The new battery-powered luxury ride is capable, comfy, and clever.
Source: Wired
The European Commission has finally given the U.S. a deadline related to the much criticized data transfer mechanism known as the EU-US Privacy Shield .
But it’s only asking for the U.S. to nominate a permanent ombudsperson — to handle any EU citizens’ complaints — by February 28, 2019.
If a permanent ombudsperson is not appointed by then the Commission says it will “consider taking appropriate measures, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation”.
So not an out-and-out threat to suspend the mechanism — which is what critics and MEPs have been calling for.
But still a fixed deadline at last.
“We now expect our American partners to nominate the Ombudsperson on a permanent basis, so we can make sure that our EU-US relations in data protection are fully trustworthy,” said Andrus Ansip, Commission VP for the Digital Single Market, in a statement.
“All elements of the Shield must be working at full speed, including the Ombudsperson,” added Věra Jourová, the commissioner for justice and consumers.
It’s the first sign the Commission is losing patience with its U.S. counterparts.
Although there’s no doubt the EC remains fully committed to the survival of the business-friendly mechanism which it spent years negotiating after the prior arrangement, Safe Harbor, was struck down by Europe’s top court following NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosures of US government surveillance programs.
Its problem is it has to contend with Trump administration priorities — which naturally don’t align with privacy protection for non-US citizens.
While the EU-US Privacy Shield is over two years’ old at this point, president Trump has failed to nominate a permanent ombudsperson to a key oversight role.
The acting civil servant (Judith Garber, principal deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs) was also nominated as U.S. ambassador to Cyprus this summer, suggesting a hard limit to her already divided attention on EU citizens’ data privacy.
Despite this problematic wrinkle, the EU’s executive today professed itself otherwise satisfied that the mechanism is ensuring “an adequate level of protection for personal data”, announcing the conclusion of its second annual Privacy Shield review.
The data transfer mechanism is now used by more than 4,000 companies to simplify flows of EU citizens’ personal data to the US.
And the Commission clearly wants to avoid a repeat of the scramble that kicked off when, three years ago, Safe Harbor was struck down and businesses had to find alternative legal means for authorizing essential data flows.
But at the same time Privacy Shield has been under growing pressure. This summer the EU parliament called for the mechanism to be suspended until the U.S. comes into compliance.
The parliament’s Libe committee also called for better monitoring of data transfers was clearly required in light of the Cambridge Analytica Facebook data misuse scandal. (Both companies having been signed up to Privacy Shield.)
The mechanism has also been looped into a separate legal challenge to another data transfer tool after the Irish High Court referred a series of questions to the European Court of Justice — setting the stage for another high stakes legal drama if fundamental European privacy rights are again deemed incompatible with U.S. national security practices.
A decision on that referral remains for the future. But in the meanwhile the Commission looks to be doing everything it can to claim it’s ‘business as usual’ for EU-US data flows.
In a press release today, it lauds steps taken by the U.S. authorities to implement recommendations it made in last year’s Privacy Shield review — saying they have “improved the functioning of the framework”.
Albeit, the detail of these slated ‘improvements’ shows how very low its starting bar was set — with the Commission listing, for e.g.:
The Commission also claims the Federal Trade Commission has shown “a more proactive approach” to enforcement by monitoring the principles of the Privacy Shield — noting that, for example, it has issued subpoenas to request information from participating companies.
Another change it commends — related to the sticky issue of access to personal data by U.S. public authorities for national security purposes (which is what did for Safe Harbor) — is the appointment of new members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) — to restore the Board’s quorum.
The denuded PCLOB has been a long running bone of contention for Privacy Shield critics.
“The Board’s report on the implementation of Presidential Policy-Directive No. 28 (PPD-28, which provides for privacy protections for non-Americans) has been made publicly available,” the Commission writes, referring to a key Obama era directive that it has previously said the Shield depends upon. “It confirms that these privacy protections for non-Americans are implemented across the U.S. intelligence community.”
It says it also took into account relevant developments in the U.S. legal system in the area of privacy during the review, noting that: “The Department of Commerce launched a consultation on a federal approach to data privacy to which the Commission contributed and the US Federal Trade Commission is reflecting on its current powers in this area.”
“In the context of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Commission noted the Federal Trade Commission’s confirmation that its investigation of this case is ongoing,” it adds, kicking the can down the road on that particular data scandal.
Meanwhile, as you’d expect, business groups have welcomed another green light for data to keep being passed.
In a statement responding to the conclusion of the review, the Computer & Communications Industry Association said: “We commend the European Commission for its thorough review. Privacy Shield is a robust framework, with strong data protections, that allows for the daily transfers of commercial data between the world’s two biggest trading partners.”
Source: TechCrunch
Chromebooks may soon have an option for what operating system they run thanks to Google’s “dual boot” feature. New Chromium repository commits suggest its development could be further along than we thought.
