Tag: reported

Facebook Slows Sales Growth With Apple’s Privacy Policy

Apple warned that sales growth slowed in the last quarter Of a corporation. App privacy rules continue to create uncertainty for social media companies. Facebook’s ad sales, a major source of revenue, slowed growth in the first quarter since Apple began demanding apps to ask users if they wanted to be tracked in April. This change makes it harder for advertisers to target their ads to the right audience and get information about their performance.

Facebook also announced on Monday that it will change its reporting structure to split a unit called “Facebook Reality Labs” that contains augmented reality and virtual reality products and services. This move separates the unit’s results from its core business segment, which includes its flagship Facebook platform and other apps such as Instagram. The company said its investment in Facebook Reality Labs is expected to reduce overall operating profit in 2021 by about $ 10 billion.

Revenues in the third quarter reached $ 29.01 billion, up 35% from the year-ago quarter, but below the $ 29.56 billion expected by FactSet polled analysts. This is the smallest increase since the fourth quarter of last year, well below the 52% in the first half of this year.

Advertising revenue fell slightly from the second quarter, including the largest complex market segments, the United States and Canada. European sales also declined from the previous quarter.

Facebook warned in its July earnings report that changes in privacy for Apple’s iOS operating system could compromise ad targeting capabilities in the third quarter as more people update their iPhones and iPads.Last week’s snap Ltd

Apple’s policy has accused stock prices of falling by more than 20% as earnings growth is expected to slow this quarter.

Facebook’s third-quarter earnings were up 17% to $ 9.19 billion, or $ 3.22 per share. According to the company, the number of monthly users was 3.58 billion, an increase of 12% over the previous year.

Facebook’s share price rose more than 3% in after-hours trading on Monday after the end of a regular session. The company’s stock fell 5% last week after Snap reported an advertising issue related to Apple’s changes.

Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Moffett Nathanson, said: Social media companies start a busy week of earnings for tech giants. After the bell on Tuesday, Apple and Amazon.com will report quarterly results. Ltd

Numbers scheduled for Thursday. All are expected to achieve healthy top-line growth year-over-year as they continue to embrace the digital products and services offered by consumers and businesses.

According to Jeffreys analysts, global supply chain disruptions were expected to slow Facebook’s sales growth as vendors with limited inventories cut advertising costs. Still, the investment firm said digital advertising is powerful and new advertising products from Facebook’s Instagram service will be up and running to provide a new source of revenue.

Facebook said it expects revenue to grow from $ 31.5 billion to $ 34 billion this quarter, reflecting factors such as “Apple’s iOS 14 changes continue to headwind.”

Parents of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have also tackled other challenges. This includes scrutiny of strict regulations in Washington and criticism of the company’s operations by its own supervisory board following a series of Wall Street Journal investigations called Facebook files.

Share your thoughts

What do you think about the current state of Facebook’s business? Join the conversation below.

Last week, UK competition regulators fined Facebook £ 50.5 million ($ 69.6 million worth) for violating reporting requirements while reviewing a proposal to acquire Giphy, an online provider of animated images. Facebook has separately agreed to pay a monetary penalty as part of its settlement with the US government. It accused social media companies of illegally booking lucrative jobs for migrant workers sponsored for permanent residence, instead of looking for and considering available US workers.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently promoted his vision for the Metaverse. It is loosely defined as a broad future online world where people exist and interact in a shared virtual space through digital avatars. He recently described the Metaverse as the next generation of the Internet and the next chapter in his company. Facebook said last week it plans to create 10,000 jobs in Europe over the next five years to work on Metaverse-related efforts.

Zuckerberg emphasized the message in the company’s earnings report. “I’m particularly excited about the roadmap that helps build creators, commerce and the Metaverse,” he said. Facebook said it expects to increase its investment over the next few years. The company added that next year’s costs will be as much as $ 97 billion for technical staff, product staff, and infrastructure-related costs.

Sarah E. Needleman

By: Sarah E. Needleman

Source: Facebook slows sales growth with Apple’s privacy policy – Texas News Today

.

Related Links:

Experts Slam Apple’s Child Protection Phone-Scanning Technology

A group of leading cybersecurity experts has spoken out against Apple’s plan to detect child sexual abuse images on iPhones, claiming it amounts to mass surveillance and should be banned.

