Written By Unknown on Sabtu, 28 Maret 2015 | 23.52
PayPal said it had voluntarily shared details about the payments
PayPal has agreed to pay $7.7m (£5.1m) to the US government following claims it allowed payments that violated sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan.
The US Treasury Department said the payment firm had failed to adequately screen and prevent transactions.
They included a $7,000 transaction from someone listed by the US government as being involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
PayPal said it had improved the real-time scanning of payments.
In a statement, it said it had "voluntarily" reported to the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) certain payments it had processed between 2009 and 2013.
Delays in scanning had allowed some prohibited payments to be processed, PayPal said.
"Since then, we've taken additional steps to support compliance with Ofac regulations with the introduction of real-time scanning of payments and improved processes," a PayPal representative told the BBC.
One of the cases involved Kursad Zafer Cire, who was named by the US State Department in 2009 as a person linked to programmes involving weapons of mass destruction.
Between October 2009 and April 2013, PayPal reportedly processed 136 transactions to or from an account registered in his name.
Other payments involved goods and services going to and from Cuba, Sudan and Iran.
In total, according to the Treasury Department, nearly 500 PayPal transactions, worth almost $44,000, had potentially violated sanctions that ban US companies from doing business with individuals or organisations on a blacklist.
Under the settlement, PayPal did not admit or deny it had violated the sanctions.
Nearly 1.4 million UK households have already had a smart meter fitted
The government's smart meter scheme could be an "IT disaster", the Institute of Directors (IoD) has said.
The risks involved with "the largest UK government-run IT project in history" were "staggering", a report said.
It recommended that the government drastically scale back the programme or abandon it altogether.
Smart Energy GB, the independent body set up to publicise smart meters, said the IoD wanted to take the UK "back to an analogue dark age".
Energy-saving digital smart meters, designed to replace existing analogue gas and electricity meters, should help householders to monitor their energy-use far more accurately, and energy companies to do away with estimated bills.
'Technological innovation'
By some estimates, the new meters could save us £17bn on our energy bills.
But the IoD believes the government's plan to roll out smart meters to all 30 million UK households by 2020 is far too ambitious.
"The pace of technological innovation may well leave the current generation of meters behind and leave consumers in a cycle of installation, de-installation and re-installation," it said.
Under the scheme, energy companies must begin offering free smart meters to their customers from the autumn. Despite the £11bn estimated cost to the industry, it will not be compulsory to have one.
Responding to the IoD report, Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Smart Energy GB, said: "The IoD does not understand what's needed to secure Britain's energy infrastructure for the future.
"The smart meter rollout must be for everybody. It will only deliver the national transformation Britain needs if every home is part of this national upgrade."
Nearly 1.4 million households have already had a smart meter installed, he added.
Costly mistake?
But the IoD isn't the only body concerned about the smart meter programme.
Earlier this month, the Parliament's Energy and Climate Change Committee said the project was in danger of becoming a costly mistake.
The MPs are concerned that allowing each energy company to come up with its own smart meter solution, rather than adopting an industry-wide approach, could lead to inefficiency and further delay.
An anonymous developer reportedly manipulated the app to allow him to match up men who both thought they were flirting with a woman
A prank played by a developer has exposed a "serious lapse of security" in the dating app Tinder, according to one expert.
The developer reportedly tricked men into flirting with each other, using fake profiles he created as bait.
Men who sought to contact one of the fake women were matched up with each other, rather than with her.
Security consultant Prof Alan Woodward said the episode "cannot help but knock one's confidence" in Tinder's security.
'Surprisingly easy'
The Verge reported on Wednesday that the anonymous developer had managed to manipulate Tinder's application program interface (API), which controls how apps and programs interact.
The developer reportedly created a program that could detect when men on Tinder expressed an interest in talking to the fictitious women portrayed in his bait profiles.
The developer reportedly collected the messages and passed them to the Verge
Two men who did so were then put in touch with each other, rather than with the woman, with the messages relayed via the dummy account. The developer, named by the Verge as "Patrick", then collected the messages they sent each other.
The process had been, he said, "surprisingly easy".
'Security lapse'
Prof Woodward told the BBC: "Put simply, it shouldn't be possible for someone to do this, so the fact that Tinder was 'tweaked' in this way is a serious lapse in security.
"I am surprised that a company that is dealing with such sensitive interactions, which are billed as being truly private, has not seen this loophole in its own penetration testing."
He said that companies that dealt with sensitive data were "trusted by default" by their users, adding: "I would have hoped that such companies would exercise the most stringent efforts as part of their duty of care".
Patrick told the Verge that he was a Tinder user himself and had met his current girlfriend using the app.
