Technology

The teens were out in force today in San Jose for the annual TwitchCon game-streaming conference. There, Twitch announced that at any given time, 1 million people are watching it (up from 746,000 last year), and it seemed like many game lovers were at TwitchCon in person to meet some of the nearly half-million web celebs that broadcast each day on the service. Considering Twitch said just 2 million were broadcasting per monthin December, the servicegrowth is still explosive under Amazonownership.

Amongst the major reveals at TwitchCon were a new Squad Streaming feature that lets up to four people broadcast at once in split-screen that will test with select streamers later this year.

Therealso a new Twitch Sings game built-in partnership with Rock Band-creator Harmonix. Broadcasters can play to perform karaoke (though only with fake versions of songs as Twitch lacks major label music licenses). Viewers can use the chat to request the next song and control the lights on the virtual karaoke stage;broadcasters can sign up here for the Twitch Sings closed beta that starts later in 2018.

Twitch Squad Streaming

And Twitch broadcasters can now use Snapchataugmented reality lenses thanks to the new Snap Camera desktop app and accompanying Twitch extension launching today. Streamers can use hotkeys to trigger different Snapchat Lenses, let viewers try those masks by scanning an onscreen Snapchat QR code and reward subscribers with a bonus thank you effect. Read our full story on Snap Camera here.

There were plenty of other minor announcements during the conferencekeynote:

• More than 235,00 streamers now have Affiliate status and are earning money on their channels, while 6,800 have joined its Partnership program so they can earn even more through channel subscriptions and ads.
• Twitch is revamping Gear on Amazon, where streamers can show off products and earn affiliate fees, renaming it Amazon Blacksmith.
• TwitchHighlight editor can now stitch together multiple clips from across a broadcasting session.
• New homepage sections will featureup-and-coming streamers, new Partners and Affiliates or streamers local to viewers.
• VIP Badges will let creators recognize their favorite subscribers and moderators.
• Moderators can now see how long someone has been on Twitch, view chat messages that person has sent in the channel and see how many time-outs or bans that account has received in that channel to better understand who to boot.
• 18 billion messages have been sent in Twitch chat and its Whispers feature in 2018, and fans have given creators 85 million Cheers and Subscriptions.
• 150 million Twitch Clips have been created in 2018 to bring the best game stream and other weird content to the rest of the web.
• Twitch users have gifted $9 million worth of subscriptions to fellow users in just 9 weeks.
• Twitch will open its Bounty Board of sponsorship opportunities to 30 more brands, and more Partners and Affiliates in the U.S. and Canada in November.
• The Twitch Rivals in-person gaming tournaments will double to 128 events in 2019. Some will have million-dollar prizes, and it already gave out $5 million in winners& jackpots last year.

As CEO Emmett Shear made the announcements, audience members hooted and hollered with delight. They out-yelled even Applekeynote attendees. Shear shouted out early users who&ve been with it since Twitch was a Y Combinator live-vlogging startup called Justin.tv. &When people have your back and support you for a long time, we think they should be recognized for it,& he said, revealing the new VIP badges and a counter that shows how many months a fan has been a channelpaying subscriber.

&You spoke and we listened,& Shear said. That truly seemed to be the message of this conference. FacebookF8 conferences held in the same San Jose Convention Center often seem to produce updates that are designed to help the company as much as the users. But Twitch has realized it can&t just be useful. It must remain beloved if people are going keep spending 760 million hours per month watching others game, joke and express themselves. Shear concluded, &I think we&re just scratching the surface when it comes to everyone playing together.&

Twitch Sings

STEM innovations, especially those in engineering, are an essential part of our modern-day lives. These innovations impact us all, and cut across social, economic and geographical boundaries. Yet, at a time when engineers must meet the needs of a vast population of users with diverse opinions and backgrounds, the engineering workforce continues to suffer from gender disparity.

The U.S. Department of Commerce reported that women accounted for 47 percent of all U.S. jobs in 2015. However, women only account for 24 percent of STEM jobs. And the percentage of women in STEM fields continues to be the lowest in engineering, with women representing just 15 percent of the workforce (NSF, 2018).

These are startling numbers — made even more striking given the range of STEM advocacy groups that making concerted efforts to increase female representation in engineering through programs that encourage women to enroll in engineering courses in high school, major in engineering in college and then go into the profession.

The problem, it seems, is that girls self-select out of engineering before these efforts even have a chance to be effective.

At a young age, girls internalize long-lasting stereotypes that tell them that boys are better at engineering and computer science, and that girls simply aren&t engineers. And during these formative years, they never have an opportunity to imagine themselves as engineers.