Earlier this year, Apple announced plans to introduce client side scanning, searching individual devices’ iCloud photo libraries for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Images would be scanned using a technology called NeuralHash and then compared with known CSAM material, before being reported to the authorities.

The plans were delayed last month, with Apple stating that feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others was prompting it to look for improvements.

Now, though, there’s more feedback, and from sources that it’s hard to downplay. In a paper titled Bugs in our Pockets: The Risks of Client-Side Scanning, security and cryptograhy experts Hal Abelson, Ross Anderson, Steven M. Bellovin, Josh Benaloh, Matt Blaze, Jon Callas, Whitfield Diffie, Susan Landau, Peter G. Neumann, Ronald L. Rivest, Jeffrey I. Schiller, Bruce Schneier, Vanessa Teague, and Carmela Troncoso claim the technology goes much too far.

“In this report, we argue that CSS neither guarantees efficacious crime prevention nor prevents surveillance,” they write.

“Indeed, the effect is the opposite. CSS by its nature creates serious security and privacy risks for all society while the assistance it can provide for law enforcement is at best problematic. There are multiple ways in which client-side scanning can fail, can be evaded, and can be abused.”

The main fear is the risk of abuse by repressive governments. While Apple says that only CSAM and terrorist material would be flagged, the researchers aren’t so sure.

“If device vendors are compelled to install remote surveillance, the demands will start to roll in. Who could possibly be so cold-hearted as to argue against the system being extended to search for missing children?” writes Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at the University of Cambridge.

“Then President Xi will want to know who has photos of the Dalai Lama, or of men standing in front of tanks; and copyright lawyers will get court orders blocking whatever they claim infringes their clients’ rights.”

With the EU believed to be considering device scanning as a part of a new law on child protection, the researchers say that it should be a national-security priority to ‘resist attempts to spy on and influence law-abiding citizens’.

And, they point out, the Data Retention Directive has already been struck down on the grounds that such bulk surveillance, without warrant or suspicion, was an unacceptable infringement of privacy, even in the fight against terrorism. Client-side scanning is equally problematic, the researchers say.

“Instead of having targeted capabilities such as to wiretap communications with a warrant and to perform forensics on seized devices, the agencies’ direction of travel is the bulk scanning of everyone’s private data, all the time, without warrant or suspicion,” they write.

“That crosses a red line. Is it prudent to deploy extremely powerful surveillance technology that could easily be extended to undermine basic freedoms?”

By: Emma Woollacott

I’ve been writing about technology for most of my adult life, focusing mainly on legal and regulatory issues. I write for a wide range of publications: credits include the Times, Daily Telegraph and Financial Times newspapers, as well as BBC radio and numerous technology titles. Here, I’ll be covering the ways content is controlled on the internet, from censorship to online piracy and copyright. You can follow my posts by clicking the ‘ Follow’ button under my name.

Source: Experts Slam Apple’s Child Protection Phone-Scanning Technology

.

Related Contents:

Scientists Figured Out How Much Exercise You Need to ‘Offset’ a Day of Sitting

We know that spending hour after hour sitting down isn’t good for us, but just how much exercise is needed to counteract the negative health impact of a day at a desk? A 2020 study suggests about 30-40 minutes per day of building up a sweat should do it.

Up to 40 minutes of “moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity” every day is about the right amount to balance out 10 hours of sitting still, the research says – although any amount of exercise or even just standing up helps to some extent.

That’s based on a meta-analysis across nine previous studies, involving a total of 44,370 people in four different countries who were wearing some form of fitness tracker.

The analysis found the risk of death among those with a more sedentary lifestyle went up as time spent engaging in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity went down.

“In active individuals doing about 30-40 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity, the association between high sedentary time and risk of death is not significantly different from those with low amounts of sedentary time,” the researchers wrote in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) in 2020.

In other words, putting in some reasonably intensive activities – cycling, brisk walking, gardening – can lower your risk of an earlier death right back down to what it would be if you weren’t doing all that sitting around, to the extent that this link can be seen in the amassed data of many thousands of people.

While meta-analyses like this one always require some elaborate dot-joining across separate studies with different volunteers, timescales, and conditions, the benefit of this particular piece of research is that it relied on relatively objective data from wearables – not data self-reported by the participants.

