Midterm attackers cited Black Lives Matter in false flag Facebook rally

Unknown midterm election attackers that Facebook has removed were hosting a political rally next month that they pinned on Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other organizations, according to third-party event websites that scraped the now-removed Facebook events.

Facebook provided an image of the deleted “No Unite The Right 2 – DC” event as part of its announcement today that merely showed its image, title, date, location, and that a Page called “Resisters” was one of the hosts of the propaganda event. But a scraped event description TechCrunch discovered on Rallyist provides deeper insight into the disruptive information operation. Facebook won’t name the source of the election interference but said the attackers shared a connection through a single account to the Russian Internet Research Agency responsible for 2016 presidential election interference on Facebook.

“We are calling all anti-fascists and people of good conscience to participate in international days of action August 10 through August 12 and a mass mobilization in Washington DC” the description reads. “We occupy ICE offices, confront racism, antisemitism, islamaphobia, xenophobia, and white nationalism. We will be in the streets on August 10-12, and we intend to win.”

But what’s especially alarming is how the event description concludes [emphasis mine]. “Signed, Black Lives Matter Charlottesville, Black Lives Matter D.C., Charlottesville Summer of Resistance Welcoming Committee Agency, Crimethinc Ex-Workers Collective, Crushing Colonialism, D.C. Antifascist Collective, Future is Feminists, Holler Network, Hoods4Justice, The International, Capoeira Angola Foundation-DC (FICA-DC), Libertarian Socialist Caucus Of The DSA, March For Racial Justice, Maryland Antifa, One People’s Project, Resist This (Former DisruptJ20), Rising Tide North America, Smash Racism D.C., Showing Up for Racial Justice Charlottesville, Suffolk County DSA, Workers Against Racism, 350 DC.”

It’s unclear if the attackers effectively ‘forged’ the signature of these groups, or duped them into signing off on supporting the rally. The attackers were potentially trying to blame these groups for the rallies in an effort to further sow discord in the political landscape.

Facebook initially provided no comment about the description of the event, but then confirmed that it was originally created by the attackers’ since-deleted Page ‘Resisters’ which then later added several legitimate organizations as co-hosts: Millenials For Revolution, March To Confront White Supremacy – from Charlottesville to DC, Workers Against Racism – WAR, Smash Racism DC, and Tune Out Trump. Strangely, those co-hosts have relaunched a new event with a similar name “Nazis Not Welcome No Unite The Right 2” and similar description including a similar but expanded “Signed by” list, and now include BLM Charlottesville and D.C. as co-hosts.

Meanwhile, Facebook also shared an image of a November 4th, 2017 “Trump Nightmare Must End – NYC” event, also without details of the description. A scraped version on the site AllEvents shows the description as “History has shown that fascism must be stopped before it becomes too late. There is only one force that can stop this nightmare: we, the people, acting together. On November 4 we’ll take to the streets demanding that Trump regime must go! We meet at Times Square (42 St and Broadway) at 2 PM!”

The co-opting of left-wing messaging and protests is a powerful strategy for the election interferers. It could provide the right-wing with excuses to claim that all left-wing protest against Trump or white supremacy is actually foreign governments or hackers, and that those protests don’t represent the views of real Americans.

Facebook finds evidence of Russia-linked influence campaigns targeting US midterms

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Can Electronauts help make VR more social?

Virtual reality is an isolating experience. You power it up, strap the headset on and just sort of drift off into your own world. But maybe that doesn’t have to be the case. Maybe there’s a way to slip into a virtual world and still interact with your surroundings.

Electronauts presents an interesting example. Survios sees the title as a party game — something akin to what Guitar Hero/Rock Band was at the height of their collective powers, when people would set them up in their living room and invite friends over to play.

The new title has one decided advantage over those older games, however: It’s impossible to hit a wrong note. That’s kind of the whole point, in fact. Unlike the gamification of Guitar Hero/Rock Band, Electronauts is more experiential, designed to create remixes of songs on the fly.

I played a near final version of the title at a private demo in New York the other week, and mostly enjoyed the experience — my own personal hang-ups about doing VR in front of a room full of strangers aside. The experience has a very Daft Punk/Tron vibe to it as you operate a spaceship control while hurtling through psychedelic space.

There are several ways to interact with the basic track in the process, using the Vive or Oculus controller. The more complex tasks take some figuring out — I was lucky and happened to have the game’s creators in the room with me at the time. I suppose not everyone has that luxury, but the good news here is that the title is designed so that, regardless of what you do, you can’t really mess it up.

I can see how that might be tiresome for some. Again, there’s no scoring built into the title, so while it can be collaborative, you don’t actually compete against anyone. The idea is just to, well, make music. Hooked up to a big screen and a home theater speaker system, it’s easy to see how it could add an extra dimension to a home gathering, assuming, of course, the music selection is your cup of tea.

Here’s the full rundown of songs [deep breath]

• The Chainsmokers – Roses (ft. ROZES)

• ODESZA – Say My Name (ft. Zyra)

• Steve Aoki & Boehm – Back 2 You (ft. WALK THE MOON)

• Tiesto & John Christian – I Like It Loud (ft. Marshall Masters & The Ultimate MC)

• ZHU & Tame Impala – My Life

• ZHU & NERO – Dreams

• ZHU – Intoxicate

• 12th Planet – Let Me Help You (ft. Taylr Renee)

• Netsky – Nobody

• Dada Life – B Side Boogie, Higher Than The Sun, We Want Your Soul

• Keys N Krates – Dum Dee Dum [Dim Mak Records]

• Krewella & Yellow Claw – New World (ft. Vava)

• Krewella – Alibi

• Amp Live & Del The Funky Homosapien – Get Some of Dis

• DJ Shadow – Bergshrund (ft. Nils Frahm)

• 3LAU – Touch (ft. Carly Paige)

• Machinedrum – Angel Speak (ft. Melo-X), Do It 4 U (ft. Dawn Richard)

• People Under The Stairs – Feels Good

• Tipper – Lattice

• TOKiMONSTA – Don’t Call Me (ft. Yuna), I Wish I Could (ft. Selah Sue)

• Reid Speed & Frank Royal – Get Wet

• AHEE – Liftoff

• BIJOU – Gotta Shine (ft. Germ) [Dim Mak Records]

• Anevo – Can’t Stop (ft. Heather Sommer) [Dim Mak Records]

• KRANE & QUIX – Next World [Dim Mak Records]

• B-Sides & SWAGE – On The Floor [Dim Mak Records]

• Gerald Le Funk vs. Subshock & Evangelos – 2BAE [Dim Mak Records]

• Max Styler – Heartache (Taiki Nulight Remix), All Your Love [Dim Mak Records]

• Riot Ten & Sirenz – Scream! [Dim Mak Records]

• Fawks – Say You Like It (ft. Medicienne) [Dim Mak Records]

• Taiki Nulight – Savvy [Dim Mak Records]

• Jovian – ERRBODY

• Madnap – Heat

• MIKNNA – Trinity Ave, Us

• 5AM – Peel Back (ft. Wax Future)

• Jamie Prado & Gregory Doveman – Young (Club Mix)

• Coral Fusion – Klip [Survios original]

• GOODHENRY – Wonder Wobble [Survios original]

• Starbuck – Mist [Survios original]

Can’t say I go in for most of those, but I can pick out a handful I wouldn’t mind sticking in rotation — Del the Funky Homosapien, DJ Shadow and the People Under the Stars, for instance. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see additional music packs arriving, as the company secures more licensing deals.

Meantime, Electronauts will be available on Steam for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, priced at $20. The PlayStation version will run $18. For those who want an even more public experience, it will be arriving in Survios’ 38 VR Arcade Network location.

