'Irritating' schoolyard bottle-flipping craze being put to good use

The craze of bottle flipping has been labelled noisy, annoying and addictive, but while some schools are banning the pastime, one is turning it into a competitive sport to teach students about probability.

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Instagram Advertisers Switch From Celebrities To "Microinfluencers"

@glowingkite / Via instagram.com

The push to make social media celebrities and "influencers" more honest about who is paying them to post has been complicated by the rise of a new category of Instagram promoter: the so-called microinfluencer, people with as little as ten followers who are being paid by brands just like top-tier stars.

Advertising businesses like Influenster and BzzAgent allow anyone with a social media account to sign up and receive free products for review, from brands like Maybelline, BITE beauty, Kleenex, and International Delight. Their social media posts appear with hashtags like #gotitfree or #gotacoupon, or with a note that the product was received "complimentary." Often there is no indication they got it for free.

In a letter on Wednesday, consumer advocacy groups told the Federal Trade Commission these posts don't meet federal disclosure guidelines, which recommend clearly using #advertisement or #ad in posts.

“One of our biggest concerns is that this is becoming normalized and so seamlessly integrated into our everyday interactions with social media," Kristen Strader, the commercial alert campaign coordinator for advocacy group Public Citizen, told BuzzFeed News. "Of course this is what advertisers want, but it is unfair to the consumer, especially young consumers who are growing up seeing paid endorsements on social media without understanding that those posts are actually advertisements.”

@sjbutterfie / Via instagram.com

Public Citizen found 50 examples of undisclosed influencer posts on Instagram between Sept. 1 and Nov. 14, a handful of which belonged to users with fewer than 1,500 followers, according to its letter to the FTC.

One review from BzzAgent member @sjbutterfie, who describes herself as a blogger, influencer and product reviewer, writes, "I just love the new L'Oréal Pure Clay Masks I received from BzzAgent."

She goes on to rave about how the mask left her skin "so soft" that she can now put makeup on "effortlessly." She includes the hashtags #gotitfee #bzzagent #bzz #loreal and #pureclaymasks. But no tag mentions it is an ad.

Another post for Influenster by @kscitysweetheart found by BuzzFeed News shows a picture of an E.L.F. lipstick along with a five-star review. The caption on the post is simply the product name and five hashtags including #influenster and #voxbox.

@kscitysweetheart / Via instagram.com

The FTC has not explicitly told brands and influencers how they need to disclose their financial relationships, Bonnie Patten, an attorney and executive director of the non-profit group Truth In Advertising, told BuzzFeed News.

But it does require a "clear and conspicuous" disclosure when an influencer is paid or given a product for free "with the expectation that you’ll promote or discuss the advertiser’s products," according to its site.

"You can’t hide the disclosure in a show more description in a YouTube page," said Patten. "You can’t hide the hashtag #ad or #igothisforfree in the midst of 22 other hashtags. Basically the law says you have to be transparent and the consumer shouldn’t have to work harder to figure out whether this is an ad or not."

@pheolynx739 / Via instagram.com

BzzAgent and Influenster together have nearly 3 million members who receive free products to review online. Both companies told BuzzFeed News that they take disclosure seriously and have their own disclosure guidelines for members. If their members don't follow the rules, they risk getting kicked out.

BzzAgent reviewers must use #gotitfree or #gotacoupon in their posts. Influenster reviewers must simply disclose they received the product "complimentary" from a brand.

Candace Lee, BzzAgent's head of audience, told BuzzFeed News that she has suspended some accounts over disclosure issues. But "it's not problematic for us," she added.

"We have the vast majority of our agents complying with our hashtags," she said.

Influenster declined to disclose how many of its members had been suspended over disclosure issues.

The issue of nondisclosure may become more important as Instagram prioritizes photos and videos in feeds based on a user's relationship with the person posting, the timeliness of the post and their interests. While celebrities have bigger followings, a friend of a friend could have their posts appear higher in your feed.