The study was published alongside the release of the World Health Organization 2020 Global Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior, put together by 40 scientists across six continents. In fact, in November 2020 BJSM put out a special edition to carry both the new study and the new guidelines.

“These guidelines are very timely, given that we are in the middle of a global pandemic, which has confined people indoors for long periods and encouraged an increase in sedentary behavior,” said physical activity and population health researcher Emmanuel Stamatakis from the University of Sydney in Australia.

“People can still protect their health and offset the harmful effects of physical inactivity,” says Stamatakis, who wasn’t involved in the meta-analysis but is the co-editor of the BJSM. “As these guidelines emphasize, all physical activity counts and any amount of it is better than none.”

The research based on fitness trackers is broadly in line with the new WHO guidelines, which recommend 150-300 mins of moderate intensity or 75-150 mins of vigorous-intensity physical activity every week to counter sedentary behavior.

Walking up the stairs instead of taking the lift, playing with children and pets, taking part in yoga or dancing, doing household chores, walking, and cycling are all put forward as ways in which people can be more active – and if you can’t manage the 30-40 minutes right away, the researchers say, start off small.

Making recommendations across all ages and body types is tricky, though the 40 minute time frame for activity fits in with previous research. As more data are published, we should learn more about how to stay healthy even if we have to spend extended periods of time at a desk.

“Although the new guidelines reflect the best available science, there are still some gaps in our knowledge,” said Stamatakis.

“We are still not clear, for example, where exactly the bar for ‘too much sitting’ is. But this is a fast-paced field of research, and we will hopefully have answers in a few years’ time.”

The research was published here, and the WHO guidelines here, in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

By: David Nield

Source: Scientists Figured Out How Much Exercise You Need to ‘Offset’ a Day of Sitting

.

Related Contents:

28 Bodyweight Exercises that Build Serious Muscle

Effects of Body-weight Squat Training on Muscular Size, Strength and Balance Ability in Physically Frail Older Adults

Growing stronger: Strength training for older adults

Physical activity for older adults

President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports Definitions for Health

Exercise for Your Bone Health

Participation in Sport and Physical Recreation

Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans 2nd edition

Effects of 16-week high-intensity interval training using upper and lower body ergometers on aerobic fitness and morphological changes in healthy men: a preliminary study

Enlist : Army Physical Fitness Test

High-intensity interval training to maximize cardiac benefits of exercise training

Exercise: A Drug-free Approach to Lowering High Blood Pressure

Physical activity, exercise, and inflammatory markers in older adults: findings from the Health

Fitness Tips for Menopause: Why fitness counts

Depression and anxiety: exercise eases symptoms

Benefits of Physical Activity

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Weight Training

Exercise as a novel treatment for drug addiction

Exercise and Mental Health: Many Reasons to Move

Optimal Load for Increasing Muscle Power During Explosive Resistance Training in Older Adults

Exercise, Inflammation and Aging

American Heart Association Recommendations for Physical Activity in Adults

Scientists Predict Early Covid-19 Symptoms Using AI (And An App)

Combining self-reported symptoms with Artificial Intelligence can predict the early symptoms of Covid-19, according to research led by scientists at Kings College London. Previous studies have predicted whether people will develop Covid using symptoms from the peak of viral infection, which can be less relevant over time — fever is common during later phases, for instance.

The new study reveals which symptoms of infection can be used for early detection of the disease. Published in the journal The Lancet Digital Health, the research used data collected via the ZOE COVID Symptom Study smartphone app. Each app user logged any symptoms that they experienced over the first 3 days, plus the result of a subsequent PCR test for Coronavirus and personal information like age and sex.

Researchers used those self-reported data from the app to assess three models for predicting Covid in advance, which involved using one dataset to train a given model before its performance was tested on another set. The training set included almost 183,000 people who reported symptoms from 16 October to 30 November 2020, while the test dataset consisted of more than 15,000 participants with data between 16 October and 30 November.

The three models were: 1) a statistical method called logical regression; 2) a National Health Service (NHS) algorithm, and; 3) an Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach known as a ‘hierarchical Gaussian process’. Of the three prediction models, the AI approach performed the best, so it was then used to identify patterns in the data. The AI prediction model was sensitive enough to find which symptoms were most relevant in various groups of people.