He was motivated, he said, by a desire to draw attention to the sometimes harassing nature of the messages many women received from men on it.
"The original idea was to throw that back into the face of the people doing it to see how they would react," he said.
He said that the first matches had been made within minutes of the program's activation and that he had been overseeing 40 conversations between men within 12 hours.
Patrick told the website that he had intervened if a real-world meeting was imminent.
Of the people he pranked, he said: "They ignore all the signs, they ignore all the weird things. When someone is so quick to meet up without any detail or know anything about the person at all, maybe it's deserved."
Users of the app can express an interest in each other - or not - by swiping right or left on their smartphone screens
While he sympathised with the developer's reasoning, Prof Woodward said: "There is no excuse for exploiting any such vulnerability and mounting this kind of interference.
"If someone is researching security, then most companies now have a bounty programme that pays them for reporting problems such as this."
It is not the first time Tinder has faced scrutiny over its security. In 2013, it was reported that some users could have been tracked to within 100ft (30m). That flaw was later patched.
The developer could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Tinder did not respond to a request for comment.
Tim Cook, the latest billionaire to pledge give away his fortune to charity
The chief executive of Apple, Tim Cook, has announced he is donating most of his wealth to charity before he dies.
The head of the world's most profitable company is worth over $800m (£537m).
Mr Cook told Fortune Magazine that he would leave his wealth to philanthropic causes but not before paying for his 10-year-old nephew's college education.
He joins a growing number of the world's super-rich who are giving away their wealth, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Five years ago, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates launched the campaign The Giving Pledge.
It aims to convince billionaires to give at least half of their fortunes to charity. Mr Zuckerberg and over 100 others have so far signed up to the "moral commitment".
Mr Cook's base salary went up by 43% in February 2014, rising to $9.2m (£6.2m) a year.
According to Fortune Magazine, he holds $120m (£81m) worth of Apple shares and a further $665m (£447m) of restricted stocks.
A private US university education costs an estimated $30,000 (£20,000) a year on average.
Ford is to sell a car that can read road signs and adjust its speed accordingly to ensure the vehicle is not driving too fast.
The speed-limiting tech can be activated via the steering wheel and briefly overridden by pressing firmly on the accelerator.
The car company suggests the facility will help drivers avoid fines and could reduce the number of accidents.
However, one expert said the innovation might only serve as a "stopgap".
"There's a plan for speed restrictions to be beamed to your car's computer systems and controlled from there, rather than requiring street sign visual recognition systems," said Paul Newton, an automotive industry analyst at the IHS consultancy.
"This would be part an extension of the networks that will connect vehicles, allowing cars to warn those behind them if they are slowing down, which is all part of a move toward autonomous vehicles that drive themselves."
The new vehicles will alert the driver to detected road signs via a read-out in the centre of the car's speedometer
Such a system, however, is some way off.
Ford's technology will become available to the public this August, when it launches the second generation of its S-Max cars in Europe.
A spokesman for the US car company told the BBC the facility would probably be extended to other models around the world.
Speed fines
The system, which is called the Intelligent Speed Limiter, combines two existing technologies already fitted to many cars:
Adjustable speed limiters - these use sensors mounted in a car's wheels to detect how fast it is going. Once software detects the vehicle is at a maximum preset speed, it limits the amount of fuel that reaches the engine, rather than applying the brakes. The system does, however, allow the driver to quickly suspend the restriction by pressing the accelerator pedal to the floor, letting them overtake another vehicle or avoid a collision
Traffic sign recognition - a forward-facing windscreen-mounted video camera scans the environment for road signs and alerts the driver to their presence. Ford cars previously fitted with this tech are limited to showing corresponding graphics on their dashboard displays
Drivers will be able to set the new system to let them speed at up to 5mph (8km/h) beyond the detected limit.
The new system will only be initially available with the S-Max car, which is limited to Europe
While some motorists might still resist the idea of giving up control to their vehicle, Ford suggested others would appreciate the convenience and safety on offer.
"Drivers are not always conscious of speeding... sometimes only becoming aware they were going too fast when they receive a fine in the mail or are pulled over by law enforcement," said Stefan Kappes, a safety supervisor at Ford.
"Intelligent Speed Limiter can remove one of the stresses of driving, helping ensure customers remain within the legal speed limit."
Ford noted that in 2013 more than 15,000 drivers in the UK had been issued with speeding fines costing £100 or more and that a motorist in Finland had been fined 54,000 euros (£38,400) after being caught driving 14mph (23km/h) over a 50mph limit.
It hopes that statistics such as this will help encourage consumers to spend extra money on the technology, which it has not included as standard on the basic S-Max model.
