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Barack Obama - BuzzFeed video to sell Obamacare
Is it un-presidential to pose with a selfie stick? To pretend to shoot hoops all alone in the White House? To make fun of yourself on the internet? To say “Yolo”?
Barack Obama has launched those important national questions with a game appearance in an unusual video produced to drive subscriptions in healthcare plans before the end of an open enrollment period on Sunday.
The video was produced by Buzzfeed and released on Thursday, a day after an interview by the news organization with the president.
In the video, the president pretends to fail to dunk a cookie in a tall glass of milk. The cookie is too big. “Thanks, Obama,” the president says, joining his fans online who use the phrase to mock his opponents who use the phrase to mock the president.
The conceit of the video is that Obama, waiting for an interviewer to arrive, is practicing delivering his pitch about signing up for healthcare in a mirror. He is kept waiting. Boredom gives way to goofy behavior. He sticks his tongue out to check it. He poses in Joe Biden’s shades. He gets out the selfie stick. And he shoots those invisible hoops.
If it all seems too involuted, circular or self-referential to you, you may not be in the demographic the White House hopes to target with its latest Obamacare enrollment drive. The law depends on younger and relatively healthy enrollees to keep things solvent for insurers. About 7.75 million people have enrolled in healthcare plans for 2015 in advance of the Sunday deadline, according to the White House.
The Buzzfeed video featuring the president, called Things Everybody Does But Doesn’t Talk About, is a spinoff of a popular earlier Buzzfeed video, called 7 Creepy Things Everyone Does, which in turn was merely one entry in a much broader YouTube genre.
The current White House media shop has experimented with the presidential image before. Obama was the first sitting president to appear on a late-night comedy show, and the first to participate in online hangouts. In January, the president was interviewed at the White House by three young YouTube stars after he delivered his State of the Union address, which was published online in advance by the White House for the first time ever.
While Obama is the first president to play with a selfie stick, other presidents have toyed with entertainment and technology. As a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton wore sunglasses and played saxophone on late-night TV. George W Bush, at the end of his second term, became the first president to deliver his weekly radio address as a podcast, if not a video.
The video had almost 1.6m views after about an hour.
A selfie stick is a pole with a camera attachment used for taking a self-portrait at more than arm’s length. Yolo means “you only live once”.
More teenagers are trying or using e-cigarettes than tobacco products, according to a US study that has prompted fresh concerns among some scientists about a new generation of nicotine addicts. The report is the first to claim such high rates of e-cigarette use among 12- to 18-year-olds, though the study did not distinguish between those who had had one puff and never tried them again and more regular users.
“This is an early warning sign, not the final story,” Wilson Compton, deputy director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, said at an American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Jose.
Advocates believe that e-cigarettes – which do not contain tobacco – have an enormous potential to improve public health by replacing traditional cigarettes, which contain hundreds of harmful chemicals. But some critics fear that the products could draw more people into nicotine addiction and possibly act as a gateway to smoking tobacco.
Figures from an annual survey of more than 40,000 students in 400 US secondary schools showed that 8.7% of 14-year-olds had smoked an e-cigarette in the previous month. Among 16- and 18-year-olds, the figures were higher, at 16.2% and 17.1% respectively. By comparison, the survey found that 4% of 14-year-olds, 7% of 16-year-olds and 14% of 18-year-olds reported using a tobacco cigarette.
Compton said: “It is quite surprising that a larger number of teenagers in the US are now reporting current use of e-cigarettes than traditional tobacco cigarettes.”
The same survey, based on spring 2014 data compiled by the University of Michigan, found that 36% of 14-year-olds who had tried e-cigarettes in the past month had never tried smoking or chewing tobacco. Among the older teens, 30% and 21% of e-cigarette smokers aged 16 and 18 respectively said they had not previously tried tobacco products.
“That’s a concern, because this may be a unique and new pathway to nicotine exposure and could open up the potential for the development of addiction to nicotine, with the potential for long-lasting complications and progression to the use of absolutely harmful forms of tobacco,” said Compton. He said the use of e-cigarettes by teenagers was a particular issue because adolescence seemed to be a critical time for the seeds of addiction to be sown.
But other experts said children trying e-cigarettes instead of traditional cigarettes was no bad thing. “Smoking prevalence in youth is showing an unprecedented decline and it is now lower than ever before,” said Peter Hajek, director of the tobacco dependence research unit at Barts and the London school of medicine. “The fact that young people are trying e-cigarettes instead of cigarettes is a cause for relief rather than alarm.”
Hajek added: “A lot of adolescents try e-cigarettes by taking a puff from someone’s device, but, crucially, they do not progress to regular use. In fact, they usually do not try them again, and there is even some evidence that this may protect them from picking up smoking.”
In the UK, about 80,000 people a year die from tobacco smoke-related diseases – nearly a fifth of all deaths in the over-35s. The most damaging health effects – cancer and heart disease – are linked to inhaling tar and other chemicals produced when the tobacco burns. Though e-cigarettes produce fewer noxious chemicals, tests have found the vapour from some to contain cancer-causing substances such as formaldehyde and acetaldehyde.