Justin Kline, co-founder of advertising business Markerly, which connects brands to influencers, told BuzzFeed News that the company steers its clients away from working with bigger celebrities. Brands tend to get higher engagement through people who may already be passionate about the product but have a smaller following, he said.

"There are some negative connotations in working with influencers and people thinking, 'Oh I’m being tricked by this person,'" he said. "We try to steer our clients in being honest — 'I got chosen by this brand to promote this product.' Just embracing that whole notion, it comes off more authentically."

But Strader with Public Citizen said this strategy makes advertising "even more seamlessly integrated in our social media platforms" which can leave consumers very little room to opt out.

"There are a lot of people who choose not to follow celebrities or companies or anyone who can give them an advertisement; they just want to follow their friends," she said. "This is advertisers finding their way into a consumers' lives who actively don't want them there. This is them reaching an audience without that audience having any control over it or any knowledge of it."

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Malware strain infects over a million Android phones

The 'Gooligan' strain of malware may be infecting 13,000 Android handsets worldwide per day, a security firm said.

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Hackers target UK National Lottery players

The U.K.’s National Lottery said Wednesday that around 26,500 players’ accounts have been accessed by hackers.

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Deals continue for phones and tablets during Cyber Week

Cyber Week deals are still happening at some retailers. Here are some of the best for smartphones and tablets.

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Chinese resort reportedly working on Titanic replica and sinking simulation

What could possibly go wrong?

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Hackers try to hold one university's computers hostage

Hackers attempted to hold computers at one Canadian university hostage for $28,500 on Tuesday, the Register reports.

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Where do you put the money? Robot stripper performs at Australian 'Sexpo'

The most eye-popping sight at the recent "Sexpo" event in Melbourne, Australia was a computer-controlled stripper robot constructed out of mannequin parts and boasting a CCTV camera for a head.

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You Are Now Able To Download Shows And Films On Netflix

Downloads are available worldwide. Finally.

Netflix has announced that all users worldwide will be able to download its shows for offline viewing, starting today. The service will be available at no extra cost.

Netflix

While many members enjoy watching Netflix at home, we’ve often heard they also want to continue their Stranger Things binge while on airplanes and other places where internet is expensive or limited. Just click the download button on the details page for a film or TV series and you can watch it later without an internet connection.

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The feature will be enabled in iOS and Android on phones and tablets and will be available for those who have updated the most recent version of the app. Netflix content is currently not available to download on your laptop.

At the moment only some shows are available to download, including The Crown and Black Mirror.

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The U.K.'s first-ever 'plastic' 5 bill has really upset vegans

When the Bank of England released its first-ever "plastic" bill in September, it proudly highlighted its many security measures aimed at deterring counterfeiters.

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iPhone 6s Battery Problem: What You Need to Know

Since early November, a growing number of iPhone 6s owners around the world have been complaining about their phones shutting down unexpectedly, even when there was significant charge left accord...

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Tim Cook On Apple's 10th-Anniversary (Red) Campaign Against AIDS

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It was 2006 when Apple joined the (Red) campaign, an effort to rally the private sector in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Now, 10 years after it fielded its first (Product) Red device — a special edition iPod nano — Apple has emerged as field marshal of sorts for (Red), using its marketing heft and considerable retail reach to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS as an ongoing global health crisis. In the process, it’s raised from the proceeds of (Red)-branded Apple products more than $120 million of the $360 million (Red) CEO Deborah Dugan says the organization has generated to date. That makes Apple the world’s largest corporate contributor to the Global Fund, a nonprofit partnership dedicated to the eradication of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.

"Part of being a great company is leaving the world better than you found it.”

Beginning today, Apple is marking World AIDS Day and the 10th anniversary of its support for (Red) with an expansive campaign that CEO Tim Cook says was “designed to reach people via all the different ways in which a customer might touch us.” That means custom (Red) content on the App Store; up to $1 million in $1 (Red) donations for every Apple Pay purchase made at the Apple Store (online and off); an iTunes-exclusive holiday album from the Killers, the full US proceeds of which will go to the Global Fund; four new additions to Apple’s year-round (Product) Red portfolio, including a pair of Beats Solo3 wireless headphones; and (Red) branding — largely via red-tinted Apple logos — at some 420 Apple Stores across five continents.

