The new iPad is more versatile and capable than ever, featuring a large retina display, the A10 Fusion chip and advanced sensors that help deliver immersive augmented reality, and provides unmatched portability, ease of use and all-day battery life.

The new iPad boasts a stunning, large viewfinder for immersive AR experiences. Its Retina display, powerful chip, enhanced cameras and advanced sensors, including a gyroscope and accelerometer for accurate motion tracking, are designed to support the next generation of AR apps. The iPad comes in silver, space grey and a new gold finish and starts at an Apple retail price of Bt11,500 for the 32GB with Wi-Fi model and Bt16,500 for the 32GB Wi-Fi + Cellular model at Apple.com/th.

It is also available through Apple’s authorised resellers and select carriers (prices may vary).

Apple Pencil is available for purchase separately for Bt3,400.

Schools can purchase iPads starting at Bt10,800 and Apple Pencil for Bt3,100.

So, in addition to Mark Zuckerberg’s announcements last week – cracking down on abuse of the Facebook platform, strengthening our policies, and making it easier for people to revoke apps’ ability to use your data – we’re taking additional steps in the coming weeks to put people in more control over their privacy. Most of these updates have been in the works for some time, but the events of the past several days underscore their importance.

Making data settings and tools easier to find 

We’ve redesigned our entire settings menu on mobile devices from top to bottom to make things easier to find. Instead of having settings spread across nearly 20 different screens, they’re now accessible from a single place. We’ve also cleaned up outdated settings so it’s clear what information can and can’t be shared with apps.

New privacy shortcuts menu

In addition to simplifying our settings menu, people have also told us that information about privacy, security and ads should be much easier to find. The new Privacy Shortcuts is a menu where you can control your data in just a few taps with clearer explanations of how our controls work. The experience is now more visual, clearer and easy-to-find. From here you can:

Make your account more secure. You can add more layers of protection to your account, like two-factor authentication. If you turn this on and someone tries to log into your account from a device we don’t recognise, you’ll be asked to confirm whether it was you.

Control your personal information. You can review what you’ve shared and delete it if you want to. This includes posts you’ve shared or reacted to, friend requests you’ve sent and things you’ve searched for on Facebook. Control the ads you see. You can manage the information we use to show you ads – Ad Preferences explains how ads work and the options you have.

Manage who sees your posts and profile information. You own what you share on Facebook, and can manage things like who sees your posts and the information you choose to include on your profile.

Tools to find, download and delete your Facebook data

It’s one thing to have a policy explaining what data we collect and use, but it’s even more useful when people see and manage their own information. Some people want to delete things they’ve shared in the past, while others are just curious about the information Facebook has. So, we’re introducing Access Your Information – a secure way for people to access and manage their information, such as posts, reactions, comments, and things you’ve searched for. You can go here to delete anything from your timeline or profile that you no longer want on Facebook.

We’re also making it easier to download the data you’ve shared with Facebook – it’s your data, after all. You can download a secure copy and even move it to another service. This includes photos you’ve uploaded, contacts you’ve added to your account, posts on your timeline, and more.

The road ahead

It’s also our responsibility to tell you how we collect and use your data in language that’s detailed, but also easy to understand. In the coming weeks, we’ll be proposing updates to Facebook’s terms of service that include our commitments to people. We’ll also update our data policy to better spell out what data we collect and how we use it. These updates are about transparency – not about gaining new rights to collect, use or share data.

We’ve worked with regulators, legislators and privacy experts on these tools and updates. We’ll have more to share in the coming weeks, including updates on the measures Zuckerberg shared last week.

Erin Egan is VP and chief privacy officer, policy for Facebook, and Ashlie Beringer is VP and deputy general counsel.

Team members Boonrit Boonmarueng, Watcharit Boonying and Thitiya Trithipkaiwanpon emerged victorious amid stiff competition between the finalist 10 teams. The Smart Hive project is an

Internet of thing (IoT) beehive management device that monitors and detects problems inside beehives to solve the mystery behind the mechanism of colony collapse disorder (CCD).