Deborah Arnott, head of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), said: “Nicotine can be harmful to the growing brain, so it’s best if young people avoid it. But if they’re going to experiment, it’s better to use e-cigarettes, as vaping is far less dangerous than smoking and much less addictive. We need to keep track, but so far in the UK and the US smoking rates are going down more than e-cigarette use is growing. This would not be the case if vaping really were a gateway into smoking.”
Estimates from Ash suggest that 1.3 million people in the UK use electronic cigarettes, with about 400,000 people using them instead of traditional cigarettes.
Roy Harrison, professor of environmental health at Birmingham University, said: “There are likely public health benefits from e-cigarettes if they provide a pathway for smokers to give up tobacco use. There is evidence that this can happen, and little doubt that e-cigarettes are much less harmful to the smoker than tobacco. However, if adolescents who have never used tobacco take up e-cigarette use, this is a matter of profound concern as they are deliberately exposing themselves to a highly addictive substance.”
Apple is reportedly hiring automotive engineers to work at a top-secret lab in Silicon Valley, fuelling rumours that the company may be designing a car.
Dozens of Apple employees led by managers from its iPhone unit are researching automotive products, according to the Financial Times. It reports that the company has poached the head of Mercedes-Benz’s Silicon Valley research and development unit, while Sir Jonathan Ive, senior vice-president of design at Apple, has held regular meetings with automotive executives and engineers.
Designing and building a car would mark a huge change of direction for the computer maker, which researches and discards plenty of projects but has so far mainly stuck to its core expertise in mobile and electronic devices.
Apple, much like its closest rival Google, is trying to incorporate its software into cars. It may be hiring extra staff to shore up its CarPlay project, which lets drivers access contacts on their iPhones, make calls or listen to voicemails without taking their hands off the steering wheel. But the background and seniority of the executives it is recruiting have prompted speculation that Apple may be trying to move into car design.
The Wall Street Journal reports that sources with knowledge of the company say it is working on an electric car. The newspaper quotes one person as saying a vehicle that looks like a minivan has been designed.
Apple commentator Bryan Chaffin, of the Mac Observer website, speculated earlier this month that Apple had entered a hiring war with electric car maker Tesla, recruiting staff with an expertise in cars.
“Three months ago, I would have said it was CarPlay,” the FT quoted a person who has worked closely with Apple for many years as saying. “Today, I think it’s a car.”
It is unlikely that any resulting product would be released soon because the research lab was only set up late last year and Apple lacks a manufacturing facility.
A contact lens that magnifies objects at the wink of an eye has been created by scientists to help people with impaired vision.
The lens contains an extremely thin telescope that is switched on when the wearer winks their right eye and returns to normal when they wink their left eye.
The contact lens magnifies objects by 2.8 times, making road signs, facial features and other objects large enough for people with AMD to recognise with their peripheral vision.
The device was funded by Darpa, the Pentagon’s research agency, as a means of giving soldiers a form of bionic vision.
“They were really interested in supervision, but the reality is more tame than that,” said Tremblay at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. So far, only five people have tested the latest version.
The device is larger and slightly thicker than a normal contact lens. It allows the wearer to see normally by correcting for short or long sight. But around the central region is a thin, ring-shaped reflective telescope, which expands the perceived size of objects like weak binoculars.
To swap between normal and magnified vision, the wearer dons a pair of liquid crystal glasses. By winking, they can switch the glasses electronically to polarise light in different planes. The contact lens is designed so that one type of polarised light goes through the normal, central part of the lens, while the other goes through the magnifying region.
More work is needed before the contact lenses are ready for patients to wear regularly. The latest lenses can only be worn for about half an hour, because they do not allow enough oxygen to pass through them and into the eye. Tremblay said he expected a working version of the contact lenses to be available in two years or so.
Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone maker, will make its first step into western markets with a US launch this year.
Five-year-old Xiaomi – dubbed “China’s Apple” by analysts – will launch its Mi Band fitness tracker, headphones and battery packs, but not its eagerly anticipated smartphones.
Opening up its online accessories store to US consumers will mark Xiaomi’s first step into western markets outside China, after an unsuccessful effort to launch in India where it has faced issues around patent infringement.
“We are an internet company. We are not in the business of only making handsets,” said Hugo Barra, vice-president of international operations for Xioami and a former Google Android executive.
“The amount of effort required to bring [smartphones and tablets] to market is significant. So we’re accelerating our entry in a sense by bringing simpler products.”
Barra cited language localisation and regulatory issues as well as manufacturing challenges as hurdles to overcome before Xiaomi’s smartphones could go on sale in the US and other key markets outside China.
Despite not yet being available outside Asia, Xiaomi became the world’s third-biggest smartphone manufacturer in the third quarter of 2014. It also raised $1.1bn in venture capital, valuing the company at $45bn.
