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Uber: Police swoop in two countries

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 18 Maret 2015 | 23.58

18 March 2015 Last updated at 13:56

Uber's Paris offices have been raided by police investigating its UberPop service, the company has confirmed.

Separately, nearly 30 people linked to the company, including chief executive Travis Kalanick, have been charged with running an illegal taxi firm in South Korea.

Uber said its South Korean staff had not broken any laws and called the Paris raid "disproportionate".

That came as a German court was due to rule on the legality of Uber's service.

On Monday, 30 police officers descended on Uber's French headquarters looking for information, the company said.

A spokesman told the BBC that the officers stayed all day and took away mobile phones that were intended for the use of Uber drivers.

He called the raid "intimidation", saying: "Why would they send 30 police officers? We are 46 [people] here. The only things we have are computers and telephones."

Uber said the police investigation was based on French legislation it has already complained to the European Commission about, and was confident would be scrapped.

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), dozens of non-professional UberPop users have been fined since the start of the year.

UberPop has been ruled illegal in France, but the company has appealed against a €100,000 (£72,000) fine it received last year, it said.

According to a report from the South Korean news agency Yonhap, 29 people connected to Uber were charged in total.

The agency reported that Mr Kalanick, who has already been indicted on charges of establishing and running Uber Korea, was charged again on suspicion of conducting an illegal business, citing local police sources.

Mr Kalanick was reported to have remained in the United States and to have refused to stand trial in South Korea.

"We plan to summon Kalanick soon and check the transaction details of overseas bank accounts to conduct further investigation into those involved in the case.

"If Kalanick continues to disobey the summons, we plan to seek an arrest warrant against him," a police official told Yonhap on condition of anonymity.

Among those also charged were the heads of six different car rental firms, who were suspected of connecting passengers with nearby drivers through the UberTaxi app without a licence, police told Yonhap.

According to the reports, police said the Uber app posed a risk for passenger safety because drivers were not screened, cars were uninsured and mobile phone numbers and credit card numbers could be leaked.

Police also said Uber Korea took 20% of passengers' taxi fares as commission and paid the remainder to drivers.

By providing such services, one car rental firm made 96 million won (£58,000) in three months, officers claimed.

Asked about the reports, an Uber spokesman said: "Uber has fully cooperated with the police during the course of their investigation and we will continue to do so as the matter is referred to the prosecution for review.

"Uber does not believe the employees in Korea have engaged in any misconduct or illegal behaviour. We believe the prosecutors will come to a similar conclusion."

In Frankfurt, a court is due to rule on whether Uber's novel taxi-hailing service violates driver licensing rules, a decision that could lead to a nationwide ban on the service, Reuters reported.

The case brought against Uber by German taxi operator group Taxi Deutschland is one of more than a dozen lawsuits filed across Europe in recent months by taxi industry associations against the San Francisco-based company.


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Free Windows 10 for China pirates

18 March 2015 Last updated at 11:42

Chinese people using pirated versions of Microsoft Windows will be able to get a free upgrade to Windows 10.

Microsoft is making the upgrade available to anyone running Windows 7 or above in China to help boost adoption of its software in the nation.

By offering the software to pirates and legitimate customers, it hoped to "re-engage" with millions of Chinese Windows users, it told Reuters.

Windows 10 is set to go on general release in the summer of this year.

The upgrade from Windows 7, 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 devices will also be available globally.

"We are upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10," Terry Myerson, head of Microsoft's operating systems unit, told the news agency. There were "hundreds of millions" of people in China it could reach with the initiative, he said.

In the interview, Mr Myerson's expanded on comments he made during a speech at Microsoft's WinHEC technology convention held in Shenzhen, China where he first mentioned the plan to engage with pirates.

The software company has signed deals with giant Chinese PC maker Lenovo, social media firm Tencent and security firm Qihoo 360 to help with the rollout. Microsoft is also working with Chinese mobile-phone maker Xiaomi on a test version of Windows 10 that people will be able to run on their smartphone.

China has been a notorious hotspot for pirated software despite ongoing government efforts to make people use legitimate versions of popular programs. About 74% of the commercial software used in China is pirated, according to an annual study by the BSA - an industry group that tracks the use of unlicensed software.

The same study suggests global piracy rates are currently running at about 43%.


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Google wants self-drive cars by 2020

18 March 2015 Last updated at 12:02 By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, Vancouver

The director of Google's self-drive car project has revealed his motivation for ensuring that the technology is standard on roads within five years.

Chris Urmson told delegates at the Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference that his eldest son was 11-years-old and due to take his driving test in "four and a half years".

