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Among the many things the current administration has been criticized for is its lack of a unified strategy to combat cyber threats, especially in light of ongoing election interference and psy ops perpetrated by Russia. The Department of Homeland Security is advancing the ball with the creation of the National Risk Management Center, intended on protecting critical infrastructure from attacks and subversion by online adversaries.

The NRMC was announced today at a cyber summit in New York held by the agency, where DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen explained the purpose and justification for this new entity. Remarkably, she directly contradicted the ongoing soft-pedaling by the Executive of Russian operations targeting the country.

&Let me be clear: Our intelligence community had it right. It was the Russians. It was directed from the highest levels. And we cannot and will not allow it to happen again,& she said.

DHS launches a new cyber hub to coordinate against threats to US infrastructure

DHS Secretary Nielsen in 2017.

Thus the creation of the NRMC, which will work directly with various entities and federal agencies to protect infrastructure like banking systems and the power grid (not to mention election systems). These are such obvious targets for foreign intelligence to attack, either for destructive or informative purposes, that they merit special attention from our side as well, and DHS is in fact the one to provide it.

The new center will be online and staffed tomorrow, though it will take some time to spin up completely as DHS allocates space, personnel and resources. Its exact duties, jurisdictions and connections with other units will no doubt be made clear as well.

Vice President Pence spoke at the event too, but naturally chose to lash out at the Obama administration, which he said &often chose silence and paralysis over strength and action.&

This is a strange thing to say when several prominent cybersecurity-related posts and offices have been abandoned and a report by the Office of Management and Budget found agencies around the country are utterly unprepared for even elementary cyberattacks.

Government investigation finds federal agencies failing at cybersecurity basics

One of the major moves to improve cybersecurity, elevating CyberCom to Unified Combatant Command level, was an Obama-era plan, and the presidentoverall cyber strategy, announced last year, also cribbed liberally from the previous administration.

That said, the vice president was realistic on other points.

&The fact is Russia meddled in our 2016 elections,& he concurred. &This administration will not tolerate threats from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or anyone else.&

The other countries on the list, it bears mentioning, have not been found to have interfered with American elections, though admittedly they might if they had the chance.

Pence also acknowledged states& prerogative in running their elections how they like, but also said the federal government would be providing additional funding and technology for election security. He mentioned the &Albert sensors& being deployed to help monitor online systems, and a &virtual situation room& many states are already using that connects DHS with state authorities.

&I want to urge, with great respect, every state to take renewed action. Take advantage of the assistance offered by our administration,& Pence said.

That seems like a good idea, as Russian operations have already begun ahead of the 2018 midterms. Perhaps that joint Russo-American cybersecurity group proposed by Putin will help.

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Apple is inching closer and closer to becoming a $1 trillion company today after posting third-quarter results that beat what analysts were expecting and bumping the stock another few percentage points — which, by Apple standards, is tens of billions of dollars.

The companystock is up around 2.5 percent this afternoon after the report, which at a prior market close with a market cap of around $935 billion, is adding nearly another $20-plus billion to its market cap. A few quarters ago we were talking about how Apple was in shooting distance of that $1 trillion mark, but now it seems more and more like Apple willactually hit it. Apple is headed into its most important few quarters as we hit the back half of the year, with its usual new lineup of iPhones and other products and its accompanying critical holiday quarter.

Herea quick breakdown of the numbers:

  • Revenue:$53.3 billion, up 17 percent year-over-year compared to analyst expectations of $52.34 billion.
  • Earnings: $2.34 per share compared to analyst estimates of $2.18 per share.
  • iPhones: 41.3 million, up 1 percent year-over-year though revenue on the iPhone line was up 20 percent year-over-year. Analysts expected 41.79 million iPhones sold.
  • iPhone average selling price: $724
  • iPads: 11.55 million, up 1 percent year-over-year but ahead of analyst expectations of 10.3 million.
  • Macs: 3.7 million, down 13 percent year-over-year and behind analyst expectations.
  • Services: $9.6 billion, up 31 percent year-over-year.
  • Other products: $3.7 billion, up 37 percent year-over-year.