The subgroups were occupation (healthcare professional versus non-healthcare), age group (16-39, 40-59, 60-79, 80+ years old), sex (male or female), Body-Mass Index (BMI as underweight, normal, overweight/obese) and several well-known health conditions. According to results produced by the AI model, loss of smell was the most relevant early symptom among both healthcare and non-healthcare workers, and the two groups also reported chest pain and a persistent cough.

The symptoms varied among age groups: loss of smell had less relevance to people over 60 years old, for instance, and seemed irrelevant to those over 80 — highlighting age as a key factor in early Covid detection. There was no big difference between sexes for their reported symptoms, but shortness of breath, fatigue and chills/shivers were more relevant signs for men than for women.

No particular patterns were found in BMI subgroups either and, in terms of health conditions, heart disease was most relevant for predicting Covid. As the study’s symptoms were from 2020, its results might only apply to the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and Alpha variant – the two variants with highest prevalence in the UK that year.

The predictions wouldn’t have been possible without the self-reported data from the ZOE COVID Symptom Study project, a non-profit collaboration between scientists and personalized health company ZOE, which was co-founded by genetic epidemiologist Tim Spector of Kings College London.

The project’s website keeps an up-to-date ranking of the top 5 Covid symptoms reported by British people who are now fully vaccinated (with a Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine), have so far received one of the two doses, or are still unvaccinated. Those top 5 symptoms provide a useful resource if you want to know which signs are common for the most prevalent variant circulating in a population — currently Delta – as distinct variants can be associated with different symptoms.

When a new variant emerges in future, you could pass some personal information (such as age) to the AI prediction model so it shows the early symptoms most relevant to you — and, if you developed those symptoms, take a Covid test and perhaps self-isolate before you transmit the virus to other people. As the new study concludes, such steps would help alleviate stress on public health services:

“Early detection of SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals is crucial to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and efficiently allocate medical resources.” Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

JV Chamary

JV Chamary

I’m a science communicator and award-winning journalist with a PhD in evolutionary biology. I specialize in explaining scientific concepts that appear in popular culture and mainly write about health, nature and technology. I spent several years at BBC Science Focus magazine, running the features section and writing about everything from gay genes and internet memes to the science of death and origin of life. I’ve also contributed to Scientific American and Men’s Health. My latest book is ’50 Biology Ideas You Really Need to Know’.

Source: Scientists Predict Early Covid-19 Symptoms Using AI (And An App)

.

Critics:

Healthcare providers and researchers are faced with an exponentially increasing volume of information about COVID-19, which makes it difficult to derive insights that can inform treatment. In response, AWS launched CORD-19 Search, a new search website powered by machine learning, that can help researchers quickly and easily search for research papers and documents and answer questions like “When is the salivary viral load highest for COVID-19?”

Built on the Allen Institute for AI’s CORD-19 open research dataset of more than 128,000 research papers and other materials, this machine learning solution can extract relevant medical information from unstructured text and delivers robust natural-language query capabilities, helping to accelerate the pace of discovery.

In the field of medical imaging, meanwhile, researchers are using machine learning to help recognize patterns in images, enhancing the ability of radiologists to indicate the probability of disease and diagnose it earlier.

UC San Diego Health has engineered a new method to diagnose pneumonia earlier, a condition associated with severe COVID-19. This early detection helps doctors quickly triage patients to the appropriate level of care even before a COVID-19 diagnosis is confirmed. Trained with 22,000 notations by human radiologists, the machine learning algorithm overlays x-rays with colour-coded maps that indicate pneumonia probability. With credits donated from the AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative, these methods have now been deployed to every chest x-ray and CT scan throughout UC San Diego Health in a clinical research study.

Related Links:

Governments must build trust in AI to fight COVID-19 – Here’s how they can do it

This AI model has predicted which patients will get the sickest from COVID-19

Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations

What history tells us about pandemics’ impact on inflation

How to back an inclusive post-COVID recovery

Survey: How US employees feel about a full return to the workplace

COVID-19 is accelerating stakeholder capitalism

COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 30 July

 
 
%d bloggers like this: