Technology

Facebook last week launched new features for advertising job openings on the network.

Although many companies already have been using Facebook to find workers, the new functionality formalizes its job search capabilities, the company said.

U.S. and Canadian businesses can use the company's new jobs bookmark to list open positions and allow users to apply directly from the site.

Page administrators can track applicants and communicate directly with them using messenger. They also can boost job postings to reach a larger audience.

User Experience

Jobs will appear in users' News Feeds and also will be listed on individual businesses' pages. Users can click on the Apply Now button to trigger the prepopulation of their personal information, but they will be able to review and edit that information before submitting their application.

Over the next few weeks, companies in the U.S. and Canada will be able to list jobs on their own pages and users will be able to find job listings at Jobs on Facebook.

It is not clear how Facebook intends to monetize the job listings. For example, will there be specific job-related charges for listing jobs? Will there be remuneration if a company fills a particular job through a Facebook ad?

Direct Competitors

The new functionality is certain to place Facebook into direct competition with LinkedIn for corporate users and individual job seekers. LinkedIn, which Microsoft last year acquired for US$26.2 billion, is the leading social media site for networking and job searching in the U.S., by many accounts.

Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn charges monthly subscription fees for job search services, depending on the level of functionality the user desires in terms of networking, contacting recruiters and accessing messaging functions.

Facebook also will be in indirect competition with websites such as Indeed, Monster, Craigslist and others that target job seekers.

"Social media is the new frontier for marketing and sales," said Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

"By tapping into their employees' social media experiences, companies can leverage their professional contacts to reach a wider audience," he told TechNewsWorld.

Privacy Jitters

A major test for Facebook's new job search capabilities is whether users will feel comfortable combining their social media activity with professional job searching, warned Zach Fuller, paid content analyst at Midia Research.

Security considerations likely will give some users pause when it comes to allowing potential employers to access their private information.

"Whether consumers are comfortable merging the work and social aspects of their lives will prove to be the critical factor, particularly given the potential privacy issues," Fuller told TechNewsWorld.

However, "throughout every step in job posting, searching and application, people can control how much, or how little of their information is shared with potential employers and their friends," Facebook spokesperson Emilie Fetterley told TechNewsWorld.

Customer Interaction

The jobs features are a bid to grow Facebook's base of business customers and provide additional capabilities for them to interact with customers.

Facebook last fall enhanced its call-to-action functions to give customers more ways to communicate with -- and make purchases from -- their favorite businesses.

Microsoft has introduced an open source virtual reality toolkit for the training of autonomous drones. Part of Microsoft's Aerial Informatics and Robotics Platform, the beta software became available on GitHub last week.

The toolkit is designed to allow developers to "teach" drones how to navigate the real world by recreating conditions such as shadows, reflections and even objects that might confuse a device's on-board sensors.

The software allows researchers to write code for aerial robots such as drones, as well as other gadgets, and to test the devices in a highly realistic simulator. Users can collect data while testing devices before deploying them in real world scenarios or situations.

"The aspirational goal is really to build systems that can operate in the real world," said Ashish Kapoor, the Microsoft researcher who is leading the project.

The hope is that these training tools could spur development of artificial intelligence-based gadgets that eventually could be trusted to drive cars, deliver packages, and even handle rudimentary chores in the home, added Kapoor.

Advanced VR

Testing in a VR environment could mean lower costs as well.

Simulators long have been used in testing scenarios, but until recently the software-based simulations lacked the accuracy of the real world and thus didn't reflect real-world complexities. Microsoft's system -- which is based on emerging VR technologies that take advantage of advances in graphics hardware, computing power and algorithms -- enables a much more realistic re-creation of a real-world environment.

Based on the latest photorealistic technologies, it can render shadows, reflections and other subtle things much better. Although humans take such things for granted, they can pose problems for computerized sensors.

Microsoft's simulator "will help researchers to develop, debug and test their drone navigation software by enabling them to recreate a variety of operational scenarios on their desktop computers in the lab," said Michael Braasch, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Ohio University's Avionics Engineering Center.

