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Twitter may introduce feature to let users flag 'fake news'
Twitter is considering a feature that would let users flag tweets that are false or inaccurate, in an attempt to combat the spread of disinformation on the platform.
The new feature, reported by the Washington Post, would allow Twitter users to report a post as misleading, in the same way they can currently report individual tweets as spam, or abusive or harmful.
The move would follow Facebook, which introduced a way for users to report “fake news” in December last year. That tool allows US users of the site to report “purposefully fake or deceitful news” to the site’s moderators. In the UK, however, the same option only allows users to block or message the poster, offering no way to bring the posts to the attention of the administrators.
It is not clear what Twitter would do with the information it gathers from such reports. According to the Washington Post, one reason why the company’s efforts in the area have progressed slowly, and why it is still uncertain as to whether the feature will be fully rolled-out at all, is because Twitter is concerned that the new reporting feature could be used to “game the system”.
Other reporting tools have ended up being abused in this way, with individual users finding their accounts suspended after organised campaigns resulted in hundreds of reports of “abusive” behaviour in a short space of time.
And if Twitter avoids that pitfall, it still runs the risk of being accused of political bias in which stories it removes. Facebook fell prey to such accusations when it was revealed that a human-curated “trending” feature relied on a list of trustworthy news sources which US rightwingers perceived as left-leaning: the social network’s response was to fire all the human curators.
These days, Facebook partners with independent fact-checking organisations in the US in an attempt to avoid being accused of partiality in which stories it deems false or inaccurate.
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A vicious attack in New Orleans left two men from Boston seriously injured, and the whole incident was caught on camera.
The victims, who have been identified as James Curran and Tim Byrne, were in town to attend the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the annual meeting of the liberal religious association.
Google has been handed a record-breaking fine €2.42bn fine by the European Union for abusing its dominance of the search engine market in building its online shopping service.
European regulators gave the tech giant 90 days to stop its illegal activities or face fines of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of parent company Alphabet.
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: “Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That’s a good thing. But Google’s strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn’t just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors.
“What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation.”
Google denies the claims and says it packages its search results in a way that makes it easier for consumers to find what they want.
Britain’s new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, which has left the Rosyth dockyard, could be vulnerable to a cyber-attack as it appears to be using the same outdated system that left the NHS exposed.
But officers aboard the £3.5bn carrier, which is the biggest and most powerful vessel ever built for the Royal Navy, insist that they are well prepared to defend against such attacks and will have a team of cyber specialists on board.
During a tour of the carrier, screens were spotted using what appeared to be the outdated 2001 Windows XP operating system. That OS was targeted by the WannaCry ransomware attack in May that disrupted parts of the NHS and other companies worldwide. Parliament came under cyber-attack on Friday with the accounts of about 90 MPs hacked.
Questions have also been raised about the vulnerability of the UK’s new Trident nuclear submarine system, though the Ministry of Defence insists that submarines are isolated when at sea.
Mark Deller, commander air on the Queen Elizabeth, said: “The ship is well designed and there has been a very, very stringent procurement train that has ensured we are less susceptible to cyber than most. With regards to someone wanting to jam my radio frequencies, we will have an escort and destroyers around us that will ward off people who try and impact our output. That’s normal routine business at sea.”
He added: “We are a very sanitised procurement train. I would say compared to the NHS buying computers off the shelf, I would think we are probably better than that. If you think more Nasa and less NHS you are probably in the right place. If the Chinese want to flood the market with a particular widget and they put £30m into it, one will eventually get through to the defence procurement chain. We have got people looking at stuff like this all the time.
“When you buy a ship, you don’t buy it today, you bought it 20 years ago. So what we put on the shelf and in the spec is probably what was good then. The reality is, we are always designed with spare capacity, so we will always have the ability to modify and upgrade. So whatever you see in the pictures, I think you will probably find we will be upgrading to whatever we want to have in due course. It might have already happened but I can’t tell you.”
Lt Cmdr Nick Leeson, senior warfare officer, said the carrier would have a capability for defending against hacking, including a team of cyber specialists.
On Monday naval staff and contractors lined the deck of the ship as it departed from Rosyth in a three-hour operation.
The ship, which will be the UK’s future flagship, and its 700-strong ship’s company are heading to the North Sea for maiden sea trials over the summer. One of the most delicate manoeuvres of the six-week trials has already been completed – just moving the ship from the dock. Navigators, pilots and tugboats had the slimmest of margins to deal with to guide HMS Queen Elizabeth out of the Rosyth basin in Fife where it was assembled.
At high tide, the ship was taken through a narrow gate avoiding the dock walls by inches while under the waterline there was just half a metre between the bottom of the ship and the seabed. Once travelling just a few hundred metres in the Forth, the carrier dropped anchor in order to wait for the tide to lower, allowing space to pass under the Firth’s bridges.
A total of 10,000 people worked on construction of the ship, made up in sections at yards around the UK and transported to Rosyth, where it was assembled.
R Adm Keith Blount, head of the Navy’s carrier programme, said: “This ship has been built in a very unique way: assembled in Rosyth but built around the UK in six different yards. This is the moment where that British shipbuilding expertise meets the professionalism of the Royal Navy to give us a ship to be proud of.”
The second ship in the class, HMS Prince of Wales, is being fitted out in the Rosyth dock and staff were able to look on as the Queen Elizabeth set sail for the first time.
Amazon’s bigger, 8in HD version of its rock-bottom tablet, the Fire HD 8, has always played second fiddle to the £50 Fire 7, but not any more.
