feed on feeds - 2019/11/19 - items 0 to 15

Two senators are asking Facebook to "respect" users' decisions to keep their location data from the company. From a report: In a letter sent Tuesday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to respond to questions about how the company collects location data through the new operating systems for Apple's iPhones and Google's Android. Both Google and Apple updated their operating systems earlier this year to give users more control and insight into which apps can access their location data. Anticipating those changes, Facebook released a blog post in September explaining that even if users opt out of letting Facebook collect their data, it could still determine users' locations in other ways, like through check-ins and users' internet connections. "If a user has decided to limit Facebook's access to his or her location, Facebook should respect these privacy choices," the senators, members of the Judiciary Committee, wrote in the letter to Zuckerberg. "The language in the blog post, however, indicates that Facebook may continue to collect location data despite user preferences, even if the user is not engaging with the app, and Facebook is simply deducing the user's location from information about his or her internet connection. Given that most mobile devices are connected to the internet nearly all the time, whether through a cellular network or a Wi-Fi connection, this practice would allow Facebook to collect user location data almost constantly, irrespective of the user's privacy preferences. Users who have selected a restrictive location services option could reasonably be under the misimpression that their selection limits all of Facebook's efforts to extract location information."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: "I don't want to be a flat Earther," David Weiss says, his voice weary as he reflects on his personal awakening. "Would you wake up in the morning and want everyone to think you're an idiot?" But Weiss is a flat Earther. Ever since he tried and failed to find proof of the Earth's curve four years ago, he's believed with an evident passion that our planet is both flat and stationary -- and it's turned his world upside down. [...] People in every pocket of this spherical planet are rejecting science and spreading the word that the Earth is flat. There's no clear study indicating how many people have been convinced -- and flat Earthers like Weiss will tell you without evidence there are millions more in the closet anyway, including Hollywood A-listers and commercial airline pilots -- but online communities have hundreds of thousands of followers and YouTube is inundated with flat-Earth content creators, whose productions reach millions. A YouGov survey of more than 8,000 American adults suggested last year that as many as one in six Americans are not entirely certain the world is round, while a 2019 Datafolha Institute survey of more than 2,000 Brazilian adults indicated that 7% of people in that country reject that concept, according to local media. The flat-Earth community has its own celebrities, music, merchandise -- and a weighty catalog of pseudo-scientific theories. It's been the subject of a Netflix documentary and has been endorsed by figures including the rapper B.o.B. Each year, more flat-Earth events fill the calendar, organizers say.

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Gotabaya Rajapaksa, credited with defeating Tamil rebels and accused of war crimes, is considered a polarising figure.

Rights group calls for end to 'brutal crackdown' of anti-government demonstrations, reporting 106 deaths in 21 cities.

Xiaomi today unveiled a new iteration of its virtual assistant Xiao Ai and shared a new feature of Android-based MIUI operating system as the publicly listed Chinese technology group pushes to expand its internet services ecosystem. From a report: At its annual Mi Developer conference in Beijing, the company said it is integrating an earthquake warning function into MIUI for select users in China, with plans to expand it nationwide soon. The integration, touted as the first of its kind globally, will enable alerts to be sent to smartphones running MIUI 11 and Mi TV "seconds to tens of seconds" before the quake waves arrive, Xiaomi said. The feature, which was first tested in September this year, has been developed in partnership with Institute of Care-life, a Chengdu-based organization focusing on natural disaster warning. Xiaomi said it has activated the feature for the earthquake-prone Sichuan Province and plans to expand it elsewhere in the nation soon. Wang Tun, head of the institute, said this function, unlike those available through apps in some countries, works more efficiently and does not rely on a working internet connection.