Apple nears a $1 trillion market cap as it clears another quarter ahead of expectations

So in all, the shipment numbers were hit or miss at a granular level, but at the same time the iPhone is generating a lot more revenue than it did last year — implying that there might be a shifting mix toward more expensive iPhones. Applestrategy to figure out if it could unlock a more premium tier in consumer demand, then, may be panning out and helping once again drive the companygrowth. Itthen padding out the rest of that with growth in services and other products like it has in the past few quarters as Apple heads into the end of the year.

In the past year or so, Applestock has continued to rise even though there may have been some dampened expectations for its latest super-premium iPhone, the iPhone X. Its shares are up more than 20 percent in the past year, and in the second quarter the company announced that it would return an additional $100 billion to investors in a new capital return program, which at the time also sparked a considerable jump in its stock. Apple hasn&t delivered a product that has entirely changed the market calculus like it did when it first started rolling out larger iPhones, but its strategy of incremental improvements and maneuvering in Wall Street continues to provide it some momentum as it heads toward $1 trillion.

Apple nears a $1 trillion market cap as it clears another quarter ahead of expectations

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TV Time, the consumer app that helps bingers keep track of where they are with favorite shows and socialize with fellow viewers, is today expanding its business with the launch of an analytics platform calledTVLytics.The new service will allow creators and distributors to tap into real-time data from across more than 60,000 TV shows. It will also offer other anonymized data collected from viewers, including things like on which platforms viewers watched, their favorite characters, bingeing behavior, viewers& locations, anticipation from fans for new episodes, social engagement and more.

The data is pulled from the appcommunity of around a million daily usersfrom more than 200 countries who check in with the app some 45 million times per month. To date, TV Time has tracked more than 10 billion TV episodes, and has seen 210 million reactions.

TV Time began its life as a source for TV show GIFs known as WhipClip, but later pivoted to a social TV community after acquiring TVShow Time in December 2016. This proved to be a smart move on its part, as the company has grown to 12 million registered users (and growing).

The appcore functionality is focused on offering TV viewers a place where they can follow shows and mark off the ones they&ve watched — something thatespecially helpful in the streaming era where people are often hopping from one binge-watching session to another, then back again, or are watching multiple series at once and need to remember where they left off.

TV Time debuts an analytics platform for the streaming era

In addition to being a utility for tracking shows, the app offers a community section for each episode where fans can post photos, videos, GIFs and memes, as well as like and comment on the content others share. Viewers can even leave video reactions about each episode, in a format similar to the &Stories& found on apps like Instagram or Snapchat.

TV Time also interjects questions of its own — asking about your reaction (good, funny, wow, sad, etc.), favorite character, device watched on and more. And it inserts its own polls in the middle of the fan discussion page, which ask about pivotal moments from the episode and what people thought.

TV Time debuts an analytics platform for the streaming era

With the launch of analytics, TV Time aims to make use of all this data by offering it to clients in the TV industry who are looking for more comprehensive viewership data for planning purposes.

Of course, TV Timedata is not a Nielsen equivalent — ituser-generated and self-reported. That means itnot going to be able to tell content creators, networks, distributors and other clients how many people are watching a show exactly. Nor can it give a holistic overview of the showfan base. TV Timeviewers skew younger — in the 18 to 34-year-old range — and only around 10 to 15 percent are based in the U.S., though that market is the fastest growing.

But TV Time can tap into the reactions and sentiments shared by a subset of a showmost engaged fans.

TV Time debuts an analytics platform for the streaming era

Its paying clients today include a handful of TV networks, streaming services and talent agencies that have been testing the app in beta for around a month. They use TV Timeanalytics to help spot trends, develop and expand a showaudience and make decisions about how to cast and market their shows. Some have also used it in advertising negotiations. Customers pay a flat annual subscription fee for access to this data, but TV Time won&t disclose exact pricing.