"My team are committed to making sure that doesn't happen," he said.

He also laid out Google's commitment to fully automated cars.

Some automotive firms have opted to introduce driver-assist functions in cars in the hope that the technology can gradually win over the many sceptics who would be uncomfortable in a fully automated car.

By contrast Google's own car - a prototype electric pod revealed in December - will have no steering wheel or conventional controls although for early testing, extra controls will be fitted so one of Google's test drivers can take over if there is a problem.

The fact that people are driving more and getting stuck in traffic jams for longer were two other good reasons to roll the technology out as soon as possible, he said.

But, most importantly, self-drive cars could drastically reduce traffic accidents, he said.

"Some 1.2 million people are killed on the roads around the world each year. That number is equivalent to a jet falling out of the sky every day."

The incremental changes some car-makers are introducing are not enough, he said.

"That is not to say that driver-assistance cars won't be useful but if we are really going to make changes to our cities, get rid of parking lots, we need self-drive cars," he said.

AI developments

Google's retrofitted self-drive cars have undergone extensive testing, racking up more than 700,000 miles on the road, and in 2013 were given to one hundred employees to test.

Mr Urmson shared with the Ted audience some of the more unusual traffic situations that the fleet of Google self-drive cars had encountered, including a child driving a toy car in the road and a woman in an electric wheelchair chasing a duck.

"There is nowhere in the handbook about how to deal with that situation," he said.

But, he added, the car slowed down and reacted appropriately in each case.

Some urge caution on the development of fully-automated cars.

Sven Beiker, executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford, has said that driverless cars may still require human input in extreme circumstances and that people may forget how to operate their vehicles if they do not do it regularly.

AI debate

Mr Urmson was one of several speakers in a Ted session entitled "Machines that learn".

The head of Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Lab Dr Fei-Fei Li spoke about her project to develop visually-intelligent computers.

Using a database of millions of images taken from the internet, her team has taught a computer to both understand a picture and generate a short audio description of that image.

The Ted audience also heard two differing points of view on the growing debate about how damaging AI will be for humanity.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom urged those involved in building super-intelligent systems to make sure AI's "were motivated to pursue our values".

But Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence maintained that just because we are developing intelligent machines did not necessarily mean that they would operate autonomously.

"AIs will empower us and help us tackle the real problems that face humanity," he said.


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Will British consumers follow Microsoft's Band?

17 March 2015 Last updated at 13:00
Microsoft Band

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WATCH: Rory Cellan-Jones talks to Microsoft's Matt Barlow about the firm's new wearable tracking band

In recent days, I've been looking like a walking - or sometimes jogging - advert for wearable technology.

On one wrist I've been wearing a smart watch, the Moto 360, on the other a fitness tracker, the Nike FuelBand - plus a device which supposedly combines the best of both in one package.

That device is called the Microsoft Band, on sale in the US for some months and now coming to the UK in April. It's a very clever product with a lot of smart technology on board. It will be a lot cheaper than the Apple Watch, while doing many of the same things. But will it put Microsoft in the lead when it comes to wearables? That may depend on what matters most to potential Band buyers - utility or design.

The device is really targeted at the fitness crowd. It measures your steps, calories burned, and your heart rate, all of them displayed with a tap on the Band's rectangular screen. You can also opt to have a run, a cycle ride or a workout tracked. I tried a run, which involves switching on the Band's GPS. It struggled at first to connect, then eventually delivered a record of my run, with split times and route - and a rather unlikely average heart rate of 165.

So just how accurate is it? Well, what I liked about it was that it showed me being more active than my other devices. Halfway through my day the Band said I'd taken 6480 steps, while the Nike Fuelband had me at 5,998 and the Moto360 reading was 5,714 steps.

Who knows which one got it right - though what I've found after wearing the Nike device for a year is that what really motivates you to exercise is simply hitting an arbitrary target.

As well as fitness tracking, the Band gives you the same kind of notifications you get on a smartwatch, throbbing and buzzing when you get emails and texts or an incoming call. If you're the kind of person who urgently needs to know when another email has arrived, this could be useful. But I found that, just as with the Moto 360, knowing that I've got more email or Twitter messages did not improve my life.

What makes the Band stand out is the software, and the fact that it is a cross-platform device. Microsoft's Health app, which gives you a wealth of data from the device, is available for iOS and Android as well as Windows Phone. You can connect other apps, such as the calorie-counting myfitnesspal, to get a more rounded picture of your health and fitness.

All in all, an impressive device which does quite a bit more than most of the simple fitness trackers on the market - and which competes with Apple's Watch in terms of functionality.

