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McGill University trains an AI to train more convincing chatbots
 Chatbots need help to seem human David GABIS/Alamy Stock Photo

“I can’t define obscenity, but I know it when I see it.” US Justice Potter Stewart’s famous turn of phrase could also be an apt description of the Turing test, our judgment of whether an AI seems convincingly human. Little clues immediately make it obvious that Siri or Alexa are driven by nonhuman intelligences, but you might be hard pressed to put your finger on exactly what gave it away.

But a new AI can do it. Given a snippet of dialogue between a chatbot and a human, the system predicts how convincingly human you or I would rate the chatbot’s response. This could be useful for building better virtual assistants.

Today’s chatbots are great for specific tasks – they can order you a pizza or check the weather – but try asking one if it’s enjoying the weather.

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Computer scientists are divided about how the Turing test should work, but most agree that if a chatbot can fool a majority of human judges into thinking they are talking to another human, then it passes the test. That’s not a problem for big companies like Amazon, which uses large teams of human testers to help evaluate Alexa, its voice-operated personal assistant. But for firms with fewer resources it’s expensive and time-consuming to use humans as judges, says Ryan Lowe at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Turing test

Would it be possible to cut humans out of this process altogether and just automate the Turing test instead? To find out, Lowe designed an AI system that automatically rates how human-like a piece of chatbot-generated dialogue sounds.

He chose 1000 short Twitter conversations, and got human volunteers to add a response. Then he got several chatbots of varying abilities to add their own response. Then he asked a different group of human volunteers to rate all the responses according to how human-like they were.

Lowe then trained his neural network on these human ratings, teaching it to differentiate between convincing and unconvincing responses.

After its training, Lowe’s algorithm was able to match the judgment of the human evaluators. However, it only took a fraction of a second to reach its decision, vastly speeding up the current process of reaching such a consensus.

“This will mean you can create better chatbots,” says Oliver Lemon at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. You could build this into chatbots to train them to maximise their evaluation scores so they gradually learn to respond in a human-like way. This is very similar to the way that some of the best image recognition algorithms are trained.

The system still needs some tweaking. Sometimes being indistinguishable from a human will make a system less useful, Lowe says. For example, answering “I don’t know” to a question is very human, but it’s a frustrating response to hear from a chatbot.

Lowe plans to open-source his chatbot evaluator, so that other researchers can use it to improve their own chatbots.

Output: Ryan Lowe of McGill University, Montreal has developed a neural network that can differentiate between convincing and unconvincing chatbot responses to human questions, matching the judgement of human evaluators. The system could help teach chatbots to become more "human-like" much more quickly than is currently possible. Lowe intendeds to open-source his chatbot evaluator, so that it can be used by other researchers.


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P2P lender Ratesetter faces $80m of endangered loans
 The peer-to-peer lender Ratesetter has been hit by £80m of struggling loans in the first major setback for the nascent online lending sector.

The company said it would use its own funds to prevent losses being taken by its 50,000 users, who are mostly small investors using the website in order to lend their savings to other individuals and benefit from higher interest rates than are available at high street banks. Some £2bn has been lent through the site, which currently promises returns of up to 4.7%.

Peter Behrens, Ratesetter’s co-founder, said: “We did something on behalf of our lenders that was quite clearly a mistake. It is not right for them to take that hit.”

The endangered loans are among the first signs that the fashionable peer-to-peer lending sector might not be immune to the problems that have plagued traditional banking. They have emerged just as the company has started to promote itself more as a business with establishment connections and less as a startup.

The City grandee Paul Manduca, chairman of Prudential, has just taken over as Ratesetter’s chair. Details of the website’s efforts to correct past mistakes come just weeks after the business’s co-founder and chief executive, Rhydian Lewis, was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list.

The company admitted that it had made £36m of loans to a company called Vehicle Trading Group Limited (VTG), a motor finance holding company that then fell into administration because it had taken on too much debt. Ratesetter said it had acquired the vehicle loans out of administration “in order to best protect our lenders’ interests” and that it would “expand our motor finance lending capabilities by integrating the two businesses into Ratesetter product lines”.

It also loaned a further £12m to an advertising company called Adpod, which during 2015 became 50% owned by VTG. The website admits that the loans, of which £8.5m are still outstanding, should not have cleared its own credit policy. It has now fully acquired Adpod to make sure that the loans will be repaid to the website’s users in full.

A further £32m has been loaned via George Banco, a provider of consumer credit, in which Ratesetter had taken an equity stake. Ratesetter now says it is withdrawing from its partnership with the company and will only be a “passive shareholder in the business”.

On Tuesday, the peer-to-peer lender told users lending money via its website that they could withdraw their deposits free of charge. The company said: “If you feel this information changes your investment, we are giving you the option to review your investment with us and sell out without incurring any fees.”

However, lenders were told that they might have to wait 30 days to get their money back.

Output: Ratesetter, a London-based peer-to-peer lender, has suffered a hit of £80m ($104m) in struggling loans. In order to protect its 50,000 users, the company has had to dig into its own pockets. Ratesetter, which has seen £2bn lent via its online platform, gave millions in loans to two companies which subsequently failed, and admitted the loans should not have cleared its credit policy. "We did something on behalf of our lenders that was quite clearly a mistake. It is not right for them to take that hit", said co-founder Peter Behrens.


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Telegraph Media Group withdraws from Project Arena
 by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, July 18, 2017

There is rarely a conversation in media circles that doesn't lament the ever increasing power of the Google and Facebook duopoly. So for the major UK newspaper groups to band together seemed like a really good idea. As of today, however, just two are left fighting the good fight.

Yes, Telegraph Media Group is the latest to drop out of what is now called Project Arena -- previously referred to as Project Juno. This comes after the Daily Mail Group Trust and Trinity Mirror pulled out at the beginning of the year. That means that The Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph have gone, as have the sites for Mail Online, Daily Mail, Mail On Sunday, Metro.co.uk, The Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People, among other titles.

The original idea was that the duopoly of Facebook and Google could cause the UK papers to lose out on GBP500m worth of revenue over the next decade, which they would stand a better chance of winning back by banding together. Today, however, just News UK -- publisher of The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun -- is left teamed up with the publisher of The Guardian and The Observer.

The departing publishers have, of course, publicly wished those they leave behind the very best for the future, but there is no real reason provided for why something that appeared to be such a good idea a year ago is now being ditched.

I'd like to hazard a guess that there were a couple of reasons. There's the very obvious battle over who would control and run any joint enterprise. The aforementioned papers are each in fierce competition with one another, and so to put aside those differences is one thing, to agree someone else's guys can run it and decide how the proceeds are shared is quite another.

That's the most obvious battle -- a turf war that the big titles just couldn't get past. I'd venture that publishers pulling out obviously felt they had more to gain by going their own way and not sharing the spoils of a greatly increased, pooled advertising reach.

Clearly, data would be at the top of the pile here. Publishers were always very wary of passing on valuable data to advertising networks and the work put into supply-side platforms has had the goal of utilising a publisher's own data to get the best price for its inventory. Presumably, header bidding has also helped when utilised, allowing publishers a wider reach of potential buyers before they cascade down to the lowest bidder.

You may want to speculate that in an era of fake news and brand safety issues, quality newspaper publishers feel that more ad dollars will flow their way as advertisers look for reputable organisations to post their branding messages.

If I were a betting man, I'd probably side with the potential argument that these longtime adversaries could do much together but sharing data and finding a way of remunerating the assorted players fairly was probably a step too far.

It's hard to fight the feeling that this is probably the beginning of the end for Project Arena. News Corp is making a lot of noise about its in-house programmatic platform, which would be a reason for News UK to at least temporarily decide to remain doing its own thing, once it is launched later this year.

It seemed like a good idea, but it looks like a partnership of foes that was reliant on sharing data was a step too far the UK press to take in the fight to ward off the Facebook and Google duopoly.

Output: Telegraph Media Group has become the latest UK media publisher to bow out of Project Arena, an ambitious coalition of media groups aimed at tackling the Facebook-Google duopoly. Its departure leaves The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun (all published by News UK) as well as The Guardian and The Observer still standing. This sparked suggestions that bitter rivalries between the outlets contributed to the project's downfall, as well aversions to passing on jealously guarded data to advertising networks.


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Sizmek acquires marketing software Rocket Fuel for $145m
 NEW YORK, July 18, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sizmek Inc., the largest people-based creative optimization and data activation platform delivering impressions that inspire, today announced it has entered into a definitive acquisition agreement with Rocket Fuel Inc., an industry leading predictive marketing platform that uses AI to anticipate optimal consumer response to messaging. Under the terms of the agreement, an affiliate of Sizmek, backed by Vector Capital, will commence a tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of Rocket Fuel common stock for $2.60 per share in cash, which represents an enterprise value for Rocket Fuel of approximately $145 million.