Most recently Xiaomi launched a new new range of phablets that take aim at both Samsung and Apple, with chief executive Lei Jun citing Apple specifically in his keynote presentation.
Jun is outspoken about his belief that Xiaomi has what it takes to be the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, but trouble with patents have kept it from expanding far beyond its home turf.
Lin Bin, Xiaomi co-founder, told a press conference – the company’s first significant event for media in the US – that intellectual property was “not the most important matrix”. However, it was one factor that he and Jun use when planning country launch strategies.
Jun recently boasted about the number of patents filed by Xiaomi around its smartphones, displaying patents awarded for the camera on its new Mi Note phablet during its announcement presentation last month.
Apple’s chief designer Jonathan Ive recently criticised Xiaomi’s alleged copying of its iPhone, saying: “It is theft and it is lazy. I don’t think it is OK at all.”
Xiaomi is likely to face fierce patent litigation from Apple and others if it does start selling smartphones in the US and Europe.
Some time in late summer 1996 I was at The Oval, sat behind that red-brick secret garden wall that snakes around the Harleyford Road, watching some county cricket. In the middle a broad-shouldered, shaven‑headed figure in a billowing white shirt was running in to bowl to someone, with the score on something, and working up a fair old pace. This was of course Chris Lewis, who was turning out to be an excellent addition to a dressing room of amusingly cocksure talents.
During the tea interval I walked out past the shops at the old Oval tube station, passing the kiosk where a man with long grey dreadlocks used to play reggae music and sell drinks. Standing next to him on this occasion was a broad-shouldered, shaven-headed figure in a billowing white shirt, drinking a can of something cold, grinning an indecently handsome smile, flirting with a cluster of women, and generally showing no great urgency to get back to the game of cricket he was, according to the scorecard, playing in at that moment.
This was, of course, also Chris Lewis, still a year away from the end of his England career and five years on from his appearance in the 1992 World Cup final – England’s last World Cup match in Melbourne, and an occasion that, looking back now, provides a kind of time tunnel into a half-finished world of paunch-hugging viscose shirts, pre‑irony moustaches and outsize sporting greats.
It has been pointed out many times that the 1992 tournament was the jumping off point for New Fast Loud Cricket, the moment coloured clothing, floodlights, white balls and all the rest began to defibrillate an unmodernised Victorian spectator sport. But take a look now at the team sheets for that final and something else jumps out too.
It turns out this was a match contested by a uniquely ill-fated group of cricketers. Indeed, there is a fair case the 92 World Cup final stands alone as one of the most murkily back-storied occasions in cricket history, with the future activities of those involved taking in – among more legitimate pursuits – corruption, cocaine addiction, match fixing, cricket journalism and international drug smuggling.
Lewis’s own story is at least due to take a slightly happier turn some time soon. By my calculations he has a chance of being released from prison this year, after being found guilty in 2009 of smuggling cocaine into the country inside tins of fruit juice.
He isn’t alone in having suffered in the years since. Famously that final turned on a brilliant spell of bowling by Wasim Akram. First Allan Lamb was bowled by an in-swinger that nipped away, a delivery so hauntingly elusive that Lamb presumably still goes out looking for it now and then in his car, combing the countryside, putting up wanted posters. Next ball, Lewis, the new man at the crease, was bowled by another perfect nip-backer.
At which point, drawing back from the names and numbers, the 92 final starts to jump up off the page and walk around the place of its own accord. Four years later Lamb – along with Ian Botham (out for a duck in Melbourne) – would meet Imran Khan again in the high court in a grandiose libel case that ended in another spectacular defeat. Lewis’s problems with the law are well documented but his replacement at the crease, Dermot Reeve, would experience his own cocaine-related problems, admitting in 2005 that he had even commentated on a Lord’s Test match in a gabbling coke-induced haze. Which is, let’s face it, some way short of the Richie Benaud ideal.
On Pakistan’s side Saleem Malik – AKA The Rat – would go on to become one of cricket’s match-fixing bogymen of the 1990s; Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mushtaq Ahmed and Akram were all fined, too, as a result of the Qayyum report into corruption. In 1993, Aaqib Javed, along with Wasim and Mushtaq, was arrested by Grenadian police on drugs charges (subsequently dropped). All-night casino trips, wild carousing, murky rumours: it is a fairly endless list, to be honest.
Lots of bad choices! All at the same time! It is, though, necessary to keep some perspective. Few teams in any sport remain untouched by some kind of scandal, while cricketers, throughout the sport’s history, have been a maverick, troubled bunch, adrift in a sport of fine margins, anxiety, fragile means. But this is extreme stuff, a fug of mishap and misadventure , all intersecting around a match that took place at a notable G-spot in cricket’s modern history.
Whether they knew it or not, the class of 92 had their noses pressed up against something. Cricket was on the verge of striking its own generational jackpot, triple-cherries zeroing in, gold coins all set to come chugging out. Except, not now: not for them. Little wonder, perhaps, that there were temptations, unusual gravitational pressures, just as there were during the golden age of English football match fixing, a time of surging revenues and star players still kept down by the salary cap.