Fatter, heavier but cheaper
Unlike the new Fire 7 tablet, the 2017 Fire HD 8 is actually thicker and heavier than the previous version, weighing 28g more and being 0.5mm thicker at just under 1cm deep.
Side-by-side with 2015’s Fire HD 8 it’s hard to see any difference. The outside is still hardwearing plastic, the sides and corners still rounded, but now it comes in a collection of bright colours.
The back is one solid-feeling piece of textured plastic.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Amazon claims it’s twice as durable as Apple’s iPad mini 4 and it certainly feels like it could take a knock or two without much issue. At 369g, it weighs as much as a large paperback.
One of the best bits about the Fire HD 8 is its speakers, which are mounted in the side (or top if held in landscape orientation) and produce fairly good, clear and loud audio, for a tablet. They were pretty good for watching a TV show while cooking, and make using Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa – which is now built into the tablet – much more like the experience you might get from an Echo Dot than the tinny speaker of the Fire 7.
The 8in, 720p screen is good but not great. Text is crisper than on the Fire 7, but still not up to the standards you might expect of a modern smartphone or premium tablet. It has good viewing angles, solid colours and is bright enough to be watched indoors, but struggles a bit outdoors.
I found reading on it surprisingly good though it’s nowhere near as clear and sharp as an e-reader. The integrated Blue Shade feature helps keep reading at night comfortable by reducing brightness and the amount of blue light emitted by the screen.
Specifications
Screen: 8in (1280 x 800) LCD (189ppi)
Processor: 1.3GHz quad-core
RAM: 1.5GB of RAM
Storage: 16GB; microSD slot also available
Operating system: Fire OS 5 based on Android 5 Lollipop
Camera: 2MP rear camera, 0.3MP front-facing camera
Connectivity: Wi-Fi n, Bluetooth
Dimensions: 214 x 128 x 9.7 mm
Weight: 369g
A day’s battery
The microSD card slot is in the side of the tablet for if you need more storage than 16 or 32GB.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The new Fire HD 8 has the same 1.3GHz quad-core processor and 1.5GB of RAM as the last one, and performs similarly. It will handle most apps and games perfectly fine, if with slightly longer load times and slower frame rates than you might be used to on a top-end smartphone.
It is not what I would call snappy, but the Fire HD 8 scrolled, launched apps and switched between apps without any moments of lag that made me question whether I actually tapped a button or not.
With the brightness set at around 70%, the Fire HD 8 easily lasted long enough between charges to view three movies with a bit of light internet use in between and battery to spare. Playing games hurt the battery life a bit more, as did setting the brightness to max, but all in you’ll get around a day’s usage out of the HD 8. Charging it took forever, though, at around six hours, so best done overnight.
Fire OS 5.4
Alexa integration is the highlight of Amazon’s new version of Fire OS.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The Fire HD 8 runs Amazon’s customised version of Android called Fire OS 5.4, the same version as the Fire 7. It looks quite different to the traditional Android experience from Google, lacks Google apps and only has access to the Amazon App Store, not the Google Play Store.
Navigating it is easy with clearly marked panes filled with apps, games, books, video, music, magazines, and audio books etc. It makes the best of what is a media consumption device, rather than a working device.
There is an email app, Amazon’s Silk browser, contacts, calendar, WPS Office and other bits pre-loaded that do general information management and light office duties should you need them.
The Fire HD 8 has Alexa built-in and works pretty well. You have to hold the home button to get it to listen to you, but the speakers are loud and clear enough to hear the answer to your query from across the room. The screen also displays interactive cards such as music controls or more details on a weather forecast while Alexa speaks to you.
Observations
The screen is perfectly good enough to watch three berks make a fool of themselves in cars.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The cameras are pretty poor, producing blurry shots with little in the way of detail – only to be used in an emergency
There’s a for kids edition of the tablet with a rubber case and no Alexa, but there also kids apps on the default version and fairly good parental controls
It requires an Amazon account to use and a Prime account to make the most of it
The 16GB of storage is enough for a good handful of TV shows and movies, but the microSD card slot is there if you need more
It doesn’t come encrypted out the box, but the option is available
Price
The 2017 Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet costs £80 for 16GB of storage “with special offers”, which are little adds on the lockscreen for recommended content from Amazon’s store. It costs £10 to remove the adverts. The version with 32GB of storage costs £100 with adverts.
Verdict
The Amazon Fire HD 8 has always played second fiddle to the cheap-as-chips £50 Fire 7, but this year with the price cut by £10 to just £80 for the starting Fire HD 8, it is actually worth the extra money.
You get twice the storage, much longer battery life, a slightly better screen and much better speakers, which make the Fire HD 8 quite a compelling package, if all you want to do is consume media. It’s no iPad, but then it doesn’t try to be. It cuts the right corners to get the job done at a price worth paying.
There are some cheaper no-name alternatives, but with the Fire HD 8 you get a brand name, support and experience very difficult to match at £80. If you’re just looking for a cheap tablet to watch a bit of video on, play the odd game and occasionally find the answer to a question, this is the one to buy.
Pros: it costs just £80, HD screen, microSD card slot, good battery life, feels durable, good speakers, Alexa
Cons: rubbish cameras, very slow charging, chunky, heavy for the size, no USB-C
The Fire HD 8 is a bit big and heavy for prolonged one-handed reading.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
For some it was the greatest video game console of all time, a 1990s treasure trove of legendary titles such as Super Mario Kart, Super Metroid and Yoshi’s Island – and now, not altogether unpredictably, it’s back.
