They hope to initially help third-party contact-tracing apps run efficiently.

But ultimately, they aim to do away with the need to download dedicated apps, to encourage the practice.

The two companies believe their approach – designed to keep users, whose participation would be voluntary, anonymous – addresses privacy concerns.

Their contact-tracing method would work by using a smartphone’s Bluetooth signals to determine to whom the owner had recently been in proximity for long enough to have established contagion a risk.

If one of those people later tested positive for the Covid-19 virus, a warning would be sent to the original handset owner.

No GPS location data or personal information would be recorded.

“Privacy, transparency and consent are of utmost importance in this effort and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders,” Apple and Google said in a joint statement.

“We will openly publish information about our work for others to analyse.”

President Trump said his administration needed time to consider the development.

“It’s very interesting, but a lot of people worry about it in terms of a person’s freedom,” he said during a White House press conference.

“We’re going to take… a very strong look at it, and we’ll let you know pretty soon.”

The European Union’s Data Protection Supervisor sounded more positive, saying: “The initiative will require further assessment, however, after a quick look it seems to tick the right boxes as regards user choice, data protection by design and pan-European interoperability.”

But others have noted that the success of the venture may depend on getting enough people tested.

SOURCE: BBC

If your business lives and dies by Google search engine results — if you at least in part make money based on Google search results — this news is for you.

Yep: one in 10.

Which might not sound like much–unless your inbound traffic, and resulting sales and revenue, dips by 10 percent.

The change is based on a simple premise. In the past, Google’s algorithm treated a search sentence as a “bag of words.” It picked out what it considered to be the important words–in “who is a great keynote speaker,” clearly “keynote” and “speaker” are more important than “is” and “a.”

But doing so eliminates context from a search sentence’s intent.

One example from Google’s announcement: Say you enter the search sentence “can you get medicine for someone pharmacy?”

The old algorithm picked out “medicine” and “pharmacy” and returned local results under the assumption you are looking for a nearby drugstore.

Google’s new algorithm notices “for someone” and determines you’re looking for information about whether you’re allowed to pick up someone else’s prescription for them.

Same search query. Very different results.

The new algorithm is based on something called BERT, or “bidirectional encoder representations from transformers.” (Yep: BERT is a lot better.) In the simplest terms I can come up with, BERT is a tool that helps optimize natural language processing by using A.I. and a massive data set to deliver better contextual results.

Or in even simpler terms, it better understands what you’re actually looking for when you enter a search query.

Another example Google shared: “Parking on a hill with no curb.” The old algorithm reached into the bag of words and discarded “no,” delivering a top result that referenced how to park on a hill with curbs. The new algorithm realizes “no” matters and delivers a top result showing how to park uphill or downhill with no curb.

And one more example: “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa.” In the past, Google ignored “to” and returned results on U.S. citizens traveling to Brazil. But “to” clearly matters, and BERT picks up the difference, returning results for Brazilian travelers to the U.S.

Keep in mind only some search queries will be affected by the algorithm changes. And that determining how the algorithm works is still something of a mystery even to the most dedicated SEO professionals.

So if your site suddenly ranks lower for certain search terms, BERT might be to blame. Or maybe not.

Either way, according to Pandu Nayak, Google VP of research, “This is the single biggest … most positive change we’ve had in the last five years and perhaps one of the biggest since the beginning.”

Reason enough to watch closely for any changes to your search rankings and to spend more time analyzing keyword context, especially if you try to rank well for longer-tail keyword strings. And if your search traffic remains stable but conversion rates dip, that’s obviously a sign at least portion of the traffic you receive isn’t interested in what you provide.

And since it’s likely to be impossible to truly optimize for BERT, make sure you create content for people, not search engines.

BERT is just another step in Google’s effort to understand what people want when they search. The more you deliver what people want, the more likely you are to rank high in search results.

Because trying to “game” a system never works for long.

But providing genuine value does

Source: inc.com

Leak of 1,000 private conversations in Dutch language by some of Google’s partners to a Belgian news site further proved that third-party contractors working for Google were also able to access these multiple sensitive user conversations, that were reportedly recorded unintentionally.

Usually, users with Google Assistant on their phones and smart speakers have to say “Ok, Google” to start a conversation with the AI-powered virtual assistant. But even when users didn’t call up the virtual assistant, various user conversations that were personal and sensitive in nature were recorded.

As per the Belgian broadcaster VRT NWS, the recordings were done despite the fact that some of Google Home users did not even say the wake word, “Ok Google”.