The acquisition brings together two of the world’s most respected names in advertising technology, to create one of the largest independent marketing platforms built for agencies and brands. It will fuse together AI powered predictive analytics, dynamic creative and media optimization to drive true campaign performance.

Collectively, Sizmek and Rocket Fuel service more than 20,000 advertisers and 3,600 agencies to global audiences in over 70 countries, and service a client base comprised of the world’s most recognized brands and agencies.

“The acquisition of Rocket Fuel brings omni-channel creativity and AI-enabled decisioning together under one roof, providing our clients with a self-service predictive marketing platform that optimizes campaigns across the entire media plan,” said Dr. Mark Grether, Executive Chairman of Sizmek. “This is the next logical step in marketing automation–media optimization and full creative optimization combined, bringing together the context and the creative for the optimal consumer experience. The result is advertising that is deeply personalized, highly intuitive, and AI-enabled for peak performance, redefining the boundaries of creative possibility and media execution.”

“By integrating with Sizmek, we’re effectively combining the powerful brand-building insights delivered via our Predictive Marketing Platform’s Decision Engine, with Sizmek’s creative optimization platform. This union creates one integrated, full-funnel solution to enable agencies and their brands to address key performance objectives across paid, owned and earned media,” said Randy Wootton, Chief Executive Officer of Rocket Fuel. “This transaction accelerates our global expansion efforts in more than 70 countries, which empowers us to provide agencies and brands with more tools, exceptional service and support worldwide.”

Upon completion of the transaction, Rocket Fuel will become a privately-held company. The transaction, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2017, is conditioned upon satisfaction of a minimum tender offer condition, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The Rocket Fuel board of directors unanimously approved the acquisition agreement. Stockholders holding approximately 24% of Rocket Fuel’s common stock have entered into a tender and support agreement with Sizmek pursuant to which such stockholders agreed to tender all of their shares into the tender offer. This agreement terminates if, among other things, the Rocket Fuel board of directors withdraws its recommendation in favor of the tender offer pursuant to the terms of the acquisition agreement.

Needham & Company, LLC is serving as financial advisor to Rocket Fuel. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Professional Corporation is acting as Rocket Fuel’s legal advisor. Kirkland & Ellis LLP is acting as Sizmek’s legal advisor.

For more information, please visit www.sizmek.com.

About Sizmek

Sizmek creates impressions that inspire through its people-based creative optimization platform. In the digital world, creating impressions that inspire is vital to building meaningful, long-lasting relationships with your customers. Sizmek provides powerful, integrated solutions so creative and data work together, optimizing campaigns across all media. When your messages resonate, your impact amplifies, and your business reaches new heights. Sizmek operates its platform in more than 70 countries, with local offices providing award-winning service throughout North America, EMEA, LATAM, and APAC, and connecting more than 20,000 advertisers and 3,600 agencies to audiences around the world, serving over 2.3 trillion impressions each year.

About Rocket Fuel

Rocket Fuel Inc. is a predictive marketing software company that uses artificial intelligence to empower agencies and marketers to anticipate people’s need for products and services. Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., Rocket Fuel has more than 20 offices worldwide and trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “FUEL.” Rocket Fuel, the Rocket Fuel logo, Moment Scoring, Advertising That Learns and Marketing That Learns are trademarks or registered trademarks of Rocket Fuel Inc. in the United States and other countries.

Cautions Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding future events, including but not limited to the acquisition of Rocket Fuel Inc. (“Rocket Fuel”) by Sizmek Inc. (“Sizmek”), the capabilities of the combined company following the acquisition, and Rocket Fuel’s expectations for its Media Services business and second half financial results. Words such as "expect," "believe," "intend," "plan," "goal," "focus," "anticipate," and other similar words are also intended to identify forward-looking statements.

These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated by such statements, including, without limitation, due to: uncertainties as to the timing of the tender offer and the acquisition; the possibility that competing offers will be made; the possibility that various closing conditions for the tender offer or the acquisition may not be satisfied or waived, including that a governmental entity may prohibit, delay or refuse to grant approval for the consummation of the acquisition; the effects of disruption from the tender offer or acquisition on Rocket Fuel’s business; the fact that the announcement and pendency of the tender offer and acquisition may make it more difficult to establish or maintain relationships with employees, suppliers and other business partners; the effects of disruption caused by the tender offer or acquisition making it more difficult to maintain relationships with employees, customers, vendors and other business partners; and the risk that stockholder litigation in connection with the tender offer or the acquisition may result in significant costs of defense, indemnification and liability.

Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated are under the caption “Risk Factors” in Rocket Fuel’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on March 16, 2017 and in subsequent SEC filings. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release, and Sizmek expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to update the forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which the statements were made.

Important Additional Information and Where to Find It

In connection with the proposed acquisition of Rocket Fuel, Sizmek, through an affiliate, will commence a tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of Rocket Fuel. The tender offer has not commenced. This communication is for informational purposes only and is neither an offer to purchase nor a solicitation of an offer to sell shares of Rocket Fuel. It is also not a substitute for the tender offer materials that Sizmek will file with the SEC upon commencement of the tender offer. At the time that the tender offer is commenced, Sizmek will file tender offer materials on Schedule TO with the SEC, and Rocket Fuel will file a Solicitation/Recommendation Statement on Schedule 14D-9 with the SEC with respect to the tender offer. THE TENDER OFFER MATERIALS (INCLUDING AN OFFER TO PURCHASE, A RELATED LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL AND CERTAIN OTHER TENDER OFFER DOCUMENTS) AND THE SOLICITATION/RECOMMENDATION STATEMENT WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION THAT SHOULD BE READ CAREFULLY AND CONSIDERED BY ROCKET FUEL’S STOCKHOLDERS BEFORE ANY DECISION IS MADE WITH RESPECT TO THE TENDER OFFER. Both the tender offer materials and the solicitation/recommendation statement will be made available to Rocket Fuel’s stockholders free of charge. A free copy of the tender offer materials and the solicitation/recommendation statement will also be made available to all of Rocket Fuel’s stockholders by contacting Rocket Fuel at ir@rocketfuel.com or by phone at (650) 481-6082, or by visiting Rocket Fuel’s website (www.rocketfuel.com). In addition, the tender offer materials and the solicitation/recommendation statement (and all other documents filed by Rocket Fuel with the SEC) will be available at no charge on the SEC’s website (www.sec.gov) upon filing with the SEC. ROCKET FUEL’S STOCKHOLDERS ARE ADVISED TO READ THE TENDER OFFER MATERIALS AND THE SOLICITATION/RECOMMENDATION STATEMENT, AS EACH MAY BE AMENDED OR SUPPLEMENTED FROM TIME TO TIME, AND ANY OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS FILED BY SIZMEK OR ROCKET FUEL WITH THE SEC WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BEFORE THEY MAKE ANY DECISION WITH RESPECT TO THE TENDER OFFER. THESE MATERIALS WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE TENDER OFFER, SIZMEK AND ROCKET FUEL.

Output: Texan online advertising firm Sizmek has agreed to definitively acquire predictive marketing software company Rocket Fuel, in a deal which values the latter business at $145m. The move will create one of the world's biggest independent marketing platforms built for agencies and brands, taking in 20,000 advertisers and 3,600 agencies across 70 countries. The deal is set to complete in Q3 2017, following which Rocket Fuel will become a privately held company.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Sizmek acquires marketing software Rocket Fuel for $145m
 Ad tech firm Sizmek has bought predictive marketing software company Rocket Fuel, in a US$145m acquisition that further consolidates the ad tech market.

Predictions of more ad tech firms banding together have been circulating for sometime as the booming automation market continues to fire out startup after startup.

In April Oracle inked a $US850m deal to acquire digital measurement and ad verification company Moat and other notable deals in the past year include Adobe buying DSP TubeMogul and Salesforce buying marketing-data startup Krux. Mobile ad tech company Smaato was acquired by a Chinese firm for $148 million; Taboola acquired ConvertMedia; tech platform RadiumOne's assets were bought by global company RhythmOne last month – the list goes on.

Also this morning, ad exchange Rubicon Project has acquired nToggle; a tech company that makes it easier and more cost effective for programmatic buyers to find the inventory they’re looking for among the billions of bid requests they receive each day.

Rumours are also rife that Snapchat is shopping for ad tech companies to help appeal to marketers. Acquisition talks with AdRoll specifically are said to have occurred.