Twenty-three years on cricket remains a uniquely hot-housed, giddily destabilised global sport. Those hidden currents of avarice and ambition are out front now, unashamedly driving the show, an entire global sporting governance predicated on the helicopter full of gold bullion model.
Meanwhile far less talented cricketers than Chris Lewis are making far more money than he would have been able to squeeze out of those wretched fruit juice tins. And Lewis himself simply looks like fortune’s fool, a comprehensive school kid from Barbados, driven on by nothing more than his own talent, who went on six England tours but never quite found a home for his goofy, flaky, party-boy style, and finally drifted into hapless criminality. Lewis may or may not emerge from prison some time this year (the rumours suggest he has survived as well as could be expected). In the meantime he probably hasn’t watched much cricket. It shouldn’t matter. There isn’t a great deal that will look that unfamiliar in this altered landscape to a man who was back there back then, before the game behind the game became the game.
Samsung said that it was “currently conducting a full and thorough investigation into the cause as our top priority”.
Several Samsung smart TV owners took to Reddit to complain that a silent video advert for Pepsi kept appearing in Plex, an app for streaming video from a computer among other sources.
“I watch most of my TV shows on a Samsung Smart TV and it has been fantastic for the past year. Recently it has been stopping half way through a show or a movie and has played a pepsi ad that is muted,” said user beans90 on Reddit explaining that the adverts do not interrupt viewing on any other platforms, including PC, PlayStation 4 and tablet computers running Plex.
A Plex spokesperson told GigaOm that the company was not behind the pop up ads.
Separately, users of Australia’s Foxtel streaming TV service reported a similar issue after having updated the Samsung SmartHub, which allows users to download apps.
“After about 15 minutes of watching live TV, the screen goes blank, and then a 16:9 sized Pepsi advert (taking up about half the screen) pops up and stops Foxtel playing,” said a users known as darlinghurst on the Foxtel company forums. “It’s as if there is a popup ad on the TV.”
Other users took to the forums to complain of the same advert interruptions using Samsung smart TVs leading a Foxtel support representative known as Beta_Boy to state: “This absolutely should not be happening and is being escalated immediately.”
A Samsung spokesperson told the Guardian: “We are aware of a situation that has caused some Smart TV users in Australia to experience programme interruption in the form of an advertisement.”
“This seems to be caused by an error, and we are currently conducting a full and thorough investigation into the cause as our top priority. This situation has so far been reported only in Australia. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience experienced by our customers.”
In 2014 it was revealed that Samsung has partnered with Yahoo to create adverts and other “interactive experiences”. These experiences were said to be “opt-in”.
It appears that an update to the Samsung software powering the smart TVs has enabled the pop-up ads by default.
The Yahoo-powered service can be disabled by declining the Yahoo privacy policy within the Samsung Smart Hub terms and policy section.
Samsung is not the only company looking to monetise smart TV platforms with adverts. Panasonic smart TVs display banner ads in some situations and streaming box manufacturer Roku has pursued revenue share agreements with streaming services using its platform.
Advertising companies including Yahoo and appTV offer solutions for advertisers to place promotions on smart TVs, while smart TVs that log user activity offer the potential for targeted advertising similar to the services internet advertising companies such as Google offer.
At 11am I had a strange pain in my toe. By 11.03 I’d decided I had gout. By 11.05 I was convinced it was a brain tumour. By 11.15 I’d realised that, actually, my shoes were probably to blame, but by that time I’d already decided on the music that should be played at my funeral.
You may think I sound crazy but, actually, I just have a mild form of cyberchondria: a condition in which benign aches and pains are transformed into fatal diseases after a few minutes spent looking up symptoms on Google. It’s a common ailment: one in 20 Google searches are health-related and, according to a 2012 study, one in four British women have misdiagnosed themselves on the internet. Google is well aware that it is now most people’s primary healthcare provider and has started to better monetise, sorry, I mean “manage”, how we access medical information online. On Tuesday, the search engine announced that, when you ask Google about common health conditions, you will be provided with the most relevant medical information immediately, through the knowledge graph, so you don’t have to trawl through heaps of websites. This new data is currently only available in the US but will eventually be rolled out globally.
The knowledge graph is, more accurately, an answers rectangle; it’s that box that sometimes comes up alongside your search results with time-saving information about whatever you were looking for. Basically, it’s Google’s ploy to keep you from leaving its clutches and clicking on links to other sites. By some reports (Wikipedia’s), the knowledge graph has played a role in the pageview decline of various language versions of Wikipedia.
The fact that Google is injecting medical information into the knowledge graph is, generally speaking, a positive thing. It means you can be more certain the medical information you’re accessing is accurate. An average of 11 doctors have vetted Google’s medical facts; each of the 400 medical conditions currently listed was then reviewed by non-profit healthcare organisation the Mayo Clinic.