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See the trippy propaganda images attacking the midterms on Facebook

Facebook just confirmed that an unknown group is waging a propaganda war against the US midterm elections. Using images and event invites to rallies in Washington next week, the attackers are attempting to sow discord into the American political landscape. Facebook has not identified whether Russian intelligence organizations were responsible like with their 2016 election attacks, as this operation was more sophisticated than previous strategies Facebook has implemented safeguards to thwart. For now, Facebook has removed 32 pages and accounts associated with the group, including “Mindful Being,” and “Resisters”, some of which shared psychedelic memes in an attempt to ingratiate themselves with receptive users.

Dodged questions from Facebook’s press call on misinformation

Last week I wrote that Facebook had dodged the question of whether it had evidence of attacks on the midterm elections. Now we have the answer: yes.

You can see a sample of the images used in the attacks below. For more info, read our full-story on these attacks on democracy.

Facebook has found evidence of influence campaigns targeting U.S. midterms

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Facebook has found evidence of influence campaigns targeting U.S. midterms

In a newsroom post Tuesday, Facebook revealed that it has detected evidence of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” designed to influence U.S. politics on its platform.

According to Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher, the company first identified the activity two weeks ago. So far, the activity encompasses eight Facebook Pages, 17 profiles and seven accounts on Instagram. Facebook stated that the activity “violate[s] our ban on coordinated inauthentic behavior” though so far is unable to attribute the activity to Russia or any other entity with an interest in influencing U.S. politics.

Facebook has been in contact with Congress and law enforcement about the discovery, which suggests that social platforms should expect to again detect the kind of coordinated disinformation campaigns targeted the 2016 election around U.S. midterm elections this November. The company stated that more than 290,000 accounts followed one of the Pages it identified. The Pages in question were created starting in March 2017 and most recently in May of 2018.

The most popular Pages displaying this kind of behavior were “Aztlan Warriors,” “Black Elevation,” “Mindful Being,” and “Resisters.” The other Pages had less than 10 followers each and the Instagram account did not have any followers. That does not necessarily discount other kinds of potential activity like commenting and messaging.

According to Facebook, “They ran about 150 ads for approximately $11,000 on Facebook and Instagram, paid for in US and Canadian dollars” between April 2017 and June of this year. The Pages also made around 30 Facebook events.

As Gleicher writes in the post, these accounts are operating more cautiously than the infamous Russian disinformation accounts around the 2016 election.

“For example they used VPNs and internet phone services, and paid third parties to run ads on their behalf. As we’ve told law enforcement and Congress, we still don’t have firm evidence to say with certainty who’s behind this effort. Some of the activity is consistent with what we saw from the IRA before and after the 2016 elections. And we’ve found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year, which is covered below. But there are differences, too. For example, while IP addresses are easy to spoof, the IRA accounts we disabled last year sometimes used Russian IP addresses. We haven’t seen those here.”

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The best free email client 2018

Sony’s new TV range has a dedicated Netflix viewing mode

Sony has announced a new range of televisions, the Master Series, in a series of live tweets from a press conference in New York today.

Sony's Twitter account introduced two new 4K television sets – the A9F and Z9F – under the Master Series branding, as a subset of the established Sony Bravia TV range. 

Paying tribute to its 50-year history in the TV industry, the manufacturer called it a “milestone event” and went on to announce a surprising new feature: Netflix Calibrated Mode.

The viewing mode is exclusive to Sony’s Master Series – for now, anyway – and aims to configure the television display in “the same way creators calibrate their monitors in post-production”, bringing your viewing experience of films and shows even closer to the people who made them.

Bill Baggelaar of Sony Pictures added: "We want you at home to be able to experience a movie or TV show as the director intended & as the director saw it."

Best of the best

The A9F is Sony’s new flagship OLED TV, which promises “top-of-the-line sound quality” with its Acoustic Surface Audio+ technology. 

The Z9F, on the other hand, is the culmination of Sony’s LED televisions, focusing on new technologies to improve the TV’s viewing angle, color consistency and motion blur.

The two model numbers were technically leaked back in May on Sony’s own e-support page. As predicted, both make use of Sony’s new high-power X1 Ultimate processor and will come in 55- and 65-inch versions. 

Keep an eye on our website for our hands-on review when it goes live later today.

• Best TV 2018: which TV should I buy?

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TCL TV range finally hits UK shops

TCL is a household name in most parts of the world, being the third largest manufacturer of televisions on the planet. But you’d be hard pressed to find someone who has heard of it in the UK. That’s about to change though – TCL is bringing its range of affordable 4K smart TVs to UK stores.

From today, you’ll be able to purchase a range of sets from a range of AV retailers and a dedicated section of the Amazon store.

Set to take on Hisense for the wallet-friendly TV crown, it’s made its sets and smart TV apps “fully compliant with terrestrial broadcasting services,” meaning you’ll get the full complement of catch-up apps as well as a Freeview Play tuner in its UK range.

Roku rocking up?

Highlights of the range include the 43 and 55-inch DP608, which offers UHD HDR (HDR10+HLG) in a slim design for a mere £499 for the largest model, and the DP648 range (available in 43, 50, 55 and 65 inch sizes), again offering 4K HDR visuals in a set just 9.9mm wide at its thinnest point. 

Later in the year, TCL will also be offering the DC748 4K smart TV, available in 55 and 65-inch sizes. While its price is yet to be determined, it’ll offer a built in JBL sound bar which should elevate its audio above the usual shoddy standards of super-slim flat screen TVs.

“We see the UK market as one of great opportunity for TCL and are delighted to be up and running now, continuing the global success story that is TCL,” said TCL UK Country Manager Bernie Chen.

“We believe the UK will appreciate the high quality and technically excellent products as will appreciate the commitment to a unique design aesthetic found in our products.” 

While we’re waiting for clarification on its presence in the new sets, here’s hoping that TCL brings the superb Roku interface integration to its UK range too – an interface and app suite that really sets it apart from similarly-priced TV ranges.

• Best cheap TV deals: here's what TCL is up against

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CallPage lets you call your website visitors

Poland-based CallPage offers something other customer interaction apps don’t: the ability to call your website visitors as soon as they click on your page. In a world where the difference between a sale and a click past your site onto Facebook, this is a pretty cool little feature.

CallPage began in 2015 when the founders, Ross Knap, Sergey Butko, and Andrew Tkachiv, tried to figure out why website visitors would leave their sites. They started out as a consultancy and the product was born out of some after-hours tinkering by the team. Instead of messaging users, they thought, why not let managers talk to them on the phone?

“Our widget analyzes user behavior on your website,” said CEO Knap. “Then when it sees an interested visitor, it offers him a free callback in 28 seconds. The interested visitor leaves a phone number on your site, our widget calls to the first available manager’s mobile phone and then the next one if no one picks up. After the conversation client will receive an SMS of thanks. It doesn’t require any extra work.”

The team raised a $4.5 million Series A from TDJ Pitango Ventures, Innovation Nest, and Market One Capital. They have 3,000 customers and it makes 280,000 calls monthly. The team started with a $50,000 seed check from an early investor.

Knap and the team have big plans.

“CallPage will continue the realization of our development plan,” said Knap. “The company is going to change into a product more from the perspective of ‘All your company calls in one place.’ The R&D department have already started working on using machine learning and AI which allows analyzing of hundreds of thousands of calls through the CallPage system. Thanks to this, companies will be able to run their communications more effectively.”

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Discord’s Jason Citron to chat it up at Disrupt SF

In September of 2013, Jason Citron hopped on to the Disrupt Startup Battlefield stage to pitch Fates Forever, a multiplayer online battle arena game for the iPad. Now, five years later, Citron is gearing up to join us once again on the Disrupt stage to discuss the stellar growth of Discord.

