War zone via smartphone: the Syria mobile film festival

Since 2011, conflict has raged in Syria. And since then, thousands of locals have recorded it on their smartphones. Such firsthand footage has become a powerful expression of freedom against the regime.

Tonight marks the opening of the Syria mobile film festival in Berlin, showcasing 11 documentary shorts shot by 12 Syrian film-makers.

Its founder is Amer Matar, a 29-year-old author, journalist and documentary film-maker now exiled in Germany, arrested twice in 2011 for his work organising peace demonstrations.

“It’s important to show what life is like inside Syria right now. It’s important to document the daily life, the daily shootings,” Matar says. That the conflict dominates the cinema produced is inevitable. “Most of the films revolve in the world of war, whether it’s death, injury or exile, and the effect of war in Syria.”

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/08/syrian-mobile-film-festival-berlin-films-shot-on-smartphones?CMP=twt_gu

iPhone SE Retail Box Allegedly Leaked, Tips 16GB Storage and ‘SE’ Branding

As Apple’s Spring event scheduled for Monday closes in, more leaks with details about the unannounced 4-inch iPhone – aka iPhone SE – have emerged. While we have already seen the alleged smartphone from all angles in a recent video, a new leaked image claiming to show the retail box of the smartphone has surfaced online, seemingly confirming the name and some of its features.

The alleged retail box first of all clearly mentions ‘iPhone SE’ confirming the official name of the device, which few weeks back was rumoured to come with the iPhone 5se moniker. The box also shows ’16GB’ indicating the Cupertino-based firm to stick with this as the base variant for the new model. This is still better than the iPhone 5c model, the base variant of which came with 8GB inbuilt storage at launch.

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/iphone-se-retail-box-allegedly-leaked-tips-16gb-storage-and-se-branding-815207

Tags: Android, Apple Mobile, Apple Smartphone, iPhone, iPhone 5SE, iPhone SE, Mobiles, Smartphones

 

President Obama Wants a Back Door on Your Phone. But Not on His.

In yesterday’s South by Southwest keynote address, President Obama took a firm stand against strong encryption. Standing before an audience of over two thousand technology enthusiasts, Obama explained why the government needs back door access to all personal communication devices.

If it was technologically possible to make an impenetrable device where there’s no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we disrupt a terrorist plot? How do we even do a simple thing like tax enforcement? If government can’t get in, then everyone’s walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket. There has to be some concession to get into that information somewhere.

Obama didn’t specifically discuss Apple’s case with the FBI, though the inference is clear. The president is not content with unlocking the individual phones of suspected criminals. He’s asking for specific security protections to be permanently removed from all electronic devices. Because terrorists, child pornographers, and tax dodgers exist, no private citizen should have the right to secure communications.

http://reason.com/blog/2016/03/12/obama-iphone-encryption-apple

Obama, at South by Southwest, Calls for Law Enforcement Access in Encryption Fight

President Obama said Friday that law enforcement must be legally able to collect information from smartphones and other electronic devices, making clear, despite disagreement within his administration, that he opposes the stance on encryption taken by technology companies like Apple.

Speaking to an audience of about 2,100 technology executives and enthusiasts at the South by Southwest festival here, Mr. Obama delivered his most extensive comments on an issue that has split the technology community and pitted law enforcement against other national security agencies. Mr. Obama declined to comment specifically on the efforts by the F.B.I. to require Apple’s help in gaining data from an iPhone used by one of the terrorists in the December attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

But the president warned that America had already accepted that law enforcement can “rifle through your underwear” in searches for those suspected of preying on children, and he said there was no reason that a person’s digital information should be treated differently.

“If, technologically, it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system, where the encryption is so strong that there is no key, there is no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer?” Mr. Obama said. “How do we disrupt a terrorist plot?”

If the government has no way into a smartphone, he added, “then everyone is walking around with a Swiss bank account in your pocket.”