CCD is a global phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, dooming the beehive’s future productivity. The students’ solution could potentially increase the production of the agricultural product significantly.

After settling on the idea of the Smart Hive, they built an IoT device to help beekeepers manage the beehives more efficiently. The device uses cognitive technology to analyse the pattern of buzzing sound inside the hive, detect irregularities, and alert the beekeepers through the dashboard and in-app IM.

BeeConnex team member Boonrit said that bees have a great impact on the natural ecosystem and studies have indicated that without them, the entire ecosystem could collapse. They are also important to the economy, as they are used commercially for large-scale pollination.

“However, beekeepers are currently facing a major threat known as the CCD and this encouraged us to learn more about bee-related issues,” said Boonrit. “People have been studying the disorder for a long time, but technology has never been fully utilised to address this issue.

“We discovered from our installed sensor device that bees send countless patterns of signals with different meanings, called a ‘Bee Dance’. The device later sent the information to cloud computing, Microsoft Azure. It made me realise that this wasn’t only an idea for a competition, but was also a smart way of studying the countless and complicated bee patterns in a short time that could never been done through human hearing.”

With the ability to analyse and anticipate problems, Microsoft Azure can also prevent colony collapse disorder by providing live notifications once bees begin to exhibit abnormal behaviours, said Boonrit.

“We are honoured to see our idea become something tangible that can contribute to preserving the natural ecosystem in terms of food production from the effective pollination,” said Boonrit. This year’s competition was supported by key partners, Unicef and SiriVenures, who sponsored two special recognition awards that reflected the awareness of integrating technology to support youth education in every sector, said event organisers. Education on the Cloud was sponsored by Unicef, and Smart Living on the Cloud by SiriVentures.

The winner of the Education on the Cloud award is team Bot Therapist, a group of students from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi who proposed the idea of “Bliss”, a robot designed to be a companion to help autistic kids learn and grow. And inSpectra, a group of students from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi won the Smart Living on the Cloud award with a system to detect gas leak and various substances based on multi-spectral imaging and image fusion.

Team BeeConnex will receive a Royal trophy from HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn and on April 4 represent Thailand together with inSpectra, the team that won the Smart Living on the Cloud award by SiriVentures in the 2018 Imagine Cup Southeast Asia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

They will compete with teams from nine countries for a chance to win a trip to the World Finals in Seattle in June this year. The best and brightest teams from across the globe will compete for the title of World Champion, a $100,000 (Bt3.11 million) cash prize and the chance to take home the Imagine Cup.

The 2016 memo published by news website Buzzfeed was written by veteran Facebook executive Andrew Bozworth, considered part of chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s inner circle.

“The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is ‘de facto’ good,” the memo read.

The memo pointed out that connecting people can lead to good outcomes, such as finding love or preventing suicide.

It could also have negative consequences, Bozworth reasoned.

“Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies,” the memo read.

“Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.”

Bozworth is known to be an outspoken defender of Facebook, and unabashed in expressing his views.

“I don’t agree with the post today and I didn’t agree with it even when I wrote it,” Bozworth said in a statement to AFP.

“The purpose of this post, like many others I have written internally, was to bring to the surface issues I felt deserved more discussion with the broader company.”

In response to an AFP inquiry, Zuckerberg referred to Bozworth as a talented leader who says provocative things, the leaked memo among them.

“This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly,” Zuckerberg said.

“We’ve never believed the ends justify the means. We recognize that connecting people isn’t enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together.”

Even if the Bozworth memo was meant solely to get colleagues to grapple with tough issues, it hints that Facebook executives were aware of risks associated with connecting and sharing on the social network.

The leak of the memo came as Facebook continued to be battered by a data breach involving Britain-based Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm linked to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Facebook faces probes on both sides of the Atlantic over the hijacking of 50 million users’ personal data by the firm.