Nintendo has announced that it will launch the Nintendo Classic Mini: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (or Mini SNES), a petite version of its early-1990s machine, on 29 September.
Priced at $79, with the UK price not yet set, the device comes pre-installed with 21 classic titles. Alongside predictable entries such Super Mario World, Super Punch Out and the genre-defining role-playing games Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Secret of Mana, there is one surprise inclusion: the never before released Star Fox 2. The sequel to the famed flight combat adventure was intended for launch in 1995 but abandoned when Nintendo switched focus to the impending N64 console.
Nintendo Classic Mini: SNESPhotograph: Nintendo
Like the Mini NES, launched last year to considerable enthusiasm, the Mini SNES comes with an HDMI cable so that games can be played on a modern flatscreen display – but there is no online functionality, so it won’t be possible to add to the games collection on offer. This time, the console comes with two controllers, rather than just one, so that nostalgic Mario Kart, Punch-Out and Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting tournaments can begin immediately.
Interestingly, Nintendo is releasing the Mini SNES in the machine’s two alternative form factors: Japanese and European fans will get a miniature version of the original light grey design, while North American stores will stock the region’s more angular grey and purple machine – altered because Nintendo of America felt the Japanese design was too squat and rounded.
Nintendo Mini SNES, US versionPhotograph: Nintendo
The Mini NES launched last autumn for £50 but sold out almost immediately. Perhaps occupied with preparing its Switch console for market, Nintendo did not step up manufacturing and the machine has become a collector’s item, often selling for hundreds of pounds on eBay.
Although the Mini NES was well-reviewed, there were criticisms that the built-in collection of games couldn’t be expanded with extra downloads. Others saw the product as a gimmick, as all the games can be found online and run via emulators on a PC or smartphone. However, the Mini NES offered smooth, accurate emulations, configured to run on modern TVs, with a variety of graphics modes, and in a nostalgic package. The smart addition of an unreleased game to the SNES line-up provides an extra incentive.
It’s likely the Mini SNES will be greeted with as much enthusiasm as its predecessor, if not more so – the original machine’s 16bit processor and huge colour palette allowed games of much greater complexity than the 1980s NES; titles like Secret of Mana, Contra III and Final Fantasy III (known as Final Fantasy VI in Japan) were at the absolute zenith of 2D game design.
It’s not clear yet if Nintendo will support the Mini SNES with a larger production run than its predecessor. However, it is perhaps telling that the company is yet to confirm whether the Switch will be getting a version of the Wii’s Virtual Console store, where players could download classic Nintendo titles.
The announcement follows the recent launch of the Sega Forever range of classic titles on smartphone and the surprise revelation that Atari is working on a new console. Nostalgia, it seems, is still as much of a draw as the latest technologies.
At just £50, it was remarkable how not-rubbish the 2015 Amazon Fire 7 tablet was. Two years on, the Fire 7 (the 7 comes from the screen size – 7”) has slimmed down a little and has an improved screen, but is still just £50.
Slimmer, lighter and brighter
Side-by-side it’s difficult to tell the 2015 Fire 7 and the new 2017 Fire 7 apart. The only really noticeable difference is a set of new colours – including black, blue, red and yellow – and if you squint you might be able to see it’s 1mm thinner, and it’s 18g lighter.
The outside is made of a finely textured plastic that feels hardwearing. Amazon claims it’s twice as durable as Apple’s iPad mini 4 and that’s probably right. The edges are rounded and quite comfortable to hold, and all the ports and buttons are in one edge, including the headphones port, microUSB port, power and volume buttons.
The speaker in the back of the Fire 7 isn’t up to filling a room with sound.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
There’s a speaker in the back that’s plenty loud enough for watching videos on the go, but not quite loud enough to comfortably watch a TV show in the kitchen over the sounds of the cooker hood fan and the wok.
The 7in screen still isn’t HD, but its colours and blacks are improved since 2015, making it brighter and better looking. It’s not going to blow you away or compete with an iPad of any generation, but it’s perfectly fine for watching the odd episode of the Grand Tour or playing a bit of Real Racing 3.
The reading experience is an improvement on that of the 2015 Fire 7, with better looking font smoothing, but it’s still not as crisp as a Kindle or a smartphone. It does have Blue Shade, which adjusts brightness and reduces the amount of blue light emitted by the screen to make nighttime reading more comfortable and less likely to disrupt your sleep.
Amazon’s Kindle app does a good job of handling text on the relatively low-resolution screen.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Specifications
Screen: 7in (1024 x 600) LCD (171ppi)
Processor: 1.3GHz quad-core
RAM: 1GB of RAM
Storage: 8GB; microSD slot also available
Operating system: Fire OS 5 based on Android 5 Lollipop
Camera: 2MP rear camera, 0.3MP front-facing camera
Connectivity: Wi-Fi n, Bluetooth
Dimensions: 192 x 115 x 9.6mm
Weight: 295g
Sluggish but not quite infuriating
If 8 or 16GB of storage isn’t enough, a microSD card slot allows you to add more.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The new Fire 7 has the same 1.3GHz quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM as the last one, and performs similarly. It’ll handle most games perfectly fine, if with slightly longer load times and slower frame rates than you might be used to on a top-end smartphone.
The operating system rolls along perfectly acceptably too. It’s not what I would call quick, but I didn’t suffer from any moments of lag that made me question whether I actually tapped the button or not. Swiping through the panes of the home screen is smooth, jumping between apps works relatively quickly, but there can be a noticeable delay between the app opening and it being ready for use.
