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VIDEO: Man Sets Guinness Electric Skateboard Speed Record

BY STEPHANIE MLOT ( PCMag Asia | Consumer Electronics Reviews, Ratings & Comparisons | News )

Tony Hawk ain't got nothin' on Mischo Erban: The 32-year-old daredevil recently earned a new Guinness World Records title for the fastest speed on an electric skateboard.

At the Portorož Airport in Piran, Slovenia, Erban reached a whopping 95.83 km/h (59.55mph) on a modified longboard from NEXTBoard.

Slovenian start-up Next Generation Vehicles (NGV) boasts "longboards for the next generation": four-wheel-drive gliders powered by four motors and two batteries. The customized board has an approximate range of six to nine miles, and takes 1.5 hours to charge.

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Are You an Instagram Pro? Netflix Might Have a Job for You

BY STEPHANIE MLOT ( PCMag Asia | Software Reviews | Photos, Video & Graphics - Reviews and Price Comparisons - from PC Magazine | Photo Management & Sharing - Products | News )

Loves film/TV, will travel: Those are the basic qualifications necessary when applying for a job as a Netflix "Grammaster."

The streaming video service is searching for four photographers (amateur or otherwise) to take Instagram pics of iconic movie and TV locations across Europe. According to the job description, Grammasters will travel for two weeks and earn $4,000 to visit the sets of popular shows, films, and Netflix originals, and snap a few filtered photos along the way.

All candidates must be 21 years or older, with a public Instagram account (not in protected or private mode); each person can only apply once, regardless of whether you have more than one Instagram account.

But you'd better hurry—there are only five more days to apply. Before Sunday, March 6, choose three of your favorite original photos—preferably those that highlight your photography skills, not your pet or last week's breakfast—and upload or tag them on your Instagram feed with #Grammasters3.

And don't forget to follow Netflix's Instagram feed (or even Annie Leibovitz wouldn't stand a chance).

Next week, the company is expected to select and notify 25 finalists, who may be required to upload additional photos depicting a movie-inspired theme, location, or scene; there might also be an interview.

Four finalists—the Grammasters—will be revealed at the end of the month. Those folks may be asked to give public relations interviews and make media appearances, so the camera-shy need not apply.

No further details have been revealed, including where and when the representatives will travel; it remains unclear just what Netflix intends to do with the collected photos.

The company did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment.

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Oculus CEO to Mac Users: No Rift for You

BY TOM BRANT ( PCMag Asia | Consumer Electronics Reviews, Ratings & Comparisons | News )

Oculus CEO Palmer Luckey has a message for Apple: build computers with better GPUs and then maybe we'll add Mac compatibility to Oculus Rift.

In fact, his actual words were even more blunt. During yesterday's Xbox press event, he told Shack News that Oculus Rift support is up to Apple. "If they ever release a good computer, we will do it," he said.

It's true that the Rift requires some hefty hardware: an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD R9 290, as well as a CPU that's at least as good as an Intel i5-4590. Most computers don't have those high end components, which means that if you want a Rift, you might have to shell out well north of $1,000 for a computer in addition to the $599 asking price of the headset itself.

Luckey, whose public statements have caused confusion in the past, clarified his dig at the quality of Apple's computers: "It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn't prioritize high-end GPUs," he told Shack News. "You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top-of-the-line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn't match our recommended specs. So if they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we'd love to support Mac. But right now, there's just not a single machine out there that supports it."

So if Mac users want a Rift, they'll have to buy a PC first, but they can take comfort in the knowledge that many PC users will also have to buy a new machine.

If you're interested in the Rift, which is now available for pre-order, we've done the legwork to come up with a list of PCs that meet those requirements. Not sure if it's for you? Here's our hands on to help you decide.

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YouTubers Now Eligible for Emmy Awards

BY STEPHANIE MLOT ( PCMag Asia | Software Reviews | Internet - Products | News )

Netflix's House of Cards and Amazon'sTransparent nabbed several Emmy nominations (and a win for Jeffrey Tambor) this year, but short-form content on the Web has yet to be recognized by the Television Academy.

That could soon change, as the Academy has expanded its short-form categories for this year's Primetime Emmy Awards to make room for content on Maker Studios, Fullscreen, AwesomenessTV, Adult Swim, and YouTube Red.