Self-professed “people-based creative optimisation and data activation platform” Sizmek, which itself was acquired by Vector Capital for $US122 million in August last year, has entered into a definitive acquisition agreement with Rocket Fuel Inc in its quest to create one of the largest independent marketing platforms built for agencies and brands.

Under the terms of the agreement, an affiliate of Sizmek, backed by Vector Capital, will commence a tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of Rocket Fuel common stock for $2.60 per share in cash, which represents an enterprise value for NASDAQ-listed Rocket Fuel of approximately $145 million.

Rocket Fuel propelled to a great height when launched by alumni of Yahoo in 2008; in its 2013 IPO it raised about US$116 million; sold shares for US$29 each and in Australia hired eBay's advertising GM Eastwood to kick-start the firm Down Under in 2014.

Many bad headlines later - such as The Street's 'Rocket Fuel Stock Is a Dud' and Forbes' The 'Demise Of The Hot IPO: Rocket Fuel Collapse' – Eastwood then left and it's had at least two major rounds of global lay-offs with the most recent in January as it attempts to save US$20 million in operating expenses.

See: How Rocket Fuel plans to reignite its business

Executive chairman of Sizmek, Dr Mark Grether, says the move is the next logical step in marketing automation and media optimisation and the result is advertising that is “deeply personalised, highly intuitive and AI-enabled for peak performance, redefining the boundaries of creative possibility and media execution”.

“The acquisition of Rocket Fuel brings omnichannel creativity and AI-enabled decisioning together under one roof, providing our clients with a self-service predictive marketing platform that optimises campaigns across the entire media plan,” Grether says.

Rocket Fuel, a predictive marketing platform that uses AI to anticipate consumer response to messaging, combined with Sizmek, will service more than 20,000 advertisers and 3,600 agencies to global audiences in over 70 countries.

An exciting chapter

In a personal email to clients Grether explains how Sizmek is built on the belief that creating impressions that inspire is vital to building meaningful, long-lasting relationships with customers.

“Our particular combination of technology, intelligence, creative solutions, and award-winning support empowers you to create advertising experiences that cultivate deeper relationships and drive campaign performance around the world,” he says.

“We’re reinforcing our commitment to you by bringing together the best of both worlds—omnichannel creativity coupled with AI-enabled decisioning. With the integration, you’ll gain access to a leading DSP and DMP and the most robust dynamic creative optimisation and ad serving capabilities all under one roof. Together, our self-service predictive marketing platform will help you to truly optimise your campaigns across the entire media plan.

“The Rocket Fuel acquisition marks an exciting chapter in our relationship, with a promise to you - with Sizmek, you create impressions that inspire and gain the power to connect with your audiences in ways you never thought possible, which in turn, produces extraordinary results.”

Takeover history

In August 2015 Rocket Fuel was in the limelight regarding a takeover deal from marketing cloud company and rival, Gravity4.

The private San Francisco-founded business, then run in Australia by ex-MediaCom AU chief digital officer turned Gravity4 MD Joshua Rex. It was thought to have made an offer of about US$260 million.

At the time, Gravity4’s founder and CEO Gurbaksh Chahal, who is also the 'disgraced' founder of RadiumOne, wrote a letter to Rocket Fuel's chairman George John and its interim CEO and director Monte Zweben. Rocket Fuel said it did not constitute a credible offer.

Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au

Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.

Output: Texan online advertising firm Sizmek has agreed to definitively acquire predictive marketing software company Rocket Fuel, in a deal which values the latter business at $145m. The move will create one of the world's biggest independent marketing platforms built for agencies and brands, taking in 20,000 advertisers and 3,600 agencies across 70 countries. The deal is set to complete in Q3 2017, following which Rocket Fuel will become a privately held company.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Google launches browsing tool created with captured user data
 Get more of the stuff you care about

With these updates to the feed, it’s easier than ever to stay in the know about exactly the things you care about and see more content to inform, inspire and entertain you. You’ll spend less time and energy trying to keep up with your interests and more time enjoying and cultivating them. Whether you’re a pet-loving, Nietzsche-reading, sports fanatic; a hip-hop head and burgeoning brewmaster; or anything in between, your feed should fit your fancy.

Output: Google has launched a personalised feed of articles, videos and other content in its app for iOS and Android, as the search giant attempts to engage users in the same way as Facebook or Twitter. Anyone performing a search in the app can click the follow button, bringing up a selection of categories. While Google said in a blog post the content is designed to "inform, inspire and entertain", critics have called the feed stale compared to Facebook and "surprisingly clumsy".


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Google launches browsing tool created with captured user data
 Google today is rolling out its take on the news feed, a personalized stream of articles, videos, and other content. The feed will appear in its flagship app for Android and iOS, simply called Google. The feed, which includes items drawn from your search history and topics you choose to follow, is designed to turn Google’s app into a destination for browsing as well as search. Google is hoping you’ll begin opening its app the way you do Facebook or Twitter, checking it reflexively throughout the day for quick hits of news and information.

Google previewed its new feed in December, when it introduced the feature to its Android app. Previously, the space below the search bar was reserved for Google Now, the company’s predictive search feature, which displayed personalized weather, traffic, sports scores, and other information.

With the introduction of the feed, the Google Now brand is going away, and the updates it used to contain are moving to a secondary tab called “updates.” The main space underneath the search bar will now contain a stream of cards related to your interests. In a demo at Google’s offices in San Francisco on Tuesday, a product manager’s feed included articles about the Oakland Athletics, a trending article about the Tour de France, and a 10-month-old blog post about a classical musician who she had previously seen in concert.

Google Now is going away

In most feeds, a 10-month-old blog post would appear stale and unwelcome. Google says it’s a sign of the company’s strengths — it can reach into the long tail of articles on the web, and surface them to audiences that missed them the first time around. Facebook and Twitter give priority to latest updates; Google says it’s working to prioritize relevance.

When you perform searches in the app, a subset of results will now show a “follow” button alongside results. News, sports, and entertainment stories are among the categories where you can expect to see follow buttons to start. Tap them and Google will work to bring you related content into the feed.

You can customize the feed by tapping the three dots on top of each card. From there, you can follow a subject or share the item on other social networks. You can also tell Google you’re “done with this story” and avoid seeing future updates, or tell it you don’t want to see any more articles from a particular publisher. You can’t follow individual publishers today, but publishers will surely clamor for it, and Google told me it will consider adding that feature eventually.

The Google feed came to my account Tuesday afternoon, and I spent a long while scrolling through it. The feed offered up articles on several of my interests: Netflix, Instagram, Game of Thrones, and the video game I’m currently playing (and have watched a bunch of YouTube videos about). The best topic I saw in the feed was “fake news,” and featured an article from Lifehacker on how to spot it.

Other social feeds can feel more lively

Scroll far enough and you’ll get a basic, ambient sense of the day’s news. But few of the items I saw compelled me to read the article. Part of what makes Facebook and Twitter’s feeds compelling is the social endorsement that links there carry: you read because your friends tell you to, and you trust your friends. They also give you commentary and analysis around what you’re reading. In short, they feel lively — and the Google feed can feel stale by comparison.

It also draws on the underlying search technology responsible for Google’s featured snippets, which have historically spread misinformation about a wide range of subjects. The Outline reported earlier this year that Google promoted false news stories asserting that, among other things, Barack Obama was the “king of America” and was plotting a coup. Ben Gomes, who runs search at Google, told reporters Tuesday that the company had implemented “a whole bunch of changes” to prevent similar misinformation from spreading in the feed.

The most surprising thing about the Google feed, at least at launch, is how little video it contains. At a time when its peers are racing to cram as much video in their feeds as possible, Google’s is still mostly a text-based affair. When YouTube cards appear, videos won’t play within the feed — tapping kicks you out to the app or to a mobile-web version of the video. The cards are formatted in such a way that it’s easy to miss that they’re even videos. It’s all surprisingly clumsy.

Surprisingly little video in the Google feed

For now, Google says there won’t be ads in the feed, although I imagine it would love to put them there eventually. Google is an ad business, after all, and it’s running out of places to put new ads on mobile devices. Earlier this year, it added a fourth advertising unit to search results in its mobile app, making you scroll down three screens before you see unpaid search results for some queries.

But with each passing year, we have had fewer reasons to open the Google app. Native apps from Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and others command more of our attention, making us less likely to begin our queries at the search bar. More recently, Siri, Alexa, and Cortana have been built into our device hardware, allowing us to bypass Google and search with our voice. Financially, Google is still on solid footing. But the trends are worrisome. Analyst Ben Thompson, among others, has written about the prospect that we have already hit “Peak Google.”

