Paper: Facebook's new app curates news stories from old media in 'distraction free' format

Facebook has announced a new mobile app named Paper that could see the social network control a significant portion of the digital news market.

The app will launch on 3 February for the iPhone in the US and promises a “distraction-free layout” by pulling in new stories from various media publications - both the established and the “emerging”.

Working with human editors, Paper will curate various sections (including sport, food, science and photography) whilst also allowing users to customize their own feed. Traditional updates and pictures from users’ friends will also be available in the app, but they will be kept separate from the news stories.

In terms of visual style and navigation, Paper appears very similar to news-curating app Flipboard. Users’ navigate through Paper with a series of swipes; going from left to right to flip through stories, and pulling up or down to expand or shrink content.

Users can also tilt their phone to pan through panorama photos whilst small, context-rich ‘cards’ are used to compress stories. This latter concept is becoming increasingly common online, with both Twitter and Google Now using these small packages of information to break up the ‘firehose’ of information online.

Paper is the first major step in Facebook’s ambitions to create “new and engaging types of mobile experience” in 2014,and some commentators believe that the app might even supplant Facebook’s current offering.

Paper doesn’t offer quite as many features as the standalone version of Facebook, but plenty of other apps have won over users by offering them a single service as simply as possible. Complex navigation doesn’t always transfer well from PCs to mobile, and Paper looks to offer a stripped down approach to Facebook that could appeal to many.

'Spying Birds': Angry Birds website hacked after GCHQ revelations over 'leaky apps'

The website of game developer Rovio has been hacked, with a picture of the company’s best-selling Angry Birds game replaced with one entitled Spying Birds and featuring the logo of the National Security Agency (NSA).

"The defacement was caught in minutes and corrected immediately," said Saara Bergstrom, a spokeswoman for the company. "The end-user data was in no risk at any point."

The attack comes days after documents leaked by Edward Snowden suggested that the American spy agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ, used the game and other “leaky apps” to collect information on smartphone users.

The Finnish company said that they do not “share data, collaborate or collude with any government spy agencies such as NSA or GCHQ anywhere in the world,” and suggested that “the alleged surveillance may be conducted through third party advertising networks.”

Rovio CEO Mikael Hed suggested that “the most important conversation to be had is how to ensure user privacy is protected while preventing the negative impact on the whole advertising industry and the countless mobile apps that rely on ad networks.”

"In order to protect our end users, we will, like all other companies using third-party advertising networks, have to re-evaluate working with these networks if they are being used for spying purposes," he said.

The latest leaks provided by Snowden referenced a GCHQ report from 2012 that had referred specifically to siphoning data from Android smartphones with Angry Birds installed. Information about the user could include age, sex, location and details about how they used their phone.

Another slide from the British spy agency titled “Golden Nugget” set out a “perfect scenario” where the target was caught “uploading photo to a social media site taken with a mobile device.” This would allow GCHQ to take a “possible image”, email as well as “a host of other social working data”.

Advances in artificial intelligence could lead to mass unemployment, warn experts

Experts have warned that rapidly improving artificial intelligence could lead to mass unemployment just days after Google revealed the purchase of a London based start-up dedicated to developing this technology.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Dr Stuart Armstrong from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford said that there was a risk that computers could take over human jobs “at a faster rate than new jobs could be generated.”

“We have some studies looking at to which jobs are the most vulnerable and there are quite a lot of them in logistics, administration, insurance underwriting,” said Dr Armstrong. “Ultimately, huge swathe of jobs are potentially vulnerable to improved artificial intelligence.”

Dr Murray Shanahan, a professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London, agreed that improvements in artificial intelligence were creating “short term issues that we all need to be talking about.”

"It's very difficult to predict," said Dr Shanahan. "That is, of course, a concern. But in the past when we have developed new kinds of technologies then often they have created jobs at the same time as taking them over. But it certainly is something we ought to be discussing."

Both academics did however praise Google for creating an ethics board to look at the “how to deploy artificial intelligence safely and reduce the risks” after its £400 million purchase of London-based start-up DeepMind.

Sacked for breaking code of conduct: Rivalry between Bletchley Park charities tumbles out of control

A long-running battle between rival charities promoting the legacy of Britain’s wartime code breakers has degenerated into a bitter dispute which has seen an elderly tour guide sacked and calls for a boycott of Bletchley Park.

The row centres on a controversial decision by the Second World War code-breaking complex to stop its tour guides from visiting the neighbouring National Museum of Computing (NMOC).

The museum houses a rebuilt Colossus machine – the world’s first electronic computer, designed and built together with the Tunny machine to crack encrypted messages between Hitler and his generals.

