Month: July 2018

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it had identified a new coordinated political influence campaign to mislead its users and sow dissension among voters ahead of November’s U.S. congressional elections.

It said it had removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram, part of an effort to combat foreign meddling in U.S. elections.

The company stopped short of identifying the source of the misinformation. But members of Congress who had been briefed by Facebook on the matter said the methodology of the influence campaign suggested Russian involvement.

“I can say I think with pretty high confidence I think this is Russian-related,” Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol.

Two U.S. intelligence officials told Reuters there was not sufficient evidence to conclude that Russia was behind the Facebook campaign, but one noted that “the similarities, aims and methodology relative to the 2016 Russian campaign are quite striking.”

A Russian propaganda arm tried to tamper in the 2016 U.S. election by posting and buying ads on Facebook, according to the company and U.S. intelligence agencies. In February, the U.S. Justice Department indicted 13 Russian nationals, and the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.

Moscow has denied involvement.

Facebook has been on the defensive about influence activity on its site and concerns over user privacy tied to long-standing agreements with developers that allowed them access to private user data.

‘ARMS RACE’

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, which was shown the suspended pages ahead of the takedown, said they showed similarities in language and approach to previously fake accounts from the Internet Research Agency, which is known as the “troll factory” because it stirs up public opinion on social media sites.

The lab cited “consistent mistranslation, as well as an overwhelming focus on polarizing issues at the top of any given news cycle.” It said, for example, the posts on the year-old, feminist Resisters page “took a liberal or left-wing stance on issues around gender, race, immigration, and human rights.” Other pages promoted racial pride among minority groups.

The group said the Resisters page was alarming because it was pushing for confrontation at multiple protests, including against “Unite the Right 2,” with a potential for violence.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said on a call with reporters that the attempts to manipulate public opinion would likely become more sophisticated to evade Facebook’s scrutiny, calling it an “arms race.”

Dan Coats, the Trump administration’s director of national intelligence, said in a speech earlier this month that “the warning lights are blinking red again. Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.”

The White House said the administration was supportive of Facebook’s actions.

“We applaud efforts by our private-sector partners to combat an array of threats that occur in cyberspace, including malign influence,” said Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

U.S. President Donald Trump has come under fire for discounting the threat of interference in the congressional elections.

During his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki earlier this month, Trump appeared to state that he believed Russia was no longer trying to influence the U.S. election process.

Trump later amended that, saying he was “very concerned” about Russian interference in the election. On Friday, Trump held a meeting with his national security advisers on election security.

The Senate Intelligence Committee had previously scheduled a hearing on Wednesday addressing the online threat to U.S. election security.

DIVISIVE ISSUES

Facebook identified influence activity around at least two issues, including a counter-protest to the Unite the Right 2 rally set next week in Washington. The other was the #AbolishICE social media campaign aimed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

In an online post, Facebook said it was disclosing the influence effort now in part because of the rally. A previous event last year in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to violence by white supremacists.

Facebook said it would tell users who had expressed interest in the counter-protest what action it had taken and why.

“This kind of behavior is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing,” the company said.

More than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the pages and about $11,000 had been spent on about 150 ads, Facebook said. The pages had created about 30 events since May 2017.

Facebook officials on a call with reporters said one known account from Russia’s Internet Research Agency was a co-administrator of one of the fake pages for seven minutes, but the company did not believe that was enough evidence to attribute the campaign to the Russian government.

The company previously said 126 million Americans may have seen Russian-backed political content on Facebook over a two-year period, and that 16 million may have been exposed to Russian information on the Instagram photo-sharing app.

Over the past several months, the company has taken steps meant to reassure U.S. and European lawmakers that further regulation is unnecessary. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg says the company has 20,000 people working to police and protect the site.

LONDON (Reuters) – British shop prices fell in July at their slowest pace since the end of 2017 and food inflation picked up speed, according to data on Wednesday that will be little relief for households still feeling the pinch on their spending power.

Overall prices paid by shoppers were 0.3 percent lower last month than in July 2017, down from a 0.5 percent fall in June and the smallest annual decline since December, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said.

Food prices rose by an annual 1.6 percent in July, up from 1.2 percent in June and May.

The BRC’s measure of shop prices has shown deflation for 63 consecutive months as retailers battle to win over shoppers, many of whom have had pay increases below the rate of inflation for much of the past decade.

BRC Chief Executive Helen Dickinson said food prices were pushed up by Europe’s cold spring and hot summer which would continue to keep pressure on prices in the months ahead.

The Bank of England says inflation, which stood at 2.4 percent in June, will slow this year from a peak of 3.1 percent in November. It is widely expected to raise interest rates on Thursday to guide inflation down to its 2 percent target.

At what point does emotion overtake logic? Inductive logic can be as simple as premise + premise = reasonable conclusion. Many flowers are red; most flowers smell good. Therefore red flowers should smell good. That’s easy enough, until you realize that titan arum, aka the corpse flower, blooms a deep red but smells like a locked dumpster that’s been sitting outside a Las Vegas Arby’s for the entire month of August.

Logic can therefore be tricky, especially, I’d argue, in the case of overwhelmingly beautiful sports cars. The Aston Martin DBS Superleggera is fist-chewingly gorgeous; cars with 715 horsepower are fabulous. Obviously then, the DBS Superleggera is the Aston Martin we’ve all been dreaming about since we loved our first car. Or is it? Only a black-hearted cynic could deny this brute’s charms, and then only out of spite. However, in the interest of a fanboy’s attempt at journalism, let me at least walk you through the trial before I deliver the verdict.

Friends, it’s Marek Reichman’s world; we’re just living in it. Even though he won’t follow me back on Instagram, Aston’s chief creative officer just hit a royal flush while the rest of the industry is shouting, “Go fish.” I’m sorry, but with the notable exception of the DB4 Zagato, I think this new DBS is the most beautiful Aston Martin since … ever. It’s a riveting design, blood pumping, jaw dropping, sweat inducing. I’ll save you the list of each and every physical reaction caused by Reichman’s latest and greatest, but rest assured, the car moves you.

The hard nose is exquisite, the front three-quarters a masterpiece. The side profile smartly apes the aforementioned DB4 Zagato, but in loving homage, not slavish facsimile. And those hips! Sinful is putting my feelings mildly. If I have a single gripe, it’s with the Superleggera’s Teutonic rear end, specifically the gaudy 144-point A S T O N  M A R T I N spelled out like a chrome billboard. I understand the argument: Customers in emerging luxury markets (Hi, China!) aren’t always sure what they’re looking at so the signage is needed. But with a design this strong, it’s not needed. Plus it looks tacky. Thankfully, fishing wire and Goo Gone are cheap. Did I mention how small and perfect the taillights are?

The interior? There’s a saying in the beer brewing world: Hand ten brewers the same recipe and ingredients, and you’ll get ten different beers. Long story short: What one guy calls a boil, another lady deems as not quite roiling. Because of the human factor, each beer is unique. The same is true for the DBS Superleggera’s insides. Since the seats are hand-stitched, the same person who sews the driver’s seat sews the passenger seat. Otherwise each seat’s patterns would fail to match. Can’t have that. Remember, even if you’re not in love with the interior photographs attached here, Aston Martin’s Q department can (nearly) outfit the innards any way you like. And yes, it’s basically the same interior as the DB11 AMR, which is no bad thing.

Under that exquisite carbon-fiber hood beats a vicious heart; Aston’s Cologne-sourced 5.2-liter twin-turbo V-12 with the boost turned up by 5 psi. The results are 715 horsepower as well as 664 lb-ft of torque. DB11/DBS mini-CEO Paul Barritt assured us that unless Aston swaps in physically larger turbochargers, this is the most power that this motor can make. Expect to see larger snails on the DBS refresh in four years. All that power and fury is routed via a carbon-fiber torque tube to a high-torque-capable ZF eight-speed transaxle. The entire rear subframe is soft-mounted to the unibody via rubber bushings like on the DB11, unlike the hard-mounted rear of the Vantage.

Despite its prodigious power output, the Superleggera is still first and foremost a grand tourer, not a sports car. The previous iteration of this vehicle was named “Vanquish,” but because of lightweighting efforts this time around, Aston Martin went and licensed the Superleggera moniker from Italy’s Touring to more accurately describe the DBS (meanwhile, the upcoming mid-engine Aston will probably be called Vanquish, because why waste a great name).