Output: Google has launched a personalised feed of articles, videos and other content in its app for iOS and Android, as the search giant attempts to engage users in the same way as Facebook or Twitter. Anyone performing a search in the app can click the follow button, bringing up a selection of categories. While Google said in a blog post the content is designed to "inform, inspire and entertain", critics have called the feed stale compared to Facebook and "surprisingly clumsy".


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Brits making fake holiday sickness claims rises 500%
 Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

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Unfamiliar food, excessive booze and too many hours spent cooking in the sun means an upset stomach can be a summer holiday inevitability, but a rise in fraudulent travel insurance sickness claims means Brits now risk being banned from all-inclusive breaks altogether.

Travel bosses have been left embarrassed by the “British-only” trend which has seen a 500 per cent increase in the number of compensation claims for holiday sickness since 2013 – a rise attributed to the growth of questionable claims management companies and “easy win” loopholes in legislation.

According to travel agents’ association ABTA, which has launched the Stop Sickness Scams campaign, claims management companies are cold-calling holidaymakers on their return home and even approaching tourists in resorts, encouraging them to make illness claims against their tour operator.

Research by law firm BLM shows that 5 per cent of all-inclusive holidaymakers have been targeted while on holiday, with a further 5 per cent receiving an unsolicited phone call upon their return home.

And while most insurance companies require medical evidence of illness, unscrupulous claims companies have less-exacting standards. “With the claims going into third party claims management agencies who are actively seeking these types of claims, there have been reports of simple packets of medication being supplied as ‘evidence’ of the incident,” says Charlotte Lee-Field, head of claims at TIFGroup.

Sarah Dawson was on holiday with her family in Costa Brava in May when she was approached by a “respectable-looking” man who tried to convince her to make a claim. “He said all we needed was a chemist’s receipt for diarrhoea medicine, and that we wouldn’t even have to go through our own holiday insurance provider. It sounded really straightforward – I’m not surprised people are going for it.”

Such is the prevalence of the scam, some hotels are talking of banning Britons fron all-inclusive holidays (Getty)

The trend has been likened to the spate of “easy money” whiplash claims seen in recent years, before the Ministry of Justice put a cap on pay outs. “Whiplash fees are now capped at £180 but prior to that claims compensation companies could charge anything with typical amounts being around £750,” says Phil Carr, director of sales at ROCK Insurance. “With the obvious decrease in fees we’re now seeing a new unregulated route for these organisations and overseas sickness claims do not have the same amount of capping. You only have to search on the web for “sickness claims” and you are greeted by dozens of organisations wanting your no win, no fee business.”

Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Show all 12 1 / 12 Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Dubai Travel blogger Ross Jennings, aka the First Piper, is aiming to play the bagpipes in every country in the world. Here he is playing in the Dubai desert. Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Malaysia Ross lugged bagpipes and a kilt for seven hours up Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia. Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world India Ross says: "Two years ago I never even contemplated the idea of piping in India let alone in front of one of the worlds' most iconic sites. The Taj Mahal is jaw-droppingly beautiful, and to have her as my subject for the day was one for the bagpipe bucket list." Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Bahrain In Bahrain, women wearing the niqab asked Ross to pose with them. Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Singapore Ross says: "Some of the most impressive types of buildings in this country have to be the HDBs (the buildings behind me!), which are apparently the Singaporean equivalent to council housing. Sad to think these colourful ones are soon to be knocked down." Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Kuwait Ross says: "Apparently there's a strict noise law in Kuwait, but I'm yet to be subject to it, so I'm having a blast." Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Kuala Lumpur Ross says: "Serenading the twins... Couldn't have been more excited to pipe at the top of the Petronas Twin Towers!" Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world India Ross visited the Hawa Mahal, an elaborately designed palace in Jaipur that was built for royal women to spy on people in the street. Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Laos Ross says: "Based on a few recs from travellers and locals, I headed North from Luang Prabang to a riverside gem called Muang Ngoi, where the sunsets were incredible and the stars at night were totally out of this world." Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Liberia Ross says: "Apart from the alarmingly jet-black rock, my beach walk and bagpipe session felt thoroughly Scottish as the rain kicked in and we ran for cover. Much of the Liberian coastline is like this but there are some beautiful beaches which one day (I hope) brings more tourists!" Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Lisbon "Forget Paris and Rome they say?! Head to Lisbon eh?? Couldn't agree more!" says Ross Jennings. Ross Jennings Travel blogger bagpipes his way around the world Nairobi Ross's trip to a Nairobi nature reserve brought an audience of giraffes. Ross Jennings

With sickness payouts ranging between £500 and £2,000, and often more – certainly enough to cover the cost of next year’s holiday – it’s easy to see why holidaymakers are enticed by this seemingly victimless, risk-free crime. But industry heads are working to ensure those making fraudulent claims are caught and held accountable – and when they are, the consequences can be serious.

Holidaymakers found guilty can expect a criminal record and a fine in the UK, as well as severe punishments from the country in question. For example, a Greek hotel is currently pursuing a counter-claim for £170,000 against a British couple where they have evidence to prove the couple made a fraudulent claim, while in Spain, anyone found guilty could face up to three years in jail with no opportunity for a suspended sentence.

Sickness insurance scams seem like easy money, but perpetrators risk fines or imprisonment if caught (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images)

And then there’s the wider impact, for those that will struggle to make legitimate claims in the face of tighter bureaucratic hurdles (“their claims will be treated by tour operators with greater scepticism and more scrutiny,” says Ian Brown from law firm Trowers & Hamlins), and for British holidaymakers in general. “Hoteliers are likely to charge British tour operators more for rooms, which will undoubtedly need to be passed down to the consumer,” says Carr.

“The Insurance industry always has to accommodate the cost of claims and increases in fraudulent claims will ultimately have to be spread across all customers to keep pricing competitive. Equally as prices of holidaying aboard increase, alongside the impact of Brexit and the rising price of insurance, we will increasingly see more and more people risking travelling uninsured in order to cut additional costs from their trip.”

According to Travel Supermarket, nearly half of all British travellers (46 per cent) have gone away without insurance at some point – a figure that could well rise if policies become more expensive. Would you risk travelling without it? A dodgy stomach is one thing, but many holidaymakers have found themselves in much more unusual scenarios. Here are 10 of the most baffling travel claims insurers have heard.

1. A woman was hospitalised in the US with what she thought was an illness, only to give birth to twins prematurely – she hadn’t known she was pregnant.

2. A campervan in Australia had such a bad case of bedbugs that the hire company advised the customer to set fire to it (with their belongings inside) and make a claim on their travel insurance.

3. A woman injured her pelvis while skiing. Due to her tall stature the village doctor’s X-ray machine wasn’t up to the job so she had to be X-rayed by the local vet.

4. A man made a claim for his contact lenses after losing one while getting a massage with a “happy ending”.

5. An insurance company flew a couple to Italy to find their missing daughter, only to discover that she’d met a man in a nightclub and was spending a few days in bed with him, ignoring her phone.

6. A man tried to claim back the cost of his safari because he felt he didn’t see enough wildlife.

7. Two Devonshire holidaymakers tried to claim for damage to their car’s paintwork after it was licked by a cow.

8. A family’s camping holiday in Wales was ruined when a parachutist from a nearby airbase landed on their tent, destroying their tent and everything inside.

9. A man filed a claim for two coconuts, lost on his way home from his travels. The claim was denied not only because it’s forbidden to bring such items back into the country, but because he wanted £1,000 for each of them.

10. A father tried to file a claim for a disastrous haircut his teenage daughter got on holiday in Spain. He said she was so upset it ruined the holiday for the whole family.

Output: Questionable claims management companies and "easy win" loopholes in insurance law have led to a 500% increase in fraudulent travel insurance claims by British holidaymakers since 2013, the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) has said. The companies have targeted UK sunseekers, cold calling or even approaching them at resorts, encouraging them to make claims against their tour agents. ABTA has launched a Stop Sickness Scams campaign to quash the practice, which Phil Carr, director of sales at ROCK Insurance, said is likely to lead to increased costs for tourists and tougher hurdles for legitimate claimants.


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Judge refuses to dismiss lawsuit on inflated facebook ad metrics
 by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, July 18, 2017

Siding against Facebook, a federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against Facebook over allegations of inflated video metrics.

U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson in the Northern District of California ruled late last week that a group of six marketers can proceed with claims that the social networking platform violated an implied contractual obligation to use "reasonable care."