In its terms and conditions, Google states that audio recordings between users and their Google smart speakers and Google Assistant devices are recorded and stored but does not mention its employees can listen to excerpts from these recordings, which further raises serious questions about the privacy of users. “We’ll share personal information outside of Google when we have your consent,” the company’s privacy policy states.

In response to the report, Google provided an in-depth explanation over a blog post by David Monsees, Product Manager-Search. The statement stated that these recordings were necessary to improve voice responses from their smart assistants.

“As part of our work to develop speech technology for more languages, we partner with language experts around the world who understand the nuances and accents of a specific language. These language experts review and transcribe a small set of queries to help us better understand those languages. This is a critical part of the process of building speech technology, and is necessary to creating products like the Google Assistant,” Monsees said in the blog post.

In the official statement, Google insisted that the human workers listen to parts of the conversation to help Assistant improve its responses and help it to work well with multiple languages. The company further stated that contract workers do have access to audio recordings and can listen in on user conversations with Google’s virtual assistant platform, although added that they are supposed to be kept confidential.

David Monsees further said that “The company has launched an investigation because the contractor breached data security policies. We apply a wide range of safeguards to protect user privacy throughout the entire review process.”

“We’re always working to improve how we explain our settings and privacy practices to people, and will be reviewing opportunities to further clarify how data is used to improve speech technology,” said Monsees.

The tech giant also admitted that it does not always delete the stored data. The company keeps the transcripts until a user “manually delete the information” and mentioned that users can turn off storing audio data to their Google accounts completely, or choose to auto-delete data after every 3 or 18 months.

Source: msn.com

Streaming Happens Bit by Bit

When you want to watch a video or play a song on your computer, you need to download it first. There’s no way around that. Knowing this, you may look at Netflix or Spotify and ask “how did we figure out how to make videos and music download instantaneously?” Well, that’s just the thing. When you stream media, it isn’t downloading to your computer instantaneously; it’s downloading piece by piece in real-time.

The word “streaming” is self-descriptive. Information arrives at your computer in a continuous, steady stream of information. If downloading movies is akin to buying bottled water, streaming movies is like using a faucet to fill an empty bottle.

You could compare streaming a movie to watching a VHS tape. When you play a VHS tape, every second of video and audio is scanned piece by piece. This happens as you’re watching in real-time, which means that any interruptions will suddenly pause or end your movie watching experience.

When you stream a movie or a song, your computer downloads and decodes itty-bitty pieces of a media file in real-time. If you have an unusually fast internet connection, then the file may be fully downloaded before you’re finished watching or listening to it, which is why a stream will sometimes go on for a while even if the internet cuts out. That being said, anything that you stream doesn’t go into your computer’s permanent storage (although some services, like Spotify, will put some small cache files on your device to make future playbacks faster).

Businesses Work Hard to Make Streaming Fast

Streaming video and audio from the internet isn’t new; it just feels new because it’s finally convenient. Watching a video or playing a song from a website happened bit by bit used to be an annoying and time-consuming affair. The stream would constantly stop and start, and you could spend minutes just waiting for media to buffer (and sometimes, it wouldn’t buffer at all).

But the way that streaming works has mostly stayed the same. Files download bit by bit as you’re watching or listening to them. It’s the infrastructure that’s changed, and businesses like Youtube and Netflix have worked hard (and spent a lot of money) building that infrastructure.

Youtube and Netflix used to use only one or two servers to host their content, and it didn’t work. Users that were far away from the servers experienced a lot of lag, and high-traffic days (Saturday night, for example) would slow streaming servers to a crawl. Companies have solved this problem by building Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), to store and send content. A CDN is a dense, global network of servers that all contain the same content. This reduces lag, keeps servers in densely populated areas from becoming overloaded.

Of course, a powerful CDN is useless if all of your users have crappy internet connections. In some ways, this issue solves itself over time. ISPs are always competing for faster, more powerful internet connections, and advances like worldwide Google Fiber and 5G home internet connections are just over the horizon.

But some streaming services and ISPs have realized that, despite fast home internet connections and dense CDNs, high global internet traffic can cause streaming lag. Not to mention, services like Netflix use more than 15% of the world’s global internet bandwidth. When a lot of people are streaming the newest season of Stranger Things, the whole internet can slow down.

As a result, streaming services tend to provide Open Connect Appliances (OCAs) to ISPs. These OCAs are basically hard drives that are full of popular movies, songs, and other streamable content, and they reduce the need for your ISP to redirect your internet traffic to a Netflix or Hulu server. This not only makes streaming faster, but it also prevents the whole internet from slowing down at the mercy of Netflix.

