ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé urged the U.N. Tuesday to continue bringing together all Internet governance stakeholders to solve issues as part of a “polycentric approach” to Internet governance. “The Internet is the great equalizer in [a] world where inequality is still a key challenge,” he said. Chehadé was among the Internet industry executives addressing the U.N. as it began its two-day high-level meeting on its 10-year review of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+10). A draft WSIS+10 outcome document circulated before the U.N.’s high-level meeting endorses the central tenets of multistakeholder Internet governance and recommits to WSIS' Tunis Agreement. The draft document would also extend the Internet Governance Forum's mandate for another 10 years, as expected (see 1511200063).

Mozilla said it's allowing Firefox users to block third-party trackers in private browsing mode, giving users more control over how they share data. The company said Tuesday in a blog post it recently introduced that functionality, which is based on the blocklist provided by its partner Disconnect. "A basic protection list is on by default in Private Browsing with Tracking Protection and it shields against many ad, analytics and social trackers," the post said. "If you want increased protection from tracking, Firefox now allows you to choose a ‘strict’ protection blocklist which will block additional content trackers such as those often found in video, photo and embeddable content." But Mozilla said some users have said some websites don't work properly when the strict list is used.

DearMob released an upgrade for 5KPlayer for Windows version 3.2 that it said Friday is to optimize H.265/HEVC video codec playback of 4K and 8K UHD videos for “much smoother” H.265 streaming. The upgrade added a feature that allows the app to play a portion of damaged H.265 files, it said.

Basic streaming media sticks will be a popular gift item this holiday season, due to competitive pricing and expanded over-the-top services, said Barbara Kraus, Parks Associates research director, in a research note Friday. Fourteen percent of U.S. broadband households plan to buy a streaming media player by mid-2016, with 31 percent owning one by Q3, said Kraus. Next year, devices will differentiate through additional content options and new technologies such as 4K video, Kraus said. "Ultimately consumers want a simple, uninterrupted experience in accessing OTT content, so that will be the minimum expectation for any device, regardless of the cost.” Kraus said two-thirds of U.S. broadband households connect at least one device to the Internet, with Xbox the leading device used for streaming in 14 percent of U.S. broadband households. Following are PlayStation at just under 14 percent and Roku at 10 percent, it said.

Certain legal aspects of algorithms and information collection and distribution aren't particularly well defined, and more transparency is needed to illuminate the data used by algorithms to make decisions for individuals, panelists said at a New America Foundation event Thursday. Algorithms normally put out information or conclusions that aren't "super surprising," University of Maryland College of Information Studies associate professor Jennifer Golbeck said, and shouldn't be relied on as the ultimate source for a decision. "The things we have to keep in mind with algorithms today is that they are going to tell us stuff, but we absolutely have to have intelligent humans taking that as one piece of input that they use to make decisions," Golbeck said. "[And] not just handing control over to the algorithms and [letting] them make decisions on their own because they are going to be wrong a lot of the time. They are not going to do things as well as a human can do." Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology professor of interactive computing, urged the media to delve deeper into the actual processes behind the operation of algorithms, rather than simply equating them to an all-knowing, mystical being. "The way we discuss algorithms in the media really does matter," he said. Laura Moy, New America's Open Technology Institute's senior policy counsel, said when thinking of the problematic outcomes of the innovative uses of algorithms, "a lot of times there aren't really clear legal 'don'ts,'" and pointed to consumer privacy as another issue presented by algorithms and data collection. Moy said algorithms have the potential to perpetuate human biases and could have "some sort of disparate impact" on users, also saying it's difficult to identify or correct the addition of human biases in algorithms. It would be worth thinking about building in ways we can check for bias and to identify it when using algorithms to produce a service or result, she said. "At a basic level, transparency about what information is going in and how it might be used to make decisions that could impact the individual, that level of transparency to the individual is important." Moy also said regulators are looking into correcting bias in algorithms in their design, and a few federal agencies have been thinking about it as a fairness issue and starting to address it. "From the regulators' perspective, full transparency, full insight into what all of the inputs [into algorithms] might possibly be and [in]to how it works is important," said Moy.

