How Can America Make the World Shun Huawei?
In short, the White House has been trying for a year to get allies, particularly in Europe, to impose bans against using Huawei equipment inside the new wireless networks, known as 5G, that will become available starting this year. 5G is seen as critical infrastructure for a quickly digitizing economy, increasing phone data speeds but also creating new opportunities in robotics, transportation, manufacturing and artificial intelligence.
The United States says using Huawei equipment in the new networks will create a grave vulnerability that the Chinese government will exploit. It’s a dramatic and worrying accusation — if true. But the Trump administration hasn’t provided much hard evidence.
Instead, American officials have tried to gain support by rehashing China’s history of cyber misbehavior and President Xi Jinping’s increasing control over the Chinese economy.
Perhaps sensing a momentum shift, Huawei has ratcheted up its opposition to the American campaign. On Monday, a Huawei executive, Vincent Peng, said cybersecurity was a “technical challenge, not a political challenge.” The next morning, Guo Ping, the company’s rotating chairman, said the United States had a more checkered history of espionage than Huawei, referring to the whistle-blower Edward J. Snowden’s disclosures in 2013 of an internet surveillance program by American spy agencies and their allies.
But the debate is worth following. Huawei foreshadows conflicts about important emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, in which China is developing an expertise that the United States and its allies are likely to view as an economic and security threat.
See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/technology/huawei-mwc-barcelona.html
Privacy complaints received by tech giants’ favorite EU watchdog up more than 2x since GDPR
“The phenomenon that is the [GDPR] has demonstrated one thing above all else: people’s interest in and appetite for understanding and controlling use of their personal data is anything but a reflection of apathy and fatalism,” writes Helen Dixon, Ireland’s commissioner for data protection.
More cross-border complaints
“The role places an important duty on the DPC to safeguard the data protection rights of hundreds of millions of individuals across the EU, a duty that the GDPR requires the DPC to fulfil in cooperation with other supervisory authorities,” the DPC writes in the report, discussing its role of supervisory authority for multiple tech multinationals and acknowledging both a “greatly expanded role under the GDPR” and a “significantly increased workload”.
A breakdown of GDPR vs Data Protection Act 1998 complaint types over the report period suggests complaints targeted at multinational entities have leapt up under the new DP regime.
For some complaint types the old rules resulted in just 2 per cent of complaints being targeted at multinationals vs close to a quarter (22 per cent) in the same categories under GDPR.
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/privacy-complaints-received-by-tech-giants-favorite-eu-watchdog-up-more-than-2x-since-gdpr/
TikTok to Pay Record Fine After Violating Children’s Privacy
The Federal Trade Commission just inked a settlement with video social network TikTok (which merged with Musical.ly last year) over the charge that its app illegally collected children’s personal information. A large percent of users are under 13, and the personal information collected — without asking for parental permission — included email addresses, names and schools. The site refused to delete video and other data when requested by some parents. The FTC said the $5.7 million settlement is a record for a child privacy violation.
The New York Times also notes that the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act requires that such online services receive parents’ permission before collecting data of those under 13 years.
In 2017, ByteDance, a Chinese Internet conglomerate, bought Musical.ly, which had 65 million users in the U.S. three years previously, and merged it with TikTok, an app ByteDance already operated. The TikTok app lets users create and share short videos. FTC investigated the app after a complaint to the Better Business Bureau and coverage by several news outlets.
Among the FTC’s findings were that “user accounts were public by default and adults were able to contact users, regardless of their age.” According to NYT, “when some parents asked to have the data of their children deleted, TikTok deleted a child’s account but retained videos and personal account information about those users on its servers.”
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/tiktok-to-pay-record-fine-after-violating-childrens-privacy/
Sony Unveils Three Phones With CinemaWide Aspect Ratio
At MWC Barcelona (formerly Mobile World Congress), Sony introduced its flagship smartphone, the Xperia 1, with a notably tall display and ‘CinemaWide’ 21:9 aspect ratio, shared by the lower cost new Xperia 10 and 10 Plus. The Xperia 1 is the successor to Sony’s Xperia XZ3 released last fall. The Xperia 1’s display is a 4K HDR OLED panel measuring 6.5-inches diagonally. With a bezel on top, it is 6.57-inches tall, almost an inch taller than an iPhone XS. Sony positions the new form factor as ideal for videos, games and multitasking.
With regard to watching videos and playing games, it notes that, although “plenty of movies are filmed in cinematic aspect ratios, which should look great on the tall screen … the content that people tend to watch on their phones, like YouTube, usually isn’t.”