By the time we try to get young women involved in high school, their minds are already made up that engineering is not for them. Young women do not enroll in engineering-related secondary school courses at the same rates as young men, according to the 2018 National Science Foundation Science and Engineering Indicators Report: About two and a half times (21 percent) as many male students earned engineering and technology credits in high school as compared to female (eight percent). This gender disparity is also apparent in AP courses. In computer science, 77 percent of exam-takers are male.

Then, when women go on to college, they do not select STEM majors at the rate of men: 44 percent of men elect a STEM major compared to 24 percent of women, and only 19.3 percent of engineering degrees are awarded to women.

If we are going to bring more women into engineering, we must start to reach out to them when they&re still young girls.

We know from our work in creating the Museum of ScienceEngineering Is Elementary curriculum, which has been used by more than 15 million elementary students and 190,000 educators across the country, that when given the opportunity and when exposed to engineering concepts, girls are just as successful as boys at understanding the engineering design process. Additionally, a five-year of study of those curricula funded by the National Science Foundation found that girls perform just as well as boys on engineering outcome measures. (Exploring the Efficacy of Engineering isElementary (E4) NSF No. 1220305)

This data is reinforced by what we see everyday within the halls of the Museum of Science: Girls like engineering if they get a chance to learn it.

More than one million kids have participated in Engineering Design Challenges at the Museum. Our research has shown that when girls immerse themselves in our exhibits, they demonstrate confidence and sustained interest in solving engineering problems and express an interest in future engineering activities (Auster - Lindgren-Streicher, 2013).

If young girls have the aptitude for and interest in engineering when they are able to experience it, and yet they are still not pursuing it as they get into high school and beyond, it means we are simply missing them.

Itincumbent upon all of us to introduce girls to engineering, in both informal and formal educational settings, during the very earliest years of schooling. We can&t wait until high school and hope to sway them. Rather, it is time we expand engineering education to all children, starting as early as preschool — and then support educators in doing so — so we can build a learning environment in which engineering is part of girls& daily conversations. When we start young, we never allow the stereotypes to take root in girls. They learn that all students are natural problem solvers and that all students are engineers — especially girls.

Facebook has removed82 pages, groups and accounts for &coordinated inauthentic behavior& that originated out of Iran.

The social networking giant discovered the &inauthentic behavior& late last week, according to a blog post by the companycybersecurity policy chief Nathaniel Gleicher. Hesaid the operationrelied on posing as U.S. and U.K. citizens, and &posted about politically charged topics such as race relations, opposition to the President, and immigration.&The company said that although its investigation is in its early stages, it traced the activity back to Iran but does not yet know who is responsible.

Facebook said that a little over one million accounts followed at least one of the pages run by the Iranian actors.The takedown also included 16 accounts on Instagram.

The actors spent &less than $100& on two ads on Facebook and Instagram using both U.S. and Canadian currency, which helped the actors gain a greater reach to Facebook users.

The company shared its findings with the FBI and the Atlantic Council prior to the takedowns,Gleicher added on a call.&We moved from detection to disruption in less than a week,& he said.

An analysis by the Atlantic CouncilDigital Forensic Research Lab of the latest takedowns said the &accounts sought to drive engagement on the platforms, rather than off them, with a mixture of memes, videos, and authored comments,& which the lab said &appears to have worked& with posts receiving large numbers of shares and replies.

&The foreign-policy messaging was in keeping with earlier Iranian networks, which primarily amplified Iranian government narratives on the Middle East,& said the analysis. &The focus on divisive content is much closer to the behavior of the Russian information operation, although the Iranian operation does not appear to have targeted conservatives as much as liberals.&

Itthe latest batch of account and content takedowns in recent months. Facebook took down hundreds of accounts and pages in August with help from security firm FireEye, which found a widespread Iranian influencing operation on the social media platform. Although previous efforts by Facebook to take down accounts linked with spreading disinformation aimed at elections, the Iranian-backed campaign was targeting a scattering of issues. FireEye said in its analysis that the various narratives employed by the Iraniansinclude &anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes, as well as support for specific U.S. policies favorable to Iran, such as the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal.&

Tech titans like Facebook have faced increasing pressure from lawmakers to better police their platforms from disinformation and the spread of false news from state-backed actors in the wake of the2016 presidential election.

Although much of the focus has been on activity linked to trolls working for the Russian government, which used disinformation spreading tactics to try to influence the outcome of the election, Iran has emerged as a separate powerhouse in its use of spreading disinformation on the platform.