&We&ve been testing it to figure out which of the insights we&ve launched are most valuable. Thathow we landed on things like the completion rate, the binge rate, affinity reports, mobility scores and favorite characters,& explains TV Time head of Programming, Jeremy Reed.

TV Time debuts an analytics platform for the streaming era

The value offered by TVLytics data doesn&t just come from the data itself, but also how hard it is to collect. In todayfragmented TV viewing ecosystem, consumers now watch across devices, and split their time between live TV, recorded TV, live TV delivered over the internet, subscription video services and internet video sites, like YouTube.

In addition, TV Time notes that, overall, the number of long-form shows on television has grown by 69 percent since 2012, with nearly 500 scripted original series airing in 2017, citing data from FX Research Networks. The majority of these scripted shows are coming from over-the-top platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and others. Thata lot of TV content to keep up with, especially as consumers hop between devices — even in the midst of a single episode.

What TV Time does is keep all this viewing data together in a single destination, and can make connections about what viewers are watching across platforms — from TV to Netflix and beyond.

&With studios — they&re looking two years out in producing content. They start to see trends in types of characters, and certainly start to see the characters of this show resonate with the characters of this other show and start to see the overlap,& notes Reed. Plus, he adds, that overlap is &agnostic to platform.&

TV Time data is put to use for consumers as well, in terms of helping to recommend their next binge.

And now its community is demanding the ability to track movies, too — especially now that streaming services are backing their own feature films. Reed says this isn&t something TV Time has planned for the near-term, as thereso much to do around episodic content — but that itabsolutely &a never-say-never& kind of thing, he hints.

Santa Monica-based TV Timeteam of 35 is backed by $60+ million in funding, according to Crunchbase, from investors including Eminence Capital, WME, IVP, Raine Ventures and Greycroft, plus individual entertainment and media industry executives like Ari Emanuel, Peter Guber, Steve Bornstein, Scooter Braun, Gordon Crawford and Ron Zuckerman.

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Unknown midterm election attackers that Facebook has removed were hosting a political rally next month that they pinned on Black Lives Matter, Antifa and other organizations, according to third-party event websites that scraped the now-removed Facebook events.

Facebook provided an image of the deleted &No Unite The Right 2 & DC& event as part of its announcement today that merely showed its image, title, date, location and that a Page called &Resisters& was one of the hosts of the propaganda event. But ascraped event descriptionTechCrunch discovered on Rallyist provides deeper insight into the disruptive information operation. Facebook won&t name the source of the election interference but said the attackers shared a connection through a single account to the Russian Internet Research Agency responsible for 2016 presidential election interference on Facebook.

Midterm attackers cited Black Lives Matter in false flag Facebook rally

&We are calling all anti-fascists and people of good conscience to participate in international days of action August 10 through August 12 and a mass mobilization in Washington DC& the description reads. &We occupy ICE offices, confront racism, antisemitism, islamaphobia, xenophobia, and white nationalism.We will be in the streets on August 10-12, and we intend to win.&

But whatespecially alarming is how the event description concludes [emphasis mine, in full below]. &Signed, Black Lives Matter Charlottesville, Black Lives Matter D.C., Charlottesville Summer of Resistance Welcoming Committee Agency, Crimethinc Ex-Workers Collective, Crushing Colonialism, D.C. Antifascist Collective, Future is Feminists, Holler Network, Hoods4Justice, The International, Capoeira Angola Foundation-DC (FICA-DC), Libertarian Socialist Caucus Of The DSA, March For Racial Justice, Maryland Antifa, One PeopleProject, Resist This (Former DisruptJ20), Rising Tide North America, Smash Racism D.C., Showing Up for Racial Justice Charlottesville, Suffolk County DSA, Workers Against Racism, 350 DC.&

Midterm attackers cited Black Lives Matter in false flag Facebook rally Midterm attackers cited Black Lives Matter in false flag Facebook rally

Itunclear if the attackers effectively &forged& the signature of these groups, or duped them into signing off on supporting the rally. The attackers were potentially trying to blame these groups for the rallies in an effort to further sow discord in the political landscape.