The battery lasted for a little over 6.5 hours of video watching with the brightness cranked up, which is enough to get through most of a transatlantic flight. Playing games brought it down closer to 5.5 hours. If just reading, the battery will likely last quite a bit longer.
Fire OS 5.4
With Fire OS you’re stricted to apps available from the Amazon App Store.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The 2017 Fire 7 runs Amazon’s customised version of Android called Fire OS 5.4. It looks quite different to the traditional Android experience from Google, lacks Google apps and only has access to the Amazon App Store, not the Google Play Store.
Navigating it is easy with clearly marked panes filled with either apps, games, books, video, music, magazines, audio books etc. It makes the best of what is a media consumption device, rather than a work device.
There is an email app, Amazon’s Silk browser, contacts, calendar, WPS Office and other bits pre-loaded that do general information management and light office duties should you need them.
Alexa
The weather card from Alexa.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The jewel in the crown for Fire OS 5.4 is Alexa – Amazon’s voice-enabled smart digital assistant. It’s the same Alexa that’s found in the company’s Fire TV and Echo smart speaker devices, and has access to the same information.
Hold the home button and Alexa listens to your commands and questions, geared up to launch apps and optimised around entertainment. Alexa’s responses are more like those found on the Fire TV with interactive cards displayed while it talks through the answer to your questions.
Ask for the weather and get a card displaying current conditions and the weather for the week you can scroll through. Ask how old Uber’s ex-CEO Travis Kalanick is and get the answer but also the option to tap a link and search Bing for the query.
You can search for media simply by asking Alexa too. Amazon Music cards display playback controls and asking for a particular show takes you to the listing in Amazon video. Searches for content within third-party apps such as Netflix go unanswered, unlike the Fire TV, but almost everything else works fine including Alexa’s flash briefing and review of your day.
Observations
Apart from Google’s Play Movies and Apple’s iTunes, most video services are available on the Fire 7.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The cameras are pretty poor producing blurry shots with little in the way of detail – only to be used in an emergency
There’s a for Kids edition of the tablet with a rubber case and no Alexa, but there are kids apps on the default version and fairly good parental controls
The 2017 Fire 7 takes about five hours to fully charge
It requires an Amazon account to use and a Prime account to make the most of it
Price
The 2017 Amazon Fire 7 tablet costs £50 for 8GB of storage and “with special offers”, which are little adds on the lockscreen for recommended content from Amazon’s store. It costs £10 to remove the adverts. The version with 16GB of storage costs £60 with adverts.
Verdict
It’s still remarkable how not-rubbish the 2017 Amazon Fire 7 tablet is when it costs just £50. Two years on from the original £50 marvel not a lot has changed, but the screen is definitely clearer and more colourful, while it is a little lighter and slimmer.
Will it win over iPad buyers? No. Can you “get work done on it”? Probably not. But you can buy six Fire 7 tablets and still have £39 left over for the same price as on iPad. And that’s the point. The Fire 7 isn’t amazing, but it gets the job of consuming media done at an absolutely rock-bottom price, and is much more capable with other tasks than you might expect. At £50 the Fire 7 has no equal, and now it even comes in a range of bright colours.
Pros: it costs just £50, microSD card slot, acceptable battery life, feels durable
Cons: rubbish cameras, very slow charging, low-res screen, chunky, heavy for the size, no USB-C
The back is made from one piece of hardwearing plastic, now in bright colours.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Just days after his sexual assault case ended in a mistrial, Bill Cosby wants to embark on a series of “town halls” to speak to young people about sexual assault – specifically, it seems, how to avoid an accusation.
That’s the impression two spokespeople for the disgraced comedian gave when they appeared Thursday on a local news show in Alabama.
“Mr Cosby wants to get back to work,” said one of Cosby’s representatives, Andrew Wyatt. “Because this is bigger than Bill Cosby. This issue can affect any young person, especially young athletes of today. And they need to know what they’re facing when they’re hanging out and partying, when they’re doing certain things they shouldn’t be doing.”
Laughing, he added, “And it also affects married men.”
“Laws are changing,” added Ebonee Benson, another spokesperson. “The statute of limitations for victims of sexual assault are being extended. So, this is why people need to be educated on – a brush against a shoulder. Anything, at this point, can be considered sexual assault, and it’s a very good thing to be educated about the law.”
Nearly 60 women have accused Cosby of inappropriate behavior ranging from unwanted sexual touching to rape, often with the aid of drugs that left them incapacitated. Cosby has denied all of their accusations. In some cases he has acknowledged having sexual contact, which he says was consensual.
On Saturday, a judge declared a mistrial in Cosby’s only criminal prosecution. His accuser, Andrea Constand, said he drugged and molested her in his Pennsylvania mansion in 2004. Cosby was charged just before the statute of limitations ran out, something that has prevented nearly all of his other accusers from confronting him in court.
Reacting to the idea of a Cosby town hall tour, Jodi Omear, the vice-president of communications for Rainn, an anti-sexual violence group, said, “It would be more useful if Mr Cosby would spend time talking with people about how not to commit sexual assault in the first place.”
If it wasn’t for one particular executive at Microsoft, whom Steve Jobs seemingly hated with a passion, Apple may never have created the iPhone or iPad.
Recounting the story of the birth of the iPhone at a talk at the Computer History Museum in California, former Apple iOS chief Scott Forstall said: “The iPhone had a very circuitous route. We’d been working on a tablet project.
“It began because Steve hated this guy at Microsoft. Any time Steve had any interaction with the guy, he’d come back pissed off.”
