Google acknowledged a problem with Google Home smart speakers, in a Thursday email to users, citing a “glitch” in a “backend system.” A fix rolled out to users Thursday, it said. Not giving a reason for the snafu, Google apologized to customers, saying it was “really sorry for the inconvenience" and "taking steps to prevent this issue from happening in the future.” The company didn’t respond to questions.
The federal government should maintain the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield and do more to promote “international privacy and cybersecurity frameworks that facilitate digital trade and the seamless movement of data across borders,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce Vice President-Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation Sean Heather told the Congressional Joint Economic Committee Wednesday.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association’s estimation that fair use generates 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product is a “comically-outsized effect,” said Phoenix Center Chief Economist George Ford Wednesday: CCIA improperly expects policymakers to “believe that entire industries like computer manufacturing, computer and printer repair, architectural and legal services, newspapers, the movie industry, among others, ‘would not exist’ without liberal fair use.” CCIA Vice President Matt Schruers said, "The choice of the WIPO methodology in 2007 was to enable cross-industry comparison with many years of content industry studies employing the same framework. If the Phoenix Center is claiming this overstates the size of the fair use economy, they're also claiming that years of content industry studies employing the same methodology are also overstated. That probably won't go over well with their funders."
The FTC should investigate “misleading and manipulative” practices by Google and Facebook that steer users toward “privacy-invasive default settings,” said the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Consumer Watchdog and six other consumer advocacy groups Wednesday. They cited an EU general data protection regulation-related study from the Norwegian Consumer Council claiming “users were deliberately pushed into less privacy friendly options.” The Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action and Public Citizen signed. “In the run up to GDPR we asked people to review key privacy information which was written in plain language, as well as make choices on three important topics,” a Facebook spokeswoman emailed. “Our approach complies with the law, follows recommendations from privacy and design experts, and is designed to help people understand how the technology works and their choices.” The FTC and Google didn’t comment.
Global distributed denial-of-service attacks rose 16 percent November-April, Akamai reported Tuesday. Reflection-based DDoS attacks rose 4 percent, and application-layer attacks like Structured Query Language injections or cross-site scripting gained 38 percent.
Adoption of voice assistants will be a key factor behind global smart home growth, with 275 million voice assistant devices projected to control smart homes by 2023, vs. 25 million this year, said Juniper Research. The introduction of scenes from Amazon and Google makes voice assistants the most convenient way to combine desired actions in the smart home, said Monday's report. Amazon’s “loss-leading strategy,” with hardware products tied to a product and service ecosystem, has established a lead, with Juniper predicting Google remaining a “distant second.”
A federal court ordered shutdown of revenge porn website MyEx.com. Granting the FTC and Nevada’s request, the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada also ordered the operators to pay more than $2 million for violating state and federal law by posting intimate images and personal information of people without consent and charging takedown fees, the FTC said Friday. It announced the complaint in January (see 1801090067). Defendants "harmed individuals by publishing their intimate images, and then victimized them again by trying to extort money to take the information down,” said FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Andrew Smith. The defendant's attorney didn't comment.
Google took a step toward making voice assistant interaction more natural, enabling Google Assistant to respond to several requests during an interaction without a user having to repeat, “Hey, Google." For Google Assistant to have a natural conversation, "it should be able to understand when it’s being spoken to and should be capable of responding to several requests during an interaction,” blogged Jaclyn Konzelmann, Google Assistant product manager. Continued Conversation launched Thursday on Google Home, Home Mini and Home Max speakers. Users can turn on the feature in the Google Assistant app.
Smart vehicle company Byton licensed BlackBerry's QNX SDP 7.0 real-time operating system and Hypervisor 2.0 software for its first series of production vehicles, said the companies Thursday. Byton chose BlackBerry's technology for its ability to partition and isolate safety-critical systems from non-safety critical systems, said the car company. Byton plans to launch its M-Byte Level 3 and sports utility vehicle in China next year, followed by the U.S. and Europe in 2020, it said last week at CES Asia in Shanghai (see 1806150004 or 1806140002). BlackBerry's QNX software is embedded in more than 120 million cars, it said.
The Basel Action Network officially debuted its EarthEye e-waste GPS-tracking service Thursday, saying it hopes the program will help thwart “unauthorized exports” of discarded electronics “to substandard recycling operations in developing countries.” BAN soft-launched the EarthEye program Tuesday with Dell (see 1806190002). BAN’s studies have found 40 percent of discarded devices given to U.S. contractors for responsible recycling instead were sent to developing countries, said the green group: “The evidence is compelling that far too many companies are unaware of the risks involved with improper management of electronic waste.”