Fear of music safety limit override

3 February 2013 Last updated at 22:30 ET

A safety limit on volume levels which comes into force on all new personal music players this month could be ignored by 40% of young people, says a hearing loss charity.

All personal music players and mobile phones sold in the EU must now have a sound limit of 85 decibels (dB), but users can increase it to 100dB.

Action on Hearing Loss says overexposure to loud music can trigger tinnitus.

Experts say the limit is "good news".

Tinnitus is a medical term used to describe a ringing or buzzing noise that people can hear permanently in one ear, both ears or in the head.

It is often caused by exposure to loud music and can be accompanied by hearing loss.

Paul Breckell, chief executive of Action on Hearing Loss, said the new EU standard is important because increasing numbers of young people listen to music through a personal music player.

Survey results

"I urge music lovers to consider the long-term risks of overriding the safe setting as overexposure to loud music can trigger tinnitus, and remember that a good pair of noise cancelling headphones can make all the difference."

A survey of more than 1,500 16 to 34-year-olds by Action on Hearing Loss suggests that 79% of young people are unaware of new standards coming into force this month.

Although 70% of survey respondents said they would take steps to protect themselves against tinnitus, nearly 40% said they would override the new default setting on their music devices.

In October 2008, the European Commission warned that listening to personal music players at a high volume over a sustained period could lead to permanent hearing damage.

As a result, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC) amended its safety standard for personal music players.

Continue reading the main story

Marc Nicholson, 31, from Essex, is a DJ who has always loved loud music. He started playing drums at 10 and got decks at 20.

"I used to go home after a night out and my ears would be ringing. It was the sign of a good night."

But two years ago he woke up with ringing in his ears and a week later it was still there.

He was diagnosed with chronic tinnitus in his right ear.

"It gets worse when I'm stressed or tired. Sometimes I think 'How could I have done this to myself?'

"It has affected my life. The ringing is the last thing I hear going to sleep and first thing I hear in the morning."

Marc has returned to DJ-ing but now wears professional ear plugs.

"I felt very depressed for a year but I'm coping with it. Doing charity work has helped me to come to terms with it."

Now all personal music players sold in the EU after February 2013 are expected to have a default sound limit of 85dB.

The user can choose to override the limit so that the sound level can be increased up to maximum 100dB. If the user overrides the limit, warnings about the risks must be repeated every 20 hours of listening time.

The European Commission's assessment said: "Listening to music at 80dB or less is considered safe, no matter for how long or how often personal music players are used. This sound level is roughly equivalent to someone shouting or traffic noise from a nearby road."

But turning the volume control to 120dB, which is equivalent to an aeroplane taking off nearby, is exceeding safe limits, it said.

The commission said an estimated 20% of young people are exposed to loud sounds during their leisure time - a figure which has tripled since the 1980s.

An estimated 5-10% of of people in the EU are thought to be at risk of permanent hearing loss if exposed to unsafe noise limits for five years or more.

Dr Michael Akeroyd, from the MRC Institute of Hearing Research in Glasgow, said of the new EU standard: "This is good news for the volumes of personal music players. The volumes they can give has been of concern for many years, going back to at least the advent of portable cassette players."

He added that headphones can vary in quality and design.

"Few designs of headphones remove background sounds, and indeed some designs remove none. But ear-defenders or ear-plugs can remove a substantial amount of noise. Earplug design has advanced greatly in recent years."

08.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Hackers target 250,000 Twitter users

2 February 2013 Last updated at 07:11 ET

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

The BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones is one of those affected

A quarter of a million Twitter users have had their accounts compromised in the latest of a string of high-profile internet security breaches.

Twitter's information security director Bob Lord said about 250,000 users' passwords had been stolen, as well as usernames, emails and other data.

Affected users have had passwords invalidated and have been sent emails informing them.

Mr Lord said the attack "was not the work of amateurs".

He said it appeared similar to recent attacks on the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The US newspapers reported that their computer systems had been breached by China-based hackers.

'Not isolated'

Twitter has 200 million active users.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

There is still little information about the nature of the attack or why just one small section of users is in danger"

End Quote

Mr Lord said in a blog post Twitter had discovered unauthorised attempts to access data held by the website, including one attack that was identified and stopped moments after it was detected.

"This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident," he wrote.

Mr Lord did not say who had carried out the attack, but added: "The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organisations have also been recently similarly attacked."

"For that reason we felt that it was important to publicise this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the internet safer for all users."