Midterm attackers cited Black Lives Matter in false flag Facebook rally

Facebook initially provided no comment about the description of the event, but then confirmed that it was originally created by the attackers& since-deleted Page &Resisters,& which then later added several legitimate organizations as co-hosts: Millennials For Revolution, March To Confront White Supremacy & from Charlottesville to DC, Workers Against Racism & WAR, Smash Racism DC and Tune Out Trump.Strangely, those co-hosts have relaunched a new event with a similar name, &Nazis Not Welcome No Unite The Right 2& and similar description, including a similar but expanded &Signed by& list, and now including BLM Charlottesville and D.C. as co-hosts.

Midterm attackers cited Black Lives Matter in false flag Facebook rally

Meanwhile, Facebook also shared an image of a November 4th, 2017 &Trump Nightmare Must End & NYC& event, also without details of the description. A scraped version on the site AllEventsshows the description as &History has shown that fascism must be stopped before it becomes too late. There is only one force that can stop this nightmare: we, the people, acting together. On November 4 we&ll take to the streets demanding that Trump regime must go! We meet at Times Square (42 St and Broadway) at 2 PM!&

The co-opting of left-wing messaging and protests is a powerful strategy for the election interferers. It could provide the right-wing with excuses to claim that all left-wing protest against Trump or white supremacy is actually foreign governments or hackers, and that those protests don&t represent the views of real Americans.

Facebook finds evidence of Russia-linked influence campaigns targeting US midterms

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Meri Beckwith Contributor
Meri Beckwith is an investor at Oxford Capital, a seed and Series A VC in the U.K., where he focuses on digital health, the future of mobility and consumer brands.

It would be hard to argue that digital products have a net-positive impact on our health. Most are designed to provide the same dopamine hit as a slot machine. We all know someone who wasted their youth playing games that were designed to be all-consuming, with the World Health Organization recently going so far as to categorizevideo game addiction as a mental health disorder.

But this habit-forming power of digital products can be used for therapeutic benefit too, often by changing the behavior that causes disease or ill health. This new range of products is being commonly referred to as digital therapeutics. These apps and services offer evidence-based and personalized behavioral therapy, and cater to a broad cross-section of illnesses and conditions — from diabetes to loneliness, and everything in-between.

Given the difficulty developing traditional therapeutics, the likelihood of the next blockbuster treatment or cure emerging from digital therapeutics is ever-increasing. And thanks to their low cost, adaptability and speed-of-deployment, they could have a transformative impact on millions of lives, and on ailing healthcare systems.

I live and work in the U.K., so I will be using the NHS as a recurring reference point in this article — however, fee-for-service, or value-based healthcare systems equally stand to benefit.

Digital therapeutics work for patients…

A range of startups are leading the charge in digital therapeutics, tackling some of the biggest problems facing patients and our healthcare system today. And the evidence proves that these treatments work.

Type 2 diabetes, the type determined mostly by diet and lifestyle, has been called the &scourge of the 21st century& by the Royal College of Physicians. And rightly so: the NHS spends around £12 billion annually, or 10 percent of its budget, treating the condition. However, in many cases, lifestyle change alone is enough to prevent, or even cure it.OurPathhas developed a digital program that does exactly that, with a recent study showing a mean 7.5kg weight loss in participants, which is enough to put type 2 diabetes sufferers into remission.

Another leader isQuitGenius, whose app helps 36 percent of its users to quit smoking completely — versus just 3 percent of smokers who are able to quit on their own. Smoking is a massive burden on our collective health, and global healthcare systems. In the U.K. alone, smoking cigarettes led to an estimated 16 percent of all deaths.

