hearing
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Apple is trying to save my hearing after I spent years ruining it
My love affair with loud music started in earnest in my sophomore year of high school, when I got an iPod for my birthday and immediately started blasting Black Mages albums and anime theme songs. Fast forward fifteen years, and my morning commute neatly illustrates just how bad my hearing has gotten. I get dressed, walk to the subway, pop in my AirPods and crank up the volume to 100 percent. That's the only way I can really hear my podcasts over the cacophony of the Q train as it winds through Brooklyn and chugs along over the Manhattan Bridge.
Apple Watch can help save your hearing and track your menstrual cycle
It wouldn't be WWDC without new features for Apple Health. We knew the company had big plans for the app this year based on Tim Cook's comments in January, but now we're getting details on the improvements that will arrive with iOS 13 and watchOS 6. First, Apple is working on improved menstrual cycle tracking in its Health app -- appropriately called Cycle Tracking. And to help, the company will also offer Apple Watch tools for tracking your cycle. The Health app can help women identify their most fertile period, in addition to letting you know when your period is likely to start. It will work with the iOS version of the app as well, no Watch required.
Nuheara's IQbuds MAX offer powerful hearing assistance
For the hearing challenged, it can be difficult to find options that help you hear better and work well. For those with mild to moderate hearing loss, Nuheara's line of true wireless earbuds offer some relief. At CES 2019, the company is introducing its most powerful assistive hearing true wireless earbuds: the IQbuds MAX. Like the IQbuds BOOST the company unveiled last year, this new model employs Nuheara's Ear ID app to calibrate the earbuds to you after a quick hearing assessment.
Google discusses privacy regulation ahead of Senate hearing
On Wednesday, a number of tech companies, including Apple, AT&T, Amazon, Twitter and Charter, will discuss data privacy before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Google will be there as well, represented by its new chief privacy officer, Keith Enright. In a blog post, Enright, who previously led Google's privacy legal team, discussed his new role and shared the company's thoughts on what data protection regulation should look like in the US.
Twitter wants to ‘increase the health of public conversation’
Twitter doesn't only want to be more transparent about the toxic content on its site, it also wants to be more proactive about removing it altogether. Speaking to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce today, as part of a hearing titled "Twitter: Transparency and Accountability," CEO Jack Dorsey said that his company's singular objective is to "increase the health of public conversation." But he said this isn't just about spotting and removing abusive content like harassment, or blocking suspicious accounts. It's also about doing so in a timely, more proactive manner. As it stands, Dorsey said, Twitter relies heavily on users reporting others' bad behavior and that simply needs to change.
Sandberg’s ‘alternative facts’ comment won’t help Facebook’s cause
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee today, addressing social media's role in election meddling and their platforms' efforts to combat it. When discussing misinformation, Sandberg described Facebook's use of fact checkers, saying that once third-party fact checkers mark a story as false, the platform then shows related articles next to the original in order to provide readers with additional and more factual coverage. But her choice of words was rather telling. "If it's marked as false we dramatically decrease the distribution on our site, we warn you if you're about to share it, we warn you if you have shared it, and importantly we show related articles next to that so people can see alternative facts," she said (emphasis added).
Twitter is keeping 500,000 bots from logging in every day
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is currently testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee and in response to questions from Representatives Kathy Castor (D-FL) and Gene Green (D-TX) about bots, Dorsey said that the platform is keeping around 500,000 bot accounts from logging in every day. He also reiterated that every week, Twitter's systems are challenging between eight and ten million accounts that are suspected of misusing automation or disseminating spam.
Twitter is considering a transparency report on suspended accounts
As part of his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee today, in a hearing titled "Foreign Influence Operations' Use of Social Media Platforms," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that his company is exploring the idea of a transparency report for suspended accounts. He said that, while details of what this document would look like or what information exactly it could include are still being worked out, it's something that's heavily on his mind. Twitter already has a bi-annual transparency report which discloses how many accounts it removes for promoting terrorism, and Dorsey said doing something similar for suspended accounts would only be a matter of figuring out its implementation.
Google shares ‘testimony’ for Senate hearing it won’t attend
Tomorrow, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss election meddling and security. Google was invited to send a representative as well and it offered Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker, but the committee rejected Walker as a witness, insisting that higher-level leaders like Alphabet CEO Larry Page or Google CEO Sundar Pichai would be more appropriate. Now, however, Walker has released the company's "testimony" online even though it appears that no one from Google will be at the hearing to deliver it.
Jack Dorsey: Twitter isn’t guided by ‘political ideology’
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will be testifying before Congress tomorrow and today he released a prepared statement he'll make during his House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. The CEO will touch on a number of timely and important topics including conversational health on the platform, Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election and recent activity on Twitter linked to Russian and Iranian groups, but Dorsey also addresses accusations of political bias. "Let me be clear about one important and foundational fact: Twitter does not use political ideology to make any decisions, whether related to ranking content on our service or how we enforce our rules," said Dorsey.