"Our industry is aggressively, quickly, and creatively evolving the various ways episodic stories are told," Bruce Rosenblum, Television Academy Chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "Our Board of Governors felt that this expansion of short-form categories begins the process of ensuring that Emmy-worthy creativity will be rewarded, irrespective of format or platform."

Short-form programs are defined as episodes averaging 15 minutes or less. Three Outstanding Short Form Series categories cover comedy or drama, variety, and reality or nonfiction; performers can also submit their name to the new Outstanding Actor/Actress in a Short Form Series categories.

The Television Academy will also recognize Outstanding Short Form Animated Program.

"These category changes reflect the broader opportunities that emerging networks and distribution platforms … are seizing in choosing innovative formats that enable our television community to share stories in novel and entertaining ways," Rosenblum said.

But don't expect to spot your favorite YouTube stars mingling with the casts of HBO's Girls during the September telecast on ABC. According to the Academy, the expanded short-form categories will be presented at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony, which takes place a week before the main event.

YouTube's subscription service Red debuted in October, allowing fans to watch any video without ads. For $10 per month, users can also save clips to watch on a phone or tablet without Internet connection.

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Defense Secretary: 'I'm Not a Believer in Backdoors'

BY MAX EDDY ( PCMag Asia | Software Reviews | Encryption - Products | News )

SAN FRANCISCO—While arguments continue about whether Apple should crack an iPhone at the behest of the FBI, and if the government should require backdoors into encryption systems to keep criminal communications from "going dark," Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter argued that strong, unbroken encryption was critical.

Speaking at the RSA Conference here, Secretary Carter said "I'm not a believer in backdoors or a single technical approach to a complex problem." He went on to say, "we're foursquare behind data security including strong encryption."

A so-called backdoor would allow law enforcement to decrypt encrypted communications in order to conduct investigations. But privacy advocates argue this is intrusive, while security experts contend that backdoors are nothing more than vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or nation states.

But at the same time, Carter was careful to not link his comments too closely with the ongoing case between Apple and the FBI regarding an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. In that case, the Department of Justice has ordered Apple to create a special version of iOS that would disable a security feature that erases iPhone contents after 10 failed attempts to unlock the device. With that disabled, the FBI could brute-force the passcode and eventually retrieve the data.

"The specific case I can't really get into," said Carter. "It's a law enforcement matter not a defense matter."

From his perspective, strong encryption is the lifeblood of the Department of Defense. "DoD data security including encryption is absolutely essential to us," said Carter. He gave the example of needing to connect vehicles and systems securely in order to operate effectively. "None of our stuff works unless it's connected. There's no reason to buy all these ships and tanks if I can't connect them."

Secretary Carter said that industry and government needed to work together in order to solve the issues of encryption and law enforcement. "I don't think we ought to let one case drive a general conclusion or solution. The only way we're going to get to a good solution is by working together," he said.

His statements on cooperation echo those espoused by NSA Director Admiral Rogers and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch at RSA.

Carter warned that, barring that cooperation, there are two possible outcomes, neither of which are desirable. The first is that Congress writes a law regarding encryption without the input of the security industry. Such a law, said Carter, could end up being written "in an atmosphere of anger or grief, which isn't the right answer." (The House Judiciary Committee confirmed as much this week when Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, told Apple that "I don't think you're going to like what comes out of Congress" regarding encryption legislation.)

The alternative, Carter said, is that Russia or China makes a decision about how to handle encryption and data security, although he did not elaborate on how such a decision would impact U.S. policy.

Cyber Defense At Home Though the larger thrust of his talk was to discuss ways in which technology professionals could work with the government, Secretary Carter did touch on other cyber operations currently being handled by the DoD.

He mentioned that in addition to traditional military operations around the world, the U.S. military is leveraging its cyber capabilities against ISIL, also referred to as ISIL. "We're going to defeat ISIL, no question about it," said Carter. "I'm looking for ways to accelerate that defeat."

Although Carter was tight-lipped on the details, he did provide a rough outline; DoD had been interrupting ability to command and control its forces and to make them doubt their communications. "It's a very effective tool at shutting down their ability to organize their forces," said the Secretary.

Carter also reiterated that the U.S. would consider cyber attacks as acts of war. "I don't care if it's with a keyboard and a bomb," he said, though he acknowledged that the state of cyber diplomacy is still developing. "It's fair to say that the world is feeling its way along as a foreign policy and national security issue."

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Samsung Galaxy S7 Survives Torture Test

BY STEPHANIE MLOT ( PCMag Asia | BlackBerry Priv (Unlocked) | News )

For the price, you want to know your new Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge will withstand everyday wear and tear—not to mention the pocket of your skinny jeans.

But YouTube tester JerryRigEverything put the new flagship device to the ultimate test: the bend, scratch, and burn test, that is.

"First we will take my scratch tools to tell where the phone will land on Mohs Scale of Hardness," the video description said. "Then we'll check the camera lense, and the frame of the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge."

On the 10-point Mohs Scale of mineral hardness, normal glass would scratch around a level five. The Galaxy's tempered glass, however, is harder, and more likely to resist key scrapes or gravel gashes. JerryRigEverything's level-six pick leaves a mark, but it takes a level-seven tool to actually make an indentation, which is "pretty on par" with most major cell phones, he said.

The video gives the Galaxy S7 Edge's glass-camera lens the "thumbs up" since it is "much more scratch-resistant" than rivals like the BlackBerry Priv and Sony Z5 Premium, which have plastic lenses.

To the right of the camera, the flash and heart-rate monitor are not so lucky: Featuring the same plastic covering as Samsung's Note 5, the tools are protected, but much more likely to show off scrapes.

An all-aluminum siding safeguards the phone, without fear of chipping or discoloration over time—a step up, the analyst said, over the plasticGalaxy S5. The 5.5-inch S7 Edge (a boost over last year's 5.1-inch S6 Edge) gently curves on either side of the display, letting users quickly access apps, contacts, preset options, contextual menus, and widgets.

But the real question is: will it bend?

Samsung's Galaxy S7 manages to pass the test, remaining firm when pushed from the back. Flip it over, however, and the back panel will run the risk of lifting—enough to break the water-resistant seal. "But the phone itself does not break, no matter how I bend it," the DIY tester said, calling the handset "a solid beast of a device."

Just keep it away from an open flame: According to the video, the phone's screen will turn permanently white when exposed to extreme heat.

For more, see PCMag's Hands On With the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge and the slideshow above.

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Epic Games Takes On Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform

BY DAVID MURPHY ( PCMag Asia | Consumer Electronics Reviews, Ratings & Comparisons | Computer & Console Gaming - Products | Console Games - Products | Microsoft Xbox One | Grand Theft Auto V (for Xbox One) | News )

Harsh words from Epic Games' co-founder Tim Sweeney today. Writing apiece for The Guardian, Sweeney calls Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP) initiative a "closed platform-within-a-platform," and an attempt to create a monopolization of the PC that "can, should, must, and will die as a result of industry backlash."

Sweeney's primary contention is that Microsoft is baking a number of features that gamers might want into this new platform—namely, the ability to easily run games across several different devices. However, UWP games have to be sold through the Windows Store; developers can't sell the games themselves, for example, nor can they update them unless they do it through said Windows Store.

"I'm not questioning the idea of a Windows Store. I believe Microsoft has every right to operate a PC app store, and to curate it how they choose. This contrasts with the position the government took in its antitrust prosecution, that Microsoft's free bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows was anti-competitive," Sweeney writes.

"My view is that bundling is a valuable practice that benefits users, and my criticism is limited to Microsoft structuring its operating system to advantage its own store while unfairly disadvantaging competing app stores, as well as developers and publishers who distribute games directly to their customers."

Sweeney isn't just complaining, though. In his editorial, he also offers up a few constructive solutions that Microsoft could implement in order to improve the Universal Windows Platform. It's doubtful that Microsoft will actually take Sweeney's suggestions to heart, which include: allowing UWP apps to be downloaded from anywhere, not just the Windows Store; allowing any company to operate its own store for UWP games and apps; and allowing users, developers, and publishers to "engage in direct commerce with each other" without Microsoft taking a 30 percent cut of sales from Windows Store games and apps.

"Microsoft's situation, however, is an embarrassment. Seven months after the launch of Windows Store alongside Windows 10, the place remains devoid of the top third-party games and signature applications that define the PC experience. Where's Photoshop? Grand Theft Auto V? FIFA 2016? There are some PC ports of what were great mobile games, and some weirder things, such as the Windows 10 port of the Android port of the PC version of Grand Theft Auto from 2004," he writes.