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/sony-unveils-three-phones-with-cinemawide-aspect-ratio/
Hands-On with the Nreal Light, Smartphone-Powered Augmented Reality Immersion
This week, China-based Nreal made the potential mass adoption of its Nreal Light AR smartglasses product a lot more likely by giving users the option of using a smartphone as the system's computer rather than the initial hip computer included in the first iteration of the product.
That announcement was paired with the news that the company had also secured additional investment funding to the tune of $15 million. This time around, the news is that Nreal will now pair the Nreal Light glasses portion of its system with smartphones powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 chip.
The list of devices using that chip primarily includes top tier Android smartphones including the Samsung Galaxy S10, Samsung Galaxy Fold, Xiaomi Mi 9, Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G, Sony Xperia 1, LG G8 ThinQ, and LG V50 ThinQ, among others.
...the company may be aiming to get the price of the glasses-only version of the Nreal Light system down around the $500 to $600 mark.
What AR Looks Like
... the Nreal Light version of AR is indeed immersive (52 degree field of view) and looks great, but it's not near the quality of interactivity of the Magic Leap One or the HoloLens 2.
Interface
The primary mode of interface is via a circular 3DoF controller that's pressure and touch sensitive and fits in the palm of your hand.
Conclusion
This Nreal Light is by no means on par with the Magic Leap One or the HoloLens 1or HoloLens 2. Overall, I think it's really a bet on being "good enough," as well as small enough and stylish enough to attract those users without several thousand dollars to spend on higher-end AR, and haven't yet been captivated by smartphone AR.
A recent and very relevant example of this is the case of North and its Focals smartglasses. The company started out trying to sell the device for $1,000 with almost no advertising or marketing and just a couple brick and mortar stores. After failing to generate significant adoption, the team quickly cut the price by almost half, and now the company is suffering massive layoffs — all in just a few months.
On the other hand, Nreal has very big backers from the Chinese venture capital space, so it likely has more runway.
See the full story here: https://next.reality.news/news/hands-with-nreal-light-smartphone-powered-augmented-reality-immersion-0194315/
Cronkite School Awarded NAB Grant to Bring Augmented Reality to Weather Reports
New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab Director Retha Hill presents "AR stories" during the 2019 PILOT Innovation Challenge in January 2019. (Photo courtesy of NAB PILOT Innovation Challenge).
The National Association of Broadcasters has invested in an innovative project at Arizona State University that will use augmented reality for television weather reports.
The experiment, called “AR Stories,” will give viewers enhanced weather reports either through broadcast television or smartphones.
Hill’s lab received a $15,000 NAB grant, supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as part of its PILOT Innovation Challenge, an annual showcase featuring member organizations across the country that pioneer advances in news delivery, innovation and production.
A prototype of the project will be presented at the Broadcasters Education Association Conference April 8-11 in Las Vegas.
See the full story here: https://cronkite.asu.edu/news-and-events/news/cronkite-school-awarded-nab-grant-bring-augmented-reality-weather-reports
Time begins production on epic immersive, virtual reality experience
The new immersive, virtual reality project, The March, offers audiences the experience of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in a room-scale VR experience. The project is a partnership between Time, immersive media studio Ryot, V.A.L.I.S. studio, and the Estate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which granted development rights to Time for the project.
Virtual reality is an incredible tool for historic re-creation and education, and a powerful vehicle for storytelling, according to Mia Tramz, editorial director of enterprise and immersive experiences at Time. “We've really tried to align what it is that the brand does best, which is putting an authoritative stamp on a moment in history, a news event or even a person, and marry that with the legacy of powerful visual storytelling that the brand has through photo and video. And now, with these new technologies.”
...
The March is a demanding project in terms of its vision and ambition, said Peter Martin, founder and CEO of V.A.L.I.S Studio, who is a producer on the project. “We're trying to do probably three or four things that have never been done before, certainly not at the same time,” he said. “Building the crowds of 250,000 people, being inside that, that has never been done in VR. You see this great crowd shots now in films like Bohemian Rhapsody, but you're flying over them, you're not inside them. Looking at an iconic speech, with a ringside seat eight feet away, that has never been done.” ...
Jake Sally, head of immersive development at Ryot, explained that it's been interesting to problem solve across technology and the creation process. The March experience is designed to be for the people, he said, and just as important as the overarching message, is the diverse range of creators involved in it. “Each of us have worked on pretty far reaching, technologically difficult projects,” Sally said. “But this is, I think, definitely the paramount of all of those, across the board.”
See the full story here: https://www.fipp.com/news/features/time-epic-immersive-vr-experience