While one in four of us suffer from a mental health condition, we can all benefit from looking after our mental well-being.

For those suffering from a mental health condition,Iesohas been a leader in delivering psychological therapies digitally, and has shown that standard treatments (like cognitive behavioral therapy) are more effective when delivered digitally (e.g. via messaging app) than in person.

However, while one in four of us suffer from a mental health condition, we can all benefit from looking after our mental well-being. Newer entrants likeHelloSelfare helping all of us be our best selves, initially by providing digital access to therapists, and by building an AI life coach that helps us deeply understand what makes us happy, and what we can do to improve our mental well-being.

Other players, likeSoma Analytics, UnmindandSilverCloud, are helping users look after our mental well-being where most feel most stressed: at work. The data behind these products demonstrates a triple win: a reduction in stress levels for employees, boosted productivity for employers and reduced burden on our public healthcare system.

Digital therapeutics are also a great fit for notoriously complex conditions like IBS, a condition affecting 800 million people, 60 percent of whom go on to develop depression or anxiety, hitherto only treated imperfectly by a range of measures from restricted diet to antidepressants. Companies likeBold Healthare using data to personalize treatments and improve outcomes, and pioneering the use of hypnotherapy to treat IBS.

… and our healthcare systems need digital therapeutics to work!

Bringing traditional therapeutics to market is becoming exponentially more expensive. The full explanation of this isEroomlaw; however, in short: the cost to develop a new drug has doubled every nine years since 1950. And even after a lengthy testing and approval process, drugs may have unintended consequences. Or, quite simply, they might not work at all.

It now takeson average 14 years and $2.5 billion to develop a market-ready drug.

Additionally, healthcare systems are under pressure from aging populations and tightening purse strings. This is, of course, particularly true in the U.K.

Against this backdrop, digital therapeutics are a great solution. They are relatively cheap to develop — all the companies I have mentioned raised less than $5 million to develop their products. This is particularly true in contrast to traditional therapeutics — it now takeson average 14 years and $2.5 billion to develop a market-ready drug.

The digital delivery method means it is much easier to collect data, iterate and refine the treatment and evidence efficacy, allowing treatments to change with the needs of the population. Quantifying the resulting cost savings is tricky, but healthcare consultancyIQVIA recently released a report estimating the NHS would save £170 million if it adopted currently available digital therapeutics in five disease areas (with £131 million saved in diabetes alone).

Digital therapeutics companies have so far found success in selling direct to consumers, even in the U.K., where healthcare is theoretically free at the point of service for all. However, helped by the evidence that they work, the NHS is &learning& how to purchase and prescribe digital therapeutics. The NHS recently launchedApp Library(still in beta), showcasing trusted digital apps to consumers; and AppScript, a platform for doctors to discover, prescribe and track the best digital health apps, is being rolled out across GP surgeries in the U.K.

And if they were to develop their own digital therapeutic solutions, national health systems like the NHS would be at a tremendous advantage, thanks to the huge amounts of longitudinal health data they own (data relating to how patients, and their health, fare over time).

Consumers are discovering digital therapeutics, and the treatments are already transforming lives. Now that the body of evidence shows they work, it is my hope that healthcare systems, particularly the U.K.NHS, begin to reap the benefits offered by this new treatment mode.

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Virtual reality is an isolating experience. You power it up, strap the headset on and just sort of drift off into your own world. But maybe that doesn&t have to be the case. Maybe therea way to slip into a virtual world and still interact with your surroundings.

Electronauts presents an interesting example. Survios sees the title as a party game — something akin to what Guitar Hero/Rock Band was at the height of their collective powers, when people would set them up in their living room and invite friends over to play.

The new title has one decided advantage over those older games, however: Itimpossible to hit a wrong note. Thatkind of the whole point, in fact. Unlike the gamification of Guitar Hero/Rock Band, Electronauts is more experiential, designed to create remixes of songs on the fly.