The firestorm has raised new awareness on how personal data is stored and shared by internet platforms and marketers.

Facebook has begun to produce documents and wants to be “cooperative” with a New York investigation into the Cambridge Analytica data breach, state attorney general Eric Schneiderman said Thursday.

On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission, a US consumer protection agency, said it had opened an inquiry into Facebook’s privacy practices, including whether the company violated an earlier agreement with the FTC on how it handles user data.

Facebook signed a consent decree with the consumer agency in 2011 settling charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then allowing it to be shared and made public.

Even while demonstrating an experiment used in a recent study at Vienna’s University of Veterinary Medicine, they’re having too much fun.

It involves them running to a touchscreen with one round and one square shape. Every time they hit the round shape with their noses, they’re rewarded with a treat.

The results gathered after hundreds of dogs took part in the study suggest that older dogs benefit from similar games, just as Sudoku and other brain exercises can help their owners stay mentally agile.

“Sometimes with older dogs we might feel that we can just let them retire to the couch and let them sleep all day and that’s fine,” Lisa Wallis, one of the authors of the report, told AFP.

“But you’re not really doing them a kindness,” she said.

Even if owners keep giving their dogs physical exercise, this won’t improve their mental agility, says Professor Ludwig Huber, one of the lead authors.

“The brain needs more stimulation and also problems to solve,” he says.

‘Unlimited number of stimuli’

In contrast to most toys which can soon become repetitive, Huber says a touchscreen can be used to present an “unlimited number of stimuli” and the games could get gradually more complex.

Other games used in the study involved having to touch a moving shape or being trained to distinguish between “good” and “bad” images and then choose them accordingly.

The younger dogs and dogs who were already used to playing similar games fared best but even with the older dogs, performance improved with practice.

The results follow a study conducted among humans last year in the United States that suggested older participants who regularly played computer brain games may have cut their chances of dementia, although experts cautioned further research was necessary in that case.

The authors of the Vienna study admit that although the dogs and their owners appeared to have enjoyed taking part in the study, it would be difficult to replicate at home.

Wallis says that short of installing a similar screen at home – as she has done for her own dogs – or at vet’s surgeries and dog daycare centres, the need of the hour is for new technologies.

The team at the university is working on software that could be used more commonly, ideally paired with tablets or other devices adapted for dogs.

“Wet noses will always be a problem,” Wallis admits.

But even if touchscreens for dogs are a little way off, Huber says using touchscreens with different species could open up a whole new vista for scientists and researchers.

“It can also be used with wolves, which is a very important one in scientific terms.”

The fact that species with different levels of dexterity can use the equipment means a very similar apparatus can even be used with reptiles and even birds, which touch the screens with their beaks, he adds.

It will play a key role in mitigating cybercrime in the region.

The objective of this project is to develop a cybersecurity workforce, particularly in Asean governmental agencies and in the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) in each of the Asean countries in order to enhance cybersecurity awareness, strengthen information security and data protection, as well as promoting information sharing.

Overall, the centre aims to develop at least 700 cybersecurity personnel in Asean in four years.

Pichet Durongkaveroj, the Minister of Digital Economy and Society (MDES) of Thailand, said yesterday that the centre is expected to launch the first cyber security training course in June 2018.

“We expect to launch the centre in June and conduct the first training for Asean nations that month,” said Pichet.

He added that initially the centre will be located in the office of Electronic Transactions Development Agency (Public Organisation) or ETDA on Rama 9 Road.

The MDES has assigned ETDA to take the lead in developing the AJCCBC centre. This project will receive financing from Japan-Asean Integration Fund for the first four years.

MDES and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) of Japan yesterday jointly announced the preparation for the establishment of the AJCCBC centre.

Thailand has ThaiCERT, under ETDA, to collaborate with government sector, organisations, universities, and other relevant entities to handle computer security incidents in Thailand.