The unnamed Microsoft executive, who was apparently the husband of a friend of Jobs’s wife Laurene Powell Jobs, continuously talked and bragged about Redmond-based company’s plans for tablets and styluses, so much so that Jobs decided to try and beat him.
After being badgered by the Microsoft executive over dinner for the 10th time, being told how Microsoft was going to change the world with its tablet PC software and stylus and that Apple should just license it, Jobs lost patience and, as recounted in Walter Isaacson’s Jobs biography, said: “Fuck this, let’s show him what a tablet can really be”.
Despite the iPad having the Apple Pencil today, Jobs famously hated styluses. Forstall recounted Jobs as saying: “You don’t use a stylus … we’re born with 10 styluses”.
During the development of the iPad, which began as a table-sized multi-touch prototype on which you could move photos with your fingers codenamed “project purple”, Apple identified that smartphones were becoming a threat to its iPod business and so diverted efforts towards what was to become the iPhone.
Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone in 2007 … ‘Steve said “put the tablet on hold, let’s build a phone”.’Photograph: Tony Avelar/AFP/Getty Images
Forstall recounted Jobs saying: “‘Do you think you could take that demo that we’re doing with the tablet and the multi-touch and shrink it down to something small enough to fit in your pocket?’
“We went back to the design team and they took it and they carved out a corner of it,” said Forstall. “Steve saw it and said ‘put the tablet on hold, let’s build a phone.’ And that’s what we did.”
The original iPhone wasn’t as well received by reviewers as you might expect at the time of its release in 2007, who were rating it against the number of clicks to get to certain things.
Forstall said: “It was being compared against other smartphones of the time, BlackBerry etc, according to the metrics people thought were important at the time.
“What they didn’t get was we were changing the entire paradigm. We were changing the entire way things were done.”
Initial sales were good, but not exceptional. After spending time with one in the real world, Forstall said he and the rest of Apple could see it was going to be huge one day.
Forstall also touched on his personal sickness in the early 2000s from an obscure virus, which was apparently cured when nothing else would do the trick by Jobs’s acupuncturist. Forstall, who was infamous at Apple for being the person who pushed the use of computer interfaces that appeared like real-life objects, also revealed he had “never heard of skeuomorphism” at the time.
Why should I use a banking app instead of logging into my bank accounts with the relevant passwords via Windows 10 and Edge? Which one would be more secure? Irene
Over the past five years or so, I feel the consensus has changed to using apps. However, it depends on the devices, banking software and browsers, what else is loaded on the device (either knowingly or not), and the communications network.
Browsers are risky because there are trojans designed to collect banking information. Apps are risky because most banking apps probably have security flaws, and because fake/malware apps sometimes appear in app stores.
If you are a careful user with a secure PC, and if you only use it on your secure home network, you should not have any problems. However, if you want to perform banking transactions from wherever you happen to be, without taking too many precautions, then it should be safest to use an app over 3G/LTE (turn off wifi and Bluetooth).
Systems that use two-factor authentication, preferably with a separate device that generates new passwords on demand, are really the way to go.
What is an app?
When personal computers first went on general sale in the 1970s, the VisiCalc spreadsheet was hailed as a “killer app”, which was short for “application program”. However, the past decade has seen a huge growth in app stores for smartphones and tablets. These apps are different from traditional PC programs in that they are vetted by and downloaded from secure online stores. Further, these apps run in sandboxes to prevent them from doing bad things.
PCs, by contrast, can run unvetted software from any source, including malware-infected websites, unless your anti-virus software blocks them.
When Microsoft redesigned Windows 8 to run on tablets and smartphones, it introduced a similar subsystem for apps. This enabled Windows to run sandboxed apps installed by the Windows Store. These apps are much safer than the old programs, because there are limits to what they are allowed to do.
Today there are quite a few Windows banking apps – Alliance, Citibank, FNB, RMB, HDFC, BNP Paribas, UBI, Westpac etc – but none that I can see from UK banks. They are rather slow to catch on …
The Edge browser in Windows 10 is a new sandboxed app, so it’s much better for banking than Internet Explorer. Otherwise, Chrome is the most secure alternative, because it runs in Google’s own strong sandbox. Some security companies also provide add-ons, such as Kaspersky Safe Money and Bitdefender Safepay.
The browsers on smartphones and tablets are also sandboxed, but like their desktop counterparts, they may be at risk from phishing and “man-in-the-middle” attacks.
Compromised devices
The biggest threat to banking security comes from using a compromised device: one with malware that captures logons etc and sends them to someone else without your knowledge. On Windows, the main banking malware comprises trojans such as “Zeus and its variants Neverquest and Gozi”. Zeus has been around since 2007.
Zeus is usually delivered as an email attachment with a text that persuades some users to click on it. It may say your bank or email account has been hacked and that you need to log on to confirm or change your password, etc. Zeus collects your logon details, or puts up a fake screen that mimics a legitimate website, or redirects you to a fake website. The malware captures your keystrokes as you try to log into your bank. Variants such as Gozi can even imitate your typing style and mouse movements, to defeat banks that use this kind of information to identify real users.
Banking trojans can also be hidden in Microsoft Word documents, pdfs or fake invoices. Some are distributed as “drive by” installations from websites that host exploit kits.
Smartphones and tablets are more likely to be compromised by fake or lookalike apps that have evaded the vetting process. Sometimes, devices are compromised by apparently simple apps that demand loads of “permissions” to run. (How can a flashlight app be allowed to monitor your network connections or modify the contents of your USB storage?)