The court battle stems from revelations that Facebook misreported two metrics related to its video ads. The result of both errors was that Facebook inflated the average time spent viewing ad clips by 60% to 80%. The company said last September that its mistaken calculations didn't affect billing. (This spring, Facebook acknowledged that it also overstated the number of times consumers clicked on some mobile ads; the company said it had issued refunds to affected advertisers.)

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Six marketers -- including bankrupt tech incubator Quirky and the individuals Tom Letizia, Mark Fierro and Greg Agustin -- subsequently sued Facebook. They argued that the misrepresentations led them to believe that Facebook's video ads were more valuable than they actually were, resulting in inflated prices.

Henderson said in his ruling that the marketers could proceed with claims stemming from allegations that Facebook failed to use reasonable care when reporting metrics.

"Under California law, every contract contains an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing," Henderson wrote. "Plaintiffs allege Facebook breached this duty by incorrectly measuring viewer engagement, including inaccurate data in its interface, and reporting inaccurate advertising metrics."

The ruling wasn't a complete loss for Facebook. Henderson also dismissed several other claims by the marketers, including that the social networking service violated California's law against unfair competition. That dismissal was without prejudice -- meaning that the marketers can beef up their allegations and bring them again. Henderson gave the marketers until August 14 to do so.

A Facebook spokesperson said the company was pleased that some of the counts were dismissed. The spokesperson added that case "has no merit" and that the company will defend itself "vigorously."

Output: A US federal court judge has ruled that six marketers can proceed with their lawsuit against Facebook, who they claim broke an "implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing" after the social media giant inflated metrics results by between 60% and 80%. US District Court Judge Thelton Henderson in the Northern District of California agreed with the plaintiffs' allegation that "Facebook breached this duty by incorrectly measuring viewer engagement". However, Henderson also dismissed other claims against Facebook and gave the marketers until 14 August to resubmit their allegations.


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Indian companies give workers ‘period days’ to tackle stigma
 Two Indian firms have introduced a policy to give female employees a “period day” off every month.

The day can be taken off under “menstrual leave”, launched by Mumbai-based firms Culture Machine and Gozoop in order, they say, to fight taboos around menstruation.

Ahmed Aftab Naqvi, CEO of Gozoop, a digital marketing firm for brands such as Dell and Asian Paints, said there were “cultural sensibilities” in India that made it difficult for women to talk about their periods. “Why should our women co-workers have to have these awkward conversations or ask for leave? It should be something that is a given, that’s understood. That’s why we instituted blanket policy for all our 70 women employees,” he said.

For New Delhi gynaecologist Dr Anita Nayar, however, the menstrual leave policy is “silly” and “regressive”. For a start, she says the majority of women have no problem with period pains – and for those who do, merely having the first day off may not be enough anyway as their discomfort can last for days.

“I don’t see why women can’t openly say, without embarrassment, that they need time off. An automatic policy of one day off a month actually feeds into this whole embarrassment syndrome and keeps it under wraps. I’d rather women openly asked for time off when their periods are painful. That would really open the lid,” she said.

Culture Machine, a digital media company with 75 female employees, announced the measure in a YouTube video that shows its female workers describing how they struggle to work during their periods through cramps and nausea, and battle the feeling that they are “going to die soon”. It shows their faces lighting up on being told they will get the first day off.

In the video, Devleena S Majumdar, Culture Machine’s head of HR, says: “We felt it was time we face reality. This is not an embarrassment, this is a part of life.”

She has been stunned at the positive reaction. The video has received more than 1.4m hits. “We have to break the taboo. I know that some critics have said that women will be embarrassed, when they take this day off, at telling the whole world they have started their period. But when you get pregnant and apply for maternity leave, you aren’t embarrassed so why would women be embarrassed about menstrual leave?” she asked.

Periods are taboo in India, not just in polite circles but everywhere. Menstruating girls and women are considered impure and banned from entering temples or cooking food in their own homes.

Even in educated, middle-class homes, girls have to wash their clothes separately. They cannot touch pickles or poppadoms because they will go “bad”. Herbs will shrivel up as they approach, they are told.

The insensitivity towards menstruation affects education. A report on sanitation last year by the Dasra foundation found that 23% of girls in India drop out of school when their periods begin because of the lack of a private toilet.

The subject is shrouded in so much shame and stigma that girls often go to insane lengths to hide their periods. Aditi Gupta, co-founder of Menstrupedia, a website that dispels myths and educates young women, said she had visited a rural school and met a girl who, through mind-boggling ingenuity, had managed to hide her “secret” from her parents for a whole year.

Gupta welcomes the menstrual leave policy. “We need to break the silence around the subject. This menstrual leave policy is a way of breaking these taboos and it’s a step in the right direction. Women can take a day off without having to explain and without being judged or branded as less efficient,” said Gupta.

It’s only when superstitions around menstruation are smashed, she said, that the custom of isolating menstruating women and girls will end. This month, a teenage girl in Nepal died after she was confined to a cowshed and bitten by a snake. Tulasi Shahi, 19, had been banished to the shed and forced to sleep alone.

The practice of sequestering women in cattle sheds for the duration of their periods is also common in many parts of India.

Culture Machine CEO, Sameer Pitalwalla, is unmoved by criticism of the policy. “We are a country that can’t say the word ‘period’,” he said, adding that it did not mean women have to stay at home. The menstrual leave was optional, for those who needed it.

Output: Indian companies Culture Machine and Gozoop are giving female workers a “period day” of leave each month in an attempt to tackle taboos around menstruation. Culture Machine, a digital media firm, announced the policy on YouTube in a video that has since received 1.4 million hits. Last year, a report by the Dasra foundation revealed that 23% of girls in the country leave school once they begin menstruating due to the lack of private toilet facilities.


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Insurer Travelers adds UBI app to promote safer driving
 The Travelers Companies, Inc. has launched IntelliDrive smartphone app, which gives customers insights into their driving habits and auto insurance priced according to how they drive.

Customers who use the app and drive safely can save up to 20 percent and will receive feedback that can help improve their driving and savings, according to the company. The IntelliDrive app is now available in Minnesota and Nevada, with more states to be added later this year.

“Our new app promotes safe driving by making people aware of their driving habits — whether it is hard braking or accelerating too quickly,” said Elaine Montgomery-Baisden, chief underwriting officer of Personal Insurance at Travelers. “IntelliDrive provides personalized auto insurance pricing, rewards our customers for good driving behavior and ultimately can lead to safer roads for everyone.”

Travelers is partnering with TrueMotion, a provider of smartphone usage-based insurance technology, to implement the IntelliDrive app. Analysis of driving data from millions of trips by TrueMotion users shows that when drivers receive a score and tips about their actual driving behavior, they take steps to become safer drivers.

IntelliDrive will capture driving information for all enrolled drivers in the household for 90 days and determine an overall score. Renewal premiums will be based on that score. New customers receive up to a 5 percent discount for enrolling in IntelliDrive.

The Travelers Companies, Inc. is a provider of property casualty insurance for auto, home and business.

Topics Auto Personal Auto New Markets

Output: Insurance firm The Travelers Companies launched IntelliDrive, a smartphone app enabling users to monitor their driving habits, receive feedback and save up to 20% on premiums. Travelers partnered with smartphone usage-based insurance technology provider TrueMotion to develop the app, which is available in Minnesota and Nevada, before being rolling it out to other states later in the year. "Our new app promotes safe driving by making people aware of their driving habits, whether it is hard braking or accelerating too quickly", said Elaine Montgomery-Baisden, chief underwriting officer of Personal Insurance at Travelers.


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Renewable energy-powered boat sets off on six-year journey
 In this Tuesday, July 4, 2017 file photo, the Energy Observer, a former race boat turned into a autonomous navigation with hydrogen, sails on the Seine river in Paris. A boat that fuels itself is setting off from Paris Saturday, July 15, 2017, on a six-year round-the-world journey that its designers hope serves as a model for emissions-free energy networks of the future. (AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu, File)

A boat that fuels itself is setting off around the world from Paris on a six-year journey that its designers hope will serves as a model for emissions-free energy networks of the future.

Energy Observer will use its solar panels, wind turbines and a hydrogen fuel cell system to power its trip. The 5 million-euro ($5.25 million) boat heads off Saturday from Paris toward the Atlantic.

The futuristic-looking 30.5-meter (100-foot) boat will rely on sun or wind during the day and tap into its hydrogen reservoirs at night. It produces its own hydrogen through electrolysis of sea water.

Originally designed in 1983, the boat enjoyed a successful career in open-sea sailing races before skippers Frederic Dahirel and Victorien Erussard and a French research institute converted it into the Energy Observer project.