Though Fates Forever had all the components to be a great mobile game, users simply never took much interest. The company struggled to monetize, and like any good startup, the team began to reassess its own situation.

The conversation turned to communication, where the space contained a few players with lack-luster products.

“Can we make a 10X project?,” said CMO Eros Resmini, relaying the tale of the company’s pivot to TechCrunch. “Low-friction usage, no renting servers, beautiful design we took from mobile.”

That’s how Discord was born. The platform launched in 2016, and has since grown to 90 million registered users, and has raised nearly $80 million in funding.

Coming from the publishing side, the Discord team had a keen awareness of what gamers want and need: a clean, secure communications platform. Since launch, the team has launched features that let game developers integrate Discord chat into their own games, as well as video-chat and screen-sharing.

But the progress has not been without discord. The company shut down several servers associated with the alt-right for violating the terms of service, bringing Discord to the center of the on-going conversation around censorship and political bias.

That said, Discord has seemed to find its stride, forming partnerships with various esports organizations for verified servers.

There is plenty to discuss with Jason Citron at Disrupt SF, and we hope you’ll join us to check out the conversation live.

The full agenda is here. Passes for the show are available at the early-bird rate until August 1 here.

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Discord’s Jason Citron to chat it up at Disrupt SF

In September of 2013, Jason Citron hopped on to the Disrupt Startup Battlefield stage to pitch Fates Forever, a multiplayer online battle arena game for the iPad. Now, five years later, Citron is gearing up to join us once again on the Disrupt stage to discuss the stellar growth of Discord.

Though Fates Forever had all the components to be a great mobile game, users simply never took much interest. The company struggled to monetize, and like any good startup, the team began to reassess its own situation.

The conversation turned to communication, where the space contained a few players with lack-luster products.

“Can we make a 10X project?,” said CMO Eros Resmini, relaying the tale of the company’s pivot to TechCrunch. “Low-friction usage, no renting servers, beautiful design we took from mobile.”

That’s how Discord was born. The platform launched in 2016, and has since grown to 90 million registered users, and has raised nearly $80 million in funding.

Coming from the publishing side, the Discord team had a keen awareness of what gamers want and need: a clean, secure communications platform. Since launch, the team has launched features that let game developers integrate Discord chat into their own games, as well as video-chat and screen-sharing.

But the progress has not been without discord. The company shut down several servers associated with the alt-right for violating the terms of service, bringing Discord to the center of the on-going conversation around censorship and political bias.

That said, Discord has seemed to find its stride, forming partnerships with various esports organizations for verified servers.

There is plenty to discuss with Jason Citron at Disrupt SF, and we hope you’ll join us to check out the conversation live.

The full agenda is here. Passes for the show are available at the early-bird rate until August 1 here.

https://ift.tt/2AsdVKB

HP launches bug bounty program for printers

HP is looking to patch one of the most pressing threats to the modern workplace with a new bug bounty program for printers.

The initiative, described by the company as the "first of its kind", will reward those who spot security flaws in its products with some serious money.

Anyone spotting a new flaw could be set to score up to $10,000, with HP also saying it may reward those who find existing threats with a "good faith payment" in certain cases.

HP printer security

HP has partnered with security crowdsourcing firm Bugcrowd to launch the program, utilising the latter's wide-ranging expertise and customisation to design a printer-specific program.

“As we navigate an increasingly complex world of cyber threats, it's paramount that industry leaders leverage every resource possible to deliver trusted, resilient security from the firmware up," said Shivaun Albright, HP chief technologist of print security. 

"HP is committed to engineering the most secure printers in the world.”

The company has long looked to push the security of its workplace products, noticeably through its big-budget "The Wolf" video series, which starred Christian Slater as a Mr Robot-esque figure highlighting the risks facing today's top businesses.

• The best small business printers of 2018

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Facebook is developing a singing talent show feature

Facebook’s plan to take on Musical.ly may involve more than just its own take on a lip syncing feature. It appears to also be working on something called “Talent Show,” which would allow users to compete by singing popular songs then submitting their audition for review. The feature isn’t live, but was rather uncovered in the Facebook app’s code by researcher Jane Manchun Wong.

Wong has a history of uncovering yet-to-launch features or those still in testing through the use of reverse engineering tactics. She has previously spotted things like Instagram’s first time-well-spent feature, Lyft’s unlaunched bike or scooter program, Instagram’s upgraded two-factor authentication system, new ways of displaying IGTV videos, and more.

In the case of “Talent Show,” Wong has discovered an interface that allow users to pick a song from a list of popular tunes, which is then followed by a way to start recording yourself singing the track in question.

The app’s code also makes references to the feature as “Talent Show” and includes mentions of elements like “audition” and “stage.” The auditions are loaded as videos, Wong notes.

Facebook is working on Talent Show where users can pick a popular song and submit their singing audition for review.

Feels like a cross between Musically and Fifteen Million Merits from Black Mirror

as I previously spotted: https://t.co/jHsYQpEvgo pic.twitter.com/TfC2Og5wlw

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) July 28, 2018

The development would offer Facebook another way to take advantage of its more recently acquired music licensing rights. The company, starting last year, began forging deals with all the record labels – including the majors like Universal, Sony, and Warner, and several others, as well as the indies. The deals mean Facebook won’t have to take down users’ videos with copyrighted music playing in the background, for starters. But the company also said it planned to leverage its rights to develop new “music-based” products going forward.

Facebook Talent Show and Instagram Music Stickers sources the music from the submissions by record labels through the new Rights Manager.

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) July 28, 2018

One of those is Lip Sync Live, an almost direct copy of the popular tween-and-teen lip syncing app Musical.ly, which today has 200+ million registered users and 60 million actives. Like Musical.ly, Lip Sync Live – which is still in testing – a way to broadcast your lip sync recordings to friends.

Talent Show (assuming the code analysis is on point) seems to take a different angle. Instead of lip syncing for fun, people are actually singing and competing. However, Wong notes that the feature may be restricted to Facebook Pages, similar to Facebook’s new trivia game show feature. That is, it may be offered to partners who are building out games on their own pages, and are using Facebook’s platform to do so.

Wong also confirms that Talent Show sources the music via the new Rights Manager, used by the record labels to track copyrighted tracks’ usage on Facebook.

Over the years, Facebook has taken aim at any other social app that gathers a following and then reproduces its own version of the app’s key draw – as it did with Stories, Snapchat’s biggest differentiator. It’s no surprise, then, that it now has Musical.ly in its sights, with regard to lip syncing. And with the Talent Show feature, it could be trying to challenge YouTube as the place where new singing talent can be discovered, too.

If Facebook offers a comment, we’ll update this post. 

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Facebook gets leave to appeal to Ireland’s Supreme Court after failing to block data transfer referral to CJEU

Facebook has been given the go ahead to appeal to Ireland’s Supreme Court against an earlier High Court decision to refer key questions relating to the validity of EU-US data flows to Europe’s top court, the Irish Times reports.

The eventual outcome of what is already years of legal to-ing and fro-ing — in a case that’s colloquially referred to as ‘Schrems II’ — could have major implications for the thousands of companies that rely on transferring EU citizens’ personal data to the US for processing.

Facebook's appeal over referral ruling will involve the Supreme Court deciding if Facebook can appeal a referral in the first place and if the Supreme Court can/ should reverse findings of fact by High Court. Appeal to be heard by end of this year. High Court to be notified.

— Mary Carolan (@MaryCarolanIT) July 31, 2018

The case was originally lodged with the Irish Data Protection Commission by European privacy campaigner, Max Schrems — as a complaint over the legality of Facebook’s use of Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) for transferring EU citizens’ data. Although it was Ireland’s DPC that took the decision to go to court — seeking a definitive ruling on the legality of the data transfer mechanism.