Livio AI hearing aid doubles as a fitness tracker
Hearing aid giant Starkey has dabbled in smart listening devices before, but not like this. The company has unveiled Livio AI, an earpiece that's as much a connected wearable as it is an audio booster. Its AI and sensors will improve your hearing, to be clear -- it can automatically compensate for loud environments and switch modes based on location, with a mobile app providing fine-tuning. However, it's also loaded with features that would normally require a fitness tracker or smartphone.
Congress' social-media hearing was a ‘stupid’ sideshow
Tuesday marked another chapter in the "Tech Companies Go to Congress" story, with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube testifying before the House Judiciary Committee. The hearing, titled "Examining the Content Filtering Practices of Social Media Giants," was supposed to shed light on how these companies are keeping their sites safe for users by filtering out toxic content. But, instead, we learned very little. Executives from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube simply echoed what they've been saying in other congressional hearings since 2017. They talked about how they're using a combination of artificial intelligence and human reviewers to fight fake news, bots and toxic content like hate speech.
Facebook can’t decide when a page should be banned
Another day, another congressional hearing on how tech companies are conducting themselves. This time it was Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that testified before the House Judiciary Committee today, in a hearing titled "Examining the Content Filtering Practices of Social Media Giants." While much of the three-hour session was information we've heard before, like what they're all doing to fight fake news and propaganda-driven bots, there was an interesting discussion about Facebook's policies (or lack thereof). In particular, the company's president for global policy management, Monika Bickert, couldn't give members of the committee a firm answer on what exactly it takes to ban offensive pages from Facebook.
Watch tomorrow's social media congressional hearing right here
Hey, if you were wondering when we were going to get another congressional hearing about social media, you're in luck. On Tuesday, executives from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will testify before a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled "Examining the Content Filtering Practices of Social Media Giants." The people representing these tech companies are members of their public policy teams, so expect them to be grilled by US Representatives about the toxic and harmful content that shows up on each of their sites.
Senator wants Mark Zuckerberg to testify on Huawei data sharing
Mark Zuckerberg could be in for another Senate hearing if Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) has his way. Today, Markey sent a letter to Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) -- chair and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, respectively -- requesting they call the Facebook CEO to testify about Facebook's practice of sharing private user data with mobile phone companies. Specifically, Markey is concerned about the data provided to four Chinese companies -- Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo and TCL.
The Zuckerberg hearings were a wasted opportunity
Over the past two days, members of Congress have peppered Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with questions about how the platform manages users' privacy, what went wrong with Cambridge Analytica and what it's doing to strengthen protections going forward. These two hearings lasted more than 10 hours combined, and dozens of senators and representatives had a chance to ask questions in five- and four-minute allotments, respectively. Until this week, Congress had tried for years to get Zuckerberg to personally appear on Capitol Hill, instead of, say, dispatching another company executive. It's a shame, then, that the lawmakers ultimately squandered the time they had with him this week.
Facebook CEO: Europe's GDPR standards to be implemented worldwide
Mark Zuckerberg's Congressional testimony continues today as he speaks to the House Energy & Commerce Committee. During questioning, Congressman Gene Green asked the Facebook CEO about Europe's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and inquired as to whether the requirements set by that set of regulations will be applied outside of Europe. Previously, Zuckerberg has said that the company wouldn't necessarily be extending those user protections in full elsewhere in the world, telling Reuters earlier this month that he agreed with GDPR "in spirit" but not going so far as to say that it would be adopted as a worldwide standard. "We're still nailing down details on this, but it should directionally be, in spirit, the whole thing," he said at the time. Today, however, Zuckerberg changed his tune a little saying GDPR would be the standard going forward.
Watch Mark Zuckerberg's second day of congressional testimony at 10AM ET
After Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent several hours answering questions from dozens of senators yesterday, he'll face the House Energy and Commerce Committee this morning. Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify at 10AM ET and you can watch the proceedings live via the committee's website right here. As was the case yesterday, Bloomberg's TicToc will be livestreaming the hearing on Twitter and several other outlets will have YouTube and Facebook feeds. We've embedded the YouTube broadcast from PBS News Hour down below for easy access.
Facebook didn't report initial Cambridge Analytica data use to FTC
During his first hearing in Washington, DC this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that the company didn't alert the FTC to the initial Cambridge Analytica leak in 2015. When answering questions from several senators during his testimony, Zuckerberg explained that after Facebook first learned that Cambridge Analytica was in possession of user data from the "Thisisyourdigitallife" app, it "considered it a closed case" when the data company said it had deleted any unauthorized info. The CEO admitted that it was a mistake to take Cambridge Analytica's word for it, but that the company didn't feel that any further action was required.
Tiny ‘hearing’ device is 100,000 times thinner than your eardrum
Finding long-range, low-powered sensors for wearable devices is the next scientific frontier. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University are working on atomically thin transducer "drumheads" that can send and receive signals at radio frequencies even greater than those we can hear with our natural ear. Better yet, the drumhead is 10,000,000,000,000 times smaller in volume and 100,000 times thinner than the human eardrum and can detect a much wider range of signal than other similar devices.