In this Tuesday, July 4, 2017 file photo, the Energy Observer, a former race boat turned into a autonomous navigation with hydrogen, sails past the Eiffel Tower on the Seine river in Paris. A boat that fuels itself is setting off from Paris on a six-year, round-the-world journey that its designers hope serves as a model for emissions-free energy networks of the future. (AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu, File)

© 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Output: A boat powered by solar panels, wind turbines and a hydrogen fuel cell system has begun a six-year journey around the world to raise awareness about renewable energy. Originally designed in 1983, the $5.25m Energy Observer will rely on solar and wind power during the day, turning to the fuel cell at night and will produce its own hydrogen via electrolysis of sea water. She was previously an open-sea racing vessel, before being converted by skippers Frederic Dahirel and Victorien Erussard and a French research institute.


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Microsoft cloud to assist in Baidu's autonomous vehicle efforts
 Rather than develop its own self-driving car, Microsoft has been playing to its strength in software by working with automotive companies on systems for turning the massive amounts of data from sensors into "actionable intelligence"

Microsoft's cloud computing platform will be used outside China for collaboration by members of a self-driving car alliance formed by Chinese internet search giant Baidu, the companies announced on Tuesday.

The US software giant is one of more than 50 entities that have joined an Apollo alliance created by Baidu in April.

Microsoft will enable alliance members to collaborate, share information and tap into the analytic power of Azure cloud computing, according to the companies.

"Our goal with Apollo is to provide an open and powerful platform to the automotive industry to further the goal of autonomous vehicles," Baidu president Ya-Qin Zhang said in a release.

The companies did not say why the alliance would not use the Microsoft cloud computing platform inside China.

However, Beijing tightly controls internet traffic in China and it was unlikely that Microsoft's platform would be permitted to operate unrestricted there.

Rather than develop its own self-driving car, Microsoft has been playing to its strength in software by working with automotive companies on systems for turning the massive amounts of data from sensors into "actionable intelligence."

Car makers such as BMW, Ford, Renault-Nissan, Toyota and Volvo use or have announced plans to adopt Microsoft's technology to help with services like driver assist, predictive maintenance and voice-controlled media, according to the US technology titan.

"Today's vehicles already have an impressive level of sophistication when it comes to their ability to capture data," said Microsoft corporate vice president Kevin Dallas.

"By applying our global cloud AI, machine learning, and deep neural network capabilities to that data, we can accelerate the work already being done to make autonomous vehicles safer."

Most major automakers and several other technology firms have been stepping up efforts on autonomous driving in recent years, contending these systems will eliminate the vast majority of road accidents. Apple is the latest to have obtained a testing permit in California.

US-based Tesla also is investing in self-driving car capabilities, as are firms in China and other parts of the world.

US car rental giant Avis Budget announced last month that it will team up with Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, on self-driving cars being tested on Arizona roads.

© 2017 AFP

Output: Microsoft's cloud platform has announced it will help Chinese search engine Baidu in its bid to explore autonomous vehicle development. Microsoft will join over 50 other companies in Baidu's Apollo alliance, created earlier this year. Microsoft's cloud will allow the alliance to share information, collaborate and use the analytics of Azure cloud computing. The system will not be used inside China, for an as yet unknown reason.


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Researchers minimise impact of weather on algae growth
 In Ohio, researchers at the University of Dayton Research Institute are addressing algae’s vulnerability to fluctuations in weather and temperature, limiting commercial growers and researchers in their selection of growing systems and locations. “Our goal was to design and build an economical and efficient system that could be transported anywhere, easily assembled and operate in any climate, and we’ve done just that,” said the project’s lead. Aside from being more cost-efficient, UDRI’s growing process is “greener” than other systems, using livestock manure instead of chemical fertilizer as a nutrient source for the algae.

Output: Researchers at the University of Dayton have designed a growing system that produces algae that are resilient to fluctuations in weather and temperature. The system can be transported anywhere, easily assembled, and operates in any climate, said Sukh Sidhu, head of the university's energy technologies and materials department. The process has the added benefit of using livestock manure instead of chemical fertilisers as a nutrient source. Algae feed on carbon dioxide produced by combustion processes, and in turn produce algae oil, which can be used to make biofuel.


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18% of UK apprentices receive illegally low pay
 Nearly a fifth of apprentices at level two and level three are illegally paid less than the minimum wage, according to the government’s long-delayed apprenticeship pay survey.

Eighteen per cent were found to be paid below the appropriate national minimum wage or national living wage (for workers aged 25 and above), up from 15 per cent in 2014.

The survey, which aims to find whether apprentices are receiving the correct remuneration, was first announced in May 2016, and finally found its way online today.

Hairdressing apprentices are “by far the most likely to have received non-compliant pay”, the survey said, rising to 47 per cent in 2016 from 42 per cent in 2014, while “those on the management framework were least likely” – up to seven per cent in 2016, from three per cent in 2014.

Other sectors with significant non-compliance included construction and related, which rose from 24 per cent in 2014 to 28 per cent in 2016. Health, social care and sport rose from 12 to 17 per cent, electrotechnical was up from 17 to 24 per cent, while hospitality and catering went from nine to 15 per cent.

The 2016 survey was carried out through telephone interviews with apprentices between June 9 and July 25 last year.

In total, “4,963 interviews were conducted with level two and three apprentices in England, and 184 with apprentices on the new apprenticeship standards developed by ‘Trailblazer’ employer groups.”

The figures painted a largely worrying picture at level two and three.

For those aged 16 to 18 or in their first year of an apprenticeship, 13 per cent were paid below the NMW – up three per cent from the 2014 survey. And for ages 19 to 20 and in second year of their apprenticeship, the figure was 32 per cent for 2014, up two per cent last year.

It was a different story for those aged 21 to 24 and in their second year of apprenticeships – with 32 per cent earning below the NMW, down five per cent from two years earlier.

But for the 25+ age group in their second year of apprenticeships, the proportion was up from 23 to 31 per cent.

Non-compliant pay was more common among level two apprentices (20 per cent) than those on level three provision (16 per cent).

The report stressed that “when comparing compliance levels between 2014 and 2016, it is important to note that the lowest NMW rate for apprentices underwent a considerable increase between October 2013 and October 2015 (the rate applicable for the 2016 survey)” – from £2.68 to £3.30. This went up again to £3.50 an hour in April this year.

The new NLW rate came into force from April 2016, creating a new minimum £7.20 rate for all those aged 25 and over or in the second year of their apprenticeship or later.

It was also noted that although levels of non-compliance had increased since 2014, so too had the proportion paid over £9 an hour: 18 per cent last year compared with 15 per cent in 2014.

Commenting on these findings, Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “The survey clearly shows that if there is a long-term relationship between the apprentice and the employer, the apprentice will on average earn a salary well over the minimum wage.”

But he stressed: “At the other end of the scale, there is absolutely no excuse for paying less than the legal minimum.”

Interim “high-level” results of the survey were released in October, as part of a report for the Low Pay Commission, the independent body that advises the government on minimum wage levels.

These indicated that the proportion of apprentices earning below the NMW had gone up, but months subsequently passed without a full report.

FE Week learned in April that the researchers who carried out the work handed a final draft of their report to the government way back in January.

Mark Winterbotham, the director of the firm which carried out the survey, told FE Week at the time that he didn’t know why it hadn’t yet been published.

He insisted his organisation had handed the final drafts of the reports over to the government in January, but admitted he had “not had any communication since early March” with the research team at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

The all-party parliamentary group on apprenticeships further recommended earlier this month, in its annual report, that pay for apprentices should be far more flexible, increasing in line with their experience and level of qualification.

It recommended that apprentices’ pay should be increased like this “to ensure that the apprentice route is attractive to as many people as possible”.

Output: Almost one in five UK apprentices are paid less than the national minimum wage or national living wage, according to a government survey. The research shows an increase in underpayment from 15% in 2014 to 18% last year. The worst sector for non-compliant pay was hairdressing, with an increase from 42% in 2014 to 47% in 2016. Apprentices within “the management framework” were the least likely to receive non-compliant pay, with an increase from 3% in 2014 to 7% in 2016. Other sectors with high levels of non-compliance included construction, electrotechnical, health, social care, sport, and hospitality and catering.


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British American Tobacco buyout of Reynolds raises health worries

British American Tobacco (BAT) has come under fire from health campaigners after shareholders approved its buyout of American firm Reynolds on Wednesday, which will create the world’s biggest tobacco company.

Shareholders of both companies approved the deal, which will take BAT back into the US market after a 12-year absence. It ends American ownership of Reynolds American Incorporated (RAI), a tobacco company headquartered in the US south since 1875.

The move is also expected to speed up the development of e-cigarettes and vapes.