The High Court then added its concerns about another mechanism: The EU-US Privacy Shield.

Facebook is disputing the court’s earlier findings, including of “mass indiscriminate processing” of data by U.S. government agencies — under the PRISM and Upstream data harvesting programs (details of which were made public in documents released in 2013, by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden).

In May, Facebook was denied a stay against the CJEU referral by the High Court. So the decision by the Supreme Court to hear its appeal sidesteps that earlier block — albeit, the referral to the CJEU stands, and has neither been blocked nor revoked by today’s decision.

However, if the Supreme Court hears Facebook’s appeal before the end of the year — as slated — that’s likely to be before the CJEU delivers its verdict on the referred questions. So there’s at least a possibility that the outcome of the Irish appeal could feed into the CJEU judgment, i.e. when Europe’s supreme court conducts its own assessment of the validity of EU-US data transfer mechanisms.

Equally, there’s no guarantee that Facebook’s arguments will persuade Ireland’s Supreme Court judges there was anything wrong with the High Court’s findings of fact in the first place.

The company’s decision to ask the Supreme Court to hear its appeal against the High Court’s CJEU referral lacks precedent in Ireland — so the company is challenging local case law.

The Irish Times reports that the judges rejected arguments made by the DPC and Schrems against the appeal, deeming it “at least arguable” that Facebook could persuade the court that at least some of the facts under challenge should be reversed.

According to the newspaper, the court granted Facebook leave to appeal on all eleven grounds which its lawyers had presented.

It was also eleven questions that the High Court referred to the CJEU in April — seeking guidance on a range of fine-grained points around whether rights afforded to EU citizens are being adequately protected by the current data transfer mechanisms and regimes, including Privacy Shield and SCCs; how to determine which rules and regulations take precedence across borders and/or where legal priorities clash and overlap; and whether, in cases of rights violations caused by surveillance law, data protection authorities have to suspend data flows or whether they can use discretion to not do so.

The case is based on an even earlier (2013) complaint by Schrems, related to US surveillance law, when he challenged Facebook (and other tech giants) over how user data they held was accessed by US intelligence agencies under US government mass surveillance programs — arguing such bulk access contravenes Europeans’ fundamental privacy rights.

The result, in 2015, was a landmark CJEU judgement which struck down a long-standing EU-US data transfer mechanism (called Safe Harbor).

The European Commission has since negotiated an updated replacement mechanism (aka: The EU-US Privacy Shield) — which is now used by more than 3,400 companies to simplify the process of authorizing transfers of EU citizens’ personal data to the US.

However this replacement is under increasing attack at home, with European MEPs angry at decisions taken by the current US administration which they see as counter to the spirit of the agreement and/or risking undermining actual protections agreed by EU and US negotiators during the Obama presidency.

US lawmakers’ continued backing for warrantless surveillance is one example — when the hope in Europe had rather been for reform of Section 702 of FISA, not the six-year renewal that Trump signed off on.

The Trump administration has also failed to fully enact certain aspects of the Privacy Shield arrangement (two years on from launch there’s still no permanent appointment to an ombudsperson role intended to handle EU citizens’ complaints, for example).

And in June the EU Parliament’s LIBE committee called for Privacy Shield to be suspended by September 1 unless the US comes into full compliance. Earlier this month the EU parliament also adopted a resolution calling for the suspension of the EU-US Privacy Shield.

The annual review of the Privacy Shield mechanism is due to take place in October — so the Commission really needs to eke out some substantial concessions from US counterparts or face further political heat in its own backyard.

Aside from the CJEU, the Commission is the only EU institution with the power to suspend Privacy Shield, although the executive body has shown no appetite for that. Rather its priorities align with ensuring ‘business as usual’ — at least where all important data flows are concerned — vs taking a principled stance in defense of EU citizens’ fundamental rights. For that, Europeans typically have to look to the courts. Or, sometimes, the parliament.

The Irish Times reports that Facebook’s grounds for appeal to the Supreme Court in the Schrems II case include the necessity of the High Court making a reference in light of Privacy Shield — with the company arguing the court is bound by the finding on US law contained within the Privacy Shield decision. (A decision that was, however, made by the Commission, not by an EU court…)

It also argues that the High Court should have taken into account the effect of the introduction of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation on the legal context which will operate when the CJEU comes to consider the reference — with the referral taking place prior to GDPR coming into force on May 25.

The company is also claiming the court made several errors in its assessment of US law — including in its finding of “mass indiscriminate” processing; and that US laws and practices did not provide EU citizens with an effective remedy, as required under the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, for breach of data privacy rights.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment on the appeal.

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Here’s what’s coming to Amazon Prime Video soon

Worldwide AI investment to top $200bn by 2025

AI is set to become a multi-billion dollar industry over the next decade as it establishes itself as a common sight in businesses across the world.

A new KPMG report estimates that investment in AI, along with machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA) technology, is set to reach $232bn by 2025.

This is a significant increase from the $12.4bn spent today as more and more organisations adopt AI in their business.

• What is AI? Everything you need to know

AI growth

The report was accompanied by a survey that looked to gather expectations among business leaders about the effect AI could have on their business.

KPMG found that 40 per cent of industry leaders said they would be increasing AI investment by 20 per cent or more in the next few years

32 per cent added that they would be upping investment in RPA by 20 per cent or more. 

However many businesses revealed they were unsure about the impact of AI and  didn't feel prepared for how it would affect employees, with recent press coverage concerning how AI could cost millions of jobs a major influence.

"Many traditional businesses with legacy approaches risk falling behind digital-first companies if they stay with the status quo," said Cliff Justice, KPMG partner, innovation & enterprise solutions.

"It takes a comprehensive transformation of business and operating models to compete in their own market at the level at which a Tesla or Amazon do in theirs."

"A lot of change has to happen that’s really uncomfortable and sometimes political, and most companies are not prepared for that."

• The best business laptops 2018: top laptops for work

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EA launches premium subscription with latest Battlefield and Fifa

Video game company EA is slowly switching its business model to recurring subscriptions. The company just launched Origin Access Premier for $15 per month or $100 per year. This subscription is only available on PC.

This isn’t EA’s first subscription. The company first launched EA Access on the Xbox One. For $5 per month or $30 per year, you can download a play old EA games as part of your subscription.

EA Access doesn’t include the most recent games. But you can play the latest Fifa, Madden and Battlefield games a few months after their initial releases. Usually, EA Access games don’t include any DLC or extra content.

In addition to full games, EA Access lets you try new EA games for 10 hours. You also get 10 percent off on EA digital purchases.

In 2016, EA launched a similar service on PC for the same price. In addition to a collection of EA games, the company partnered with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and other game companies. You can find indie hits, such as The Witness, Oxenfree and Trine 2.

And now, EA is launching a more expensive subscription tier. With Origin Access Premier, you get new EA titles a few days before launch day. For instance, you’ll be able to download and play Madden NFL 19, Fifa 19, Battlefield V and Anthem when they launch in the coming months.

Subscribers won’t have to pay for DLCs, or at least not as many. Games included in the subscription are deluxe editions (Fifa Ultimate Edition, Battlefield V Deluxe, etc.).

In order to convince people to subscribe right away, EA is adding deluxe editions of Battlefront II, Fifa 18, Unravel Two, Fe or The Sims 4 right away.

Other companies have launched subscription services, such as Microsoft with the Xbox Game Pass and Sony’s PlayStation Now. This is an interesting shift as game companies are getting ready for cloud computing.

While many people still buy games on DVDs and play on gaming consoles, the industry is slowly going to switch to cloud gaming. You will launch a game on a server in a data center near you and stream the video feed to the device in front of you.