Internet security specialist Graham Cluley warned Twitter's announcement that emails would be sent to users may prompt a spate of spam emails "phishing" for sensitive information.

He says people should be cautious about opening emails which appear to be from Twitter.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

Philip Hampsheir Business reporter

---

The biggest worry for most of Twitter's 200 million active users is not this attack per se, but the additional new "phishing" scams the attack has already inspired.

Since Twitter users now know to be on the lookout for emails asking them to change their passwords, criminals are sending out very similar messages.

If users click on the links in those they risk - once again - having their account hacked.

Don't click on links in emails asking you to change your password.

Go directly to the web site, log in normally, and change it using the instructions without clicking on email links.

"You have to be careful if you get hold of one of these emails because, of course, it could equally be a phishing attack - it could be someone pretending to be Twitter.

"So, log into the Twitter site as normal and try and log in to your account and, if there's a problem, that's when you actually have to try and reset your password."

Another expert in online security, Professor Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey, warned users to be wary of messages sent them by the hackers via Twitter itself.

"They can then send what's called direct messages," he said. "They can put malicious links in those."

"It really looks like it's coming from someone you know and you might respond to it, you'd go to the site and all of a sudden you find that actually you've got some malware on your machine which is then stealing your bank details or whatever."

On Thursday the New York Times linked the attack to a story it published alleging relatives of former Premier Wen Jiabao controlled assets worth billions of dollars.

China's foreign ministry dismissed the New York Times' accusations as "groundless" and "totally irresponsible".

08.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Google boss labels China 'IT menace'

2 February 2013 Last updated at 13:35 ET

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt uses a new book to call China an Internet menace that backs cyber-crime for economic and political gain, reports say.

The New Digital Age - due for release in April - reportedly brands China "the world's most active and enthusiastic filterer of information".

China is "the most sophisticated and prolific" hacker of foreign companies, according to a review obtained by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

China denies allegations of hacking.

Revolution coming?

Beijing has been accused by several governments, foreign companies and organisations of carrying out extensive cyber espionage for many years, seeking to gather information and to control China's image.

Continue reading the main story

• China was widely believed to be the source of major cyber attacks between 2006 and 2011 targeting 72 organisations including the International Olympic Committee, the UN and security firms
• In 2011, Google said hackers based in Jinan province had compromised personal email accounts of hundreds of top US officials, military personnel and journalists
• South Korea blamed Chinese hackers for stealing data from 35 million accounts on a popular social network in July last year
• Chinese-based computers seized "full functional control" of computers at Nasa in 2011, the US body said
• In 2011 US media reported that Chinese-based hackers were suspected of a "significant" cyber attack on defence firm Lockheed Martin.
• Coca-cola says its systems were breached in 2009 by Beijing-backed hackers, while it was trying to buy China's Huiyuan Juice Group
• The US Pentagon said it was hacked by the Chinese military in 2007
• China says hacking is illegal under its laws and that it is a victim of such attacks itself

The New Digital Age analyses how China is dangerously exploiting an Internet that now permeates politics, business, culture and other aspects of life, the WSJ says.

It quotes the book as saying: "The disparity between American and Chinese firms and their tactics will put both the government and the companies of the United States at a distinct disadvantage."

This, it says, is because Washington "will not take the same path of digital corporate espionage, as its laws are much stricter (and better enforced) and because illicit competition violates the American sense of fair play".

The book argues that Western governments could do more to follow China's lead and develop stronger relationships between the state and technology companies.

States will benefit if they use software and technology made by trusted companies, it suggests.

"Where Huawei gains market share, the influence and reach of China grow as well," the WSJ quoted the authors as writing.

The WSJ this week said its computer systems had been hacked by specialists in China who were trying to monitor its China coverage.

It was the second reported attack on a major US news outlet in days, as the New York Times reported earlier that Chinese hackers had "persistently" penetrated its systems for the last four months.

China's foreign ministry dismissed the New York Times' accusations as "groundless" and "totally irresponsible".

08.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Mini helicopter drone for UK troops

3 February 2013 Last updated at 10:19 ET

British soldiers in Afghanistan have become the first to use miniature surveillance helicopters in frontline operations.

The drones can fly around corners and obstacles to identify potential hidden dangers, the Ministry of Defence said.

The Norwegian-designed Black Hornet Nano features a tiny camera and relays video and still images to a handheld control terminal.

It measures about 10cm by 2.5cm (4in by 1in) and weighs 16g (0.6oz).

The MoD, which also operates more than 300 larger-sized unmanned air vehicles in Afghanistan, said the Black Hornet is carried easily on patrol and works in harsh environments and windy conditions.

They have been in use in Afghanistan since 2012, a spokeswoman confirmed.

Surrey-based Marlborough Communications has a £20m contract with the military to supply and maintain 160 of the drones, which were originally developed by Prox Dynamics for search and rescue operations.

Mini drones can be piloted directly or programmed to follow co-ordinates using GPS.

Powered by battery, the Black Hornet is reported to have a range of about half a mile (800m), a top speed of 22mph (35kph) and can fly for up to 30 minutes.

They can help soldiers on the ground pinpoint hidden Taliban fighters and explosives.

Sgt Christopher Petherbridge, of the Brigade Reconnaissance Force in Afghanistan, said: "We used it to look for insurgent firing points and check out exposed areas of the ground before crossing, which is a real asset.

"It is very easy to operate and offers amazing capability to the guys on the ground."

Defence minister Philip Dunne said intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems were a "key component" of the MoD's investment in new equipment over the next 10 years.

Spending outlined last month also includes almost £36bn for a new generation of nuclear-powered submarines, almost £19bn for combat aircraft, and around £17bn for Royal Navy warships.

08.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Panasonic shares surge on profit

3 February 2013 Last updated at 21:59 ET

Shares of Panasonic have surged 17% to 692 yen in Tokyo, after the firm swung back into profit in the third quarter.

On Friday, Panasonic reported a net profit of 61.3bn yen ($666m; £421m) for the October-December period, compared with a 197.6bn yen loss a year earlier.

Panasonic, which kept its forecast for a full-year loss unchanged, said a weak yen had improved business conditions.

Analysts said investors were hoping that a weak currency will help boost profits further in the current quarter.

"For the time being they are being rescued by the weak yen and it looks like they may have a good fourth quarter as well," Yuuki Sakurai of Fukoku Capital Management told the BBC.

The Japanese currency has dipped more than 15% against the US dollar since November last year.

A weak yen boosts profits of Japanese exporters such as Panasonic when they repatriate their foreign earnings back home. It also makes Japanese goods more affordable to foreign buyers.

"The hope is that if the yen continues to to remain weak then the losses could be less than what Panasonic had previously forecast," Mr Sakurai added.

The firm has said it expects to make a net loss of 765bn yen for the financial year to 31 March 2013.

Long term concerns

Continue reading the main story

If the basis of a profit surge is just the weak currency, then than that is always going to be risky"

End Quote Yuuki Sakurai Fukoku Capital Management

Panasonic has seen its fortunes slide in recent years amid a slowdown in global demand and falling prices for TVs.

To make matters worse, it has also had to face strong competition from rivals, including South Korea's Samsung which has grabbed a big share of the global TV market.

In its latest results, Panasonic said that global demand for flat-panel TVs and digital devices had weakened further.

It said its overall sales in the last quarter fell 8% on the year to 1.8 trillion yen.

Analysts said that the firm had been too reliant on its TV business over the past years, and that it needed to rethink its strategy.

"People are still sceptical if the business model of Panasonic will be successful in the long run," said Fukoku Capital Management's Mr Sakurai.

For its part, Panasonic has been trying to restructure its business. But it has previously warned that the costs related to such moves may be almost 11 times more than previously estimated.

Mr Sakurai added that while the drop in the yen's value was a welcome relief for Panasonic, until it addresses the long term issues, the firm's future remained uncertain.

"If the basis of a profit surge is just the weak currency, then than that is always going to be risky," he said.

"For all you know, the yen could start to rise again and things may be back to square one for Panasonic."

08.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Parents warned over online abuse

4 February 2013 Last updated at 05:57 ET

Children are increasingly being groomed over the internet for the sole purpose of online sexual abuse, research by a child protection watchdog suggests.

Only 7% of the 1,145 online abuse cases reported to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre in 2012 involved people trying to meet a child.

Ceop said offenders may target hundreds of victims at a time, and described the abuse as an "alarming new trend".

The organisation said parents needed to talk to their children about the issue.

'Blind spot'

Peter Davies, chief executive of Ceop - which monitors child abuse online - said: "We've seen a drop in the amount of grooming with a view to meeting offline. That's still a risk but it's a diminishing risk.

"The growth area seems to be grooming, contact, and then sexual abuse purely online. We really need to make sure that young people are target hardened [sic] against that.