Surangkana Wayuparb, CEO of ETDA , stated that the centre will organise cybersecurity training every two months or at least six times a year.

The courses to be conducted include CYDER (Cyber Defence Exercise with Recurrence), focusing on handling cybersecurity incidents. CYDER is a proven course that has been adopted by the government of Japan for training cybersecurity personnel across the country for the past five years, with more than 5,000 participants from more than 1,500 organisations.

The other two courses are Forensics, dealing with digital evidence of cyber-attacks and Malware Analysis which covers various types of malware according to the trend of cyber threats. All courses are designed to allow participants to learn the theory and to have hands-on practices. The contents will be updated at least yearly to keep up with the evolving threats.

During the initial four years of this project, Japan will help Asean develop cybersecurity personnel and provide essential knowledge transfers for long-term management and sustainability of the centre.

Anand Mahindra, whose Mahindra Group business empire spans everything from cars to real estate, sparked a flurry of brainstorming as Facebook reels from a scandal over the misuse of its user data.

The social media giant has been under pressure to explain how data on up to 50 million users was allegedly taken from Facebook and used in political campaigns.

Mahindra earlier this week urged India’s tech entrepreneurs to devise “our own social networking company” and offered seed funding to startups to get the better ideas rolling.

The invitation provoked a flood of proposals, even from his own chief digital officer Jaspreet Bindra who was tempted by his boss’s offer.

“To say I’m overwhelmed by the responses to my call for social network startup proposals would be an understatement!” Mahindra posted on Twitter on Wednesday.

“The good thing is that it’s clear there’s an explosion in entrepreneurial energies in this country. Let the games begin!”

India has the world’s highest number of Facebook users with 241 million active members, according to a report published last June by Amsterdam-based firm The Next Web.

India’s information technology ministry last week formally requested that Cambridge Analytica — the data analysis company at the centre of the Facebook firestorm — provide clarity over its practices by the end of the month.

That followed reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party and the opposition Congress had used the firm in previous elections, sparking a series of alleged data abuses which both sides deny.

India’s IT minister warned Facebook against any abuse of social media in elections. India is preparing for general elections in 2019 and there are also a number of state polls due this year and next.

The new features follow fierce criticism of the social network giant after it was revealed that the personal data of tens of millions of users was harvested by a British firm linked to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The company acknowledged that it needed to “do more to keep people informed,” but said the changes have been “in the works for some time.”

“We’ve heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find,” chief privacy officer Erin Egan and deputy general counsel Ashlie Beringer said in a blog post.

“We’re taking additional steps in the coming weeks to put people more in control of their privacy.”

The updates include easier access to Facebook’s user settings and tools to easily search for, download and delete personal data stored on the site used by two billion people.

Facebook said a new privacy shortcuts menu will allow users to quickly increase account security, manage who can see their information and activity on the site, and control advertisements they see.

Earlier this month, whistleblower Christopher Wylie revealed political consulting company Cambridge Analytica had obtained profiles on 50 million Facebook users via an academic researcher’s personality prediction app.

The app was downloaded by 270,000 people, but also scooped up their friends’ data without consent — as was possible under Facebook’s rules at the time.

Egan and Beringer also announced updates to Facebook’s terms of service and data policy to improve transparency about how the site collects and uses information.

Lukewarm praise

Yet some analysts said Facebook and its chief Mark Zuckerberg have made similar promises in the past.

“Zuck promised easier, better privacy controls ‘in the coming weeks’ eight years ago,” Zeynep Tufekci, a University of North Carolina professor who studies social media, said on Twitter.

“This isn’t the first or last broken promise. The solution isn’t shifting the burden to the user because the problem is the negative externalities of the business model.”

Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University professor of communications, said the new privacy settings and tools “are so obviously important to users that one has to wonder why this wasn’t already done.”

She said Facebook has “some of the best talent in the industry” and that “their old interface was not a mistake, it was by design.”