The post You’ll soon be able to run Windows and Chrome OS on your Chromebook appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
The passenger-side small overlap test takes center stage for 2019.
Source: CNET
Google announced today it’s now using mobile-first indexing for over half the web pages shown in its search results globally – a significant milestone in Google’s move to favor mobile sites over desktop sites in its search results.
The plans for the project have been in the works for years.
The company had first detailed its efforts around mobile-first indexing back in 2016, where it explained the impacts to how its search index operates. It said it would shift over to using the mobile version of a website’s content to index its pages, as well as to understand its structured data and show snippets from the site in Google’s search results.
Its reasoning behind the change is simple: most people today search Google from a mobile device, not a desktop computer. But Google’s ranking systems for the web were originally built for the desktop era. They still typically look at the desktop version of the page’s content to determine its relevance to the user.
This, obviously, causes problems when the desktop site and the mobile site are not in sync.
Before responsive web design became more commonplace, many site owners built a separate, simpler and sometimes less informative version of their site for their mobile web visitors. These users may have been guided to the site because of Google Search. But once there, they couldn’t find what they were looking for because it was only available on the desktop version of the web page.
In December 2017, Google said it had begun to transition a small handful of sites to mobile-first indexing.
Earlier this year, Google announced it had begun to officially roll out its “mobile-first” indexing of the web, following a year and a half of testing and experimentation. At the time, it said it would first move over the sites already following the best practices for mobile-first indexing. It also noted it would favor the site’s own mobile version of its webpage over Google’s fast-loading AMP pages.
Sites who are shifted are notified through a message in Search Console and then see increased visits from the smartphone version of Googlebot, which crawls the mobile version of their site. Site owners can also check their server logs, where they can track the increased requests from Googlebot Smartphone.
Google additionally offers a URL inspection tool, which site owners can use to check how a URL from their site – like the homepage – was last crawled and indexed.
Google today notes that sites that don’t use responsive web design are seeing two common problems when Google tries to move them over to mobile-first indexing.
Some don’t use structured data on their mobile sites, even though they use it on the desktop. This is important because it helps Google to understand the website’s content and allows it to highlight pages’ content in its search results, through its “fancier” features like rich results, Knowledge Graph results, enhanced search results, carousels and more – basically any time you see more engaging search results that offer more than just a list of blue links.
The company also said that some mobile sites were missing alt-text for images, which makes it harder for Google to understand the images’ content.
At the time of the initial wave of sites being shifted over, Google had said that the mobile-friendly index wouldn’t directly impact how content is ranked, but it did say that a site’s mobile-friendly content will help it “perform better” in mobile search results. Mobile-friendliness has also long been one of many factors in determining how a site is ranked, but it’s not the only one.
Google didn’t say what it will do to sites that are never properly updated for the mobile web, but it seems that – at some point – their ranking could be impacted.
Source: TechCrunch
The state’s approval is a moot point for now. Uber’s autonomous vehicle program hasn’t started back up following a pedestrian’s death in Arizona this year.
Source: CNET
Who needs Photoshop? Appropriately named remove.bg, one web developer’s new website will help you automatically remove backgrounds from photos and bring out your inner graphic designer.
The post Free online tool helps you automatically remove backgrounds from photos appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Dataiku wants to turn buzzwords into an actual service. The company has been focused on data tools for many years, before everybody started talking about big data, data science and machine learning.
And the company just raised $101 million in a round led by Iconiq Capital with Alven Capital, Battery Ventures, Dawn Capital and FirstMark Capital also participating.
If you’re generating a lot of data, Dataiku helps you find a meaning behind data sets. First, you import your data by connecting Dataiku to your storage system. The platform supports dozens of database formats and sources — Hadoop, NoSQL, images, you name it.
You can then use Dataiku to visualize your data, clean your data set, run some algorithms on your data in order to build a machine learning model, deploy it and more. Dataiku has a visual coding tool, or you can use your own code.
But Dataiku isn’t just a tool for data scientists. Even if you’re a business analyst, you can visualize and extract data from Dataiku directly. And because of its software-as-a-service approach, your entire team of data scientists and data analysts can collaborate on Dataiku.
Clients use it to track churn, detect fraud, forecast demand, optimize lifetime values and more. Customers include General Electric, Sephora, Unilever, KUKA, FOX and BNP Paribas.
With today’s funding round, the company plans to double its staff. The company currently works with 200 people in New York, Paris and London. It plans to open offices in Singapore and Sydney as well.
Source: TechCrunch
Amazon’s voice assistant made considerable gains in 2018 through the continued refinement of machine learning techniques.
Source: Wired
AMD’s best mid-range graphics card, the RX 580, is even more value for money right now, as Newegg has a special promotion that brings its already great price down to just $180.
The post The best 1080p gaming card is on sale for just $180 right now appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends