wrote much of the Wachowski-helmed Netflix series Sense8.
Warner Bros. Pictures chairman Toby Emmerich on Tuesday gave an official statement on the matter, telling Variety, "We could not be more excited to be re-entering The Matrix with Lana... We are thrilled that she is writing, directing and producing this new chapter in The Matrix universe." In the same report, Wachowski told Variety, "Many of the ideas Lilly and I explored 20 years ago about our reality are even more relevant now. I'm very happy to have these characters back in my life and grateful for another chance to work with my brilliant friends."
Chrome OS tablets have been a thing since last year, but there still aren’t all that many of them. Acer, Asus, CTL, and Google have released a single model each, and that’s about it for the consumer space. But commercial device maker AOPEN …
Chrome OS tablets have been a thing since last year, but there still aren’t all that many of them. Acer, Asus, CTL, and Google have released a single model each, and that’s about it for the consumer space. But commercial device maker AOPEN has something new — the first Chrome OS tablet designed for commercial […]
This week, AT&T completed the name change from DirecTV Now to "AT&T TV Now" and rolled out a few higher-priced packages. The $50 and $70 plans still exist, but AT&T TV Now customers can also get 65 channels for $93 a month, 85 channels for $110, 105 channels for $124, or 125 channels for $135. There's also a Spanish-language plan called Óptimo Más with 90 channels for $86 a month.
Google takeover will kill “Works with Nest,” and there’s no going back.
Enlarge/ Coming soon to a Nest near you: Your Google account. (credit: Google Nest)
The smart home company Nest is currently in the middle of a rocky transition from standalone Alphabet company to a full-on merger with Google's hardware team, where it will exist as a Google sub-brand. The details were announced during Google I/O 2019 and include the debut of the first "Google Nest" product, the shutdown of the "Works with Nest" (WWN) ecosystem, and the death of standalone Nest accounts and the Nest/Google data separation. Until now, the transition has mostly involved news and new products, but now a recent update to the Nest app will let existing Nest users "migrate their account to Google." Be warned that doing this will break a lot of things and is irreversible.
So far, it looks like the Nest-to-Google transition more or less involves shutting down everything that was unique to Nest and switching to the Google Home/Google Assistant ecosystem. Migrating your Nest account to a Google account basically means jumping ecosystems, leaving behind any "Works with Nest" integrations with other apps or devices. Basic things like the Nest app, website, and Google voice commands will still work, but that's about it. Amazon Alexa users will probably see the current "Works with Nest" skill stop working, but apparently there is a new "Google Nest" skill that will replace some of the functionality.
Google's support page on the transition warns that the process "is not reversible" and that "During the migration process, you will need to remove and disconnect all your WWN third-party product connections (also not reversible)." This means you'll have to take careful stock of your Nest integrations before you switch and make sure you know what will and won't break. If you mess up, there's no going back.
The most common star in our galaxy is a red dwarf, smaller and dimmer than the Sun. Because these small stars put out much less radiation, the region where planets could have liquid water on their surfaces is much closer to the star. In these exosolar systems, the habitable zone is typically closer to the star than Mercury is to our Sun.
That's a good match to our current technology, which is best at identifying planets close to their host stars. But it has raised questions about whether these close-in planets could actually be habitable, given that red dwarf stars are prone to violent outbursts. Now, researchers have taken a close look at a planet orbiting close to a red dwarf and have found that it looks like a bare rock, suggesting that its star may have stripped off any atmosphere that once existed.
Redistribution
Studying the atmosphere of an exoplanet typically involves observations of it creating a partial eclipse of its host star. In these cases, some of the starlight passes through the planet's atmosphere, allowing us to get a sense of its composition. If there's no sign of this sort of change, then we typically infer that the planet doesn't have an atmosphere.
Microsoft is getting ready to replace the Edge web browser that ships with Windows 10 with a new version based on Google’s Chromium. Now the company is one step closer to doing that: Microsoft has released a public beta of its new Chromium-based …
Microsoft is getting ready to replace the Edge web browser that ships with Windows 10 with a new version based on Google’s Chromium. Now the company is one step closer to doing that: Microsoft has released a public beta of its new Chromium-based Edge browser. It’s available for both Windows and Mac. Microsoft says while […]
Uber and Uber Eats will offer the same 3% cash-back deal Apple Stores do.
The Apple Card is first and foremost a virtual card—meaning you make contactless or online payments using your phone or other supported Apple device. [credit:
Apple
]
Applications to Apple's new digital credit card, dubbed simply Apple Card, are now available to all iPhone users in the United States. This follows a short period when Apple offered early access to a select number of customers who signed up and an employees-only test before that.
Apple Card is a MasterCard backed by Goldman Sachs, and it is primarily managed and used inside the Wallet app on iPhones running iOS 12.4 or later. Users can track their spending categories, pay off the card, order a physical card, and more from within the app.
Apple aimed to address a few common complaints about credit cards with this product—for example, credit card transaction histories are often cryptic, and it's sometimes difficult to determine which vendor a charge was made at if the abbreviated name behind the charge doesn't match the vendor's public-facing name; Apple Card's transaction history shows full names of vendors, along with splash images matching the spending category when possible.
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