Live Streaming Presents New Problems

With live video streaming on platforms like Facebook Live or Twitch, the information that you’re receiving on your computer is happening in real-time (or as close to that as possible). So as you can imagine, a live streamer needs to be able to upload content as fast as you can download content.

As a livestreamer is recording their video, every millisecond of that video (and its accompanying audio) is broken down into tiny little files. These tiny files are compressed and organized by an encoder, they fly across the internet, and your computer downloads them bit by bit. Since the files are encoded, your computer can put them together in a comprehensible video, and there shouldn’t be much lag between you and the streaming source.

Popular live streaming services like Twitch and Youtube utilize a global network of servers to reduce lag and to improve video streaming quality. But all live streamed videos are at the mercy of a livestreamer’s internet connection. As you can imagine, livestreamers can’t use OCAs. Luckily, the development of fast home internet connections, like Google Fiber, has made live streaming possible, and the implementation of 5G home internet connections will take the quality of live streams a bit further.

The Future of Streaming is Video Games

The idea of playing video games in your browser isn’t very new. A good bit of the internet is dedicated to small games, and there’s plenty of people that go on Facebook specifically for Farmville and Candy Crush. But some companies are trying to take browser gaming a step further by creating streaming services for resource-heavy console games.

Just to be clear, we aren’t talking about livestreaming Farm Simulator on Twitch, we’re talking about remotely playing video games, without a dedicated console or a $1000 computer. With game streaming, a server far away from your home handles all the number crunching that’s needed to power resource hungry games. Services like Google’s Project Stream and Nvidia’s GEFORCE NOW promise that your crappy $100 laptop will be able to play even the biggest, most beautiful games. This can save people a lot of money, and it’ll eliminate the barrier that hardware limitations have set for video games.

Of course, streaming a video game to someone’s computer is a lot more difficult than streaming a movie. You aren’t progressively downloading a static file; you’re manipulating and interacting with a file with real-time. If there’s any lag between controller inputs and on-screen activity, then the game is unplayable. You could look at services like Skype and Facetime as a pre-cursor to game streaming, as they require fast two-way connections. But game streaming needs to be much more seamless.

Resource-heavy game streaming services aren’t mainstream or super reliable yet, so companies have been tight-lipped about their trade secrets. But we do know that they’re essentially following in Netflix’s footsteps. Companies like Nvidia are building CDN’s that are full of superpowered graphics cards, and Google is trying to figure out how to pair Open Connect Appliances that are full of games to the high-speed Google Fiber home internet services. Either way, game streaming is the next step in the story of streaming media.

SOURCE: howtogeek.com

Google could face major fines from the European Union’s privacy watchdogs for the “deceptive” way it track users’ locations.

Consumer agencies in seven European Union countries on Tuesday asked privacy regulators to take action against the firm for allegedly breaching the bloc’s new privacy law.

Seven countries, including Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Slovenia and Sweden, claim location data tracked by Google could help reveal someone’s religious beliefs, political activity, health and sexual orientation.

However, Google has failed to give users “straightforward information” about how their data is being used, they claim.

The allegations come in the wake of the discovery that tracking by Google continues even if users turn off “Location History”.

A separate function, Web & App Activity, must be turned off to fully prevent GPS tracking.

“Google’s data hunger is notorious but the scale with which it deceives its users to track and monetise their every move is breathtaking,” Monique Goyens, director general of EU consumer organisation, BEUC, said.

The firm “is not respecting fundamental GDPR principles, such as the obligation to use data in a lawful, fair and transparent manner,” she said.

“The situation is more than alarming. Smartphones are being used for spying on our every move.”

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, came into force on May 25.

Under the rules, companies must provide details about how data is collected and retained. They must also give users the “right to be forgotten” and notify the EU’s Information Commissioner’s Office of breaches within 72 hours.

Failure to do so could see firms fined 4pc of the previous year’s annual global turnover, or €20m, whichever is the higher.

A Google spokesman said: “Location History is turned off by default, and you can edit, delete, or pause it at any time. If it’s on, it helps improve services like predicted traffic on your commute.”

“If you pause it, we make clear that – depending on your individual phone and app settings – we might still collect and use location data to improve your Google experience.”

“We’re constantly working to improve our controls, and we’ll be reading this report closely to see if there are things we can take on board,” he said.

Google is already facing a lawsuit in the US that for tracking the location of users using their searches and web activity.

San Diego resident Napoleon Patacsil issued the legal challenge in California. He stated that Google’s “principal goal was to surreptitiously monitor [the claimant] and to allow third-parties to do the same.”