For Cook, whose tenure as CEO of Apple has been defined in part by principled stands on human rights and calls for social progress, the company’s ongoing participation in efforts like (Red) is driven by a strongly held belief in corporate social responsibility.

“My view on this — which I recognize is different from that of some others — is that just as people have values, so too should corporations,” Cook told BuzzFeed News. “One of ours at Apple is the idea that part of being a great company is leaving the world better than you found it.”

And through its involvement in (Red), Apple is working to do just that. According to the World Health Organization, HIV has killed some 35 million people since the epidemic began. But thanks to greater availability of antiretroviral (ARV) medications like those (Red) helps purchase — some 18 million people are currently on ARV medications, largely thanks to (Red) — fewer HIV-positive mothers are passing the virus to their unborn children. “Over 400 kids with HIV are born every day,” Cook said. “That’s down from 1,200 a decade ago, so there’s been significant progress. 400 a day is obviously still 400 too many, but we are on target to have an AIDS-free generation in 2020.”

Apple’s effort on behalf of (Red) is textbook creative capitalism, an estuary of altruism and consumerism that Cook believes dovetails nicely with Apple’s core competencies.

“We look for ways we think we can uniquely contribute to the world in which we live,” Cook said. “And we’ll always touch more people through our products than anything else. … It’s that area — an area in which we have expertise — where we think we can make a contribution that multiplies well beyond simply writing a check. We want to advocate for human rights in a way that people can look at what we’re doing and say 'you know, I could be a part of something like that’ — ‘I could do something like that.’ For us this is critically important.”

"I think we can all agree that the right to live is perhaps the ultimate human right."

The 10th anniversary of Apple’s support of (Red) and its efforts to eradicate HIV/AIDS come amid growing unease over US President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated pledges to repeal the Affordable Care Act upon taking office in January, a move that could herald dire consequences for the uninsured/underinsured persons living with HIV who’ve come to rely on it. Asked if there might be heightened sense of urgency around this year’s (Red) campaign given Trump’s remarks, Cook observed that ridding the planet of preventable disease is a bipartisan issue.

“I don’t see this as a political issue at all,” Cook said. “This is about people living — it’s about giving people the gift of life. Regardless of people’s political beliefs or backgrounds, I think we can all agree that the right to live is perhaps the ultimate human right.”

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Are you smarter than a fourth grader — from Kazakhstan?

A new global report card shows Australian students' results in science and maths slipping, with central Asia's Kazakhstan moving ahead in the rankings. But can you do any better?

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There's more to Kazakhstan than Borat

Here's what you need to know about just one of the countries that beat Australia in the latest global education report.

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Trump’s Transportation Secretary May Be Friendly To Uber and Lyft

Former US Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao arrives at Trump Tower on a day of meetings scheduled with President-elect Donald Trump on November 21 in New York.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / AFP / Getty Images

Uber and Lyft cheered President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Transportation pick, Elaine Chao, after her appointment today.

"Ms. Chao's knowledge of transportation issues is extensive and we look forward to working closely with her,” Niki Christoff, head of federal affairs at Uber, said in a statement.

Lyft spokesman Adrian Durbin said the company looks forward to working with Chao and has the “utmost respect” for her.

The admiration is mutual. As recently as November, 2015, Chao expressed general support for ride-hail — and skepticism of regulation thereof — arguing in a speech to the American Action Forum Panel that “at a minimum, government policies must not stifle the innovation that has made this sector such an explosive driver of job growth and opportunity.”

Chao was deputy secretary of the DOT under President George H.W. Bush, and labor secretary under the second Bush. She is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a connection that could help as Trump looks to push forward an ambitious infrastructure plan. Her appointment comes at a time when the transportation industry faces a crucial turning point: cash-strapped local agencies across the US are outsourcing public transit to private companies, and the tech and auto industries are racing to put self-driving cars and trucks on the road, threatening millions of jobs.

Local governments with strained budgets are increasingly subsidizing Uber and Lyft rides for their residents as an alternative to adding bus routes and building parking structures. In August, DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx told BuzzFeed News he expects public transportation to continue to be outsourced to private companies.

But Uber and Lyft, which employ their drivers as independent contractors, are also facing legal battles in courts across the country with drivers who say they should receive benefits such as reimbursement for expenses.

On Tuesday, the same day President-elect Trump announced Chao’s appointment, Uber drivers joined nationwide protests for $15 minimum wages. BuzzFeed News reported in June that Uber drivers in three major US markets — Denver, Detroit, and Houston — earned less than $13.25 an hour after expenses in late 2015.

A report by the Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, found in 2008 that Chao’s labor department “inadequately investigated complaints from low-wage and minimum wage workers alleging that employers failed to pay the federal minimum wage, required overtime, and failed to issue a last paycheck.”

In a statement today, Jim Conigliaro Jr., founder of the Independent Drivers Guild, which represents over 45,000 Uber drivers in New York City, said, "As Labor Secretary, Chao failed to stand up for workers and safety.”

“At a time when the transportation industry is being transformed by companies like Uber that want to put driverless vehicles on our roads, we need leadership that puts safety first,” Conigliaro said. “Chao's hands-off approach could be dangerous for America's roads."

Chao’s administration will also likely have a heavy hand in determining the regulation of autonomous vehicles. The agency released guidelines for self-driving vehicles in September. It may fall to the next transportation department to finalize those rules. Where Chao stands on self-driving vehicles is unclear, but her department’s actions could influence the livelihoods of millions of truck and ride hail drivers.

In October, Otto, the self-driving truck company owned by Uber, demonstrated its first delivery for Anheuser-Busch.

Chris Spear, President and CEO of the American Trucking Associations, the largest trade group for that industry, said in a statement that Trump “could not have picked a more qualified, experienced and dedicated individual to serve in this important role.”

“I had the privilege of serving with and working closely with Secretary Chao during my time at the Department of Labor, and I am extremely pleased that she will be taking on this new challenge,” Spear said.

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Corrupt Law Enforcement Sold Information To Silk Road Mastermind, Lawyers Say

Ross Ulbricht

Facebook

A person with inside knowledge of law enforcement’s investigation into dark-web drug bazaar Silk Road sold information to the site’s mastermind, according to lawyers for Ross Ulbricht, the man convicted over the site and sentenced to life in prison.

Attorneys for Ulbricht, who was convicted last year of seven drug crimes, said Tuesday that a user named 'notwonderful' communicated with the Silk Road boss’s Dread Pirate Roberts account on the site's forum in the summer of 2013.

According to the defense attorneys, notwonderful asked DPR to pay him or her an $8,000 down payment, with subsequent payments of $500 per month, in exchange for information on the authorities' investigation into Silk Road.

After DPR was said to have agreed, notwonderful allegedly set up an account on the Silk Road marketplace under the name albertpacino in order to receive the payments in bitcoins.

Ulbricht’s attorneys believe that between $10,000 and $11,000 was paid by DPR to the albertpacino account. The last payment was made in September 2013 just weeks before Ulbricht’s arrest inside a California library, where his laptop was still logged-in to the DPR account.

Ulbricht’s lawyers said that the information “kept DPR one step ahead” of the investigation.

Ulbricht’s lead attorney, Joshua Dratel, said that his team found the communications between notwonderful and DPR while examining an administrator version of the forum they just discovered this past summer during their persistent review of the massive amount of digital data — an estimated five to six terabytes — from the Silk Road.

However, in a puzzling twist, Dratel said that the communications were missing from previous versions of the forum that were turned over to the defense during the course of the case by the government. In fact, all forum data from July and August 2013 is missing from those government versions, Dratel said.

“Why was it wiped? Because somebody didn’t want it to be found,” Dratel said.

Silk Road

According to Ulbricht’s attorneys, notwonderful told DPR that they were working as a law enforcement analyst and had access to the same intel as field agents. The notwonderful user allegedly told DPR that he was “in it for the money” and thought the Silk Road was “interesting” and “in a fantasy world I might be doing this myself.”