But will it appeal to a market beyond those people obsessed with measuring their every move?

Microsoft's achilles' heel is design - and the Band is never going to win prizes for its looks. Even the setup guide tells you that you may choose to wear the device on the inside of your wrist, as if ashamed to show it off.

I put it to Matt Barlow, who runs Microsoft's devices division, that the Band is, well, a little ugly. He laughs off my rudeness about his baby: "Compared to a chest strap or a really large GPS watch, it's elegant and rugged." But he agrees that the software and the data it will deliver, rather than the device itself, is at the heart of Microsoft's strategy. "We want to take that data and turn it into insights," he explains, "and share it with any health or wellness service that a customer would choose."

Don't expect the Band to outsell the Apple Watch, even if it is at least £130 cheaper. But Microsoft is betting that our interest in our own health will be what makes wearable technology take off - and it's determined that its software will play a key role.


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Bacteria programmed to find tumours

17 March 2015 Last updated at 19:14 By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, Vancouver

Bacteria programmed to spot tumours in the liver have been shown off at the Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Vancouver.

Tal Danino, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), described how he programmed the bacteria with genetic code.

The system could be developed to identify other cancers, he said.

So far the research has only been tested on mice.

The results will be published in Science Translational Medicine.

The mice are fed pre-programmed probiotic bacteria - a similar type to that found in some health-promoting yogurts.

The bacteria produce enzymes when they encounter a tumour which will, in turn, change the colour of urine.

So far, the system has proved accurate at detecting liver cancer.

"Liver cancer is hard to detect, and there really is a need for new technology to help spot it," Mr Danino told the BBC ahead of his talk.

Worldwide, liver was the second most lethal cancer in 2012, resulting in 745,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Mr Danino was the first of 21 Ted fellows - young researchers engaged in cutting-edge work - chosen each year by the non-profit Ted organisation. Their five-minute speeches kick off the conference which, for the second year running, is being hosted in Canada.

"There are more bacteria in the body than there are stars in the galaxy," Mr Danino told the Ted audience.

"It is a fascinating universe in our body and we can now program bacteria like we program computers."

But the intersection between biology and computer is still at a "very early stage", he said.

"We don't know what the exact impact will be," he told the BBC.

Bacteria may be particularly useful in the continuing battle against cancer.

Studies have shown that there are often large concentrations of bacteria inside tumours, especially intestinal ones, with some experts suggesting that the bacteria are hiding in tumours because they are places where they cannot be attacked by the immune system.

The next stage for the work Mr Danino is doing is to use the programmable bacteria to detect a range of other cancers and, perhaps eventually, offer treatments.


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'Terminator' printer 'grows' objects

17 March 2015 Last updated at 13:52 By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, Vancouver
Eiffel Tower being 3D printed

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WATCH: The Carbon3D printer uses a pool of resin to make its objects 'grow'

A 3D printing process that harnesses light and oxygen has been demonstrated at the Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Vancouver.

Carbon3D said its "game-changing" process could make objects such as car parts, medical devices or shoes.

The technique was inspired by the film Terminator 2, in which the T-1000 robot rises from a pool of metallic liquid.

One independent expert told the BBC the technology showed huge potential, if the company's assertions stood up.

"It's not unusual for huge claims like this to be made," said James Woodcock, group editor for TCT Magazine.

"But as it's renowned experts working on it, it gives it some gravitas."

Mushroom growing

On the Ted stage, the Carbon3D machine produced a plastic ball from a pool of resin in 10 minutes.

"It would traditionally take up to 10 hours to print this," Carbon3D chief executive Prof Joseph DeSimone told the audience.

He said that current 3D printing methods had some fundamental flaws.

"First up, the name is a misnomer. It is really 2D printing over and over again," he said.

The process is also often very slow.

"There are mushrooms that grow faster than some 3D-printed parts," he joked.

And finally the objects created by traditional 3D printing are often mechanically weak because they are made up of multiple layers.

His method is 25 to 100 times faster and can print solid final parts. It can, he said, potentially be up to 1,000 times faster.

It works by applying different levels of light and oxygen to a pool of resin. Light hardens the resin, while oxygen stops hardening.

By intricately controlling levels of each, the resin can be forced into complex shapes.

In the field

Possible uses for objects include medical stents that could be made-to-measure in medical rooms and teeth printed "while the patient sits in the dentist's chair", he said.

Currently the printer can only work with polymer-based materials but Prof DeSimone told the BBC his firm is "working on" materials beyond that.

There are already several printers being tested in the field - by an unnamed automotive firm, an athletic apparel company and a research lab.