Crack the throttle of the Superleggera, and all sorts of hijinks ensue. Forward momentum is one of them, but with so much power travelling through just two wheels, well, hijinks. Should you have the traction control fully on, then the little yellow light will flicker on the dash, letting you know that the 305/30 ZR21 Pirelli P Zeros are having momentary grip issues (the fronts are 265/35 ZR21). Now, it should be pointed out that torque is limited through first, second, and third gears in normal and Sport modes. If you are in Sport Plus, then torque is restricted in just first and second.

Remember those soft rubber bushings holding the rear end onto the rest of the car? As the engine cuts, but then allows power, you can feel the transaxle rocking around back there. Even under small applications of throttle, you can feel the housing move as the torque converter locks and unlocks. Although the amount of movement is both interesting and comical, it’s kind of a mess. I’m hoping that I drove early cars and that Job One vehicles will be a bit better sorted. Still, I can’t stop thinking about the fact that I’ve never driven an automatic transaxle vehicle that was 100 percent shipshape. Specifically, I’m thinking about the Corvette and how its slushbox is never actually good enough. I think the solution for the DBS is active transaxle mounts, like AMG employs on its GT S. That car puts down power like an all-wheel driver. All that said, Aston claims the Superleggera can crack 62 mph in 3.4 seconds. Quick enough, says me.

Although the DBS Superleggera may not be the finest drag racer the world has ever seen, blasting from, say, 40 to 80 mph, or 40 to 100 mph, or (let’s be honest) to 130 mph could very well be its own sport. Any issues I had with standing starts were instantly forgotten as I spent the better part of three hours passing as much Bavarian Alpine traffic as possible (pro driving tip: Avoid Berchtesgaden at the height of summer). Thanks to generous helpings of carbon bits including the brakes, this car should weigh 159 pounds less than the 4,194-pound DB11.  What an intoxicating rocket sled. What a torque monster.

At the launch of the DB11 AMR, the 630-horsepower refresh of the V-12-engined DB11, Aston CEO Andy Palmer was quick to point out that the AMR produced more horsepower than the new Bentley Continental GT (630 versus 626) and had a 1 mph higher top speed (208 versus 207). What Mr. Palmer didn’t know was that I’d just driven the new Conti, and due to its AWD traction, the Bentley felt like it would get to its V-max well before the Aston. The AMR is a fast car, but no match for the Bentley. Now, with the DBS, which should weigh 1,000 pounds less than the Continental GT, the Aston feels like the quicker machine. Perhaps much quicker. I’m not sure if the Superleggera actually is, but the car feels that way. Just an awesome feeling of on-road invincibility. Also, the DBS can hit 211 mph. Neener, neener.

Dynamically, the DBS rocks. What a wonderfully sorted front end. The steering is beautifully weighted, neutral, and imbued with great-for-a-modern-car feedback. You can fall into the clutches of understeer should you fail to brake hard enough for a corner (sorry!), but that’s on the driver, not the car. For the most part the DBS offers a front end that refuses to quit. The sounds of the snarly V-12 have been enhanced for DBS duty, and the results are fab. What I love most is that you’re not hearing separate induction and exhaust noises, but rather a full-on mechanical symphony taking place inside the cabin. One with just the right amount of turbo whirl mixed in, too. It’s glorious. In fact, you can apply that descriptor to the driving experience itself. I’m still drunk on the memories.

At this point, I’m almost ready to conclude that with the DBS Superleggera, Aston Martin is just showing off. Quibbles about the transmission programming aside, the Superleggera’s big flaw is its unobtainable price. Just over $308,000 to start, and the metallic crimson example with the lovely navy blue leather and red contrast stitching raises the buy-in to up over $370,000. That’s some serious scratch, and hard to logically justify. Though as Marek Reichman so famously said, “You don’t need an Aston Martin. You want an Aston Martin.” Damn skippy. Had I the means, I’d buy one just to look at the damn thing. Consider the driving experience a nice little bonus.

The post 2019 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera First Drive: Glorious. Glorious. Glorious. appeared first on Motor Trend.

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Tuesday halted online distribution of gun blueprints for 3-D printing, issuing an order blocking a settlement the Trump administration had reached with the company which planned to put the plans online.

U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik in Seattle, Washington said the blueprint’s publication could cause irreparable harm to U.S. citizens.