Mr. Obama’s decision to embrace the law enforcement position on encryption represents a fundamental break with a tech community that has strongly supported his political career. For years, the president nurtured close ties to Silicon Valley, tapping the youthful talent there to help him reshape the federal government’s aging technology infrastructure and seeking out leading executives for private advice and millions in campaign cash

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/us/politics/obama-heads-to-south-by-southwest-festival-to-talk-about-technology.html?_r=0?login=google

Your Smartphone Knows Who You Are and What You’re Doing

Your phone knows more about you than you think.

It knows where you’ve been and who you were with, the birthday gift you bought your mother and who you plan to vote for. Sex last night? It knows that too if you’re using one of the applications for couples trying to conceive.

From pre-installed apps that count your steps to saved passwords for banking accounts and social media, smartphones have evolved from devices that make calls into digital repositories for the most intimate details of life.

“You can extract enough information on a typical person’s phone that you can construct a virtual clone of that individual,” said Elad Yoran, executive chairman of Koolspan Inc., a communications security company. “They are the windows not just into our personal lives but they are equally the windows into our professional lives.”

And, as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s battle with Apple Inc. shows, they have become a goldmine for investigators. The agency has won a court order demanding Apple’s help unlocking an iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who shot scores of co-workers at a December office event in San Bernardino, California in December, killing 14.

Apple is fighting the order, mounting a highly public case against what it calls government overreach and in defense of privacy. It warns that anything it does to override the encryption of its smartphones could help hackers.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-29/your-smartphone-knows-who-you-are-and-what-you-re-doing

YOUR SMARTPHONE KNOWS WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU’RE DOING

It knows where you’ve been and who you were with, the birthday gift you bought your mother and who you plan to vote for. Sex last night? It knows that too if you’re using one of the applications for couples trying to conceive.

From pre-installed apps that count your steps to saved passwords for banking accounts and social media, smartphones have evolved from devices that make calls into digital repositories for the most intimate details of life.

http://www.infowars.com/your-smartphone-knows-who-you-are-and-what-youre-doing/

Jolla Confirms The Sailfish Tablet Is Dead

Hardware is always hard. But if you’re playing at the margins of a mobile ecosystem dominated by Android and iOS, well, it’s best described as a bloodbath. To wit: Finland’s Jolla, which makes its own mobile OS Sailfish and — previously — its own mobile devices too, has confirmed that its crowdfunded tablet is being canned.

The Jolla Tablet project started as an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, back in November 2014, which went on to raise more than $2.5 million from some 21,600 backers. The overly optimistic estimated shipping schedule for the slate was the following year. Instead, Jolla was showing off unreleased hardware at the MWC trade show last spring — where TechCrunch got hands on. And backers were left waiting for the rest of 2015.

Writing in a blog update on the tablet late last week, Jolla co-founder and chairman Antti Saarnio confirmed that only a very small number of backers will now get a tablet (540 units will ship, starting from February). He said the rest of the backers will get a refund — although this process may take up to a year.

http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/01/jolla-confirms-the-sailfish-tablet-is-dead/

Jolla Confirms The Sailfish Tablet Is Dead https://t.co/n5i4sUC1ZT by @riptari

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) February 1, 2016

Candle power to charge smartphones

A power outage – it’s an experience all are familiar with and everyone dreads. The lights go out, the TV goes black, the computers shut down as their batteries drain. And worst of all – your smartphone dies.

This scenario was one of the inspirations for Andrew Burns of California startup Stower to develop the candle charger. Its simplistic design is based on the principles of therm-oelectrics, which have been around since the early 1800’s.

Light a candle, fill the device with water, and you have a charger.

“So the way thermo-electric generators work is you have a hot plate and a cold plate and you smash these generators together and it’s that temperature difference, it creates a diffusion of energy from the hot side to the cold side,” said Burns, co-founder of the company.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/28/us-usa-candle-charger-idUSKCN0Q229Q20150728