Continue reading the main story

We can talk to young people and educate them on staying safe online just as we do about stranger danger or drugs"

End Quote Claire Lilly NSPCC

"It's amazing, the number of parents I meet who would not think twice about talking to their kids about just about anything else that is risky - but have a blind spot about online."

There were 1,145 reports to Ceop in 2012 relating to incidents of online grooming. However, only 7% of these related to attempting to meet a child offline, a drop from 12% in 2011.

Online sexual abuse is commonly conducted via webcams, instant messenger applications and social networking sites.

The research by Ceop and the University of Birmingham suggested physical contact did not appear to be a motivation for offenders who sought to abuse children in this way.

Ceop said that once initial contact is made, it "often rapidly escalates into threats and intimidation".

A Ceop spokeswoman said some offenders hack into the accounts of victims and say they will only get their account back if they do what the abuser tells them to do.

Thereafter the abuser makes more demands "so the victim often feels like they haven't got any control... and it ends up in this spiral of continuous abuse", she added.

Mr Davies said the "devastation" caused to young people's lives through online grooming could be seen on a daily basis.

"UK children can be targeted from anywhere and offenders will cast their net widely to target large numbers of children," he said.

'Trick victims'

Ceop's research highlighted the case of two brothers in Kuwait who targeted 110 children worldwide - including 78 in the UK - forcing them into performing sexual acts online.

The pair were jailed for blackmail offences last December following a Ceop-led investigation.

Ceop said the pair pretended to be someone the children already knew on social networking and instant messaging applications. They would trick victims into giving them online passwords before threatening them into engaging in sexual activities via webcam.

There was no evidence of an offline meeting with victims ever being a motivation, Ceop said.

Ceop also said that instant messaging on mobile phones was used by paedophiles to contact children in about third of the reports of grooming it saw in 2012.

While smart phones were increasingly popular among 12 to 15-year-olds, more than two-thirds of them do not have parental controls installed, it added.

Ceop's chief executive said parents and carers had a duty to ensure their children remained safe online.

Claire Lilly, of children's charity the NSPCC, said there had been a sharp rise in young people contacting its Childline help service about being approached online.

She said: "What is apparent is that parents and carers can make that vital difference in whether or not a child becomes a victim of these ruthless predators online.

"The internet is part and parcel of young lives... we can talk to young people and educate them on staying safe online just as we do about stranger danger or drugs."

08.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Old news used to predict headlines

4 February 2013 Last updated at 07:26 ET

Researchers have developed software which could predict future events such as disease outbreak.

The prototype software uses a combination of archive material from the New York Times and data from other websites, including Wikipedia.

The experts focused on predicting riots, deaths and disease outbreaks and say their accuracy was between 70%-90%.

The work is a collaboration between Microsoft Research and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

In their research paper, the two scientists say that using a mixture of archived news reports and real-time data, they were able to see links between droughts and storms in parts of Africa and cholera outbreaks.

For example in 1973 the New York Times published news of a drought in Bangladesh, and in 1974 it reported a cholera epidemic.

Following reports of another drought in the same country in 1983, the newspaper again reported cholera deaths in 1984.

"Alerts about a downstream risk of cholera could have been issued nearly a year in advance," wrote researchers Eric Horvitz, director of Microsoft Research, and Kira Radinsky, PhD student at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

While other research has been done in this area, it has tended to be retrospective - looking back at the event leading up to an outbreak - rather than using that data to try to look ahead to the next one, they said.

Ms Radinsky told MIT Technology Review that other useful websites included knowledge bases DBpedia and OpenCyc, and language database Word.

The software could also be used to verify the likelihood of other predictions, according to the research paper.

"It can be valuable to identify situations where there is a significantly lower likelihood of an event than expected by experts based on the large set of observations and feeds being considered in an automated manner," it said.

""I truly view this as a foreshadowing of what's to come," Mr Horvitz told MIT Technology Review.

"Eventually this kind of work will start to have an influence on how things go for people."

08.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Somalia Islamists back on Twitter

4 February 2013 Last updated at 08:07 ET

Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group has opened a new Twitter account in English, less than two weeks after its previous account was suspended.

A senior al-Shabab official told the BBC that the new account was genuine.

Al-Shabab's previous English-language account was suspended after it used it to announce it would kill a French hostage and then said it had done so.

Twitter's rules say that threats of violence are banned but it refused to comment on the suspension.

One of the message on the new account reads: "For what it's worth, shooting the messenger and suppressing the truth by silencing your opponents isn't quite the way to win the war of ideas."

While the main Twitter account, which used to publish in several languages, had been blocked, a separate feed in Arabic continued to operate.