On Wednesday, Playboy said it was deactivating all the Facebook accounts managed by the company due to the mishandling of personal data.

“The recent news about Facebook’s alleged mismanagement of users’ data has solidified our decision to suspend our activity on the platform at this time,” a company statement said.

Dylan Gilbert of the consumer group Public Knowledge said Facebook’s moves “are welcome steps forward” but “do little to remedy a larger systemic problem.”

“Online platforms currently lack meaningful legal incentives to protect users before their privacy is violated,” Gilbert said in a statement.

“Facebook similarly lacks business incentives to engage in responsible data collection because disgruntled advertisers don’t have anywhere comparable to go.”

Deepening tech crisis

Facebook’s move comes as authorities around the globe investigate how the social network handles and shares private data, and after its shares have tumbled more than 15 percent, wiping out tens of billions in market value.

The crisis also threatens the Silicon Valley tech industry whose business model revolves around data collected on internet users.

The US Federal Trade Commission this week said it had launched a probe into whether Facebook violated consumer protection laws or a 2011 court-approved agreement on protecting private user data.

US lawmakers are trying to haul Zuckerberg to Washington to testify on the matter.

Authorities in Britain have meanwhile seized data from Cambridge Analytica in their investigation, and EU officials have warned of consequences for Facebook.

Facebook has apologized for the misappropriation of data and vowed to fix the problem.

On Wednesday, six consumer and privacy organizations called upon Facebook to cease all campaign contributions and election activity until they ensure the integrity of all apps on the platform.

“A company whose platform is self-admittedly powerful enough to influence elections, must stay out of them,” said a letter from the groups including Consumer Watchdog, Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.

Iceland’s combination of fire and ice not only makes it a stunning site to film parts of the medieval fantasy epic Game of Thrones.

It also offers a unique combination of cheap renewable energy and free air conditioning that is making it a promised land for those “mining” virtual currencies, including bitcoin, using powerful computers that are voracious users of electricity and throw off lots of heat.

And noise.

The din from shelves and shelves of computers whirring inside the 400-square-metre (4,300-square-foot) warehouse rivals a jet during takeoff.

Unlike the dollar and the euro, bitcoin is not issued by central banks. Instead it is “mined” or created in computer “farms” like this one.

It uses computers souped up with six graphics cards tasked with the heavy lifting of thousands of thousands of calculations needed to solve complex algorithms to process bitcoin transactions and be rewarded with bitcoins in exchange.

Cheap and cool Iceland

“It’s possible for everyone to do it at home. There is no one stopping you (and) there are no technical limitations,” said Philip Salter, head of operations at Genesis Mining, told AFP.

Last year saw a meteoric rise of hundreds of virtual currencies led by bitcoin, which was fetching almost $20,000 per unit in December as both amateur and professional miners jumped onto the bandwagon.

Home miners often use an old computer, have no choice where they operate, and are lucky if they get a fraction of a bitcoin every now and then.

Professionals like Genesis Mining need to invest serious amounts to build and equip a facility like this one with a surface area a third of an Olympic-size pool, but which has a much greater chance of catching part of the 12.5 bitcoins created every ten minutes.

They can choose where to set up operations, however, and that choice can have a huge impact on their profits as the price of the electricity to power and cool the computers varies considerably from country to country.

Iceland is attractive for cryptocurrency mining because of its cheap electricity, which has the added advantage of being generated from clean geothermal energy.

At a 0.065 euros ($0.081) per kilowatt per hour before tax, the cost of electricity is nearly half the EU average.

This makes Iceland one of the most competitive nations in Europe after Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia.

But Iceland also has an advantage in its average annual temperature is about five degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit), meaning mining farms can for most of the time just suck in cool air from the outside instead of running energy-hungry air conditioners.

The power usage efficiency “is really good in Iceland because of the natural cooling,” said Johann Snorri Sigurbergsson, director of business development at Iceland’s power company HS Orka.