Ulbricht’s attorneys said that they reviewed the investigation information that notwonderful provided to DPR and that the timing and substance of communications align with information that agents testified to during the case, further leading them to believe that the person operating notwonderful was a corrupt law enforcement agent.

However, Dratel said that they had reason to believe notwonderful is not one of the two former law enforcement agents who were convicted of corruption related to their investigation into Silk Road, DEA agent Carl Mark Force and Treasury Department special agent Shaun Bridges.

Force and Bridge were caught extorting hundreds of thousands of dollar in bitcoin from site admins that they transferred to personal accounts.

Dratel said that during the investigations of Force and Bridges all of their electronic devices were seized and investigated by the government, and neither albertpacino or notwonderful came up. If one of the corrupt agents had operated under these aliases, Dratel said, “We would have seen it in hundreds of pages."

However, the albertpacino handle was referenced in the Force case at least one time during the investigation, according to a recently unsealed 2014 letter in which Department of Justice officials discussed their probe of agency corruption:

Department of Justice

However, the albertpacino handle was never officially mentioned again in the case.

“This is someone else,” Dratel maintained.

Ulbricht’s team said that they sent a letter requesting additional discovery to prosecutors handling the case against the corrupt agents in the District of Maryland. They hope to gain more information about notwonderful and albertpacino and determine why exactly the forum communications were wiped from versions of the site that the government turned over to the defense.

“If they have investigated, we should be apprised of the results,” Dratel said. “If they haven’t, the government is derelict.”

Ulbricht is currently appealing his life sentence in the Second Circuit. At the appeal arguments in October, the judges indicated some apprehension, calling the life sentence for Ulbricht “unusual” and “quite a leap” given his lack of a criminal history.

The judges also asked whether allowing the impact statements of families whose loved ones died after buying drugs from the Silk Road and overdosing created “enormous emotional overload” at sentencing.

During his argument at the appeal, Dratel told the panel of judges that corrupt agents had administrative privileges and hijacked user accounts. “They were inside the guts of the website,” Dratel said.

Ulbricht’s attorneys said that this new evidence would not have direct immediate impact on the appeal. However, Dratel said that this new information “amplifies our defense that the investigation lacked integrity.”

They also said they would not ask the Second Circuit to put the appeal aside while they continue to investigate. However, they said they were not ruling out using this new information about notwonderful selling information to DPR as the subject of a new trial motion at some point.

LINK: Judges Question Whether Life Sentence For Silk Road Founder Is Unfair

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The Clever Trick An Alt-Right Hot Spot Is Using To Seem Much, Much Bigger

Since the presidential election, the media has paid an enormous amount of attention to the alt-right, a loose confederation of trolls, white nationalists, conservatives, and neo-Nazis. From intense scrutiny of Steve Bannon — the former Breitbart executive appointed to be Donald Trump's chief strategist — to blanket coverage of a white separatist press conference last week in Washington, DC, the spotlight has been commensurate with a major new force in American politics.

But there's a fundamental problem in our understanding of the alt-right: No one knows how many people the controversial movement comprises. Like Anonymous and other leaderless, internet-driven movements before it, the alt-right leverages social media to amplify its message while keeping its membership, if you can call it that, obscure.

Last week, the journalist John Herrman noticed one eye-popping number: 7,528,000, or the total number of subscribers to the subreddit r/altright. That would make r/altright one of the 50 most popular pages on Reddit, up there with huge general interest subs like r/food and r/gadgets.

And this morning, that number had grown by a factor of 1,000, to the humungous figure of 8,190,000,000, or roughly half a billion subscribers more than the population of planet Earth.

So what the heck is going on?

The moderators of r/altright appear to be playing a simple trick with an input prompt. Reddit allows moderators to customize the name for subscribers to a subreddit in the right-hand column where the subscriber count appears, so the group of subscribers could be called "readers," or "followers," or "fanatics" — whatever you like. In the case of r/altright they appear as "Fashy Goys."