I played a near final version of the title at a private demo in New York the other week, and mostly enjoyed the experience — my own personal hang-ups about doing VR in front of a room full of strangers aside. The experience has a very Daft Punk/Tron vibe to it as you operate a spaceship control while hurtling through psychedelic space.

There are several ways to interact with the basic track in the process, using the Vive or Oculus controller. The more complex tasks take some figuring out — I was lucky and happened to have the gamecreators in the room with me at the time. I suppose not everyone has that luxury, but the good news here is that the title is designed so that, regardless of what you do, you can&t really mess it up.

I can see how that might be tiresome for some. Again, thereno scoring built into the title, so while it can be collaborative, you don&t actually compete against anyone. The idea is just to, well, make music. Hooked up to a big screen and a home theater speaker system, iteasy to see how it could add an extra dimension to a home gathering, assuming, of course, the music selection is your cup of tea.

Herethe full rundown of songs [deep breath]

  • The Chainsmokers & Roses (ft. ROZES)

  • ODESZA & Say My Name (ft. Zyra)

  • Steve Aoki - Boehm & Back 2 You (ft. WALK THE MOON)

  • Tiesto - John Christian & I Like It Loud (ft. Marshall Masters - The Ultimate MC)

  • ZHU - Tame Impala & My Life

  • ZHU - NERO & Dreams

  • ZHU & Intoxicate

  • 12th Planet & Let Me Help You (ft. Taylr Renee)

  • Netsky & Nobody

  • Dada Life & B Side Boogie, Higher Than The Sun, We Want Your Soul

  • Keys N Krates & Dum Dee Dum [Dim Mak Records]

  • Krewella - Yellow Claw & New World (ft. Vava)

  • Krewella & Alibi

  • Amp Live - Del The Funky Homosapien & Get Some of Dis

  • DJ Shadow & Bergshrund (ft. Nils Frahm)

  • 3LAU & Touch (ft. Carly Paige)

  • Machinedrum & Angel Speak (ft. Melo-X), Do It 4 U (ft. Dawn Richard)

  • People Under The Stairs & Feels Good

  • Tipper & Lattice

  • TOKiMONSTA & Don&t Call Me (ft. Yuna), I Wish I Could (ft. Selah Sue)

  • Reid Speed - Frank Royal & Get Wet

  • AHEE & Liftoff

  • BIJOU & Gotta Shine (ft. Germ) [Dim Mak Records]

  • Anevo & Can&t Stop (ft. Heather Sommer) [Dim Mak Records]

  • KRANE - QUIX & Next World [Dim Mak Records]

  • B-Sides - SWAGE & On The Floor [Dim Mak Records]

  • Gerald Le Funk vs. Subshock - Evangelos & 2BAE [Dim Mak Records]

  • Max Styler & Heartache (Taiki Nulight Remix), All Your Love [Dim Mak Records]

  • Riot Ten - Sirenz & Scream! [Dim Mak Records]

  • Fawks & Say You Like It (ft. Medicienne) [Dim Mak Records]

  • Taiki Nulight & Savvy [Dim Mak Records]

  • Jovian & ERRBODY

  • Madnap & Heat

  • MIKNNA & Trinity Ave, Us

  • 5AM & Peel Back (ft. Wax Future)

  • Jamie Prado - Gregory Doveman & Young (Club Mix)

  • Coral Fusion & Klip [Survios original]

  • GOODHENRY & Wonder Wobble [Survios original]

  • Starbuck & Mist [Survios original]

Can&t say I go in for most of those, but I can pick out a handful I wouldn&t mind sticking in rotation — Del the Funky Homosapien, DJ Shadow and the People Under the Stars, for instance. I wouldn&t be too surprised to see additional music packs arriving, as the company secures more licensing deals.

Meantime, Electronauts will be available on Steam for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, priced at $20. The PlayStation version will run $18. For those who want an even more public experience, it will be arriving in Survios& 38 VR Arcade Network location.

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