The deal was backed by nearly all shareholders who voted at a special meeting at the Hilton London Bankside in London (78.2% of investors voted). At Reynolds headquarters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, meanwhile, the vast majority (82.%) of Reynolds shares approved the deal.

BAT is buying the 57.8% of Reynolds it does not already own. The cash-and-stock offer announced in January valued each Reynolds share at $59.64, up from $56.50 offered in October. The deal is expected to complete by next Tuesday.

BAT is one of the multinational tobacco companies that have threatened governments in at least eight countries in Africa to block or dilute new regulations to limit the harm caused by smoking, a Guardian investigation found last week. BAT says it is not against all regulation but sometimes needed to intervene.

The merger vote comes the same day that the World Health Organization (WHO) released a report on tobacco companies push against anti-smoking laws worldwide. WHO’s director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said “governments around the world must waste no time” in enacting the laws.

Farm worker activists in the US said they were anxious around the growing power of tobacco firms in response to the merger.

In London, Nicandro Durante, the BAT chief executive, welcomed the “overwhelming support” for the acquisition from both sets of shareholders. He added: “We look forward to welcoming Reynolds group employees to British American Tobacco and to realising the benefits of operating these two great companies as one stronger, global tobacco and Next Generation Products business with direct access for our products across the most attractive markets in the world.”

The deal brings together BAT’s Lucky Strike, Dunhill, Rothmans and Benson & Hedges cigarettes with Reynolds’ Pall Mall, Newport and Camel.

But Deborah Arnott, chief executive of UK public health charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), was worried what the creation of an even bigger business would mean for the growing tobacco epidemic in poorer countries. “By taking over Reynolds, BAT, already one of the top five companies in the FTSE 100, is now the largest tobacco company in the world.

“Despite all the talk during the merger negotiations of the importance of ‘next generation products’ BAT is still clearly focused on flogging fags to low- and middle-income countries. As a result, it is hardly surprising that the tobacco epidemic is still growing in such countries rather than on the wane as it is in the UK and the US.

“We find it particularly shameful that a British company, BAT, is so dominant in Commonwealth countries like those in Africa, where it has been exposed for its continued use of intimidatory tactics. Ironically this is at the same time that the British government has committed £15m in aid funding to help governments tackle the epidemic and drive down smoking rates.”

Arnott said companies were only serious about promoting e-cigarettes and vapes as alternatives to smoking in high-income, western countries.

‘Industry with the deepest pockets’

For shareholders at Reynolds headquarters in Winston-Salem, the focus was on the end of an era for the American company, despite recent (and historic) criticism of its business. “This would be the last meeting of RAI as an independent entity,” said Virgil Goode, a 70-year-old shareholder who traveled from Rocky Mount, Virginia, for the vote, and praised Reynolds as an employer.

His spouse, 53-year-old Lucy Goode, said several generations of men in her family had worked for one or the other tobacco company. Her grandfather, brother-in-law and nephew had all worked at RAI at some point. Her father worked for Brown & Williamson, BAT’s former US subsidiary. “It provided a good income for them for a number of years,” said Lucy Goode.

Reynolds produces some of the bestselling cigarette brands in the nation, including increasingly popular menthol cigarettes under the Newport brand, as well as Camels. The company was founded as a chewing tobacco company in 1875 in Winston-Salem by Richard Joshua Reynolds.

The 2004 merger between Reynolds and BAT’s US subsidiary Brown & Williamson lead to the events Wednesday, but was not the companies’ first interaction. BAT has owned 42% of Reynolds since the company purchased Brown & Williamson 13 years ago.

BAT’s initial purchase of Reynolds shares came with an agreement that it could not buy the remaining lot of Reynolds for 10 years. Reynolds currently employs about 2,000 people in the area, not including surrounding farms that supply tobacco to the companies. For many in Winston-Salem, where Reynolds has long been headquartered, the acquisition by the British giant has been expected for years.

In fact, the two companies’ ties go back much further. At the beginning of the 20th century, the giant monopoly American Tobacco Company, headed by James “Buck” Duke, once controlled nearly all of the US tobacco market, including firms, such as Lucky Strike and Reynolds. In addition, American Tobacco Company struck an agreement with Imperial Tobacco in the UK. But in 1911, the US government succeeded in its efforts to break up the monopoly, and the American tobacco giant RJ Reynolds, as well as British American Tobacco, were born out of American Tobacco Company’s dissolution.

Today, though smoking hasn’t retained the glamor it had in the 1960s, tobacco companies have remained profitable. In part, companies have been able to shift sales of cigarettes to less educated and poorer consumers. They have also weathered lawsuits and regulations of the 1990s.

Tobacco companies, such as Reynolds, continue to donate to politicians. RAI donated $1m to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, and officials with deep ties to the company have been nominated for high-profile government posts.

The merger will put profits from eight out of a 10 cigarettes sold in the US into the pockets of two companies, Marlboro-maker Altria and BAT. The merger has led to speculation that Altria could again be purchased by Philip Morris International, the larger company that spun-off the American affiliate.

President of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Baldemar Velasquez, said the merger has pushed him to take the fight for fair, organized labor worldwide. “The supply chain is globalized, and they put one poor group against another,” said Velasquez. “Tobacco is the one crop that runs through the agriculture industry – it’s the most lucrative crop, and it’s the industry with the deepest pockets.”

Asked about whether the behaviour of tobacco firms ever figured into the Goode’s decision to remain shareholders, Virgil Goode said, smoking is “a choice people make, and I’m not a smoker. Never have been”.

One Winston-Salem resident who refused to give his name called the deal “bittersweet”. He said the deal was “good for shareholders,” but that “there’s a little bit of civic pride in having an independent company here in Winston-Salem”, before rushing off.

Output: Health campaigners have criticised the British American Tobacco (BAT) buyout of US firm Reynolds, which was approved by shareholders of both companies on Wednesday. The move, which will establish the world’s largest tobacco firm, came on the same day that the World Health Organization released a report into the actions of tobacco companies which are fighting anti-smoking laws across the world. BAT was one of the companies implicated in a recent Guardian investigation into attempts by tobacco companies to undermine smoking regulation in eight African countries.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Payver uses drivers' mobile camera to gather data on roads
 If you drive for a living, you’re likely worried about what self-driving technology will do to your livelihood, and for good reason. But if you’re a “can’t-beat-'em-join'-em” type, and figure you might as well make a few bucks helping ease the inevitable into existence, just download Payver. It's an app that pays you a few pennies for every mile you drive, if you’re willing to point your phone’s camera at the road and share what it records.

Payver is the work of Lvl5, a new startup focused on building the maps self-driving cars will need to navigate safely. Detailed, digital maps are widely considered an essential addition to the sensors these vehicles carry, an extra source of information to complement the cameras, radars, and lidars scanning the road. If the car at least knows the basic lay of the land, the thinking goes, handling real time obstacles gets easier.

The problem is, those maps need a level of detail that goes way beyond what you’ll find on any phone screen or atlas: Not just street names and which roads are one-way, but the exact location of every stop sign, traffic light, lane line, and curb, down to the centimeter.

Lvl5

Lvl5 was founded last year by three engineers—two Tesla Autopilot veterans, one formerly of iRobot—who think they can make charting the world easy by crowdsourcing data from the countless camera phones already in cars. Payver is the first step in their plan: Anyone can download the app, point the camera out the windshield, and get paid between one and five cents for every mile they drive (you get more for roads other drivers haven’t hit yet). The camera’s feed gets uploaded to Lvl5’s central hub (via Wi-Fi by default), where the startup’s software picks out key features—traffic lights, lane lines, stop signs—and builds the map. No expensive lidar, or dedicated drivers needed. Each subsequent user to drive that same stretch either confirms the details or provides updates: Here there be a new pothole.

“Our approach, which combines computer vision software, crowdsourcing and widely available, affordable hardware, means our technology is accessible,” says CEO Andrew Kouri.

Many of the companies developing autonomous tech have built their own maps by sending out fleets of camera- and lidar-equipped vehicles to scan the environment in advance. That works fine for testing purposes, but it’s hard to scale to larger areas, especially since these maps will need to be updated frequently—like every few days—because they’re no good if they’re giving robots bad data.

Output: Mapping start-up Lvl5 has launched Payver, an app that pays drivers in the US for sharing a recording of the road they're driving on through their smartphone's camera. The data will be used to create detailed digital maps to provide self-driving cars with information on the road ahead. Each user to drive the same stretch will confirm or provide updates on traffic lights, stop signs and other details to improve the map. Crowdsourcing is the natural way to gather data from the whole country, said John Ristevski, former head of autonomous car mapping at Here.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Hackers highlight cyber-weaknesses in Segways
 When you imagine riding a Segway MiniPro electric scooter, your biggest concern is probably falling on your face. Much lower on that list? The notion that attackers could remotely hack your ride, make it stop short, or even drive you into traffic. Unfortunately, as one reacher found, they could have done just that.