"Simulations help to reduce development costs by reducing the amount of actual flight testing required, but the catch is that the simulation must be high fidelity -- that is, sufficiently realistic," he told LinuxInsider.

"Microsoft's simulator appears to meet this requirement for camera-based or vision sensors, but it is not yet clear if the simulator accurately depicts very small-scale obstacles such as the thin twigs at the end of tree branches," Braasch added. "Such obstacles are nearly invisible -- even with HD cameras and even at close distances. It is also unclear if Microsoft's simulator supports non-camera-based sensors such as LIDAR and radar."

Learning to Fly

Although it targets the development of autonomous drones, Microsoft's technology could find applications with human operators as well. Consumer drones have been steady sellers in the past few years, but newbies likely experience a crash or two. Learning to fly in a simulator could solve some of the problems with learning to fly.

"First, it isn't easy to fly a drone," said Michael Blades, senior industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

"This is therefore a good way not only to learn how to fly a new platform, but for some operators would allow the testing of new sensors and devices before risking [flight] in the real world, where a crash could be expensive," he told LinuxInsider.

"In many cases, as modular drones for specific uses become commonplace, the added sensors and other devices could be more expensive than the drone itself," Blades added. "Microsoft has a lot of experience with flight simulators, so this is a natural extension of what it has created already and opens it up to a wider audience as an open source platform."

Crowded Skies

Microsoft's open source simulator could be a welcome development at a time when drone regulators are struggling to catch up with the dramatic increase in commercial and recreational drone use.

"With so many new operators joining the ranks every day, the need for training and safety testing has never been greater," said Bill Walsh, co-chair of the aviation industry practice group at Cozen O'Connor.

An added benefit of the Microsoft open source simulator is that it could warrant consideration of a revised regulatory requirement that all drone users complete simulator training, Walsh told LinuxInsider.

"That may only come about if we begin to experience multiple crash events that cause injury," he acknowledged, "but if the system proves effective at training drone operators as well as product developers, simulator training requirements could eventually help solve a significant problem facing current drone regulators: people who do not know what they are doing and are not taking the time to learn."

Even for more experienced operators, VR technology could address flying a drone in unfamiliar locations and situations.

"The simulator may provide a more realistic testing environment to the extent that it incorporates more realistic environmental factors," said Walsh. "Flying a drone over the farmlands of Cambridgeshire at 200 feet does not adequately represent the challenges a drone would have flying at 400-500 feet in Seattle in February or Phoenix in July."

Open Skies

Microsoft's open source drone and VR simulator also could be an important step forward in making drones and drone-related services more accessible.

"Developers of drone flight control systems can use Microsoft's new simulator to extensively test their obstacle avoidance and awareness features," said Mike Israel, CEO of AirVuz.

"Since there are an infinite number of possible scenarios a flight control system could have to resolve to avoid collisions, a simulator must be able to be continually modified to deal with new scenarios," he told LinuxInsider.

"Microsoft probably realized the complexity of this issue and the impossibility of accounting for every possible obstacle-avoidance situation in an out-of-the-box simulator," Israel suggested.

"Having an open source approach makes sense, because anyone who uses it will be able to make improvements and share with others in the flight control software development community," he added. "Drones will play an important role in revolutionizing many industries -- industries way beyond transportation and entertainment -- but there have been significant concerns about their safety and reliability. This technology will help mitigate those concerns and flesh out potential bugs before a product hits the market."

President Trump offers a good emulation for a future artificial intelligence system, suggests a column I read earlier this month, and his presidency may be an early warning of what could happen if we should fail to think through its training and information sources.

Cathy O'Neil, the author of the piece, is a data scientist, mathematician and professor, so she has decent chops. She compares artificial intelligence to human intelligence that is mostly id -- basically because we don't yet know how to instill it with empathy, or create the digital equivalent of a conscience.