A simple right-click inspection of the page HTML shows that name, but it also shows something else: six zeroes.

That places the true subscriber count directly next to a multiplier of 1,000,000 (or when Herrman noticed it last week, merely 1,000). A moderator appears to have done the same thing with the online count for the current number of subscribers:

On the moderator page you can find the real number of subscribers, 8,191, or approximately .000001 of Earth's population.

Eight thousand subscribers isn't nothing: As the Anti-Defamation League found in its examination of anti-Semitic abuse against journalists, a relatively small number of internet users can make a hell of a lot of noise. But it does provide a new data point about an amorphous movement that may have a vested interest in appearing bigger than it really is.

Reddit did not respond to a request for comment.

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DirecTV Now Might Not Be a Game Changer for Cord-Cutters

AT&T is finally rolling out its DirecTV Now streaming service, which offers 100-plus channels of TV programming for an initial price of $35 per month.

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Navy gets new flight simulator technology

The U.S. Navy’s newest flight simulator technology will be found among the exhibits at this year’s Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) taking place in Orlando this week, according to an announcement by NVIDIA.

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Facebook Wants You To Keep In Touch By Playing Pac-Man

Facebook’s newest Messenger upgrade will let you challenge friends, family, and that crush from summer camp to matches of Pac-Man, Galaga, Words With Friends, and a bunch of other games.

When you download the latest update for Messenger, you'll see a game controller icon in the same area as the GIF and sticker selector.

Blake Montgomery

Tap that icon, and you're presented with a list of games that includes classic 8-bit titles, recognizable mobile games, and unique exclusives for Messenger.

You play the games together but not at the same time. They aren't turn-based, though. The competition is more about comparing scores than simultaneous play.

The message thread shows what game you've played, who else in the thread has played, and you and your opponents' scores. You can play in a message thread with more than one person.

After each round, you can also swipe right for an already-taken screenshot of your score, mark it up with a sliding color finger brush, and send it to the people in the message thread.

Facebook

You don't have to open a separate app to play. The games are webpages that open within Messenger.

Facebook first got the idea for the feature when it debuted a single game during March Madness 2016 called "Basketball."

You can still play it by sending a basketball emoji and double tapping it.

Blake Montgomery

Andrea Vaccari, a Messenger product manager, said that at the time Basketball launched, his team wasn't considering the idea of building more games in the app. They were more interested in engaging basketball fans.

Then, he said, people played the game a billion times.

"The success caught us by surprise," he told BuzzFeed News, "Then we started to think about games as a way to keep in touch. With games, you may not have something to say, as with a photo or a message, but you can play together."

Vaccari said he hopes the feature will make gaming less isolating: "Most consoles and other mobile games build games and sprinkle social on top. We built a game on top of social."

The games are built with the mobile experience in mind, but they're also available on the desktop version, messenger.com. They'll open in a vertical window like they would on a phone.

Sound too familiar? Don't worry. Your mom won't be able to start a FarmVille game with you on Messenger.

The classic Facebook desktop game, which accrued millions of users and hundreds of millions of notifications to people who may not have wanted them, won't be part of the Messenger gaming platform.

"We learned our lesson," Vaccari said.

You can only challenge people within message threads, and Messenger only displays messages from friends — unless you accept strangers' requests. You can also abandon or mute message threads you want to avoid. That means no mass requests like when FarmVille was at the height of its popularity.

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Military IDs energy hogs with MIT sensor

The concept device is currently being tested on Coast Guard Cutters.

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Samsung Galaxy S8 could revolutionize selfies

According to a new report, Samsung's Galaxy S8 could pack an auto-focusing front camera that would take incredible selfies.

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Snapchat's Spectacles Are Overhyped – But Amazing

I waited for five hours to buy Snapchat’s $129 camera glasses. I don’t regret it.

If you’ve ever shared a self-destructing photo or video, you probably did so on Snapchat. Two months ago, the company re-branded itself as Snap Inc., “a camera company” (though the app is still called Snapchat).

But what’s a camera company without a camera? Enter Spectacles.