But Google’s medical intervention isn’t without serious side-effects. First, it gives Google even more control over the information we consume every day. Second, by making it easier to research medical conditions, this new function is basically crack for the worried well. Indeed, it’s possible that, by now, you are starting to remember that your toe hurts, or you have a headache, or your leg is twitching. You may feel an urge to Google your symptoms. Please proceed with caution. In order to help you bypass some of the many perils of self-diagnosis, here is a hypochondriac’s guide to Google:
Don’t take the illustrations literally
Google’s diagnoses come with medical illustrations that look like they belong in a children’s book of cautionary tales from the 1950s. While it would be weird if Google told you about diseases via animated gifs, the terrifying realism of these drawings may induce irrational phobias. For example, the illustration for “food poisoning” shows an old lady eating egg salad alone in a park. Next thing you know, she is clutching her belly in pain in a beige bathroom. All I gleaned from this before I quickly clicked away was “egg salad will kill you”.
Google knows very little about pimples
The medical illustration for “pimple” shows a woman frozen in the act of applying mascara as she eyes a big red pimple with a mix of horror and grudging admiration. The woman has purple lipstick and a cartilage piercing and probably sleeps in her makeup after coming home drunk, which is why she has pimples. She is clearly thinking: should I pop it, should I pop it? Google has nothing to say about this very important question. Instead, it recommends Neutrogena. I recommend bypassing Google for such queries and consulting Dr Zoella instead.
Quizzes are not a diagnostic tool
Sometimes, Google’s knowledge graph just doesn’t have the answer and you will be tempted to click through to a diagnostic quiz. Online quizzes are a great way to find out which Disney princess you are (I’m Pocahontas) but they are not such a great way to find out if you are suffering from Asperger syndrome.
Never Google Image dracunculus medinensis
I’m still having nightmares.
Finally, always consult your doctor
Google’s medical information may be more accurate than other information you’ll find online, but you should still take everything you read on the internet with a grain of salt. But not too much salt, of course. That will give you high blood pressure.
Economists in Glasgow believe they can predict future election results using Google search data after they accurately forecast the vote in last year’s Scottish independence referendum.
Analysing live data on Google searches for the name Alex Salmond combined with commercial polling figures allowed the researchers to predict the yes vote would hit 45% – five days before that actual result in the referendum on 18 September.
Prof Ronald MacDonald, an economist and currency expert at Glasgow University, said they were able to track the yes vote rise with several complex methods routinely used by financial markets to analyse Google Trends big data to predict stock market movements and commodity prices.
In a study likely to catch the eye of political strategists who already mine internet and social media data during campaigning, MacDonald said the same methodology could be used to forecast the result in elections.
They were now considering a further test for May’s general election, he added. “Potentially, it’s a very useful tool but its complementary to the main pollsters. It would be feasible to do it on the day [of an election],” he said.
MacDonald, who backed the pro-UK group Academics Together during the referendum, added that an election was a more complex political event than a referendum, so the tracking would need to be more complex too. A forecast also assumed there was no cataclysmic event in the last days of campaigning.
He added that a single question referendum dominated by two campaigns and a few key personalities was easier to measure than numerous parties and party leaders competing on different agendas, in different parts of the country.
MacDonald said he and researcher Xuxin Mao tracked Google Trends data on searches for Salmond’s name and “SNP”, and factored in opinion polling results every week until August 2014, and then switched to live, daily tracking of searches for nearly six weeks until 16 September.
By 13 September, the model predicted yes would hit 45% with a very high degree of confidence, he said, with a range between 44.8% and 45.2%. In the event, the yes vote hit 44.7%.
They mapped a spike in likely yes support, pushing the vote up by 4.3% to 36.2%, when George Osborne announced the UK government would veto a sterling currency union after independence. It also detected a rise in yes backing after a YouGov poll in the final stages of the campaign gave yes a two-point lead over no, which energised grassroots yes campaigners.
However, that tracking did not link an increase in pro-independence votes with the anti-cuts, pro-NHS campaign run by Yes Scotland in the final weeks, which no campaigners believe cost the pro-UK camp up to five points on polling day.
MacDonald said their modelling was not able to map incremental changes in voting patterns due to one particular topic: it was more sensitive to specific events.
But he added that the famous “vow” from all three UK party leaders promising more devolution in the Daily Record had no clear impact on the final vote – despite assertions by Salmond it had a direct effect on the result. Nor did Salmond’s victory over no campaign leader Alistair Darling in the second TV debate.
MacDonald said in fact, had the referendum campaign continued for several more weeks, the steady momentum by then building for yes could have seen the pro-independence campaign win.
It emerged soon after the vote that Salmond and Yes Scotland believed they would win on 18 September by 54% to 46% because they had used cruder social media data, including Twitter activity. In the event, that prediction from their Canadian pollsters First Contact was significantly wrong.
Scientists have poured cold water on new research questioning dietary advice issued 30 years ago urging people to avoid eating fatty foods such as butter and cheese.
The guidelines, introduced in the UK in 1983 and in the US six years earlier, recommended reducing overall dietary fat consumption to 30% of total energy intake and saturated fat to 10%.