It doesn’t make as much sense to own a game if you don’t even run it on your console in your living room. By creating recurring subscriptions and putting together gaming libraries, companies can increase recurring revenue.tt

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Tractable is applying AI to accident and disaster appraisal

“Happy to spend 10 minutes on our vision and the journey we’re on, but then, really, 15 minutes on what we’ve got today, what it is we’ve achieved, what it is our AI does,” says Tractable co-founder and CEO Alexandre Dalyac when I video called him a couple of weeks ago. “You can probably speed up all of that,” I quip back.

The resulting conversation, lasting well over an hour, spanned all of the above and more, including what is required to build a successful AI business and why he and his team think they can help prevent another “AI winter.”

Founded in 2014 by Dalyac, Adrien Cohen and Razvan Ranca after going through company builder Entrepreneur First, London-based Tractable is applying artificial intelligence to accident and disaster recovery. Specifically, through the use of deep learning to automate visual damage appraisal, and therefore help speed up insurance payouts and access to other types of financial aid.

Our AI has already been trained on tens of millions of these cases, so that’s a perfect case of us already having distilled thousands of people’s work experience Alexandre Dalyac

Dalyac launches into what is clearly a well-rehearsed and evidently polished pitch. “We are on a journey to help the world recover faster from accidents and disasters. Our belief is that when accidents and disasters hit, the response could be 10 times faster thanks to AI. So what we mean there is, everything from road accidents, burst piping to large-scale floods and hurricane. Whenever any of these things happen, things get damaged.”

Those things, he says, broadly break down into cars, homes and crops, roughly equating to $1 trillion in damage each year. But, perhaps more importantly, livelihoods get impacted.

“If a car gets damaged, mobility is reduced. If a home gets damaged, shelter is reduced. And if crops get damaged, food is reduced. Across all of those accidents and disasters, we’re talking hundreds of millions of lives affected.”

It is here where a little lateral (and non-artificial) thinking is required. Accident and disaster recovery starts with visual damage appraisal: look at the damage, say how much it’s going to cost, unlock the funds and rebuild. The problem (and Tractable’s opportunity) is that having an appraiser look at a car, house or field can take days to weeks depending on availability — and therefore so can accessing funds to start rebuilding — whereas the claim is that computer vision and AI technology can potentially do the same job in minutes.

“When you assess, that is basically a very powerful but very narrow visual task, which is, look at the damage, how much is it gonna cost? Today, as you can imagine, these kind of assessments are manual. And they take days to weeks. And so you instantly know that with AI that can be 10 times faster,” says Dalyac.

“In some sense this is a perfect class of AI tasks, because it’s very heavy on image classification. And image classification is a task where AI can surpass human performance as of this decade. If you have instant appraisal, that means faster recovery. Hence the mission.”

Dalyac says that part of Tractable’s secret sauce is in the many millions of proprietary labels the company has produced. This has been aided by its patented “interactive machine learning technology,” which allows it to label images faster and cheaper than typical labeling services.

The team’s focus to date has been to train its AI to understand car damage, technology it has already deployed in six countries, seeing the startup work primarily with insurers.

Related to this I’m shown a simple demo of Tractable’s car damage appraisal tool. Dalyac opens a folder of car images on his laptop and uploads them to the software. Within seconds, the AI has seemingly identified the different parts of the car and determined which parts can be repaired and which parts need to be entirely written-off and therefore replaced fully. Each has an AI-generated estimated cost.

It all happens within a matter of minutes, although I have no way of knowing how difficult the pre-determined and fully controlled task is. It’s also unclear how an AI can possibly do the full job of a human assessor based on a limited set of 2D images alone, and without the ability to peek under the hood or undertake further investigations.

“We’re trying to figure out how much damage there is to a vehicle based on photos,” explains Dalyac. “There’s some really tough correlations to pick out, which are: based on the photos of the outside, what’s the internal damage? When you’re a human you are going to have seen and torn down maybe about a thousand to two thousand cars in your whole life of 20 or 30 years of doing that. Our AI has already been trained on tens of millions of these cases, so that’s a perfect case of us already having distilled thousands of people’s work experience. That allows us to get hold of some very challenging correlations that humans just can’t do.”

You need to find real-world use cases that will make a difference, where you can surpass human performance Alexandre Dalyac

With that said, he does concede that a photo doesn’t always contain all of the necessary information, and that it might only have a certain level of accuracy. “You might need to then get a tear-down of the car and get photos of the internal damage. You might even want to get some data from the dashboard. And you can think that as cars get more sensors… the appraisal will be not just visual but also based on IoT data. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that we are convinced that it will be AI that will be doing this entirely.”

What is abundantly clear is Dalyac’s commitment to developing AI technology with real-world use that is commercially viable. If that doesn’t happen, he believes it won’t just be Tractable that will suffer, but the continued belief and investment in AI as a whole. Here, of course, he’s talking about the prospect of another so-called “AI winter,” citing a recent Crunchbase report that says funding for artificial intelligence companies in the U.S. has levelled off and even started to decline at seed stage.

“If you’re trying to make the $15 billion that has been invested into AI not fuck up and lead to something successful that will prevent an AI winter that will lead to continuous improvement, you need a really good return on that asset class. And for that you need those businesses to be successful.

“To make an AI company successful, really successful — not just an acqui-hire, not just an IP exit but a real commercial success that’s going to prevent an AI winter — you need to find real-world use cases that will make a difference, where you can surpass human performance, where you can change the way things work,” he says.

The reference to acqui-hire or IP exit takes on more meaning when you consider that Tractable was in the same cohort at Entrepreneur First as Magic Pony Technology, the AI startup acquired by Twitter for up to $150 million for its image enhancing technology. And most recently, the team behind Bloomsbury AI, another EF company, was acqui-hired by Facebook for $20-30 million.

To ensure that Tractable can continue its mission of applying AI to accident and disaster recovery — and presumably not sell too early — the startup has closed $20 million in Series B investment in a round led by U.S. venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners. Existing investors, including Ignition Partners, Zetta Venture Partners, Acequia Capital and Plug and Play Ventures, also participated. The new capital is to be spent on accelerating growth, expanding its research and development and entering new markets.

(The Series B also included an additional $5 million in secondary funding, seeing some investors at least partially exit. I understand Tractable’s founders sold a relatively small number of shares as they were permitted to take money off the table. Dalyac declined to comment.)

As we wrap up our call, I note that all of Tractable’s main investors, not including EF, are from the U.S. — something Dalyac says was a deliberate decision after he discovered the gulf between European and U.S. valuations.

“That’s a shame, isn’t it?” I say with my European tech ecosystem hat on.

“It isn’t; it’s enormous exports for the U.K.,” says the Tractable CEO who is French-born but raised in the U.K. “We have, as of today, the vast majority of our headcount in London. The entire product team is in London. The entire R&D team is in London. But most of the revenue comes from the United States. We are making AI an export industry of the U.K.”

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Nintendo’s profit jumps 88% as it nears 20 million Switch sales

Nintendo released its latest earnings report today and the headline is that the company has now sold nearly 20 million Switch consoles. The actual number is 19.67 million as of the end of June, so add July sales and the 20 million milestone is likely to have already been hit. Either way, it has easily surpassed its predecessor, the much-maligned Wii U.

Overall, the business recorded a 30.5 billion JPY ($275 million) operating profit, up 88 percent year-on-year, as revenue grew 9 percent to reach 168 billion JPY, or $1.5 billion.

The Japanese firm sold 1.88 million Switches in the most recent quarter, which is actually down from 1.97 million one year ago, although this quarter tends to be a slow one ahead of the holiday season. That slip was made up for on the software side as sales of Switch games jumped from 8.1 million last year to 17.96 million in the most recent quarter.