Snap's new camera/sunglasses hybrid is like a GoPro for hipsters, or maybe like a cuter and less conspicuous Google Glass. While wearing them, you can take photos that automatically upload to your phone, ready for you to add to your Snapchat story. They cost $129 and come in three colors (black, teal and coral), all in a rounded, slightly cat-eye shape.

And their hype is real, thanks in no small part to a genius rollout that's led to artificially scarce supply, super-long lines, and a media story in and of itself. Unless you live in New York City or LA, Spectacles are only available via so-called Snapbots — a cyclops/vending machine hybrid that's trackable on this map and that has been popping up in places like Big Sur, the Grand Canyon, and Tulsa, Oklahoma (but curiously enough, not bigger cities like Chicago or Philadelphia). Some pairs are already going for two or three times retail price on eBay, and Lumoid is charging $20 to rent a pair for a day.

Xavier Harding / BuzzFeed News

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Cyber Monday MacBook deals stick around through Cyber Week

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over but some good MacBook deals are still out there.

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WATCH: New Drone Video Shows Apple 'Spaceship' Almost Done

A new drone video released over the Thanksgiving weekend shows that Apple's new "Spaceship" building in Cupertino is nearly completed.David Sexton, who runs Sexton Videography, made a trip from his hometown...

Photo Credit: David Sexton/ Sexton Videography

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A major Internet outage in Germany on Sunday was probably a botched hack attack

Nearly a million internet users in Germany were knocked offline for much of Sunday and Monday following what's believed to have been a failed effort to hijack customer routers for the Mirai botnet.

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Japan spending $173M on world's fastest supercomputer

When completed, this supercomputer will be capable of 130 quadrillion calculations per second.

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Report: Updated iPad Pro to ditch home button

To fit a larger screen, side bezels will be reduced and the home button retired, according to reports.

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Facebook's Plan B To Bring Millions Of Indians Online Just Went Live

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The last time Facebook tried to bring free internet access to millions of unconnected people in India, it didn’t go so well. Now, the world’s largest social network is back for round two. Its brand new program to bring internet access to rural India called Express WiFI is now live after months of testing in remote parts of the country, according to the program’s website.

“We are working with carriers, internet service providers, and local entrepreneurs to help expand connectivity to underserved locations around the world,” says the website.

Unlike its controversial Free Basics program where Facebook tied up with cellphone carriers and allowed people to access a limited selection of websites and services for free, Express WiFi lets users access the entire internet for a small fee — alleviating any potential net neutrality concerns. Users can buy affordable data packs in the form of digital vouchers to access internet on the Express WiFi network.

Facebook declined to say how much internet access under the program would cost, but notes on its website that its “working with local internet providers or mobile operators” who are able to use “software provided by Facebook to connect their communities.”

"We are currently working with ISP and operator partners to test Express WiFi with public deployments in multiple pilot sites," said a Facebook spokesperson. "This solution empowers ISPs, operators, and local entrepreneur retailers to offer quality internet access to their village, town or region."

According to previous reports, at least one of the ISPs that Facebook may have partnered with for the Express WiFi program is India’s state-owned RailTel, which provides internet access through fiber that runs alongside the country’s dense network of railway tracks. Earlier this year, Google partnered with RailTel to bring free WiFi to over 50 railway stations in India.

Facebook did not respond to BuzzFeed News' questions about the program, including exactly which parts of the country is it available in and what the timeframe is for a nationwide rollout. However, Facebook does note on the program's website that Express WiFi will be available in more countries soon.

With millions of people still unconnected to the internet and smartphone penetration in the low hundreds of the millions, internet companies like Facebook and Google see India as their next battleground for growth.

Google’s Project Loon, which uses giant solar-powered balloons floating in space to beam down internet to places where getting online is nearly impossible, has been stuck in with Indian regulators for months. The company recently announced Google Station, a new initiative to let cafes, malls, and small businesses set up public WiFi easily. Facebook’s Free Basics program was shut down by Indian regulators in February on the grounds that it violated net neutrality.

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