Carbon3D hopes to have its product out commercially "within a year".

Mr Woodcock from TCT Magazine said the demonstration showed the need for companies in the industry to continually work on new technology.

"The whole 3D printing industry is on a knife edge - there' so much still to come. Even the biggest and most established companies are only a couple of announcements away from being redundant."


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Tiger-tagging app to boost tracking

18 March 2015 Last updated at 07:13 By Jonathan Webb Science reporter, BBC News

A new iPad app is asking users to "tag" tigers, to help researchers with counting and tracking the animals.

Images gathered from across the internet are fed into the app, which is set up as a game.

Players score points by tagging the images that contain tigers, as well as answering questions about the big cats' surroundings and what they are doing.

Eventually the team aims to combine the data with facial recognition software, to help track individual animals.

The project is called Wildsense and it emerges from research at the University of Surrey, where a team of computer scientists has a particular passion for wildlife conservation - and they want to share that with the public.

Untapped resource

They have developed the app as a tool to turn the internet's vast wealth of images, and the help of willing iPad users, into valuable data for conservationists.

Aaron Mason, a PhD student with a background in software and app development, told the BBC: "It pulls in photos from the internet which have the word tiger associated with them - but that brings up all manner of images, from baseball teams, to cuddly toys, to furry cats and pets. We want to get rid of that noise."

Hidden among that noise will be photos of real tigers in the wild, many of them uploaded by tourists to public sites like Flickr: a largely untapped resource for conservationists monitoring the species.

So first of all, users will be asked: Is there a real tiger in this photo?

After that, they will pinpoint its face in the image, and give some more, simple details about the picture.

"People can interact with the photos and provide more context," Mr Mason said.

This will include the type of surroundings, the weather, and what the beast in the photo is up to - is it running, sleeping or eating, for example.

All of this data will be put together with whatever information can be gleaned automatically from the photo, such as its location. That might be from the original camera's GPS tag, or simple keywords like "India".

Then comes the job of analysing the results, which falls to Mr Mason and his colleagues. They are hopeful that the app - and anyone who plays the game - will make a useful contribution to monitoring the numbers, distribution and activity of tigers in the wild.

There is certainly no shortage of the raw resource, because the internet is famously full of pictures.

"There's so many photos online, we still haven't even processed them all," Mr Mason said.

"We're hoping after the experiment we'll understand better where they come from - is it guides, is it tourists, or is it something else?"

Follow that tiger

Once the photos have been annotated, the team hopes to apply facial recognition software to the tagged tigers. Trials have shown some promise at distinguishing individuals in this way.

And the team had some previous success identifying specific tigers from their stripes, in an ongoing project called Tiger Nation. In that case, people who have seen wild tigers in India upload their own snapshots as part of a more active effort to help monitor the population.

It proved popular; Tiger Nation currently has several thousand active users, Mr Mason said. That is about as many participants as there are tigers alive in the wild.

By contrast, the Wildsense app enlists anyone with an iPad to help, by processing any image the researchers can lay their hands on. They are already keen to add photos that haven't simply been scraped from the web.

"There are other sources which we are beginning to access," said Prof Paul Krause, who runs the Surrey laboratory where Wildsense was developed. "For example, a lot of professional photographers publish their photographs in libraries. We need permission to access those photos - but we're working with two or three people to grant us that access.

"They're richer in information, because typically they will include time and date information, and we get a high quality image."

The team also has experience gathering its own photos, with the help of different specialised technology.

"For this experiment we're mainly using photos from the internet, uploaded by tourists. But in the past we've done experiments where we deployed camera traps in the field - in the jungle in India for example - which sent us photos directly," Mr Mason explained.

So by combining these image sources - and enlisting the help of citizen scientists and facial recognition algorithms - there is the potential to track the movements of individual tigers in the wild, in an entirely non-invasive way.

"That's our aim," Mr Mason said.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter


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Blipfoto assets sale deal close

18 March 2015 Last updated at 10:01

A group of investors from the Polaroid group has been named as the preferred bidder for Edinburgh-based online photo-sharing site Blipfoto.

The firm went into liquidation last week but it was hoped that the sale of the assets would be completed by the end of this week.

FRP Advisory were appointed as liquidators on 11 March.

They said that a sale of the assets would protect subscribers and ensure continuity of the service.

Eleven staff were laid off at the company before FRP was called in.

Blipfoto is a website where users document their lives daily with a single photo and some text.

It was founded in 2004 by Joe Tree and now reaches half a million people every month, in 175 countries.

In January, it entered a partnership with Polaroid. The website was then relaunched as Polaroid Blipfoto.