Nintendo has a bunch of new titles incoming — including Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and two Pokémon titles — while its Nintendo Switch Online service is due to launch in September so there’s plenty more to come. That said, Nintendo has some work to do if it is to hit its target of 20 million Switch sales during the current financial year.

Elsewhere, Nintendo said it sold 1.26 million of the NES Classic Edition when it was relaunched in June, while it sold 1.39 million Labo kits for the Switch.

The companies mobile gaming business continues to do well, grossing nine billion JPY, $81 million, in the quarter. That’s likely to spike when the company introduces Mario Kart Tour (huzzah!) and new title Dragalia Lost for mobile before March 2019. Although Nintendo suggested that the pipeline for new mobile games will slow once these two new arrivals are released.

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Dixons Carphone breach may have been bigger than originally thought

Dixons Carphone has revealed that millions of its customers could have been affected by a major data breach.

The electronics retailer has said that up to ten million users might have been hit by the attack, revealed last month, with details such as names, addresses and email accounts all revealed.

However the company says that no payment cards or bank account information was leaked, and that so far there is no evidence of its customers being hit by fraud.

"Disappointed"

The news comes as Dixons Carphone continues its investigation into a major cyber-attack that hit the business last year, but was not made public until last month.

The attack, which took place back in July 2017, affected data from 5.9 million credit cards following a breach in one of the processing systems used by both Currys PC World and Dixons Travel stores.

Since then, Dixons Carphone has been working with both cybersecurity experts and the National Crime Agency to help safeguard it against further attacks. 

"Since our data security review uncovered last year's breach, we've been working around the clock to put it right," Dixons Carphone chief executive Alex Baldock said in a statement. 

"That's included closing off the unauthorised access, adding new security measures and launching an immediate investigation, which has allowed us to build a fuller understanding of the incident that we're updating on today."

"Again, we’re disappointed in having fallen short here, and very sorry for any distress we’ve caused our customers. I want to assure them that we remain fully committed to making their personal data safe with us.”

• The best antivirus software in July 2018

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The best business broadband deals in 2018

All prices are exclusive of VAT

When you're looking for the best business broadband service, the one you choose is about more than just price. You need fast, reliable internet, with expert support when it matters most.

But when it comes to the price, it's easy to be taken in by promises of market leading tariffs and discounted deals. That's where TechRadar comes in. So that you don't have to waste your time (and, therefore, your money) searching high and low for the cheapest plans, we've put in the hard yards to track down the cheapest business broadband deals in the UK today.

Our comparison chart features some of the most attractive business broadband packages currently available, with our choice of the best at the very top of the chat. With different options depending on whether you want the very fastest fibre optic broadband speeds, or simply the least impact to your bottom line. You can use the filters to narrow down the best broadband for your business.

Best broadband for your business

With businesses chasing every customer online, it's vital for your company to have a broadband service that can deliver the performance you need today, and handle your needs in the future.

Choosing a broadband service for your business may seem like child's play, with these services becoming almost a commodity. However, it is critical to carefully consider the service in use, since this can have a massive impact on performance, and ultimately on the profitability of your company.

Claire Sadler, head of marketing at BT Broadband's business division, advises: "Traditionally business-grade services are slightly more expensive, but that's because they include things such as greater levels of support - both during and outside of normal office hours and guaranteed fix times - as well as more consistent speeds where business traffic gets priority at peak times.

• ADSL vs fibre broadband: we explain the difference

"One other area to look at is whether it includes a free Wi-Fi connection outside of the office, which can enable staff to work effectively wherever they are - whether that's on a laptop, tablet or smartphone."

For business users of broadband services the service level agreement (SLA) is all-important, because the SLA governs how the broadband service will be supported. Richard Phillips, managing director of CUP Classic Cars, says: "As with anything these days, you need to do your homework and know what you need.

"Choose a reputable supplier that really understands your requirements and works with your business needs, so they can give you advice on the best service for you. You have to be comfortable with your supplier and know that problems are going to be resolved quickly should anything go wrong."

Need for more than just speed

Buying broadband services is more complex than simply choosing the fastest speed. Business broadband services also mean data management, backup and recovery, and of course email. Look closely at any services on your shortlist and ensure that they are not consumer grade, and are built with business users in mind.

Cost of course is a clear driver here but the devil is in the detail, as Andrew Ferguson, editor at thinkbroadband.com, says: "A good business connection should come with clear information on what speeds you can expect. So while cheap services will use the classic 'up to' marketing phrase, those services aimed at the business sector should talk about things like committed rate and burst speed. Do not be afraid to ask for explanation, though be wary of sales staff who trot out the line 'our consumer services are 50:1 contention and business is 20:1'... this sales person's patter is eight years out of date."

No discussion of business broadband would be complete without considering the impact that the cloud is now having. Small business users can clearly see the advantages that cloud-based services can offer. What is also vital is the connection that is available to the cloud, which is where a reliable, fast and robust broadband connection becomes essential.

David Barker, technical director of 4D Data Centres, says: "SMBs need to make a decision on what their immediate requirements are to meet the business's needs. Usually for a first connection this is a small office or sole trader, so a basic business ADSL line will suffice. But, if you are looking to grow your staff quickly or if you're planning on using cloud services for your day-to-day activities, then you might want to look at a faster connection such as fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) or even a leased line which can offer speeds from 10Mbps to 1Gbps and is usually able to scale the speed as your business grows."

Top tips for business broadband buyers

To ensure your business chooses the right broadband service for its needs, use the checklist below to help you define your needs, and then locate a broadband supplier that can become a trusted business partner:

1. Perform a data audit

Before choosing a broadband service, look at how your business uses the data it is creating, storing and analysing. This will give you a benchmark to use that will ensure the broadband service has the capacity to handle these data loads. Is your LAN or WAN set up to handle high speed broadband?

2. Connect to the backbone

Your internet service provider (ISP) can be connected to the internet in one of three ways. These are referred to as tiers 1, 2 and 3. Look for a host that has a tier 1 connection, since this means they have their own portion of the internet that they control. These are the most expensive, but the most reliable.

3. Look for better bandwidth

The speed and efficiency of your website depends on how much data your server can send and receive. This is the bandwidth. Look for a hosting service that has bandwidth utilisation of below 50% to avoid bottlenecks.

4. Study service level agreements (SLAs)

Any hosting service worth their salt should offer you one of these. Look closely at every clause so you don't get any nasty surprises. Most items should be open for negotiation.

5. Seek cloud optimisation

As small businesses increasingly use cloud-based services, look for a broadband supplier that is set up to manage a hybrid cloud storage approach to data management, so your small business can use on-site servers and cloud services together.

6. Embrace data services

As more businesses embrace the cloud and the flexibility that this offers for teleconferencing, VPNs (Virtual Private Network), VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and support so you can bring your own device (BYOD), choosing the right broadband service is more important than ever.

Phillips adds: "Don't think in the short term. Technology is changing so rapidly and now enables businesses to do all sorts of things that were unimaginable even five years ago - the internet is at the heart of that change. There is a wide range of options, but as with all things you need to buy the best you can afford, as you'll soon grow into the capacity, whether or not you think you currently need it."

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Dixons Carphone now says ~8.8M more customers affected by 2017 breach

A Dixons Carphone data breach that was disclosed earlier this summer was worse than initially reported. The company is now saying that personal data of 10 million customers could also have been accessed when its systems were hacked.

The European electronics and telecoms retailer believes its systems were accessed by unknown and unauthorized person/s in 2017, although it only disclosed the breach in June, after discovering it during a review of its security systems.