New top-level domains “are not treated any differently than traditional domain names like .com or .org” within Google's search results, Google Domains Product Marketing Manager Chad Lancaster said in a blog post Thursday on “common questions” about new TLDs. “Domain names with new endings are shown in search just like any other domain name.” Lancaster suggested website owners prepare URL mapping from current URLs to their corresponding new URLs when moving to a new TLD, along with configuring for redirection of site contents to the new URLs. “It takes time to be fully processed in Google Search, but once it is, your new domain name is expected to work just like your old domain name,” Lancaster said.

Worldwide spending on IoT will grow from $698 billion in 2015 to nearly $1.3 trillion in 2019, an IDC report said Thursday. The Asia/Pacific region leads in IoT spending, with 40 percent of the market, followed by North America and Western Europe, at a combined $250 billion this year, IDC said. In North America, the fastest growing IoT use case is retail marketing, it said. “In-store contextual marketing is growing rapidly as retailers try to capture continuous, real-time streams of data from mobile devices, online customer activity, in-store Wi-Fi routers/beacons, and video cameras in order to gain insight into customer behavior and desires.”

Amazon’s Streaming Partners program, launched Tuesday, allows Prime members to add Showtime, Starz and “dozens” more video subscriptions to their Prime membership at slight discounts and with “self-service cancellation of any subscription at any time.” Subscriptions to Showtime and Starz are $8.99 per month through Amazon. It's billing the program to video providers as a fast track to cord cutters, and to consumers as a way to streamline their video subscriptions. Content providers can “reach a new set of highly engaged viewers with Amazon responsible for driving subscriber acquisition,” it said. Amazon also handles billing with credit cards already on file. In addition to “special Prime member pricing,” subscribers get the latest episodes available simultaneously with broadcast, single-account billing, one watch list across all subscriptions and integration with IMDb X-Ray, Amazon said. “The way people watch TV is changing, and customers need an easier way to subscribe to and enjoy multiple streaming subscriptions,” said Michael Paull, Amazon vice president-digital video. The program makes it easy for video providers to reach “highly engaged Prime members, many of whom are already frequent streamers,” Paull said. Additional content launch partners are A+E Network (Lifetime Movie Club), AMC (Shudder and SundanceNow Doc Club), BroadbandTV (Hooplakidz Plus), Cinedigm (Dove Channel, Docurama, CONtv), CuriosityStream, Defy Media (ScreenJunkies Plus), DramaFever (DramaFever Instant), FlixFling (Cinefest, Nature Vision, Warriors and Gangsters, Dox, Monsters and Nightmares), Gaia, Gravitas (Film Forum, Daring Docs, Fear Factory), IndieFlix (IndieFlix Shorts), Qello, Ring TV Boxing, RLJ Entertainment (Acorn TV, Urban Movie Channel, Acacia TV), Smithsonian (Smithsonian Earth) and Tribeca Short List. Showtime also announced a similar deal with Hulu last summer.

User numbers for infidelity app Ashley Madison are "bouncing back," and in Q3 hit where they were before the summer's high-profile data breach that resulted in millions of users being revealed (see 1507200017), said online security company AVG Technologies in a report Tuesday. "Perhaps in anticipation of a 'singleton' Christmas, dating and cheating apps, in general, saw an uptick in usage over the third quarter, with Ashley Madison competitor platforms MiuMeet and AnastasiaDate both joining the app in seeing a rise in numbers from the previous quarter," AVG said in a news release. The report highlights app usage trends, analyzing anonymous data from more than 1 million AVG Android app users.

Apple users “can no longer be complacent about security,” as the number of infections and new threats against Mac OS X and iOS devices rises sharply, said Dick O'Brien, senior information developer at cybersecurity firm Symantec, in a Tuesday blog post. Symantec estimates the number of new Mac OS X threats rose by 15 percent in 2014, and the number of iOS threats discovered this year has more than doubled since 2014, O’Brien said. The range of threats affecting Apple devices also has “multiplied,” he said. “These threats span from ordinary cybercrime gangs branching out and porting their threats to Apple platforms, right up to high level attacker groups developing custom Mac OS X and iOS malware.” Attackers targeting iOS devices “need to find a way to install malware” on an iPhone or iPad, “which can represent a significant hurdle,” he said. Many threats are installed when victims connect their devices to a “compromised” desktop computer, he said. “Jailbroken” devices, meaning iPhones that have had their iOS software restrictions removed, “present more opportunities for compromise and many threats are designed to take advantage of jailbroken phones,” he said.