Nat Baldwin of Metis Partners, which was appointed by the liquidators to handle the sale, said in a statement: "Blipfoto has benefited from remarkable brand affection.

"The preferred bidder views Blipfoto as a strategic opportunity and has expressed excitement about the prospects for growing the business and nurturing existing users."

A group of investors behind several of the Polaroid brand properties including Jeffrey B. Hecktman - CEO of Hilco Global - and Bobby Sager - partner and a director at Gordon Brothers - has been named as the preferred bidder.

Mr. Hecktman said: "The Blipfoto brand has created a genuine global community with users in over 175 countries who share the most important moments of their lives on a daily basis.

"By leveraging this type of powerful social media tool with the direction and great success we are having with the Polaroid brand as a whole and our new retail concept called Polaroid Fotobar, we believe this is as a fantastic addition to our current growth platform."


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Charges dropped over Facebook rant

18 March 2015 Last updated at 12:46

Charges have been dropped against a US man who was arrested in the UAE after making critical comments about his employer while in America.

Helicopter mechanic Ryan Pate wrote the comments in Florida in December about Global Aerospace Logistics (Gal).

The comments were made after a phone call with Gal during which it refused a request to take sick leave.

On returning to the UAE he was arrested for breaking the nation's strict online defamation laws.

In a hearing held on 17 March all charges against Mr Pate were dropped.

With the help of US ambassadorial staff in the UAE Mr Pate has reportedly reached an agreement with Gal over his comments. He has also apologised on Facebook for criticising the firm.

In the rant published on his Facebook page, Mr Pate called the Abu-Dhabi based firm "backstabbers" and warned other people about working for the firm.

On returning to UAE in February to resign from Gal, Mr Pate was called in to a local police station and arrested because Gal had filed a complaint which said his comments broke UAE laws governing slander.

If found guilty, Mr Pate could have spent a year in jail and had to pay a $50,000 (£30,000) fine.

UAE's strict online defamation laws were introduced in 2012 and made it an offence to mock or deride people and organisations online. The strict laws have produced several difficult legal cases for the UAE authorities. In one, an eyewitness who uploaded a video of someone being beaten up faced a stiffer sentence than the person who mounted the attack.


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Budget boosts digital cash research

18 March 2015 Last updated at 16:00

UK research into digital cash could get a £10m boost from government.

The plan to funnel cash into the "opportunities and challenges" of digital currencies such as bitcoin were announced in the budget.

It was one of several technology-related policies unveiled in the Chancellor's speech.

Others include money to improve mobile networks and a pledge to bring superfast broadband to remote areas more quickly.

Ultrafast push

The funds will swell the money the government already puts into research into digital currencies, it said in a statement. It is also planning a new research initiative overseen by the UK's research councils, the Digital Catapult tech accelerator and the Turing Institute.

The Turing Institute was announced in the 2014 budget and, once up and running, will be an R&D centre specialising in ways to collect, organise and analyse large data sets.

Alongside the spending will go changes to the way digital currencies are policed in the UK. The Chancellor announced plans to apply anti-money laundering regulations to the UK markets where digital cash is traded and to look at ways to protect consumers who buy and sell them.

The £10m pledge showed the government was "serious" about digital currencies, said Garrick Hileman, an economic historian from the London School of Economics.

"The net impact of the announcements is to make the UK, and London specifically, an even more attractive destination for investment in the crypto-currency economy," he said.

The budget also contained a pledge to put about £140m in research cash towards smart cities, driverless cars and the internet of things.

Mr Osborne also announced ways to improve UK broadband speeds. The Chancellor unveiled an "ambition" to ensure that "ultrafast broadband of at least 100 megabits per second should be available to nearly all UK premises".

"It's a really good ambition for the UK," said Malcolm Corbett of the Independent Networks Co-operative Association. "We would encourage the government to ensure that they support a competitive response to this ambition."

Andrew Ferguson, co-founder of the Think Broadband news site, said the commitment to ultrafast was "exciting" but said the details needed to be fleshed out.

"The 'nearly all' line might mean 90% or it might mean 98%," he said.

In addition, the government plans to boost online speeds by changing the terms of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) that sets out the minimum telecom service every home should expect to get. The basic speed that homes should get will be raised from dial-up to 5 megabits per second, said the Chancellor.

Mr Ferguson from Think Broadband said: "The USO change is the big news for rural and could be done quickly if they want since vouchers for satellite install are easy."

The budget also promised a new £4m fund to help video games start-ups and a further £4m for a skills investment fund to boost the training available to people already working in the sector.


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