Last month it said 5.9M payment cards and 1.2M customer records had been accessed. But with its investigation into the breach “nearing completion”, it now says approximately 10M records containing personal data (but no financial information) may have been accessed last year — in addition to the 5.9M compromised payment cards it disclosed last month.

“While there is now evidence that some of this data may have left our systems, these records do not contain payment card or bank account details and there is no evidence that any fraud has resulted. We are continuing to keep the relevant authorities updated,” the company said in a statement.

In terms of what personal data the 10M records contained, a Dixons Carphone spokeswoman told us: “This continues to relate to personal data, and the types of data that may have been accessed are, for example, name, address or email address.”

The company says it’s taking the precaution of contacting all its customers — to apologize and advise them of “protective steps to minimize the risk of fraud”.

It adds it has no evidence that the unauthorized access is continuing, having taken steps to secure its systems when the breach was discovered last month, saying: “We continue to make improvements and investments at pace to our security environment through enhanced controls, monitoring and testing.”

Commenting in a statement, Dixons Carphone CEO, Alex Baldock, added: “Since our data security review uncovered last year’s breach, we’ve been working around the clock to put it right. That’s included closing off the unauthorised access, adding new security measures and launching an immediate investigation, which has allowed us to build a fuller understanding of the incident that we’re updating on today.

“Again, we’re disappointed in having fallen short here, and very sorry for any distress we’ve caused our customers. I want to assure them that we remain fully committed to making their personal data safe with us.”

Back in 2015, Carphone Warehouse, a mobile division of Dixons Carphone, also suffered a hack which affected around 3M people. And in January the company was fined £400k by the ICO as a consequence of that earlier breach.

Since then new European Union regulations (GDPR) have come into force which greatly raise the maximum penalties which regulators can impose for serious data breaches.

Last month, following Dixon’s disclosure of the latest breach, the UK’s data watchdog, the ICO, told us it was liaising with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Financial Conduct Authority and other relevant agencies to ascertain the details and impact on customers.

Of the 5.9M payment cards which Dixons disclosed last month as having been compromised, it said the vast majority had been protected by chip and PIN technology. But around 105,000 lacked the security tech so Dixons said at the time could therefore have been compromised.

It’s the additional 1.2M records containing non-financial personal data — such as name, address or email address — that have been revised upwards now, to ~10M records, which constitutes almost half the Group’s customer base in the UK and Ireland.

The spokeswoman told us the Group has approximately 22M customers in the region.

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Google Calendar now gives guests the power to suggest a new meeting time

Having proven itself an invaluable tool for the scheduling of group meetings, Google Calendar has now made itself even more useful by introducing a new feature that promises to make appointment organizing more convenient for everyone involved. 

Starting today for web users and available for mobile from August 13, Google has announced that invited meeting guests will now be able to propose an alternate meeting time along with an optional message, which the organizer can then review and approve at their leisure. 

Users who've been invited to a Calendar event will now be presented with the option to 'Propose a new time' instead of choosing 'Yes', 'No' or 'Maybe'. 

Depending on the organizer's chosen Calendar permissions, guests will be able to see the availability of other attendees, allowing them to pick a time that's right for all parties. 

According to the search giant's blog post, the new feature “allows for richer communication between attendees, reduces time spent on meeting practicalities, and makes meetings more productive with key stakeholders in attendance.” 

Available to all G Suite editions, the new feature is said to work across domains and will also allow Microsoft Exchange users to send and receive proposals.

• G Suite gets updated for better collaboration

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Firefox is burning its old logo and wants the internet's feedback on new branding

Disney streaming service: Disney's all-inclusive streaming package explained

Right now, you'll find a pretty sizable amount of Disney-owned content on Netflix: From Moana and Coco to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, several original Marvel shows, various cartoon series, and more, there's no shortage of Bob Iger-condoned content. 

But that probably won't be the case once 2020 roles around.

Disney will launch its own streaming service in 2019, and it's primed to be the destination for all things Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars—and maybe Fox too, as Disney's acquisition of its entertainment properties will conclude early next year. Netflix's deal for recent Disney movies concludes at the end of 2019, so the shift should be fully complete come 2020.

The new service will undoubtedly pack loads of existing content, but its biggest strength may be a heap of brand new, totally exclusive TV shows and movies that leverage Disney's many popular franchises. Two different Star Wars shows are coming, for example, and that's just the tip of the mouse-eared iceberg.

Wondering if you'll need to add another streaming video service to your monthly haul? Here's an early look at what to expect from Disney's streaming service, and why even Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video subscribers might be tempted to jump on in 2019.

What is Disney's streaming service?

Disney's streaming service will be an all-in-one Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars video destination, packing plenty of existing movies and TV shows along with a stack of brand-new content.

Disney has been working on the plan for some time now, acquiring a controlling stake in streaming technology provider BAMTech in 2017 following a first investment the previous year. BAMTech spun out from Major League Baseball's streaming efforts and now powers platforms like HBO Now and ESPN+, so it knows a little something about on-demand video traffic.

Obviously, Disney has a massive heap of content in its archives: loads of movies, TV series, and cartoons spread across the Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel brands. Fox's entertainment brands may well be folded into that, as well, given the pending deal.

Disney makes serious money (an estimated $300 million) putting its films and properties on Netflix and other services, but if the company can make an attractive-enough service to pull in millions of paying subscribers, then it could yield potentially much more income. And it gives Disney a new, exclusive platform for developing new content, whether it's with existing brands or original properties.

The service is expected to launch in late 2019, giving Disney plenty of time to court creators and then develop and produce new shows. 

So just who will be able to tune into the House of Mouse's streaming service? A report from Deadline suggests that the service will first debut in North America before expanding internationally.

What content will it have?

Disney plans to have four to five exclusive TV shows and four to five original movies ready for the late 2019 launch, which means there will be a large amount of fresh content available on day one.

Surely the most exciting original announcement so far is that of a brand new live-action Star Wars TV series—something that has been in the works in one form or another for ages. Jon Favreau (Iron Man, The Jungle Book) will both write and executive produce the show, with a storyline set three years following the events of Return of the Jedi.

It's not the only new Star Wars episodic content that'll be on the service early on, either. At San Diego Comic-Con 2018, Disney announced that a new, concluding season of animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars will also be on the service. We have to imagine that the existing episodes, currently on Netflix, will also join the fray.

We'll also get an original Marvel series, separate from the myriad shows already on Netflix and other platforms/channels, as well as a new Monsters Inc. project and a fresh take on the once-popular High School Musical franchise.

Many additional new shows and TV series have been rumored or reported on, but not officially announced as of this writing. Deadline suggests that projects based on Lady and the Tramp, Don Quixote, Sword and the Stone, and 3 Men and a Baby are in the works, along with other projects titled The Paper Magician, Stargirl, Togo, and Timmy Failure.

Deadline suggests that two films for the service were already in post-production as of February 2018: Magic Camp from director Mark Waters (starring Adam DeVine and Jeffrey Tambor), and Christmas-themed comedy Noelle from Marc Lawrence (featuring Anna Kendrick and Bill Hader).

All told, you can expect "thousands of hours" of Disney TV shows and films on the service, including existing content, and that new Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars films will be available to stream at some point following their theatrical releases.

How much will it cost?

No official details have been released yet, but Disney is clearly positioning the service as a lower-cost alternative to Netflix.

"I can say that our plan on the Disney side is to price this substantially below where Netflix is. That is in part reflective of the fact that it will have substantially less volume," said Robert Iger, The Walt Disney Company's chairman and CEO. "It'll have a lot of high quality [content], because of the brands and the franchises that will be on it that we've talked about. But it'll simply launch with less volume, and the price will reflect that."

In short: less content for less money, but there should be plenty of compelling stuff on offer. Iger also suggested that the price could rise gradually over time as the service expands, which is hardly surprising—Netflix's prices have risen alongside its pivot towards original content.