Insecure banking apps
Banking apps ought to be more secure than browsers, but it ain’t necessarily so. In 2014, Ariel Sanchez tested 40 home banking apps and found that 90% included insecure links (ones that didn’t use SSL), 40% didn’t check the validity of SSL certificates, 50% were vulnerable to cross-site scripting, and 40% were vulnerable to man in the middle attacks.
In a typical hack, the user might get a message to say that their session or password had expired and they needed to retype their user name and password. (Don’t.)
Today’s banking apps should be much more secure, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Compromised networks
If you use public hotspots, your communications could be monitored, or you could mistakenly log on to a copycat hotspot run from a nearby PC. It’s not always easy to identify the correct network for a coffee bar, hotel or airport. These networks make you potentially vulnerable to monitoring and “man in the middle” attacks,
In fact, someone may be able to hijack an account without knowing your name or your password. This was demonstrated by a “network sniffer” called Firesheep, which could identify and steal the unencrypted “session cookies” some websites used to store information after you had logged on. This only works if you are on the same network as the attacker, but when you use a public network, you have no idea who else is logged on.
Whatever device you are using, the best solution is end-to-end encryption, shown by “https” addresses and a padlock in the browser. The whole of ecommerce – and egovernment – is totally dependent on encryption, which is why it’s insane to think about banning it.
Secure booting and SSL
Online banking depends on secure booting and secure communications. The secure booting system tries to ensure that the device starts in an uncompromised state. To do this, it uses secure hardware on the device that uses cryptography to verify the bootloader code, which uses cryptography to verify the secure loading of the operating system. This is built into smartphones and tablets. If buying a Windows PC, choose one with a UEFI system that securely boots Windows 10.
The secure chain is broken when people use exploits to “jailbreak” devices. Banking systems should detect and block them, but 90% of Sanchez’s 40 home banking apps didn’t.
Once the device is running, it must connect to your bank via an SSL/https connection, though it may not be easy to tell if does. (I assume that 3G and LTE mobile connections are secure enough.)
The simplest solution is to install the EFF’s HTTPS Everywhere extension in Chrome, Firefox or Opera. Not every website supports https, but if not, the extension should redirect you to the unencrypted site.
Dedication works
You can increase your banking security in Windows 10 by keeping one browser for financial transactions and never using it for anything else. Also, either use a private browsing/incognito mode or delete all caches and cookies after use. Indeed, you could use a separate standard user account (not an administrator account) for financial transactions. Switching between accounts isn’t arduous nowadays, and you can leave your original account open while you do it.
Going even further, you could keep a password protected Apple iPad at home for banking. Do not download any other apps and, out of the box, that’s one of the most secure home systems you can get. Government security services could hack you, but it’s unlikely that they would.
President Trump celebrated two more Republican victories in congressional special elections Wednesday and talked up the prospect of legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare at a campaign-style rally in Iowa.
President trump talked about fulfilling his campaign promises, slams Democrats and the mainstream media, unveils plans for a solar paneled border wall, and more!
Watch the full video from below.
📹President Trump Full Speech at Cedar Rapids, Iowa 21st June 2017
In Georgia the resistance was stopped by the rain on Tuesday when Jon Ossoff, long the best hope of Democrats to win a special election in the Trump administration, suffered a narrow loss to Republican Karen Handel in the Sixth Congressional District.
With 99% of precincts reporting, Handel had 52.4% and Ossoff had 47.6%
Sporadic downpours and flash flood warnings helped to put a damper on Democratic turnout in base precincts and on the hopes of progressives to thwart Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Combined with an energized Republican base that kept Ossoff from accumulating a significant lead among early voters, it doomed the hopes of the anti-Trump activists who made the first time Democratic candidate a minor political celebrity.
The runoff came after a first round of voting in April where Ossoff won just over 48% of the vote and Handel finished second in a splintered Republican field with just under 20% of the vote. However, Ossoff struggled to match that total as Handel consolidated the Republican vote in a traditionally conservative district in the northern suburbs of Atlanta and ended up falling a percentage point short of his much hyped performance in the first round of voting.
Trump took to Twitter to hail the result as a personal victory “Thank you @FoxNews “Huge win for President Trump and GOP in Georgia Congressional Special Election.”
The seat had been vacated by Tom Price when the former congressman joined Trump’s cabinet to become secretary of health and human services and previously held by Republican stalwarts like Senator Johnny Isakson and former speaker Newt Gingrich. Although Price won by 23% in 2016, Donald Trump only narrowly won this wealthy, well-educated district by just over 1%.
Trump’s narrow win sparked optimism among Democrats that the district, where nearly 60% of residents have a college degree, could flip as part of the political realignment around the president’s upset victory in 2016. Roughly $50m ended up being spent by both parties and allied groups in the race as it became the most expensive congressional campaign in the history of the United States.
However, while Democrats had motivated their base and won over skeptical Republicans, the conservative slant of district proved too much even for the nearly unprecedented resources that Democrats invested in the race, even flying in volunteers for last minute doorknocking as local television stations had been saturated by 30-second advertisements.
Although the race had been cast a referendum on Trump – an opinion the President seemed to endorse after the result had been reported – both candidates awkwardly danced around his looming presence on the campaign trail. At Handel’s campaign events, Trump’s name went unmentioned by the candidate and introductory speakers. Instead, there was constant refrain of attack on Ossoff for his ties to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and praise for previous holders of the seat like Price and Gingrich. Ossoff was regularly bashed for the amount of money he raised out of state and for having “San Francisco values.”
