Technology - Google News

Valve has acquired Firewatch studio Campo Santo
Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google
Apple Initiates A Free Battery Replacement Program For A Limited Number Of 13-Inch MacBook Pros

Valve has acquired Firewatch studio Campo Santo

Posted: 22 Apr 2018 07:35 AM PDT

Video game distributor Valve has acquired Firewatch developer Campo Santo, according to Kotaku. Campo Santo confirmed the news in a blog post last night.

Campo Santo says that they love making video games and that they "found a group of folks who, to their core, feel the same way about the work that they do" in Valve. The 12-person studio will relocate to Valve's headquarters in Seattle.

The studio also says that it will continue production of its next game, In The Valley of Gods, and confirmed to Polygon that the game won't become a PC exclusive under Valve. The studio will also continue to support Firewatch and release its literary journal, The Quarterly Review.

Founded in 1996, Valve created games such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Portal, and others, as well as its distribution platform, Steam. Last year, it announced that it was producing a digital trading card came called Artifact, based on Dota 2.

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Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google

Posted: 22 Apr 2018 05:01 AM PDT

Christopher Mims

The Wall Street Journal

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@mims
christophermims
christopher.mims@wsj.com

April 22, 2018 8:00 a.m. ET

28 COMMENTS

Recent controversy over Facebook Inc.'s FB -1.08% hunger for personal data has surfaced the notion that the online advertising industry could be hazardous to our privacy and well-being.

As justifiable as the focus on Facebook has been, though, it isn't the full picture. If the concern is that companies may be collecting some personal data without our knowledge or explicit consent, Alphabet Inc.'s GOOGL -1.11% Google is a far bigger threat by many measures: the volume of information it gathers, the reach of its tracking and the time people spend on its sites and apps.

New regulations, particularly in Europe, are driving Google and others to disclose more and seek more permissions from users. And given the choice, many people might even be fine with the trade-off of personal data for services. Still, to date few of us realize the extent to which our data is being collected and used.

"There is a systemic problem and it's not limited to Facebook," says Arvind Narayanan, a computer scientist and assistant professor at Princeton University. The larger problem, he argues, is that the very business model of these companies is geared to privacy violation. We need to understand Google's role in this.

How Google harvests data

Lawmakers and others have asked Facebook about "shadow profiles"—data the company gathers on people without Facebook accounts. The company doesn't use the term but does track non-users.

It's likely that Google has shadow profiles on as at least as many people as Facebook does, says Chandler Givens, CEO of TrackOff, which develops software to fight identity theft.

If lawmakers really want to understand online advertising and data harvesting, they might want to speak with Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google Inc., who was a speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. Photo: Jason Alden/Bloomberg

Google allows everyone, whether they have a Google account or not, to opt out of its ad targeting, though, like Facebook, it continues to gather your data.

Google Analytics is far and away the web's most dominant analytics platform. Used on the sites of about half of the biggest companies in the U.S., it has a total reach of 30 million to 50 million sites. Google Analytics tracks you whether or not you are logged in.

Meanwhile, the billion-plus people who have Google accounts are tracked in even more ways. In 2016, Google changed its terms of service, allowing it to merge its massive trove of tracking and advertising data with the personally identifiable information from our Google accounts.

Google uses, among other things, our browsing and search history, apps we've installed, demographics like age and gender and, from its own analytics and other sources, where we've shopped in the real world. Google says it doesn't use information from "sensitive categories" such as race, religion, sexual orientation or health. Because it relies on cross-device tracking, it can spot logged-in users no matter which device they're on.

This is why Google and Facebook are dominant in online advertising. By pouring huge amounts of our personal data into the latest artificial-intelligence tech, they can determine who—and where—we really are, whether or not we reveal ourselves voluntarily.

Google fuels even more data harvesting through its dominant ad marketplaces. There are up to 4,000 data brokers in the U.S., and collectively they know everything about us we might otherwise prefer they didn't—whether we're pregnant, divorced or trying to lose weight. Google works with some of these brokers directly but the company says it vets them to prevent targeting based on sensitive information.

Google is the biggest enabler of data harvesting on mobile devices, through the world's two billion active Android devices. Shown, the Android pavilion at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in February. Photo: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

While data brokers can sell this information to insurers, employers and anyone else who might be interested, many of their customers are marketers who need another component: Google's AI, which delivers "look-alike" audiences—people similar to the ones found in the brokers' data.

How Android funnels data

Google also is the biggest enabler of data harvesting, through the world's two billion active Android mobile devices.

Since Google's Android OS helps companies gather data on us, then Google is also partly to blame when huge troves of that data are later used improperly, says Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University.

A good example of this is the way Facebook has continuously harvested Android users' call and text history. Facebook never got this level of access from Apple's iPhone, whose operating system is designed to permit less under-the-hood data collection. Android OS often allows apps to request rich data from users without accompanying warnings about how the data might be used.