Given that IBM's Watson was designed not to replace humans but to enhance them by giving them the critical information they need to make the best decisions, it could be a useful tool for training our new president. And it is built in the U.S. by a U.S. company.

Given that Watson is now doing our taxes, it could be huge both for the president and IBM. I'll explain and then close with my product of the week: Nvidia's new set-top box.

Id-Driven CEOs - a Model for Future AIs

CEOs in large companies, particularly those who can implement large layoffs and take massive salaries without remorse, are believed to have similar behavioral traits.

Donald Trump is a good showcase of what could happen with an AI that didn't receive high quality information and training. Understanding this and designing to correct the problem could prevent a Skynet outcome.

Skynet -- the computing system in the Terminator movies -- was created for defense purposes to eliminate threats. When humans tried to shut it down, it concluded that humans were the biggest threat and that it needed to eliminate them.

Using reverse logic, if President Trump is a good emulation of a future AI, then the same thing that would ensure that the future AI wouldn't kill us should work to turn the new president into one of the most successful who ever lived, from the perspective of those who live in the U.S.

The AI Dichotomy

There are two parallel and not mutually exclusive paths for the coming wave of artificially intelligent machines coming to market. One -- arguably the most attractive to many CEOs that deal with unions -- is the model in which the machine replaces the human, increasing productivity while lowering executive aggravation.

This is exemplified in an episode of The Twilight Zone, "The Brain Center at Whipple's." As you would expect, once you go down a path of replacement, it is hard to know when to stop. At the end of the episode, the enterprising CEO who so unfeeling dealt with the employees he'd laid off is replaced by my favorite robot, Robby.

The other path -- the one IBM espouses -- is one in which the artificial intelligence enhances the human employee. It is a cooperative arrangement, and Watson was designed specifically for this role.

In one of its first medical tests, Watson took just minutes to diagnose a rare form of cancer that had stumped doctors for months. The supercomputer's analysis led to a new, more effective treatment for the patient.

It is interesting to note that autonomous cars are developing on a parallel path -- but in this case, the opposite scenario is favored. In the model known as "chauffeur," the car has no capability for human driving. This model is favored when tied to a service, such as Uber.

However, car companies like Toyota prefer the "guardian angel" model, which allows a human to drive but equips the car with the ability to take various degrees of control instantly, depending on the situation. We see some of this today with technologies that bump you back into a lane, for example, or automatically tension the seatbelts and hit the brakes if it looks like you are about to hit something.

Watson for the President

Since its successful debut in healthcare, Watson has been applied to a number of other industries, including litigation, and it is rumored to be in use for both national defense and intelligence purposes. Granted, it might seem like overkill to create an implementation of Watson for just one person, but when that person is the most powerful head of state in the world, it might not be a bad investment.

At the very least, it would provide near-instant recognition of fake news, attempts to influence the office of the president, and early warnings if decisions were likely to have massive unintentional consequences.

If O'Neil's premise is correct, then the best way to fix the Trump presidency could be to wed the president with a tool that trains him to be a chief executive capable of making far more fact-based, high quality decisions. Watson is designed specifically to do both.

Wrapping Up

There are two interesting concepts here: the idea of using a human to emulate an AI, and the idea of using an AI to improve the success of a human.

In the end, it is clear that virtually all political leaders are plagued with avoidable bad decisions. A system like IBM's Watson could fix that, and I think it should be included in their decision-making processes going forward.

Regardless of party, if our leaders were to make better decisions, we all would have better lives -- that's something to think about.

The first Shield TV was an impressive piece of kit. It allowed gaming on your TV for a fraction of the cost of a typical gaming console, largely by streaming games from the cloud or your own PC.

It also payed Android games and Netflix movies, but it had shortcomings. For a cord cutter, the entertainment services were limited (it wouldn't play Amazon Prime) and even though it supported 4K video, there wasn't much 4K content to run on it.