Shocking rise in demand

A growing number of firms like Genesis Mining, which was previously based in Bosnia, have chosen to set up shop in Iceland, which means demand for electricity has shot up.

“The demand has been increasing exponentially, especially the last three months,” said Sigurbergsson.

The increase has come as the price of bitcoin has plunged from its peak of nearly $20,000 to below $9,000 currently, with analysts saying that the price decline has made operating costs even more of a concern for miners.

Salter, who fears the growing competition in the sector, said bitcoin’s “price isn’t a very good indicator on how bitcoin mining industry is doing”.

He may not have that much more competition from neighbours as Sigurbergsson said HS Orka “will not be able to supply all the demand” from miners wanting to set up operations.

He said his firm is “in the great position of we can pick and choose who we can do business with”.

HS Orka estimates that Iceland’s three largest bitcoin farming companies in 2018 will consume more electricity than the nation’s 350,000 inhabitants.

Miners also have another worry: Even a virtual gold rush attracts real thieves.

Between December 2017 and January 2018, equipment worth an estimated 1.6 million euros was stolen.

Zuckerberg instead offered to send one of his deputies as the US company comes under new pressure from the EU to disclose more details about how up to 50 million users’ data are alleged to have been taken from Facebook and used in political campaigns.

In a letter to the British parliament’s digital, culture and media committee, Rebecca Stimson, head of public policy for Facebook UK, said the company “fully recognizes the level of public and parliamentary interest in these issues”.

But committee chair Damian Collins renewed his demand to interview Zuckerberg saying the seriousness of the allegations meant it was “appropriate” for the tech tycoon to offer an explanation himself, whether in person or via video-link.

In the letter published by the British committee on Tuesday, Facebook offered to send chief technology office Mike Schroepfer or chief product officer Chris Cox to London next month to provide answers.

“We’d be very happy to invite Mr Cox to give evidence. However, we would still like to hear from Mr Zuckerberg as well,” Collins said at the start of a committee hearing on Tuesday.

“We will seek to clarify with Facebook whether he is available to give evidence or not, because that wasn’t clear from our correspondence.

“And if he is available to give evidence, then we would be happy to do that either in person or via video link if that would be more convenient for him.”

The EU meanwhile has given the social media giant two weeks to answer its own queries over the scandal, which has heavily hit Facebook’s share price and raised major questions over how social media companies use private data.

EU justice commissioner Vera Jourova wrote to Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, asking what measures the company plans to take to prevent a similar scandal.

She also asked whether stricter rules were needed for companies like Facebook as exist for traditional media, and whether it would change its approach on transparency toward users and regulators.

“Have any data of EU citizens been affected by the recent scandal?” Jourova wrote, adding: “If this is the case, how do you intend to inform the authorities and users about it?”

European Parliament chief Antonio Tajani has also invited Zuckerberg to address the body about its concerns.

Growing crisis

Facebook insists it did not know the data taken from its site were being used by a British company, Cambridge Analytica, which worked on US President Donald Trump’s election campaign among others.

However, its rules at the time allowed an app developed by an academic researcher, which was downloaded by an estimated 270,000 people, to take information from millions of their friends.

Facebook has placed ads in British, German and US newspapers in recent days to apologise for the scandal.

Zuckerberg explained there was a quiz developed by a university researcher “that leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014”.

“This was a breach of trust, and I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time. We’re now taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he said in the ads.

In Facebook’s letter on Tuesday, Stimson revealed that the tech giant was working with regulators around the world to assess how many people in each country were affected.

“We can now confirm that around one percent of the global downloads of the app came from users in the EU, including the UK,” she wrote.

The company is struggling to contain the growing crisis amid investigations by lawmakers in Europe and the United States.

US consumer protection agency, the Federal Trade Commission, on Monday confirmed it had opened an investigation into whether Facebook mishandled private data or violated a 2011 agreement which settled an earlier probe.