F-35A fighter jet in pictures

The U.S. Air Force recently declared that its F-35A Lightning II fighter jet is combat ready. Here are some stunning images of the aircraft.

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Wearable translation device promises a science-fiction future, almost

A device called the Pilot has captured imaginations and sparked skepticism. How well will it work?

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FCC commissioner wants an investigation into Wi-Fi at presidential debate

A commissioner from the Federal Communications Commission has asked the agency to investigate the banning of journalists' Wi-Fi hotspots at Monday's presidential debate at Hofstra University. Press were required to pay $200 for Wi-Fi access.

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Oculus Diversity Program Members "Shocked And Dismayed" By Founder's Alt-Right Ties

Palmer Luckey

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This May, 100 virtual reality developers from around the country gathered at Facebook’s Menlo Park campus for a bootcamp in making software for the Oculus Rift. They were there as a part of the Launch Pad program, a fellowship designed “for diverse creators to build for VR.” After a long day of meetings, the final speaker was Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, wearing his trademark Hawaiian shirt. By keynoting the event, some attendees felt, Luckey was sending a message: The future of VR looked like them.

Now, four short months later, many of the Launch Pad fellows are reconsidering their involvement with the program after revelations that Luckey donated money to a pro-Trump nonprofit associated with the alt-right, the online political movement of trolls that sees offensive speech as a patriotic duty and views cultural diversity with disdain.

"I'm doing a Day of the Dead project. ... How can I promote that when the head of Oculus is giving money [to support] Trump?"

"The mood is surprise, shock, dismay, and disappointment," one Launch Pad fellow, a California-based producer, told BuzzFeed News. "A number of people are creating documentaries to address social issues, and they are questioning whether Oculus is the right platform."

Announced in March, the Launch Pad program comprises the May bootcamp as well as the possibility of tens of thousands of dollars in funding for Oculus projects. In the announcement, the company encouraged "women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community and anyone who is willing to share how their perspective adds to the 'diversity of thought' in our community" to apply.

The program also includes a community: a closed Facebook group set up for the fellows by in-house coordinators, where dozens of fellows are now sharing their anger and disappointment.

"Let me get this straight, the founder of Oculus thinks my sister should be banned from visiting me in the US because she's Muslim? And hates my husband because he's Jewish?" wrote one fellow.

Alejandro Quan-Madrid, a Launch Pad fellow based in Los Angeles, said Luckey's political donations make him feel like a hypocrite. "I'm doing a Day of the Dead project and showing it at Day of the Dead festivals," he told BuzzFeed News. "How can I promote that when the head of Oculus is giving money [to support] Trump — and Trump wants people in my community to be deported?"

On Friday, Luckey wrote a Facebook post apologizing for "my actions ... negatively impacting the perception of Oculus and its partners." But he did apologize not for the activity of Nimble America itself, which was formed to turn "shitposting and meme magic" into a "real life" political operation. As the Daily Beast reported, Nimble America gestated on r/The_Donald, the Trump subreddit whose community members say that liberals are "cucks" and "left wing SJWs," Syrian immigrants are "animals" who should be "put in a cage," and that black people would "still be living in mud huts" if not for colonialism.

Palmer's apology didn't move many of the Launch Pad fellows. "It didn’t say anything of real substance," said the California producer. "At some point, I’m not sure if there is anything to be said. It feels like he probably really believes this stuff."

Several of the fellows asked the Launch Pad coordinator, Oculus Diversity Lead Amy Thole, for clarification on Luckey's apology. Thole, who declined to speak to BuzzFeed News, sent an email to the fellows yesterday announcing that because of a planned move to Oregon, Monday was her last day at the company. There would be an "Oculus Diversity Transition" to new leadership, she wrote. She did not mention Luckey or Nimble America. (According to the email, Thole's replacement is Ebony Peay, who previously worked as an executive assistant at Oculus.)

Peay will be thrust into a difficult situation — now many of the fellows are hesitant about Oculus publicly using their work. At the bootcamp, Oculus employees talked about the importance of “making VR inclusive” from the very beginning of the new industry, one of the fellows told BuzzFeed News. But now, fellows say, people are going to view Project Launch skeptically. "I feel bad for the organizers," said Quan-Madrid. "Any time they come out and talk about Launch Pad, it will look like a PR cover-up."