Heart-attack detector
Ford is one of several vehicle-makers to have turned to sensor-based technologies to help people drive more safely.
Volvo has fitted some of its cars with sensors and software that can tell cyclists apart from other objects
Cars from China's Volvo offer bicycle-detection software that applies the brakes if a cyclist suddenly swerves in front of its cars. Volvo has said it also intends to expand this to avoid collisions with animals soon.
Germany's Mercedes-Benz promotes its Steering Assist system, which prevents its cars driving too close to the vehicles in front of them and aims to stop drivers unintentionally drifting out of their road lane.
Japan's Honda uses similar technology to provide its False Start Prevention Function, which prevents a sudden lurch forward if it detects another object in close range, and makes the accelerator pedal vibrate.
Elsewhere, British computer-chip maker Plessey is developing a car seat that monitors the driver's heartbeat, which could give the car control if it suspected the motorist was having a heart attack.
Meanwhile, Australia's Seeing Machines has fitted an eye-movement detection system to several coaches in Europe that sounds an alert if it detects drivers falling asleep.
Plessey has been working on a heart-rate monitor that would be built into car seats
However, Mr Newton warned the rise of further intervention-based automotive technologies posed risks of their own.
"Removing the human element is one way to provide safety, but we know that computers go wrong," he said.
"I suppose there will have to be a point in time when we accept that computer-generated accidents and even potentially fatalities are part and parcel of the greater good. We'll never get faultless technology."
Google has lost a Court of Appeal bid to stop consumers having the right to sue in the UK over alleged misuse of privacy settings.
A group of users claim that Google bypassed security settings on the Safari browser to install tracking cookies on their computers in order to target them with advertising.
Google said it was "disappointed with the court's decision".
One of the claimants called it a "David and Goliath victory".
The case revolves around a so-called Safari workaround, which allegedly allowed Google to avoid the Safari web browser's default privacy setting to place cookies, that gathered data such as surfing habits, social class, race, ethnicity, without users' knowledge.
Safari is a browser used on Apple computers, iPads and other devices while cookies are small text files stored by browsers which can record information about online activity, and help some online services work.
Google had attempted to prevent the action, claiming there was no case to answer because consumers had suffered no financial harm.
In its judgement, the Court of Appeal said: "These claims raise serious issues which merit a trial.
"They concern what is alleged to have been the secret and blanket tracking and collation of information, often of an extremely private nature… about and associated with the claimants' internet use, and the subsequent use of that information for about nine months. The case relates to the anxiety and distress this intrusion upon autonomy has caused."
"The Court of Appeal has ensured Google cannot use its vast resources to evade English justice," said Judith Vidal-Hall, one of three claimants.
"Ordinary computer users like me will now have the right to hold this giant to account before the courts for its unacceptable, immoral and unjust actions."
The landmark case potentially opens the door to litigation from the millions of Britons who used Apple computers, iPhones, iPods and iPads during the relevant period, summer 2011 to spring 2012, said Jonathan Hawker who represents the Google Action Group, a not-for-profit company set up to manage claims against the internet giant for breach of privacy.
Dan Tench, a partner at law firm Olswang who is acting for the claimants, welcomed the decision.
"Google, a company that makes billions from advertising knowledge, claims that it was unaware that was secretly tracking Apple users for a period of nine months and had argued that no harm was done because the matter was trivial as consumers had not lost out financially.
"The Court of Appeal saw these arguments for what they are: a breach of consumers' civil rights and actionable before the English courts. We look forward to holding Google to account for its actions."
Google has already paid fines of over $40m related to this incident in the US. It was fined by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and separately by 38 US states.
The centre has a collection of vintage arcade machines from the past 30 years
The UK's first national centre dedicated to the art and culture of videogames opens this weekend.
The £2.5m National Videogame Arcade (NVA), in Nottingham, celebrates the industry through interactive exhibits and vintage arcade machines.
The NVA follows the success of Game City, an annual videogame festival held in Nottingham since 2006.
Games entrepreneur Ian Livingstone said it was about time the country had a centre devoted to videogames.
Ian Livingstone CBE (left) takes on a journalist at tennis on one of the many consoles in the building
He said: "We only have to see the evidence all around us, on public transport you see people playing games on smartphone devices, in the home, everywhere we go, it's pervasive.
"The games industry is worth $100bn alone.
"It's not just guys making games for guys, there's cultural and diverse content and also diversity in creation, which is more important."