Handel, who suggested in the first televised debate of the campaign that Trump should use Twitter less often, told the Guardian in an interview on Monday that she didn’t pay attention to the president’s use of social media. She said “I am focused on my campaign, I have precious little time to be on Twitter.” Several hours later, her campaign sent out a fundraising email signed by the former secretary of state with the subject line “did you see what Trump just tweeted?” after the President used his ubiquitous social media account to tout her campaign.
Ossoff has also been measured in his attacks on Trump in a traditionally Republican district albeit one that the president barely won in 2016. Instead, the lanky and measured political neophyte focused on banal and politically non-controversial issues like government waste and turning Atlanta into “the Silicon Valley of the South” and let the progressive anti-Trump enthusiasm of the Democratic base carry him.
Instead, he has focused on Handel’s stint as Georgia secretary of state as well as her brief stint with the Susan Komen Race For The Cure, a charity which combats breast cancer, where she led an effort to cut off the organization’s funding for Planned Parenthood. The decision sparked a major controversy and funding was eventually restored and Handel had to resign from the non-profit.
In an interview with the Guardian, Ossoff slammed his opponent. Secretary Handel’s record as secretary of state is extremely weak … perhaps because she was too busy preparing her next run for higher office to do her job. She quit her job early to run for higher office, as so many career politicians do. Her last significant private sector experience, her performance also lacked.”
The issue of civility and the growing toxic nature of American political culture became an issue late in the race in the aftermath of the shooting of House Minority Whip Steve Scalise. Handel pointed to social media and journalism as reasons for the decline of civility in American society in an interview with the Guardian. “Journalism is not journalism any more,” said Handel. Ossoff stuck to broader themes, telling the Guardian, “this is a deep rooted problem in American politics right now which is going to take work and bipartisan commitment to trying to heal wounds and focus on substance instead of fear mongering and slander.”
The new OnePlus 5 has big shoes to fill following, as it does, the excellent OnePlus 3 and 3T, which managed to undercut the competition on price and beat them on design. So, more expensive than ever, can OnePlus’s latest smartphone pull off the same trick in 2017?
Familiar design
The metal back of the OnePlus 5 has a gentle curve that makes it easier to hold onto.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The OnePlus 5 continues the company’s refined metal smartphone design. From the front it doesn’t look that different from last year’s OnePlus 3 and 3T (there was no OnePlus 4). The corners are slightly more rounded, but that’s about it. The screen is of similar quality, with deep blacks and good colour saturation, which you can tweak to fit a series of profiles including sRGB and DCI-P3. It’s not quite as pin-sharp as some rivals, with only a full HD resolution, not QHD, but most will not care. The fingerprint scanner is just as good, reliably unlocking the device almost instantly, while the optional capacitive back and overview buttons work well and can be swapped over.
To say the back of the OnePlus 5 looks like an iPhone 7 Plus would be an understatement. It’s not a carbon copy; the back is curved and the edges tapered, which makes the phone more ergonomic and feel really nice in the hand. But OnePlus has used the same technique for hiding the antenna strips, moving the plastic inlays to almost the edge of the top and bottom, as was introduced with the iPhone 6 in 2014.
It also has a dual camera on the back placed horizontally in the top left corner with a LED flash to its right, which Apple did in 2016 with the iPhone 7 Plus. It even has the OnePlus logo in about the same place as the Apple logo is on an iPhone 7 Plus. The OnePlus 5 is slightly shorter and narrower than the iPhone 7 Plus, but about the same thickness.
Apple comparisons aside, it’s a well built phone that feels great, with good ergonomics for a device with a large 5.5in screen in the traditional 16:9 aspect ratio. But it certainly doesn’t look and feel like the new breed of minimal bezel phones that launched in 2017, such as the Galaxy S8 and LG G6. The top and bottom feature large bezels, which makes the device considerably larger than its screen – like a smartphone from 2016, and therefore firmly in the “phablet” category of harder to handle devices.
For a well machined device, there were also some unusually sharp edges around the camera lump (a small raised bezel holding the lens glass), the edge of the USB-C port nearest the back of the phone and the backside of the volume button. These are small nitpicks but were obvious when the rest of the device feels so smooth. It also isn’t water resistant, so try not to drop it in the toilet.
Specifications
Screen: 5.5in full HD AMOLED (401ppi)
Processor: octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
RAM: 6 or 8GB of RAM
Storage: 64 or 128GB
Operating system: Oxygen OS based on Android 7.1.1
Camera: 16MP + 20MP rear dual camera, 16MP front-facing camera
Connectivity: LTE, dual sim, Wi-Fiac, NFC, Bluetooth 5 and GPS
Dimensions: 154.2 x 74.1 x 7.25mm
Weight: 153g
Buttery smooth
The OnePlus 5 has the company’s proprietary Dash Charge over USB-C, which means fast recharging even when using the phone.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The OnePlus 5 has the same (or better) specifications as most of the current top-of-the-line smartphones available. It has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor found in the US Galaxy S8, the HTC U11 and others.
It has either 6 or 8GB of RAM, which is frankly overkill, and has either 64 or 128GB of storage, which should be plenty of space for almost everyone.
In gaming and when using demanding apps it performs as well or better than the competition. In fact, OnePlus has gone to great lengths to try and provide the smoothest, most consistently high-performing Android experience possible, and it really shows.
It is the most fluid, fast and reliable Android smartphone I’ve ever used, arguably smoother than Google’s Pixel smartphones, which is an achievement.