Major changes as part of an £8m modernisation programme to broaden the appeal and increase visitors to Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, have seen its guided tours cut from 90 minutes to 60 – with NMOC no longer on the itinerary. 

Bletchley Park Trust insists “most” guides have “embraced” the changes, which were announced around a year ago, with “regrettably, one exception".

That exception was long-standing volunteer Tony Carroll, who resisted the move and continued to take people to the NMOC. He was sacked last week as a result.

The emotional reaction of the veteran tour guide – captured on television by a local BBC crew – has prompted the creation of a "Boycott Bletchley Park" group on Facebook.

“They haven’t got a clue – they are ruining this place,” he said on camera. “We are all very upset about not being able to tell the story we want to.”

Tim Reynolds, chair of the computing museum, said last night: “It beggars belief to see the Bletchley Park Trust pursue a policy of fragmentation.” He added: “The Bletchley Park conservation area has many buildings of enormous potential – some of which have been realised over the past ten years by organisations other than the Bletchley Park Trust. All stakeholders need to be appropriately represented.”

But a spokesperson for Bletchley Park Trust said: “The National Museum of Computing remains available to any visitor to Bletchley Park who wishes to visit it,” and it is “signposted” by guides at the end of the tour. As for Mr Carroll, he “continues to be a valued volunteer” and is now helping in the education department, they added.

NSA surveillance: Angry Birds and other 'leaky apps' targeted by US and UK security agencies

Users of smartphone apps and mobile games such as Angry Birds are reportedly leaving their personal information open to secret harvesting by government spies.

The latest disclosure, from documents acquired by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, suggests officials from the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have developed methods to mine and collect personal details such as age, gender and location. In some cases the documents can even record political views and sexual orientation.

State targeting of so-called “leaky apps” was disclosed in documents published on Monday by The New York Times, The Guardian and ProPublica. One slide from a May 2010 NSA presentation, titled “Golden Nugget!”, set out GCHQ’s “perfect scenario”, described as a “target uploading photo to a social media site taken with a mobile device.” The presentation explained that in such a case, the agency could get a “possible image”, email and “a host of other social working data”.

NSA officials told The New York Times: “The NSA does not profile everyday Americans as it carries out its foreign intelligence mission. Because some data of US persons may at times be incidentally collected in NSA's lawful foreign intelligence mission, privacy protections for US persons exist across the entire process.” Similar protections, the agency said, are in place for “innocent foreign citizens.”

In a separate development,  NBC News reported that GCHQ demonstrated a pilot program to their US partners in 2012 in which they were able to monitor YouTube in real time and collect addresses from the billions of videos watched daily, as well as some user information, for analysis. At the time the documents were printed, they were also able to spy on Facebook and Twitter. The network said the monitoring program was called "Squeaky Dolphin."

The latest revelations will intensify pressure on President Barack Obama who earlier this month ordered the attorney general and senior intelligence officials to recommend changes by March 28 that would allow the US to identify suspected terrorists' phone calls without the government holding the phone records itself. As of yet there has been no mention of smart phone applications as part of expected reforms that are expected to be implemented as part of his final tenure in The Whitehouse.

Google buys UK artificial intelligence start-up DeepMind for £400m

A former child chess prodigy and computer game designer from London has sold his company to Google for around £300m in one of the Internet giant’s largest European acquisitions.

Demis Hassabis, a computer scientist, is understood to have struck the deal with Google for his secretive start-up business Deep Mind Technologies, which specialises in artificial intelligence (AI) for computers.

Hassabis, 37, has built the company by bringing together neuroscientists and computer engineers in an effort to use technology and medical research to help machines to mimic the brain’s ability to improve performance. He previously led a study at University College London in 2009 that scanned human brains and found “just by looking at neural activity we were able to say what someone was thinking”.

Google founder Larry Page, who has expressed interest in making search commands easier by having an implant in the brain, is understood to have led the move to buy Deep Mind. Google is exploring smart technology that will enable it to go into space travel and create self-driving cars.

The website The Information claimed that Google had beaten Facebook to the acquisition and had sealed the deal after agreeing to set up an ethics board to ensure that the AI technology was not abused.

Downworthy plug-in offers Upworthy headlines without the hyperbole

f you've spent longer than five seconds on Facebook in the past year you'll probably be aware of feel good viral content siteUpworthy's sticky headlines.

They usually centre around the overblown reaction the story will supposedly have on you – all 'restore your faith in humanity' and 'stay with you every minute of the day' – or else harness the curiosity gap, providing next to no information in the headline so you have to click through to find the unbelievable, mind-altering, self-defenestration-worthy story.

Well now there's a way to combat them, with a Chrome plug-increated by Alison Gianotto replacing headlines' hyperbolic devices with something a little more accurate – and it works surprisingly well.