The National Videogame Arcade lies in the heart of Nottingham's creative quarter in Hockley
Analysis: Neil Heath, BBC News Online
It is apparent when you visit the centre how, whether you like it or not, videogames are a huge part of our lives. The question is why has it taken so long for a national centre to be set up?
For me memories came flooding back of afternoons spent in seaside arcades by the appearance of vintage arcade games like Track and Field and Donkey Kong.
The staff at the National Videogame Arcade are passionate about the industry and are on a quest to show that it is just as important to the UK as art, film and theatre.
The centre lies in the heart of Nottingham's creative quarter, in Hockley. It has five floors and boasts vintage arcade machines, interactive exhibits, a cinema, cafe and an education space.
Jonathan Smith, one of the centre's directors, said the building would be a "cathedral" for the art form and a unique visitor attraction.
The centre has an interactive exhibition titled A History of Games in 100 Objects
The industry has often come under fire for the content of a number of 18 certificated titles including Grand Theft Auto.
However, Mr Smith said criticism of gaming was unfair and he hoped the NVA would help change people's minds.
"Videogames are fantastic learning tools for children, they encourage creativity, experimentation and social play with others," he said.
"They are part of a healthy diet of different learning techniques and of different activities which of course includes going outside, running around and making things with your hands, but within that rich landscape I think [videogames] play a really important role."
The NVA is set to open on Saturday morning.
Mission Control allows visitors to become games-makers by allowing them to press buttons, turn switches and move sliders
Why Nottingham?
It was a question asked by national media during the press day at the NVA and several reasons were given.
Ian Livingstone, who co-founded Games Workshop, which is based in Nottingham, said games had a "long legacy" in the city.
"Games and Nottingham sit hand and hand," he said.
However, the NVA has not emerged out of nothing. Game City, a festival celebrating videogames as cultural works, began in 2006 in partnership with Nottingham Trent University.
The event is still going strong after nine years and has always been backed by Nottingham City Council.
As part of the NVA's educational offering, visitors are given the chance to make their own controllers out of fruit
Children are spending far more time watching a screen, even though traditional TV viewing has dropped
The amount of time children spend glued to a screen has risen dramatically in the last 20 years, a new report suggests.
Children aged five to 16 spend an average of six and a half hours a day in front of a screen compared with around three hours in 1995, according to market research firm Childwise.
Teenaged boys spend the longest, with an average of eight hours.
Eight-year-old girls spend the least - three-and-a-half hours, according to the study.
Screen time is made up of time spent watching TV, playing games consoles, using a mobile, computer or tablet.
Changing times
The Connected Kids report, compiled by market researcher Childwise, has collated data from 1995 to the present day to create a comprehensive picture of children's media habits.
Each year, its report, which is not available online, surveys around 2,000 children, aged five to 16.
It finds that teenaged girls now spend an average of seven-and-a-half- hours watching screens, compared with 3.5 hours of TV viewing in 1995.
Younger children fare slightly better - in 1995, five to 10-year-olds averaged around two-and-a-half-hours of TV.
Fast-forward to 2014 and screen time has risen to four-and-a-half hours.
Children are also now multi-screening - using more than one device at the same time, for example, watching TV while surfing the internet on a tablet or mobile so some of the screen time will be concurrent.
"The main difference from the 1990s is that then TV and magazines were the main ways for connecting kids to the media and now they have different devices from tablets, mobiles, games consoles and they have a much higher screen time," said research executive Matthew Nevard.
Back in 1995 children's main interaction with the media was via TV or comics like The Beano
Children's TV viewing habits have changed dramatically, with the majority now watching television via catch-up services and YouTube rather than the traditional TV set, according to the report.
YouTube is the most popular on-demand service with more than half of respondents accessing TV and video via the site since 2013.
Paid-for on-demand services, such as Netflix, have also risen rapidly in recent years and are expected to continue to grow in popularity.
It is not great news for the terrestrial channels - BBC One has seen its audience of seven to 16-year-olds drop from over 80% in 1995 to just over 40% in 2014. ITV's audience follows a similar trajectory.
The transition to digital, coupled with dedicated children's channels, is another reason for the the drop in children's viewing of the main channels with children now watching more content on dedicated channels such as CBBC, CITV, Nickelodeon and Disney.
Demanding connectivity
Children growing up now have never known a time without the internet
The study also looks at how the internet has changed the way children engage with information.
"The internet is pivotal to their lives and they are now able to access a wealth of content," said Mr Nevard.
The internet has given children more freedom to explore their own interests rather than being tied into the content offered to them from the TV schedules or magazines.
"They can find the content that they want," he said.
The study describes connectivity as "a fundamental need for young people now".
"Children now don't remember a time before the internet," said Mr Nevard.