The study, which reviewed data available at the time the guidelines were issued, states: “It seems incomprehensible that dietary advice was introduced for 220 million Americans and 56 million UK citizens, given the contrary results from a small number of unhealthy men.
“The results of the present meta-analysis support the hypothesis that the available [randomised controlled trials] did not support the introduction of dietary fat recommendations in order to reduce [coronary heart disease] risk or related mortality.”
The review was led by Zoë Harcombe, of the Institute of Clinical Exercise and Health Science, University of the West of Scotland, Hamilton, and Dr James Dinicolantonio, Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, Kansas City. They argued that in characterising saturated fat as the “main dietary villain”, public health teams did not pay enough attention to other risks – especially carbohydrates, which are believed to be helping to fuel the obesity crisis.
However, the paper has prompted a flurry of criticism, with scientists lining up to question its methodology and conclusions. Some went so far to argue that the new study was potentially dangerous.
“The claim that guidelines on dietary fat introduced in the 1970s and 80s were not based on good scientific evidence is misguided and potentially dangerous,” said Christine Williams, professor of human nutrition at the University of Reading.
“Whilst it is important to ensure we continue to interrogate the evidence on diet and heart disease, this must be approached through an holistic assessment of the evidence base and recognition of the clear improvements in population cholesterol levels that have taken place over the past 30 years. There are justifiable concerns regarding evidence that saturated fats have been replaced in the diet by sugars, and this requires a reasoned assessment of alternative approaches for the future.”
Photograph: Hartmut Kiefer/Getty
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) pointed out that the guidance issued 30 years ago was based not just on randomised controlled trials, but on other evidence as well.
“Understanding the true relationship between diet and our health is not simple. Unlike drug trials, studies on diet and disease are difficult to conduct,” said Victoria Taylor, senior dietitian at the BHF.
“It would be all but impossible to carry out a research trial where you controlled the diets of thousands of people over many years. That’s why guidance in the UK is based on a consensus of the evidence available not just on randomised controlled trials.”
Taylor said the BHF continued to recommend switching saturated fat for unsaturated fat, consistent with a Mediterranean-style diet, which is associated with a lower rate of coronary heart disease.
Others argued that fat is not the only factor in managing heart disease.
“This review reminds us that like Saturday Night Fever, tartan culottes and bubble perms, the reductionist ‘single nutrient’ dietary recommendations deserve to be left in the early 80’s where they belong,” said Catherine Collins, principal dietician at St George’s hospital NHS trust, said: “As do doctors and other health professionals who persist in their persecution of single nutrients whilst ignoring a ‘whole diet’ approach.”
Collins added: “Studies had small study numbers [most with a history of heart disease], were highly varied in dietary and lifestyle approach, and reviewed outcomes over a short time scale – around five years on average. All these factors would influence the outcome – whatever dietary changes were made. In contrast to that era, today’s population studies review tens of thousands of people over decades before making recommendations on diet or lifestyle factors, improving the accuracy of findings.”
In linked editorial to the study, Rahul Bahl, of the Royal Berkshire NHS foundation trust, also sounded a note of caution.
He wrote: “There is certainly a strong argument that an overreliance in public health on saturated fat as the main dietary villain for cardiovascular disease has distracted from the risks posed by other nutrients, such as carbohydrates. Yet replacing one caricature with another does not feel like a solution.”
The film it needs to overhaul is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, whose total stands at $335.7m (£220.4m) since its US release on 21 November. Sniper, which was released on Christmas day, currently stands at $281.4m, and is projected to finish with around $360m.
American Sniper: ‘Clean Harry. Like Dirty Harry, but boring’ – video review
Dan Fellman, Warner Bros’ head of domestic distribution, told Variety he was taking nothing for granted. “We’ll take it one week at a time,” he said. “But it’s certainly moving in that direction.”
The Clint Eastwood-directed biopic of Navy Seal Chris Kyle, starring Bradley Cooper, is already the highest-grossing war film in the US, having gone past the $216.3m lifetime total of Saving Private Ryan. (However, Ryan was released in 1998, and adjusted for inflation its takings are equivalent to $373.6m.)
Guardians of the Galaxy remains the top-earning film entirely within the calendar year 2014, with $328.1m out of its domestic total of $333.1m.
Nearly a third of British 11-16 year-olds say they have been targeted by mean or cruel behaviour online in the last year, but nearly two-thirds say they feel able to cope with online negativity, according to a survey commissioned by the UK Safer Internet Centre.
Its report, based on interviews with more than 1,000 young people, was released as part of the charity’s Safer Internet Day 2015 event, which has backing from politicians, celebrities and internet companies.
The survey found plenty of positives around young people’s online activities, with 63% saying they are closer to their friends because of the internet, and 55% seeing kind, positive and supportive posts all or most of the time on social networks and messaging apps.
However, the report also notes that 13% of 11-16 year-olds feel that people post negative, mean, critical or upsetting things all or most of the time on these services, while one in 20 said they feel that people are mean to them “most of the time” online.