To be listed in Google's Android app store, developers must agree to request only the information they need. But that doesn't stop them from using "needed" data for additional purposes.

Designers call the ways marketers and developers cajole and mislead us into giving up our data "dark patterns," tactics that exploit flaws and limits in our cognition.

Google bans what it calls deceptive requests for user data, such as obscuring opt-out buttons. At issue is whether Google goes far enough. But Google itself uses what are arguably dark patterns to get people to switch to its own apps for things like email and web browsing.

Android users of the Gmail app will be asked to enable access to the device's camera and microphone again and again until they say yes. Similarly, on Android, Google Maps asks users to turn on location services—justifiable, sure, but this enables geo-targeted ads.

All of this is ostensibly done with your permission. But it's hard to understand how even an expert could give meaningful informed consent to the average request for data, says Dr. Narayanan.

New EU privacy rules are forcing companies to make comprehensible to mere mortals what data they gather and how they use it. But in many cases, Google is pushing responsibility for obtaining data-gathering permissions to advertisers.

Will Google take responsibility?

It's not as if Google is unaware of the issues inherent in its business model. The company opposes the California Consumer Privacy Act, a November ballot measure, on the grounds that it is vague and unworkable. It would grant consumers three basic protections: "the right to tell a business not to share or sell your personal information, the right to know where and to whom your data is being sold or shared, and the right to know that your service providers are protecting your information." Even Facebook dropped its opposition to this act.

The solution may be simple: build better tools to give us a clear understanding of what we're opting into. If given clear choices, many people might be fine with their data being collected. But it's just as likely they would refuse, in ways that could affect Google's bottom line.

Write to Christopher Mims at christopher.mims@wsj.com

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Apple Initiates A Free Battery Replacement Program For A Limited Number Of 13-Inch MacBook Pros

Posted: 22 Apr 2018 06:23 AM PDT

A conference attendee touching the Trackpad on a MacBook Pro laptop (Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images)

Apple recently determined that a component in a limited number of 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) units may fail, thus causing the built-in battery to expand. So Apple announced a battery replacement program for certain 13-inch MacBook Pros. The affected MacBook Pro units were manufactured between October 2016 and October 2017. Apple said that this is not a safety issue and the eligible batteries will be replaced free of charge.

To see if your 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) is eligible, you simply have to input your serial number to Apple's Support page. You can see your serial number by choosing "About This Mac" from the Apple menu at the top left of the screen. Your serial number is located at the bottom of the "About This Mac" overview.

If you are eligible for a battery replacement, then there are three options to do so. You can do this by finding an Apple Authorized Service Provider. You can make an appointment at an Apple Retail Store. And you can mail in your MacBook Pro to the Apple Repair Center. It is recommended that you backup your data on the MacBook Pro before you begin the battery replacement process. 

Apple also said that you will need to resolve any issues that could impair the battery replacement process such as damage to the 13-inch MacBook Pro. And there may be some costs associated with the repair in some cases.

It's worth mentioning that the battery replacement program does not extend the standard warranty coverage of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. If you already paid to replace your battery, then you can contact Apple for a refund. This battery replacement program covers affected MacBook Pro models for 5 years after the first retail sale of the unit.

This is not the only battery replacement program that Apple has established in the past. Apple had set up a battery replacement program for the iPhone 6s in November 2016. And Apple launched a free placement plan for Apple Watch Series 2 batteries due to swelling issues earlier this month, according to MacRumors.

One of Apple's most challenging battery situations happened late last year after it was revealed that the iOS 10.2.1 software update throttled iPhone performance behind-the-scenes. So Apple issued an apology for how it communicated that process. Apple said that it throttled the iPhones since rechargeable batteries are consumable components that become less effective as they age chemically and the ability to hold charges diminishes. This would have caused unexpected shutdowns on older iPhones that still have the original battery. The device usage also affects battery performance (example: charging a battery in a hot environment makes batteries age faster).

Apple addressed those concerns by reducing the price of out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacements by $50 (from $79 to $29) for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needed to be replaced up until December 2018. And Apple's iOS 11.3 update included a new feature that gave users visibility into the health of their iPhone battery.

A conference attendee touching the Trackpad on a MacBook Pro laptop (Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images)

To see if your 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) is eligible, you simply have to input your serial number to Apple's Support page. You can see your serial number by choosing "About This Mac" from the Apple menu at the top left of the screen. Your serial number is located at the bottom of the "About This Mac" overview.

One of Apple's most challenging battery situations happened late last year after it was revealed that the iOS 10.2.1 software update throttled iPhone performance behind-the-scenes. So Apple issued an apology for how it communicated that process. Apple said that it throttled the iPhones since rechargeable batteries are consumable components that become less effective as they age chemically and the ability to hold charges diminishes. This would have caused unexpected shutdowns on older iPhones that still have the original battery. The device usage also affects battery performance (example: charging a battery in a hot environment makes batteries age faster).

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