"But the good PC stuff isn't there, with the exception of Microsoft's own software products. Does Microsoft really think that independent PC developers and publishers, who cherish their freedom and their direct customer relationships, are going to sign up for this current UWP fiasco?"

Sweeney's comments come in the wake of the news that Remedy Entertainment's Quantum Break will only be available for the Xbox One and Windows 10, and only purchasable through the Windows Store for the latter. The move has already generated a bit of criticism. Though, to Microsoft's credit, at least these triple-A titles are helping the Windows Store feel less like a gallery of ported smartphone games.

Microsoft's Phil Spencer, who runs the company's Xbox division, took to Twitter today to address Sweeney's criticisms.

https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/705794534513324032

https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/705795213709561857

https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/705795341572923392

Sweeney responded: "I like the sound of this, and look forward to thorough technical details on UWP's planned openness at //build."

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NASA: Hubble Breaks 'Cosmic Distance Record'

BY ANGELA MOSCARITOLO ( PCMag Asia | News )

An international team of astronomers has broken the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen, NASA announced Thursday.

The team, comprising scientists from Yale University, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the University of California, used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to measure the distance to the so-called GN-z11 galaxy. Located in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, GN-z11 is a record-breaking 13.4 billion light years away, making it the most distant galaxy ever discovered. It was formed just 400 million years after the Big Bang explosion, NASA said.

"We've taken a major step back in time, beyond what we'd ever expected to be able to do with Hubble," Principal Investigator Pascal Oesch of Yale University said in a statement. "We see GN-z11 at a time when the universe was only 3 percent of its current age."

Oesch and his teammates were able to precisely measure the distance to GN-z11 "spectroscopically by splitting the light into its component colors" — a first for a galaxy so far away, NASA said.

Astronomers measure large distances by determining the "redshift" of a galaxy, the space agency explained. Distant objects in the universe appear to be receding from us because their light is stretched to longer, redder wavelengths. Thus, the greater the redshift, the father the galaxy.

GN-z11 is 25 times smaller than the Milky Way, but is "growing fast, forming stars at a rate about 20 times greater than our galaxy does today," NASA said, adding that the new Hubble observations shed new light on the nature of the early universe.

"It's amazing that a galaxy so massive existed only 200 million to 300 million years after the very first stars started to form," investigator Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz said in a statement. "It takes really fast growth, producing stars at a huge rate, to have formed a galaxy that is a billion solar masses so soon."

The team's findings will be published in an upcoming edition of the Astrophysical Journal. For more on the discovery, check out the video below.

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U.S. Military Eyes Autonomous Weapons

BY TOM BRANT ( PCMag Asia | Consumer Electronics Reviews, Ratings & Comparisons | Robotics & Automation - Products | News )

Lethal weapons controlled remotely (a.k.a. drones) are one thing, but what about lethal weapons that aren't controlled at all (a.k.a. killer robots)?

The U.S. Department of Defense intends to study the feasibility of the second category, but would prefer that you call them "autonomous kinetic options." That's according to Melissa Flagg, a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the DOD's Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Directorate. She talked about the autonomous weapons plans, which are still very conceptual, at an industry conference yesterday, Ars Technica reports.

"We need to understand and know that it doesn't necessarily need to happen, but we also have to put the options on the table because we are the worst-case scenario guys," she said.

The goal is not to send Terminator-style robots into the battlefield. Instead, it's to develop a technology that's compatible with existing systems but can handle tough decisions on its own, such as whether to pull the trigger if communications with headquarters are lost.

An early version of that technology has been operational in Israel since 2011. Called the Iron Dome, it's designed to automatically intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells. Some of the Dome's components, such as intercepting missiles, are built by Ratheon and other U.S. companies.

There's no shortage of warnings against autonomous weapons development from academics and business leaders. Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School last year released a report that strongly discouraged their development. One of their biggest concerns was that it's unclear who would be held responsible if the technology malfunctions.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and professor Stephen Hawking were among the 1,000-plus artificial intelligence and robotics researchers who endorsed an open letter last year warning against the technology.

"The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting," the letter said.

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Tinder to Let You Play Matchmaker 

BY DAVID MURPHY ( PCMag Asia | Cell Phone Reviews | Mobile App Reviews | News )

Some people just don't have time to maniacally swipe back and forth on Tinder all day long. But if you don't spend time playing the game, you might miss out on that big, romantic opportunity. Right?