“The report shows how important technology is in young people’s lives and their friendships: for the majority of them, the internet is a positive place. But there is still that issue of young people that don’t have such a good time,” Will Gardner, chief executive of Childnet International and director of the UK Safer Internet Centre, told the Guardian.
“We don’t want to trivialise the fact that many young people are having a difficult time online. We want to use this Safer Internet Day event to inspire young people to create a kinder internet for themselves, as well as showing parents that internet safety is an important issue to be looking at.”
According to the report, 26% of British 11-16 year-olds use six or more social networks and messaging apps every week. The most popular individual services are YouTube and Facebook, used by 78% and 74% of this age group respectively.
They’re followed by Snapchat (46%), Instagram (43%), Twitter and WhatsApp (both 37%) and Skype and Minecraft (both 32% – the latter game presumably included because children can play it together online).
The report suggests that many children are taking action on these services when they encounter negativity. Of those who have experienced mean behaviour, 75% have blocked another user; 68% have supported someone who was being targeted, and 74% have stood up to a culprit.
Gardner, who sits on Facebook’s safety advisory board, said that internet services have made encouraging steps forward in recent years to help their users – young people included – take action.
“The different services now have safety centres where you can get advice on how to keep safe, and there have been some improvements to the reporting and blocking tools available on those services,” he said.
“Facebook reporting wasn’t transparent in the past: when you made a report, you didn’t know what happened to it. Now it has a dashboard where you can track that report, see if it’s been dealt with or not, and what the outcome was. It’s really important that these service providers maintain their users’ confidence in the safety tools that are there.”
Gymnast Beth Tweddle is backing Safer Internet Day.
On the Safer Internet Day a film – #Up2Us – featuring more than 150 schoolchildren talking about their online experiences will premiere. There will also be an online TV show, SID TV, aimed at 8-15 year-olds and featuring celebrities including gymnast Beth Tweddle.
“Beth has experience of getting abuse online, and she was very clear in saying ‘let’s not throw away Twitter because of the minority that are abusive: let’s engage with this medium’. She has made some incredible statements about listening to the positive voices while using this technology, and reporting the things that are abusive,” said Gardner.
“And in the film, we’ve got a very inspiring commentary from young people saying that on Safer Internet Day, when they see a negative comment they’re going to post a positive one to counteract it.”
Adults are also a key target for the day-long event, with online resources for parents and carers including a factsheet and “conversation starters”, and education packs for teachers of primary and secondary-school age children.
“Our goal is to try to get a dialogue between parents and children about technology. Just as you’d ask you child what they did today, so you can take an interest in their online lives and the services that they’re using,” said Gardner.
“If there is a dialogue going on, it’s more likely that young people will come and talk to their parent if something goes wrong.”
Politicians including digital economy minister Ed Vaizey, the Prime Minister’s digital advisor Baroness Shields and Labour leader Ed Milliband are backing Safer Internet Day.
Gardner said British politicians have a “pretty good track record” of engaging with the issues around internet safety for children.
He cited the current coalition government’s addition of e-safety to England’s new computing curriculum, and the previous Labour administration’s Byron review of child internet safety and creation of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) as evidence.
“The UK is seen as something of a leader in the area of online safety. We’re very careful not to make this into a political issue: it is something which is relevant to everybody,” said Gardner.
“We want to make sure that whatever happens after the general election in May, there is good support in this space for education and awareness work.”
He stressed that the positive side of how children are using the internet should be acknowledged alongside problems such as cyberbullying and online grooming.
“Young people are seizing the opportunity to engage with new technologies: they’re doing brilliant things, discovering new things, connecting with other people and being creative. That is a positive story,” said Gardner. “At the same time, let’s not ignore the fact that there are some other issues here.”
Samsung has set up a new research lab concentrating on drones, robotics, 3D printing and virtual reality.
The research group will be part of Samsung’s mobile division but will operate independently, building on the work done by the company in robotic vacuum cleaners and, most recently, its Gear VR headset built in partnership with Facebook’s Oculus Rift.
A Samsung spokesperson told the Korea Times: “Given the significance of the team, members will have more authority and independence because the main purpose of the team isn’t to develop single devices for any imminent results, but to develop solutions to go with Samsung’s manufacturing capabilities. The team will explore how technologies could help people’s daily life for a better future.”
The move forms part of Samsung chief executive BK Yoon’s plan to finally make the Internet of Things (IoT) – an environment where everything is connected to the internet, creating “swarm intelligence” from individually dumb devices – a reality after being simply a meaningless buzzword for years.
“Samsung’s previous success was mostly due to releasing products that are competitive in pricing,” Samsung said. “This is an old business formula. We need to constantly explore new ways to meet the needs of people through innovation and updated technologies.”
Samsung’s revenues in its mobile business have declined as growing sales of the company’s smartphones, including the flagship Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series, have faltered with competition from Apple at the top end and Chinese manufacturers such as Xiaomi and Lenovo at the bottom.