Ubiquitous online access is also likely to influence the way children interact with their families and "their willingness to participate in family holidays and trips out", the report finds.
Image culture
Will all children own a virtual reality headset?
For the last 10 years, Childwise has charted the most popular websites for young people.
YouTube has remained in the top three since 2007 while Facebook has seen its appeal dip in recent years, as children turn to newer services such as Snapchat.
Children enjoy the privacy of WhatsApp and Snapchat, according to the survey, and the use of such services is also changing how they communicate.
"It reflects the image culture which has emerged, where pictures are utilised to give a better representation of current moods and or activities," the survey said.
Google is one of the few sites to remain popular across 10 years of data with sites.
Wearable tech
The report also attempts a bit of future-gazing and predicts that in the next 10 years, children growing up will have little understanding of a world without the internet.
The internet of things - where household objects communicate and share data - will be regarded as normal, it suggests.
"Having appliances which cannot be controlled using a smartphone or some kind of online dashboard may be seen as outdated, or at least increasingly rare," the report concludes.
It also thinks that most children will have some form of wearable technology, be it a smart watch, smart glasses or a virtual reality headset.
A California jury has found that a venture capital firm did not discriminate against a female partner in a closely watched case in Silicon Valley.
Ellen Pao claimed she missed out on promotions at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers because of her gender.
Ms Pao, now an executive with the website Reddit, says she was dismissed after complaining.
The firm has said its decisions were based on her performance.
The case has drawn attention to a lack of gender diversity in the technology industry - particularly among its top executives.
Venture capital firms are a chief source of funding for many start-up companies in Silicon Valley. Kleiner Perkins - as it is commonly known - has invested in companies including Snapchat, Spotify, Uber, Twitter, and Google.
In addition to punitive damages, Ms Pao was also seeking $16m (£10.7m) in compensation for lost wages.
During closing arguments, jurors heard conflicted stories of Ms Pao's tenure at the firm.
John Doerr (right), one of the firm's venture capitalists, on stage with Apple's Steve Jobs in 2008
Her attorneys portrayed her as a successful junior partner who was discriminated against because the firm judged men and women differently.
Ms Pao's lawyer, Alan Exelrod, said two of her male colleagues had been promoted, despite the fact that one was called confrontational and the other was accused of having "sharp elbows" - an apparent reference to his attitude towards other workers.
The firm's legal team said Ms Pao was a failed investor and sued to get a big payout as she was being pushed out.
They said she was a difficult person to work with and had a history of conflicts with colleagues, all of which contributed to the decision to dismiss her.
A study given as evidence during the trial said that women are largely underrepresented in top roles in the venture capital industry.
Californian investor and entrepreneur Eric Ries told the BBC the wider issue of gender bias in Silicon Valley is well documented but can be unintentional.
"Silicon Valley aspires to be a meritocracy so we have a culture that values outsiders and the perspectives they bring, and there is this idea that good ideas can come from anywhere... that's our aspiration but the reality is in many ways we fall short," he said.
Sir Konstantin Novoselov showed Chancellor George Osborne the bulb when he opened the institute
A light bulb made from graphene - said by its UK developers to be the first commercially viable consumer product using the super-strong carbon - is to go on sale later this year.
The dimmable LED bulb with a graphene-coated filament was designed at Manchester University, where the material was discovered in 2004.
It is said to cut energy use by 10% and last longer owing to its conductivity.
The National Graphene Institute at the university was opened this month.
The light bulb was developed by a Canadian-financed company called Graphene Lighting - one of whose directors is Prof Colin Bailey, deputy vice chancellor at the University of Manchester.
It is expected to be priced lower than current LED bulbs, which cost about £15 each.
Prof Bailey said: "The graphene light bulb will use less energy. We expect it to last longer. The manufacturing costs are lower and it uses more and more sustainable components."
The discovery of graphene by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, two Russian-born scientists at the University of Manchester, earned the pair the Nobel Prize for Physics and knighthoods.
A micro-thin layer of graphene is stronger than steel but can also conduct electricity and heat more effectively, and it has been dubbed a "wonder material" because of its potential uses.
The National Graphene Institute was opened at the university this month
The government has invested £38m in the National Graphene Institute via the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, with an additional £23m provided by the European Regional Development Fund.
Chancellor George Osborne, who opened the site on 20 March, has said he hopes the UK can see off competition from China and South Korea to become a centre of excellence in graphene technology.
More than 35 companies worldwide have already partnered with the university to develop projects.
The race is now on to develop other practical and commercial uses, including lighter but more robust car and aircraft frames and false teeth. The material has already been incorporated into products including tennis rackets and skis.