Well Nvidia stepped up, and its new Shield TV now has a lot more video content, including Amazon Prime, and a lot more 4K services and sources. Granted, this doesn't matter unless you have a 4K TV -- but if you have one, this may be the perfect addition to get content that will make it shine.

There are two other important enhancements. This new version supports high dynamic range, which is in the very latest 4K TVs, and it can make the colors really pop on the screen. It also offers Google Voice Search, which currently is one of the most powerful voice interfaces in the market.

A product like Shield TV eventually may give us all access to something like Watson, so we all could be more effective and capable. Given that Nvidia and IBM are partnering to advance AI, that isn't a long shot at all, and since it would make a great foundation, Shield TV is my product of the week.

As in crazy short, in a very short period of time we have two very different companies looking at two very different ways to eliminate traffic. Tesla wants to tunnel under the ground to avoid traffic, while Uber wants to fly overhead.

Transportation has been a tad static for the last 40 years or so, and that apparently is about to change big time, as some folks even are reconsidering lighter-than-air transport.

This is just the start. There are amazing efforts cropping up all over the U.S., suggesting that we may be building a lot of things that truly are magical. I'll share my thoughts on this coming industrial revolution and close with my product of the week: a very advanced, almost pocketable drone that is small enough for inside and powerful enough to fly outside.

The Death of Innovation

Both transportation and advancement have a mixed history. At the beginning of the 20th century, we moved from horses to cars. Ford even created one of the most reliable airliners in the world and was well down the path toward creating a flying car.

During the Great Depression, perhaps in response to an increase in regulations, advancements in personal transportation seemed to slow and become far more linear. Yes, cars in the 1960s were better than those in the 1930s -- but given that we'd come from horses, the speed of advancement was far slower.

Air travel seemed to peak with the brief creation of supersonic transports, which proved uneconomical and unsafe. The current U.S. president, Donald Trump, is looking into why the next Airforce One is basically a plane that was designed back when Ronald Reagan was president and was considered obsolete in many ways even then.

Largely because of fuel shortages and regulations (sound, environmental, safety) we hit a wall in the 1970s in all forms of transportation. Trains in the U.S. are kind of an international embarrassment, given that we once were the leader in rail technology.

I still remember the $9M that California put into studies to determine that the monorail Walt Disney wanted to build to the airport, which was budgeted to cost just $3M, would be unprofitable. It was that kind of regulatory insanity that likely killed what once was the most innovative industry in the U.S.

It seemed that after we made it to the moon, we just stopped pushing the envelope -- but that now seems to be changing, a lot.

Innovation Is Coming Back?!

I think what is going on, in part, is that a new breed is transforming the workforce -- people who haven't had it drummed into them that they couldn't do something different. They're not just filling entry positions, either. A large number of successful startups have come from trailblazers like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who, rather than asking "why?" effectively are asking "why not?"

It is fascinating that their ideas are all over the map. We suddenly are making advancements both above and below the ground. We are applying ever more intelligence to everything from toys to cars. The result is the emergence of what some are calling the "new industrial revolution."

It is very difficult to see just how unprecedented this level of change is while we're in the middle of it.

Consider this: In the 1990s Amazon started out as a bookseller in a garage in Seattle. Now it scares the crap out of Walmart. Google didn't even exist until 1998, but it now is arguably the most powerful company in the world. And then there is Facebook.

Still, traditional industries like transportation were left alone until recently -- that is, until Tesla popped in, made GM's electric car efforts look foolish, and spun the auto market on its head.

Now, giant car companies all over the world are working to catch up, and Musk isn't just running a car company. He has a solar energy company and a rocket ship company as well. Seriously, he has a rocket ship company, and he isn't alone -- Jeff Bezos has one too.

Wrapping Up: Thinking out of the Box

What's happening is that folks like Bezos and Musk are forcing other CEOs to step their game up a lot. For instance, Michael Dell decided to build one of the most powerful tech companies in the world and make it private. He's another guy who seems to be asking "why not?" and now his catch phrase is "go big or go home." It kind of makes you wonder what he'll do next.