What will be missing?

The Disney streaming service won't have content from outside of the Disney ecosystem, as far as we know. That might seem obvious enough, but services like Netflix and Hulu have such diverse offerings because of their wide partnerships and licensing deals.

Disney has plenty of content to draw from, especially if Fox content comes onboard as well, but this will still be a very Disney-centric offering. On top of that, there won't be any R-rated or adult-oriented content on the service. That stuff will go to Hulu instead, according to a report from Deadline.

Also, the Marvel original series on Netflix will stay where they are for the foreseeable future. "As long as they keep making those shows, they continue on Netflix," said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos in early 2018. "Our Marvel series that Disney produces for us – we own those shows. They run until we cancel them." He added, "We get to use them for a very long time."

Should I subscribe to Disney's streaming service?

It's far too early to know exactly how the service will take shape, since we don't have a sense of the branding, availability of platforms, or final pricing—but the early signs are all promising.

Disney plans to tap into its estimable vault of franchises to create exclusive and potentially compelling new content, along with creating a single streaming service for watching all of the latest and greatest movies and TV shows from across the Disney creative ecosystem.

It'll have less content than Netflix, but a lower price is planned – and the Disney streaming service might be more appealing as an add-on to your current subscriptions, rather than a full-on replacement for Netflix or Hulu.

The Disney streaming service won't be as comprehensive or wide-ranging as some rivals, but Disney, Star Wars, and Marvel fans might have trouble resisting some of the original shows and movies coming down the pipeline. We're certainly excited to see what Disney has in mind for the live-action Star Wars series, above all, but other projects sound compelling as well.

• DC Universe: DC's new TV and comic book streaming service explained

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Disney streaming service: Disney's all-inclusive streaming package explained

Right now, you'll find a pretty sizable amount of Disney-owned content on Netflix: From Moana and Coco to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, several original Marvel shows, various cartoon series, and more, there's no shortage of Bob Iger-condoned content. 

But that probably won't be the case once 2020 roles around.

Disney will launch its own streaming service in 2019, and it's primed to be the destination for all things Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars—and maybe Fox too, as Disney's acquisition of its entertainment properties will conclude early next year. Netflix's deal for recent Disney movies concludes at the end of 2019, so the shift should be fully complete come 2020.

The new service will undoubtedly pack loads of existing content, but its biggest strength may be a heap of brand new, totally exclusive TV shows and movies that leverage Disney's many popular franchises. Two different Star Wars shows are coming, for example, and that's just the tip of the mouse-eared iceberg.

Wondering if you'll need to add another streaming video service to your monthly haul? Here's an early look at what to expect from Disney's streaming service, and why even Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video subscribers might be tempted to jump on in 2019.

What is Disney's streaming service?

Disney's streaming service will be an all-in-one Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars video destination, packing plenty of existing movies and TV shows along with a stack of brand-new content.

Disney has been working on the plan for some time now, acquiring a controlling stake in streaming technology provider BAMTech in 2017 following a first investment the previous year. BAMTech spun out from Major League Baseball's streaming efforts and now powers platforms like HBO Now and ESPN+, so it knows a little something about on-demand video traffic.

Obviously, Disney has a massive heap of content in its archives: loads of movies, TV series, and cartoons spread across the Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel brands. Fox's entertainment brands may well be folded into that, as well, given the pending deal.

Disney makes serious money (an estimated $300 million) putting its films and properties on Netflix and other services, but if the company can make an attractive-enough service to pull in millions of paying subscribers, then it could yield potentially much more income. And it gives Disney a new, exclusive platform for developing new content, whether it's with existing brands or original properties.

The service is expected to launch in late 2019, giving Disney plenty of time to court creators and then develop and produce new shows. 

So just who will be able to tune into the House of Mouse's streaming service? A report from Deadline suggests that the service will first debut in North America before expanding internationally.

What content will it have?

Disney plans to have four to five exclusive TV shows and four to five original movies ready for the late 2019 launch, which means there will be a large amount of fresh content available on day one.

Surely the most exciting original announcement so far is that of a brand new live-action Star Wars TV series—something that has been in the works in one form or another for ages. Jon Favreau (Iron Man, The Jungle Book) will both write and executive produce the show, with a storyline set three years following the events of Return of the Jedi.

It's not the only new Star Wars episodic content that'll be on the service early on, either. At San Diego Comic-Con 2018, Disney announced that a new, concluding season of animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars will also be on the service. We have to imagine that the existing episodes, currently on Netflix, will also join the fray.

We'll also get an original Marvel series, separate from the myriad shows already on Netflix and other platforms/channels, as well as a new Monsters Inc. project and a fresh take on the once-popular High School Musical franchise.

Many additional new shows and TV series have been rumored or reported on, but not officially announced as of this writing. Deadline suggests that projects based on Lady and the Tramp, Don Quixote, Sword and the Stone, and 3 Men and a Baby are in the works, along with other projects titled The Paper Magician, Stargirl, Togo, and Timmy Failure.

Deadline suggests that two films for the service were already in post-production as of February 2018: Magic Camp from director Mark Waters (starring Adam DeVine and Jeffrey Tambor), and Christmas-themed comedy Noelle from Marc Lawrence (featuring Anna Kendrick and Bill Hader).

All told, you can expect "thousands of hours" of Disney TV shows and films on the service, including existing content, and that new Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars films will be available to stream at some point following their theatrical releases.

How much will it cost?

No official details have been released yet, but Disney is clearly positioning the service as a lower-cost alternative to Netflix.

"I can say that our plan on the Disney side is to price this substantially below where Netflix is. That is in part reflective of the fact that it will have substantially less volume," said Robert Iger, The Walt Disney Company's chairman and CEO. "It'll have a lot of high quality [content], because of the brands and the franchises that will be on it that we've talked about. But it'll simply launch with less volume, and the price will reflect that."

In short: less content for less money, but there should be plenty of compelling stuff on offer. Iger also suggested that the price could rise gradually over time as the service expands, which is hardly surprising—Netflix's prices have risen alongside its pivot towards original content.

What will be missing?

The Disney streaming service won't have content from outside of the Disney ecosystem, as far as we know. That might seem obvious enough, but services like Netflix and Hulu have such diverse offerings because of their wide partnerships and licensing deals.

Disney has plenty of content to draw from, especially if Fox content comes onboard as well, but this will still be a very Disney-centric offering. On top of that, there won't be any R-rated or adult-oriented content on the service. That stuff will go to Hulu instead, according to a report from Deadline.

Also, the Marvel original series on Netflix will stay where they are for the foreseeable future. "As long as they keep making those shows, they continue on Netflix," said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos in early 2018. "Our Marvel series that Disney produces for us – we own those shows. They run until we cancel them." He added, "We get to use them for a very long time."

Should I subscribe to Disney's streaming service?

It's far too early to know exactly how the service will take shape, since we don't have a sense of the branding, availability of platforms, or final pricing—but the early signs are all promising.

Disney plans to tap into its estimable vault of franchises to create exclusive and potentially compelling new content, along with creating a single streaming service for watching all of the latest and greatest movies and TV shows from across the Disney creative ecosystem.

It'll have less content than Netflix, but a lower price is planned – and the Disney streaming service might be more appealing as an add-on to your current subscriptions, rather than a full-on replacement for Netflix or Hulu.

The Disney streaming service won't be as comprehensive or wide-ranging as some rivals, but Disney, Star Wars, and Marvel fans might have trouble resisting some of the original shows and movies coming down the pipeline. We're certainly excited to see what Disney has in mind for the live-action Star Wars series, above all, but other projects sound compelling as well.

• DC Universe: DC's new TV and comic book streaming service explained

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