Using the OnePlus 5 as my primary device, browsing and using apps for three hours with hundreds of push emails, 60 minutes of gaming, and listening to around five hours of music via Bluetooth earbuds, it lasted just over 28 hours between charges with no power-saving modes activated, which is very good.
Less demanding users will likely see two-days battery life, while OnePlus’s proprietary Dash Charge lives up to its name, charging the device even when in use faster than almost any other charging technology. A full charge takes around an hour, but it still takes about that when the phone is actively being used, including as a GPS device in a car with a 12v Dash Charge adapter, which is the most impressive bit.
The downside of Dash Charge is that you need special chargers and cables to make use of it, but the OnePlus 5 charges at a normal rate using any other USB charger.
The fingerprint sensor is accurate and fast, making unlocking the phone and authenticing payments very quick.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Bluetooth 5
The OnePlus 5 is the second smartphone this year to ship with the latest version of Bluetooth 5.0, rather than a 4.0 or 4.1. While there aren’t many Bluetooth 5.0 headphones or other devices available yet it will become the new standard and so the OnePlus 5 is future-proofed. I also found Bluetooth performance was better than almost any other smartphone for using truly wireless earbuds, matching the Galaxy S8 in maintaining a consistent, interruption-free connection.
Oxygen OS
The alert slider on the side of the OnePlus 5 allows users to quickly switch between the ringer, do not disturb and silent modes.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
OnePlus loads its devices with a custom version of Android 7.1.1 called Oxygen OS. The company’s philosophy is not to radically change the appearance and operation of Android, but to optimise it and add small tweaks for extra functionality.
Such changes include gesture support for launching apps and performing actions by drawing on the screen, the excellent alert slider that sets different sound and do not disturb modes, and a new reading mode that makes reading books and other texts easier on the eyes.
Overall Oxygen OS is a slightly refined version of the standard Android look, avoiding bloat and generally adding to the experience. The big question is whether OnePlus will keep up with Android version and security updates, which the company has a hit-and-miss track record over with its previous devices.
Camera
The dual-camera system works great.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
The OnePlus 5 has the company’s first dual-camera setup on the back. A primary 16-megapixel camera is joined by a secondary 20-megapixel camera and together they offer up to 2x lossless zoom in a similar way to Apple’s dual-camera setup on the iPhone 7 Plus.
The primary 16-megapixel camera is capable of some really good shots, and while shots taken at 2x zoom aren’t quite as good, used in the right scenarios you can produce some excellent pictures. They produce pretty, colour-accurate shots, but I found photos could be a little washed out in bright sunshine and they fall down a little on fine detail compared to the best smartphone cameras available, such as the Google Pixel and HTC U11.
The rear camera also has the obligatory portrait mode, which blows out the background using depth-sensing software and works as well as the best of the competition, but still struggles with mistakenly blurring the edges of rounded objects and fine details like hair. The large f/1.7 aperture of the 16-megapixel camera naturally creates an excellent bokeh effect if used correctly, so in most instances software blurring isn’t necessary.
The 16-megapixel selfie camera is one of the best I have used, capturing a lot of fine detail and offering beautification modes to smooth skin to your liking.
The camera app is vastly improved since the OnePlus 3, with an easy to use automatic mode but also plenty of options and settings for a new Pro mode to keep even the most keen photographer happy. There’s even a level tool that uses the phone’s gyroscope to help shoot straight photos and RAW output.
Overall the OnePlus 5 has the best camera the company has fitted to a smartphone as is right up there as a contender with the the likes of Samsung and Apple.
Observations
The dual-camera lump on the back and the antenna band running around the top.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Dual sim support means you can have two phone numbers and two plans in one phone, handy for travelling or juggling a work phone and a personal phone in one
You can customise which icons are shown in the status bar as well as how some of them look, such as the battery percentage
OnePlus has kept the handy notification LED for the 5, but there’s also an ambient display option
The OnePlus 5 used for testing did not have Google Assistant only Google Now, and it is unclear when it will gain it
Price
The OnePlus 5 comes in two variants. A slate grey version with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage costing £449 and a midnight black version with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage costing £499. The phone will be available to pre-order from 20 June with open sales on 27 June. It will also be available through O2 in the UK.
The OnePlus is a great phone. But thanks to its large top and bottom bezels, it looks and feels dated compare to the likes of the Galaxy S8 and LG G6. Its similarity to an iPhone 7 Plus is remarkable, and in many ways it is like an iPhone running Android.
The OnePlus 3 was an absolute bargain, but the OnePlus 5 is less so. It is every bit as good as many of the top-end phones from much bigger manufacturers currently on the market, but its large advantage on price has been eroded. Soon you will be able to buy the likes of the Galaxy S8 at similar money.
The camera is great, the metal body feels good, dual-sim support is hard to find in rivals available in the UK, Dash Charge does just that, plus the battery lasts over a day and Bluetooth 5 support boosts wireless performance and makes it more future-proofed. But it’s not waterproof and doesn’t have any stand-out features compared to the top-end competition.
So while it isn’t terribly innovative for a top-end 2017 phone, if you’re looking for the smoothest Android experience currently available outside of a Google Pixel, the OnePlus 5 is it.
Pros: great camera, super-smooth performance, plenty of storage, Dash Charge, good screen, dual-sim, good battery life, Bluetooth 5
Cons: not water resistant, dated bezel-heavy design, no expandable storage, 5.5in screen only FHD, no wireless charging
The midnight black version of the OnePlus 5.Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
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