Launch Pad fellows will have until October to decide whether or not they will accept funding from Oculus; that's when the company plans to announce the winning projects. If they don't, they'll join a handful of developers who have already decided to withdraw support from the platform in the wake of last week's report about Luckey. Among other things, that's not good news for Facebook, which faces major competition in the burgeoning VR market from Sony, HTC, and Google.

"The days of separation between a founder's values and his company’s values are waning," the California producer and Launch Pad fellow said. "And there’s a bigger question: Are the values he embodies good for Facebook?"

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Report: iOS 10 backups easy to hack

A Russian company that sells software for guessing iPhone passwords discovered a vulnerability in iTunes backups.

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Aetna to Subsidize Apple Watch

Aetna announced that it will be making Apple Watches available for large employers and individual customers during open enrollment season.The health care services company said the new initiative will...

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Those Online Polls Showing Trump Winning The Debate Were Probably Not Rigged By Russia

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images

SAN FRANCISCO — Many of the online polls following the first presidential debate were manipulated to make it appear as though Trump had won, but those trying to skew the polls appeared to be be pranksters and Trump supporters rather than organized Russian hackers.

As it emerged Tuesday that dozens of online polls showed landslide victories for Trump following the first debate, rumors swirled that Russian hackers had been behind a campaign to hack the polls and hand Trump a victory.

A tweet by Twitter user @DustinGiebel purported to show a map of Twitter activity in the Russian city of St Petersburg as evidence that the #TrumpWon hashtag had originated there. The tweet has since been deleted but a screengrab is below.

The tweet has since been deleted and the account has not answered numerous requests for comment on which program was used to reach the conclusion that Russians were behind the #Trumpwon hashtag. A blog post from the Washington Post also pointed out that the map used in the tweet is not typical of mapping programs used to plot Twitter trends, including TrendsMap which was originally identified as the source of the graphic.

"This is certainly not from any of our tools and do not know of any tools that look this way," TrendsMap spokesperson Kathy Mellett said in an email to the Post. "Based upon our analysis, #TrumpWon primarily came from the US. There was an initial spike just after the debate followed by a much larger one a few hours later. In particular, around 97% of the initial spike of approximately 6,000 tweets came from the US."

An analysis by BuzzFeed News showed that while there was one St. Petersburg-based Twitter account repeatedly using that hashtag, it was also widely used across the United States at the same time.

Meanwhile, a look at the poll results, however, showed that the polls themselves were so poorly designed and secured that simple tricks suggested by Trump supporters on the 4chan messaging board were enough to manipulate the results at dozens of media outlets, including Time, CNBC, and BuzzFeed News.

The idea to manipulate the polls was suggested on 4chan in the week leading up to the debate. In one dedicated chat room Monday night, Trump supporters shared tips on how to manipulate the polls using easy methods such as opening an incognito browser window, or turning a phone's airplane mode off and on.

4chan / Via boards.4chan.org

4chan / Via boards.4chan.org

A developer at BuzzFeed confirmed that in-house this poll, run in the wake of the debate, had indeed been manipulated to give Trump a hardy victory over Clinton. The developer said that someone had executed a JavaScript script to register votes repeatedly, basically running a program that let them vote repeatedly in the same poll.

BuzzFeed News reached out to Time and CNBC for comment, both of whom ran polls created by the same Playbuzz platform, which gave Trump a huge victory in the debate. A spokeswoman from Time said the company had seen more unique viewers than votes on the page where they ran the poll. CNBC did not respond to a request for comment, though it appears it was heavily targeted by 4Chan users. A spokesperson from Playbuzz did not answer a request for comment on how it ensures that its polls are conducted securely, but a Playbuzz employee, who answered a call from BuzzFeed and agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said their polls were "not scientific, they aren't meant to be taken as scientific evidence."

That media companies continue to run online polls, especially around important news events such as the first debate in right race for the presidency is a "failing of journalism," said one editor at a news organization who ran one of the polls conducted Monday night.

"I spent all morning asking and no one knows if our poll was secure, how it was conducted, or if someone scammed it. Now people are pointing to our poll saying that it shows Trump won," said the editor, who asked to remain anonymous as he was not authorized to speak about his company's polling system. "That's not good journalism."

CNN is currently the only news outlet to have run a poll in which verified people were asked how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump fared in the debate Monday night. The CNN/ORC poll conducted immediately following the debate found that Clinton topped Trump 62 to 27.

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