When Thomas Kilbride got a Segway MiniPro, its paired mobile app piqued his interest; by day, Kilbride works as an embedded device security consultant at IOActive. The app already has fairly potent capabilities as designed. You can use it to remote control your scooter or shut it off when no one's on it, and you could even use its social GPS tracking feature to show all Segway MiniPros in an area in real-time. But when Kilbride investigated the security behind those features, he found vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit to bypass the hoverboard's safety protections from afar, and take control of the device.

"I own a hoverboard, I use it quite frequently because parking is expensive," Kilbride says. "I was surprised that the exploits were as accessible as they were. Something like a transportation device should be handled with the utmost care and security, because somebody could be thrown off of it or seriously injured if an attacker decides that they want to [hack] it."

Easy Access

The Segway MiniPro app uses Bluetooth to connect to the vehicle itself. In addition to the features mentioned above, it can also change device settings and accept firmware updates to the scooter for tweaks and improvements. Think of it like a smart lighting app that talks to the bulbs.

While analyzing the communication between the app and the Segway scooter itself, Kilbride noticed that a user PIN number meant to protect the Bluetooth communication from unauthorized access wasn't being used for authentication at every level of the system. As a result, Kilbride could send arbitrary commands to the scooter without needing the user-chosen PIN.

He also discovered that the hoverboard's software update platform didn't have a mechanism in place to confirm that firmware updates sent to the device were really from Segway (often called an "integrity check"). This meant that in addition to sending the scooter commands, an attacker could easily trick the device into installing a malicious firmware update that could override its fundamental programming. In this way an attacker would be able to nullify built-in safety mechanisms that prevented the app from remote-controlling or shutting off the vehicle while someone was on it.

"The app allows you to do things like change LED colors, it allows you to remote-control the hoverboard and also apply firmware updates, which is the interesting part," Kilbride says. "Under the right circumstances, if somebody applies a malicious firmware update, any attacker who knows the right assembly language could then leverage this to basically do as they wish with the hoverboard."

As if that weren't enough, the Segway MiniPro app also provided one other tool to unintentionally aid in malicious activity. The GPS feature known as "Rider Nearby" acted as a sort of social platform for finding other MiniPro owners, but it's easy to see how publicly available, persistent location tracking could be abused. As part of addressing Kilbride's findings Segway discontinued the feature.

Regaining Balance

The good news is that IOActive disclosed the bugs to Segway, which is owned by Chinese scooter-maker Ninebot, in January, and the company addressed the bulk of the problems in an app update in April. As part of the changes, Segway added mechanisms like cryptographic signing to validate firmware updates, which should prevent full takeovers. It eliminated the Rider Nearby feature, and took steps to evaluate its Bluetooth communication protocols and security. Segway has not yet returned a request from WIRED for comment. Kilbride says the company was responsive to his disclosures, but notes that some weaknesses may still exist in the way users can access the device's Bluetooth management interface. The severe attacks attacks Kilbride executed during his research aren't possible anymore, though.

Although patched, the extensive exposure in a digitally connected vehicle still reinforces the very real dangers of device hacking. IoT vulnerabilities have already led to real-world harm in many incidents, and "smart" transportation has long posed clear physical safety risks if left unsecured. For Segway, pairing an internet-connected device with a Bluetooth-enabled vehicle created exposures that a standalone scooter without digital connectivity would have avoided.

In terms of existential dread, you can find some reprieve in knowing that most hackers are seeking profit, and there isn’t a lot of money to be made in maiming Segway riders. But stealing Segways, which someone could have done with Kilbride’s exploits, could be a genuinely appealing scheme.

Output: Hackers have shown that Segways can be attacked, affecting the rides by stopping them completely or even taking control of the journey. After investigating the security features of his Segway MiniPro and paired mobile app, Thomas Kilbride discovered that vulnerabilities existed that could allow an attacker to work around the device's safety features and take control of it from a distance. Kilbride also found that he could send commands to the scooter without knowing the user PIN, aimed at preventing unauthorised access.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Turning CO2 into nanotubes could change carbon capture economics
 Schematic representation of a possible future C2CNT station that uses solar thermal power to convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into carbon nanotube wool. Credit: Johnson et al. ©2017 Elsevier Ltd

(Phys.org)—When most people hear the term "CO 2 emissions," they probably think of several negative things: greenhouse gas, pollutant, climate change, political discord, economic burden. But a team of researchers led by Stuart Licht, a chemistry professor at George Washington University, has a vision for transforming CO 2 emissions from a pollutant into a valuable resource—all while making a potentially large net profit.

In a new study published in Materials Today Energy, the researchers have shown that they can use CO 2 and solar thermal energy to produce high yields of millimeter-length carbon nanotube (CNT) wool at a cost of just $660 per ton. The market value of long CNTs like these—which can be woven into textiles to make metals, cement replacements, and other materials—is currently $100,000-$400,000 per ton.

"We have introduced a new class of materials called 'Carbon Nanotube Wool,' which are the first CNTs that can be directly woven into a cloth, as they are of macroscopic length and are cheap to produce," Licht told Phys.org. "The sole reactant to produce the CNT wools is the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide."

The researchers hope that the new technology, called C2CNT (CO 2 to CNTs), will offer an indisputable economic incentive to remove excess CO 2 from the atmosphere. They calculate that, if they were to set up solar thermal stations over an area equal to 4% of the Sahara Desert, they could reduce the CO 2 concentration of the atmosphere back to pre-industrial levels in 10 years. They note that a more realistic implementation would be to set up stations on the oceans, where there is more available surface area.

The new study builds on the scientists' previous research going back to 2010, when they first proposed the idea of a solar thermal electrochemical process (STEP), in which solar energy is used to power an electrolytic cell. This cell captures and breaks down, or electrolyzes, atmospheric CO 2 into carbon or carbon monoxide and oxygen. The carbon byproducts can then be used to synthesize various products, such as methane, syngas, and ammonia. Although useful, these products are valued at around $100 per ton, and so are not nearly as valuable as CNTs.

Synthesizing CNTs from CO 2 emissions has proved to be more challenging, with some earlier research suggesting that it may be impossible to produce CNTs by electrolysis using molten lithium carbonate, which is the compound used in the STEP process to nucleate the growth of the carbon products. However, in 2015, Licht and his team demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of high-yield, low-energy electrolytic splitting of CO 2 into CNTs, which uses an alternative growth mechanism with molten lithium carbonate.

One drawback of that process, however, is that the CNTs it produces are nanometer-sized (less than 100 micrometers long), which is too short to be woven into textiles. The main result of the new study is that the CNTs are 100 times longer, which is achieved by replacing the copper or steel cathodes on the electrolytic cell with Monel, a type of nickel-copper alloy. By making this change and carefully tuning other parameters, the researchers produced CNTs with diameters of more than 1 micrometer and lengths of more than 1 millimeter—which, they point out, raises the question of whether the CNTs should actually be classified as "nanomaterials." In any case, the wool-like CNTs are long enough to be woven into textiles for various applications.

"Inexpensive, weavable CNT wools are preferred replacements for conventional steel and aluminum applications, due to the CNT wool's lightweight, strength-to-mass advantage," Licht said. "In addition to textiles, CNT wools serve as preferred additives to formulate blast- and fracture-resistant cement and ceramics. Other applications of stronger-than-steel, highly conductive CNT cloth are bullet-proof CNT suits and taser-proof suits."

More information: Marcus Johnson et al. "Carbon nanotube wools made directly from CO2 by molten electrolysis: Value driven pathways to carbon dioxide greenhouse gas mitigation." Materials Today Energy. DOI: 10.1016/j.mtener.2017.07.0032468-6069

© 2017 Phys.org

Output: Researchers at George Washington University have developed a low-cost method of turning carbon dioxide (CO2) and solar thermal energy into weavable lengths of carbon nanotube (CNT) wool, worth $100,000-$400,000 per ton, according to an article published in Materials Today Energy. Previous efforts to make CNTs resulted in lengths of 100 micrometers, which were too short to be woven into textiles. However, the use of Monel, a type of nickel-copper alloy, along with several other changes, produces CNTs with diameters of more than 1 micrometer and lengths of more than 1 millimeter, able to be woven into bullet-proof and taser-proof suits.