If you have a few friends who also scan the service for love, then a new feature that Tinder is testing out might actually help you in your own quest for digital affection. No longer will your search be a solo affair.

"We are testing the ability to play matchmaker on Tinder. While swiping through potential matches, a small group of users may see the option to share a profile they come across. Tapping the 'share' icon will allow you to send a temporary link via text to a friend, and give them the ability to swipe on the profile you shared. The link will expire after five clicks or 72 hours - whichever comes first," reads Tinder's descriptionof the new feature.

If you agree that you like a person based on a recommendation that someone has sent you, then it's possible that your profile might appear in your interest's recommended list as well. Though Tinder isn't outright saying that you'll be catapulted to the person's screen, it stands to reason that this recommendation engine wouldn't be all that helpful unless there's some way to for Tinder to force a judgment call. If you live in a location with a ton of Tinder users and said interesting person simply never sees you on their app, it doesn't much matter how you found them.

As always, the person will also have to indicate an interest in you before an official Tinder match is made.

If you're a Tinder user and you're a bit concerned that people will now be able to just share your profile to anyone they want, you shouldn't feel that threatened. As Business Insider notes, people already do that anyway via screenshots. Nevertheless, you can also opt out of the sharing feature for your own Tinder profile via the app's settings menu—but it'll just be that much tougher for love to come calling.

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Cortana Learns New Languages, Tricks

BY ANGELA MOSCARITOLO ( PCMag Asia | Windows 10 | News )

Microsoft on Friday announced details of the next Windows 10 update, which brings improvements for Cortana, a new log-on experience, and a few other goodies.

The update—Build 14279—is rolling out today to Windows Insiders in the "Fast" ring, with three new languages for Cortana — Spanish for those in Mexico, Portuguese for Brazil, and French for Canada.

"For each new market and language, the Cortana team works to develop a custom experience that is relevant in each individual market and language," Microsoft said. "For instance, in Brazil—Cortana is fond of pasteis, which is a common food found in many regions across Brazil. And in Mexico, we added local flavor to reflect the accent and language of the country."

Microsoft encouraged those running the Windows 10 Insider Preview in these languages to give Cortana a try, and provide feedback about how it works.

With this update, Cortana can also help you save information you need to remember. Just say, "remind me to read [that book everyone has been talking about]" or "remind me to wash the car" and Cortana will make sure you don't forget. You can set specific details like a location, time, and people if you wish, so that Cortana will surface your to-do when it's most relevant. You can view and edit these in the same place you see your reminders in Cortana today.

Meanwhile, if you have a custom Lock screen background set, you will now see this image on the login screen as well, Microsoft said. Besides that, Microsoft is integrating its Sway tool with the Photos app in Windows 10, letting you quickly turn your albums into interactive, Web-based presentations. You'll be able to easily add section headers, text narration, cations, and other details to add some pizazz to your images. Plus, an update to the beta Xbox app for Windows 10 will include some new features like a Gamerscore Leaderboard and an updated "Featured" section.

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Team Enliten won 2nd place in Futsal

Monday, 29 February 2016 - 

Team Enliten has just won 2nd place for competing Ferro Futsal Mini League Kickoff at Ferro Futsal  Subang Jaya, Malaysia. 10 of this individual warriors have fought their way through in an intense matches against 12 different teams with six game won and one draw, Team Enliten has proven to be a contender in this arena even though went back empty handed, at least the joy and passion are still intact and one day with more hard work and determination, team Enliten will become the champion which they are born to be. Congratulations to the team and GO!! GO!! Enliten.   

Enliten Ventures Sdn Bhd (964146-H) Location Headquarters Unit 1-033, 1st Level, Millennium Square Jalan 14/1, 46100 Petaling Jaya Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

Contact Info Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]

Email addresses CEO [email protected]

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ISIS Supporters Threaten Zuckerberg, Dorsey Over Account Takedowns

BY STEPHANIE MLOT ( PCMag Asia | Software Reviews | Social Networking | News )

ISIS supporters have reportedly turned their attention toward Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey, who were targeted this week in a 25-minute video released by extremist hackers.

The "Sons Caliphate Army," a group that claims to be associated with the Islamic State, on Tuesday posted a video bragging about social media hacks, and threatened Dorsey and Zuckerberg. A shorter clip was also distributed, which shows the CEOs' faces engulfed in flames as animated bullets pierce the screen.

The full video, called "Flames of the Supporters," was reportedly authenticated by Storyful, according to CNET. In it, the radicals boast that they've taken over more than 10,000 Facebook accounts, 150 Facebook groups, and 5,000-plus Twitter accounts—many of which were "given to supporters," and, "if Allah permits, the rest of them will be distributed, too."

Things take an even darker turn in a note directed at Zuckerberg and Dorsey. "To Mark and Jack, founders of Twitter and Facebook and their Crusader government: You announce daily that you suspended many of our accounts. And to that we say: Is that all you can do? You are not in our league," the video said.

The Sons Caliphate Army continue, writing that if the companies close terrorist accounts, "we will take 10 in return."

But Twitter doesn't appear too concerned by the intimidation tactic: In a statement to The Guardian, the company said, "It just happens all the time." Back in March, in fact, Islamic State militants threatened Dorsey and Twitter with a "real war" over the blocking of ISIS-associated Twitter accounts.

Twitter did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment; a Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment on the video.

These threats come after both organizations move to crack down on terrorists using their networks.

Earlier this month, Twitter revealed that it has suspended more than 125,000 accounts since mid-2015, removing those that threaten or promote terrorist acts. Most were connected to ISIS.

After the San Bernardino shootings, Facebook removed the profile of Tashfeen Malik, one of the two shooters, for violating community standards, CNET reported, since the company prohibits praise or promotion of "acts of terror."

Amidst concern that terrorists are using popular messaging services to communicate, meanwhile, President Obama said U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials "are constantly monitoring public posts" online as part of the visa review process.

For more, see The Social Media Sisterhood of ISIS.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.

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Google Opens 'Project Shield' DDoS Protection to News Sites

BY STEPHANIE MLOT ( PCMag Asia | Software Reviews | News )

If you're a small news site covering controversial topics, you're likely at risk for DDoS attacks orchestrated by those who oppose your views. But when those attacks hit, how do you protect yourself? Google's Project Shield might be the answer.

Project Shield lets small site owners fight off attacks using the power of Google's network. It debuted in October 2013 with a handful of "trusted testers," but is now opening up "to all the world's news sites to protect them from DDoS attacks and eliminate DDoS as a form of censorship," Jared Cohen, president of Jigsaw, the tech incubator formerly known as Google Ideas, wrote in a blog post.

"We learned a lot from our early group of Project Shield testers," Cohen said. "Not only have we kept websites online during attacks that otherwise would have taken them offline, we learned crucial information about how these types of attacks happen, and how we can improve our services to defend against them."

Sites sharing news, human rights, or election-monitoring content that fear they cannot defend against DDoS attacks, can apply for Project Shield online. Those who are accepted will receive an approval email with further instructions.

Google warns that it cannot guarantee participating sites won't be hit by DDoS attacks. But the project's infrastructure was designed "to defend itself from quite large attacks," so it should be able to keep you online.

"Project Shield is not just about protecting journalism," Cohen said. "It's about improving the health of the Internet by mitigating against a significant threat for publishers and people who want to publish content that some might find inconvenient. A free and open Internet depends on protecting the free flow of information—starting with the news."

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YouTube Now Lets You Blur Anything You Want

BY ANGELA MOSCARITOLO ( PCMag Asia | Software Reviews | Internet - Products | News )

Good news, YouTubers: Now you can blur anything you want in a video.

The Google-owned video-sharing site has let you blur faces in videos since 2012, but is now expanding this feature to let you blur out specific objects or people as they move in your video.

To try out the new custom blurring feature, click the Blurring effects tab, then select Custom blurring, and Edit. From there, you can simply click and drag a box over whatever you want to blur. The tool will then automatically blur that object as it moves throughout your footage.

You can also prevent the blurred area from moving at all, if you so choose, by clicking "Lock" in the timeline. If you need to blur multiple areas in the video, that's also possible — just click and drag new boxes over the additional parts you want to conceal.

Once you create a blurred box, you can easily click and drag to move it to a different place, or click any corner to resize it. You also have the option to specify when the blurring begins and ends; just click and drag the ends of the timeline to set when it happens.

Of course, you can also still blur just the faces in a video by clicking the Blurring effects tab, then Blur faces, and Apply.

Meanwhile, YouTube earlier this month jumped into original content with three exclusive films and one original series for subscribers of its $10-per-month YouTube Red service. The original series, Scare PewDiePie, features popular video game vlogger PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg) trying his best to deal with all kinds of crazy, live-action horror games.

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Welcome to the Internet of Payments

BY ROB MARVIN ( PCMag Asia | News )

BARCELONA—Mobile payments technology dominated Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year, and not exactly in the ways you'd expect. MasterCard and Visa are granting payment capabilities to a wide range of devices and objects—from wearables and smart clothes to connected cars—turning the Internet of Things (IoT) into a tokenized payments network. Anything a consumer wears or carries becomes a mobile point-of-sale (POS) to complete transactions using a swipe or a tap.

Visa is expanding its Visa Ready program to the IoT. The program consists of a framework and best practices to enable Visa payments on any platform. This also means putting its Visa Token Service (VTS)—technology that replaces 16-digit credit card numbers with a unique digital identifier—into wearables, appliances, clothes, and transportation through a new group of Visa Ready partners. That includes Coin, Samsung, wearable payments company FitPay, and smartwatch manufacturers Chronos and Pebble. MasterCard, meanwhile, is doing the same, having just announced developer partnerships with Coin and WISeKey to bring payments to wearables and luxury watches.

Both companies had flashy MWC booths that looked more like department stores, with mocked-up mobile payment-enabled storefronts, cases of high-end jewelry and watches, smart clothes on racks, connected appliances like refrigerators, and new cars with tokenized keys. For consumers, it's a natural, hassle-free buying experience; they get the choice of paying however they like, and through whatever means they choose. Commerce has always been a function of choice, according to Sherri Haymond, MasterCard's Senior Vice President and Group Head of Digital Payments & Labs.

"A few years ago, we recognized an opportunity to ensure that, as payments became digital, they did so in a scalable way that made them accessible to regular people for a great consumer experience," said Haymond. "For the past couple months, we've been really focusing on building the foundation to create this ecosystem around not just wearables, but all different kinds of connected commerce experiences: wearables, watches, fitness bands, jewelry, clothing, all sorts of connected everything."

Tokens Are Middleware For RetailersThe trick to actually making these connected payment methods feasible for businesses is to take the merchant complication out of mobile transactions. At the same time, consumers still need that choice and the ability to pay in an instant, without ever taking a card out of their wallets.

American Express, MasterCard, and Visa collaborated with EMVCo to help develop and publish the EMV Payment Tokenization Specification in 2014. As Haymond explained, the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) is built on the standard and serves as the company's credential management system or token vault connecting banks to device manufacturers.

Mark Jamison, Visa's Senior Vice President of New Product R&D and Design, talked about what tokenization really means for businesses and consumers.

"Tokenization is this foundation that's going to allow commerce to be embedded in everything," said Jamison. "With the [IoT], anything you can connect to the web can hold a token, and that represents you in a secure way; the car we have in our booth is a tokenized device."

On the retail side, merchants see a trend, such as the IoT, where consumers would like to use near field communication (NFC) to browse, scan, and pay for goods. To enable this kind of commerce on a broader scale, they can't get bogged down in the painstaking process of adding support for every new connected payment method. MasterCard and Visa don't work with the end consumer in this new kind of payment scenario; they operate on a business-to-business (B2B) level so the businesses themselves don't have to worry about investing in and implementing payment processing for every individual connected device.

The credit card companies are uniquely positioned to act as the middleman between retailers and end-users. They're working with acquirers, issuers, merchants, and processors to create the standards around how businesses can securely adopt this deluge of new payment vectors. As the Internet of Payments expands, the credit card companies' presence at MWC this year represents the connective layer between the technology providers and the retailers.

"We go where businesses are pulling us but, at the same time, we have an obligation to set the standard," said Jamison. "For example, with the 'Pays'—Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay—we built out tokenization to make sure the payments were secure, reliable, and worked for everyone. That's also why we built out VDAP [Visa's Digital Enablement Program] to set up rules for how that interaction works. We want to be a steward for this ecosystem."

For Visa's part, the next step in expanding the ecosystem is developers. The company announced the launch of Visa Developer earlier this month, expanding its Internet of Payments ecosystem beyond these retail and technology partners, to offer payment technologies including account holder identification, person-to-person payment capabilities, and Visa Checkout as open application programming interfaces(APIs).

"When you think about your business as a platform, you'll now have new use cases built on top of it by third parties we haven't traditionally thought of," said Jamison. "It expands the possibilities for payments to be embedded in even more ways."

Securing the Internet of PaymentsMasterCard and Visa's MWC booths showcased proof-of-concept demos around thumb and palm print biometrics, iris scans, voice recognition, and facial recognition. MasterCard is even letting consumers

snap a selfie

to verify their identity. These extra mechanisms are layered on top of the checkout experience to keep the experience secure in a natural way, without overcomplicating how easy these mobile payments are designed to be in the first place.

Ajay Bhalla, MasterCard's President of Enterprise Security Solutions, said it's challenging from a security perspective to make sure every commerce-enabled device won't compromise the data that users have stored, and tokens are just a piece of this.

"There are multiple layers of security working in everything we do," said Bhalla, explaining the company's multi-layered strategy. "When the transaction comes in, it's screened through algorithms to detect anomalies; your card has an EMV chip and mobile devices have tokenized credentials. Finally, you need a consumer play. The consumer needs to authenticate these devices before they can start off, whether it's their phone, watch, or car. And we're looking at biometrics in a major way."

Many of the biometric security mechanisms are experimental, and both MasterCard and Visa had booth demonstrations for technologies that are not yet on the market. Touch ID fingerprint scanning is widely adopted and MasterCard's selfie pay is coming this summer, but devices such as Visa's palm print scanner and MasterCard's heartbeat biometric identification (based on fitness trackers) are further away from the market.

Fingerprint scanning through technologies such as Apple's Touch ID and Samsung's Finger Scanner are widely adopted across mainstream mobile devices, and MasterCard's selfie pay is coming this summer. But technologies such as Visa's palm print scanner and MasterCard's heartbeat biometric identification (based on fitness trackers) are further away from the market.

What is more readily available are new, real-time intelligence solutions. MasterCard rolled out two new security products this week as part of its MasterCard IQ Series, designed to detect fraud. Bhalla pointed to Assurance IQ, in particular, as a way to more accurately analyze and approve transactions by calculating a blended risk score based on information gathered from the consumer's device and the merchant's system. During a digital transaction, Bhalla explained that, if Assurance IQ is authorized by the user, it can extract all of the information on your device, browser, or location, and let MasterCard's network pass that information to the issuing bank.

"From the retailer's perspective, we're trying to take away consumer pain points," said Bhalla. "We're trying to implement technology that if consumers agree to share that information with us, we can check the behavior of the card and the merchant to ensure quick, accurate authorization. Consumers want and need security with all these new payment methods, and the value in these mobile devices is that all the information we need to help ensure this is already there."

[enlitenitskillstraining]

Report: Until Prices Drop, VR Will Thrive on Mobile

BY ANGELA MOSCARITOLO ( PCMag Asia | Samsung Gear VR | News )

Mobile virtual reality gaming is turning into big business.

According to market research firm SuperData Research, the mobile VR gaming market is "on track" to hit $861 million this year.

"Samsung will soon expand the mobile VR audience by bundling free Gear VR headsets with pre-orders of its Galaxy S7 smartphone," SuperData wrote in a Thursday blog post. "Google, which already dominates the low-end of mobile VR with Cardboard, wants to move upmarket and is rumored to be working on a Gear VR competitor."

But SuperData predicted that "mobile is how mainstream consumers will experience VR in the near future," due to the high cost of headsets like the upcoming Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. The Rift will set you back $600 while the Vive from HTC and Valve is priced at $800. That's on top of the cost of a powerful PC required to use these devices.

VR as a whole is poised to be a multibillion-dollar market, GameStop CEO Paul Raines recently suggested.

"The market size is really hard to measure right now, but there are a lot of different measurements, all of them start with a b," Raines said during an interview earlier this month with Fox News, referencing a recent Goldman Sachs report that said the VR market could reach $80 billion by 2025.

Meanwhile, SuperData also this week also reported that digital game sales totaled $6.3 billion in January 2016, up 8 percent year over year. Supercell's Clash of Clans, which earned an estimated $1.3 billion in 2015, was the top-grossing mobile game in January, followed by Mixi's Monsterstrike and Activision Blizzard's Candy Crush Saga. Rounding out the top five were Gungho Online Entertainment's Puzzle & Dragons and Activision Blizzard's Candy Crush Soda Saga.