The company is likely to look to the innovation centre to revitalise its technology sales leveraging Samsung’s extensive expertise in semi-conductors and component manufacturing.
Streaming music firm Deezer is rolling its high-definition Deezer Elite service out to more than 150 countries, following its US debut in September 2014.
The company says it brought forward the plans for its global launch after finding strong demand in the US, where 200,000 people have signed up for the service that streams music in the lossless Flac audio format.
For now, Deezer Elite will only be available through connected hi-fis made by Sonos, which was also its launch partner in the US.
Sonos owners who are already Deezer subscribers can switch to Elite for no extra cost, while people who are new to the streaming service will be able to sign up for its higher-quality tier from 19 March.
“We still haven’t set a price for new users, but I would anticipate that it will be similar to the US,” Tyler Goldman, chief executive of Deezer north America, told the Guardian.
There, Deezer Elite costs $9.99 a month for people who sign up for a year in advance and $14.99 a month if they opt for monthly billing. That hints at £9.99 and £14.99 respectively in the UK.
Goldman said Deezer Elite’s US launch has been successful beyond his company’s expectations, noting that while subscribers to its standard service tend to listen for around an hour a day, Deezer Elite users listen for double that time on average.
“This is obviously a somewhat self-selecting group – these are huge audio enthusiasts so they’re naturally going to be heavy listeners – but the satisfaction quotient is extremely high too,” he said. “65% of them say they won’t go back to MP3-quality music. They’re definitely valuing the sound-quality difference.”
Deezer is focusing its energy on selling Deezer Elite to Sonos’s customers for now, but Goldman said more hardware partnerships will follow in due course, as the service is refined.
Its appeal rests on the higher-quality bitrate at which the music it streams is encoded: 1,411 kilobits per second (kbps) rather than the 320kbps rate offered by Deezer’s standard service.
For now, the Flac streams will not be available on Deezer Elite subscribers’ mobile devices. “Firstly because most phones today cannot support Flac, and secondly because there would be significant data charges,” said Goldman.
“Third, most people listening on a mobile are listening on a headset, and although they’d hear a difference, it wouldn’t be pronounced. Also, in the US, we’re seeing for Deezer Elite users that the majority of consumption is happening at home.”
Goldman said record labels have been supportive of Deezer’s move into high-quality streaming, enabling it to make more than 25m tracks available in Flac format, out of the 35m in its catalogue.
Deezer is far from alone in exploring lossless-quality streaming music. Norwegian firm Aspiro has one service called WiMP HiFi in Scandinavia, and another – Tidal – available elsewhere in the world.
French firm Qobuz also has a hi-fidelity streaming service available in eight European countries, and while Spotify does not currently offer a lossless option, its chief executive Daniel Ek hinted in December that it was mulling the idea.
Musician Neil Young recently launched PonoMusic – a music-playing device and online store focusing on lossless files. However, Pono offers them solely as “a la carte” downloads, rather than as a subscription streaming service.
Goldman admitted that in time, lossless may be a standard feature for streaming services. “There are parallels to HDTV: initially people paid more for HD channels, but over time it just became part of your package,” he said.
“You can see a longer-term arc in music where Flac may be the common way that files are delivered. In the interim, you’ll definitely see other services offer Flac as an option, but super-serving this audience will not just about the encode rate. It will be about the other features.”
Such as? Goldman noted that Deezer Elite customers “way over-index” with their interest in the classical and jazz genres; tend to have plenty of lossless-quality songs either bought or ripped from their CD collections; and often have more than one residence.
“There are a lot of things that we can super-serve here. Clearly this is an audience that has different needs,” he said.
It’s also an audience that will be crucial to Deezer’s future prospects, as it faces up to competition from well-resourced rivals Apple, Google (including YouTube) and Spotify.
Deezer currently has 16 million active users, including 6 million paying subscribers, although a significant proportion of the latter have the costs picked up by their mobile operators as part of “bundle” deals, so are not guaranteed to continue subscribing when those deals run out.
Targeting audiophiles through Deezer Elite is one strand in the company’s strategy to find currently under-served groups of people who are not already paying to stream music.
“Globally, we’re only at around 40 million people paying for a music subscription,” he said, of the wider streaming market. “That’s still quite small. There’s a lot of room for growth, but it’s important that we continue to refine what we’re doing.”
Forza Horizon 2 (Playground Games/Microsoft Studios)
OlliOlli (Roll7)
Madden NFL 15 (Electronic Arts)
Trials Fusion (Ubisoft)
Story 80 Days (Inkle, Profile Books)
Broken Age (Double Fine Productions)
Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft)
The Last of Us: Left Behind (Naughty Dog/Sony)
Never Alone (Upper One Games/E-Line Media)
The Wolf Among Us (Telltale Games)
Bafta Ones to Watch Award in association with Dare to Be Digital Chambara (Kevin Wong, Catherine Fox, Alex Faulkner, Esteban Fajardo, Thomas Hoffman – Overly Kinetic)
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