The new al-Shabab account has 280 followers, compared to the previous account which had more than 20,000 followers.

It was closed on 25 January, about a week after it announced the killing of a French spy, Denis Allex, it was holding hostage.

Mr Allex, who was kidnapped in Somalia in July 2009, was killed in retaliation for a failed French operation to free him.

Analysts say the US has wanted al-Shabab banned from Twitter for some time, but lacked the legal means to enforce its will.

Al-Shabab has been forced out of Somali's main towns over the past 18 months but it still controls many rural parts of southern and central Somalia.

For more than 20 years Somalia has seen clan-based warlords, rival politicians and Islamist militants battling for control of the country.

08.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

No extra charge for 4G from Three

4 February 2013 Last updated at 08:13 ET

Mobile phone provider Three says it will not charge customers extra to upgrade to the 4G data service.

Three is due to get access to the fast data network later this year.

Provider EE was the first company in the UK to be able to offer customers access to 4G and received complaints about its pricing structures.

Existing customers were asked to pay an extra £5 for the same amount of data they were entitled to with their 3G contracts.

Last month the firm cut its entry price from £36 to £31 but the reduced cost was only available for new customers.

Three says any customer with an "ultrafast-ready" smartphone, which includes Apple's iPhone 5, Nokia's Lumia 920 and the Sony Xperia Z, will qualify.

"As we add the next wave of technology to our ultrafast network, we've listened to our customers and thought long and hard about the right way to do it," said Three chief executive Dave Dyson.

"We don't want to limit ultrafast services to a select few based on a premium price and we've decided our customers will get this service as standard."

Ernest Doku, from price comparison website uSwitch.com, said the move "flew in the face" of the current pricing strategy for 4G in the UK.

"Three's move could really force the other networks to reconsider how they price their own forthcoming 4G deals," he said.

"That being said, there's nothing stopping Three from putting tariff prices up across the board ahead of a 4G rollout, so it's still a waiting game before we find out the true cost of super-fast mobile data in the UK."

08.10 | 0 komentar | Read More

Google searches 'expose racial bias'

4 February 2013 Last updated at 08:19 ET

A study of Google searches has found "significant discrimination" in results depending on the perceived race of names searched for.

Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney said names typically associated with black people were more likely to produce ads related to criminal activity.

In her paper, Prof Sweeney suggested that Google searches may expose "racial bias in society".

Google has said it "does not conduct any racial profiling".

In a statement to the BBC, the company said: "We also have an 'anti' and violence policy which states that we will not allow ads that advocate against an organisation, person or group of people.

"It is up to individual advertisers to decide which keywords they want to choose to trigger their ads."

Arrested?

The study analysed the type of advertisements that appeared on Google when certain names were searched for.

It looked at Google.com's core search engine, as well as the search function of Reuters.com - which also displays Google's advertising.

Prof Sweeney's investigation suggests that names linked with black people - as defined by a previous study into racial discrimination in the workplace - were 25% more likely to have results that prompted the searcher to click on a link to search criminal record history.

Continue reading the main story

Technology can do more to thwart discriminatory effects and harmonise with societal norms"

End Quote Prof Latanya Sweeney Harvard

She found that names like Leroy, Kareem and Keisha would yield advertisements that read "Arrested?", with a link to a website which could perform criminal record checks.

Searches for names such as Brad, Luke and Katie would not - instead more likely to offer websites that can provide general contact details.

"There is discrimination in the delivery of these ads," concluded Prof Sweeney, adding that there was a less than 1% chance that the findings could be based on chance.

"Alongside news stories about high school athletes and children can be ads bearing the child's name and suggesting arrest. This seems concerning on many levels."

User habits

However, she was reluctant to pinpoint a cause for the discrepancies, saying that to do so required "further information about the inner workings of Google AdSense".

She noted that one possible cause may be Google's "smart" algorithms - technology which automatically adapts advertising placement based on mass-user habits.

In other words, it may be that the search engines are reflecting society's own prejudices - as the results Google serves up are often based on the most popular links previous users have clicked on.

"Over time, as people tend to click one version of ad text over others, the weights change," Prof Sweeney explained.

"So the ad text getting the most clicks eventually displays more frequently."

She argued that technology should be used to counteract this effect.

"In the broader picture, technology can do more to thwart discriminatory effects and harmonise with societal norms.

"Ads responding to name searches appear in a specific information context and technology controls that context."

Google is yet to comment on Prof Sweeney's research.

08.10 | 0 komentar | Read More