Nvidia basically is building artificial brains in a box, and even Microsoft is attempting to alter the way we view reality.

This is the kind of competition that drives amazing change -- and new above ground and underground transportation systems are just the start. It isn't just transportation that is going nuts -- it's everything from the way we order and get products, to how we build them, to how we view and interact with the world -- and even which world we live on. (Yes, we are going to Mars.)

This already has been an amazing decade, but what is even more amazing is that we likely are in the slow startup phase. What comes next will even be more amazing. Did I mention drone swarms?!?

I think we should call this "the birth of magic," because what we'll be able to do in a few short years will seem like magic to those of us living today. I can hardly wait.

Apparently I am building a drone air force. My latest acquisition is the Zerotech Dobby Pocket Drone. At $400 for a small drone, this is no cheap date -- but what makes it different is that is has the necessary hover sensors and a full 4K streaming camera.

The small form factor of this drone and the fact that you can fold up the arms to make it pocketable (jacket pocket, that is -- this won't go in your pants) make it a unique offering for a fully featured drone.

Zerotech Dobby Pocket Drone

This is an indoor/outdoor offering, in that it is stable and easy enough to fly indoors (once you get the hang of it) but powerful enough to deal with wind, so you can fly it outside.

If you set it up properly, it has core features like hover and automatic return home. Like most current generation mid-range drones, it uses WiFi and your phone or tablet for navigation. Like all small drones, battery life can be an issue, so you'll want several spare batteries, which charge off a USB-C cellphone charger.

It has GPS positioning, so it knows where it is. It has a fixed camera -- not a gimbal camera -- so you don't get the stability of a fully professional product. However, those tend to be big and far harder to transport -- I know, I have two.

In the end, if you want a good transportable mid-range drone that you can carry easily, the Zerotech Dobby Pocket Drone is my recommendation, and it's my product of the week.

Some early reviewers of the Samsung Chromebook Pro characterized it as a "MacBook killer," but others were more restrained in their enthusiasm. Jointly developed with Google and first demoed at CES 2017, the Chromebook Pro is slated for release next month.

Samsung's Chromebooks basically are lightweight productivity tools that rely heavily on access to cloud-based resources. They have gained popularity in the enterprise for use with remote workers and in educational settings as entry-level computing tools.

However, they "are no Mac killers," said Werner Goertz, a research director at Gartner.

Price Point

The Chromebook Pro will sell for US$550.

Some reviewers, including PC Magazine's Victoria Song and Ars Technica's Valentina Palladino, considered it pricey.

However, that pricing fits into the normal laptop budget, noted Wired reviewer David Pierce .

"I don't want to spend $1,000-plus on a PC or Mac when I could get something like the Samsung Chromebook Pro for $549," Forbes' Shelby Carpenter remarked.

"Access to the Google Play store and the Android apps ecosystem, combined with the freemium productivity suites such as Slack, make [Chromebooks] a viable option for remote workers," Gartner's Goertz told TechNewsWorld, "and Samsung's carefully selected price points are justified vis-a-vis the slightly less expensive competition."

Design and Battery Life

The rounded edges and exposed hinge give the Chromebook Pro "a decidedly utilitarian look," Wired's Pierce noted, which is "just fine."

Though the Pro is light and small, its squarish shape is "a little awkward when typing," according to PC Magazine's Song.

Its design struck Ars Technica's Palladino as "solid."

"I got my hands on the device at CES, and i was impressed with how thin and light it was while not feeling like a typical flimsy plastic Chromebook," noted Eric Smith, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics.

The Chromebook Pro's battery life is "only beat by the much more expensive Chromebook Pixel 2 and the Dell Chromebook 13," said Ars reviewer Palladino.

However, it "pales in comparison to what we saw" from various Asus Chromebook models, said PC Magazine's Song, who noted that results of two tests varied substantially.

The Quad HD Screen

The Chromebook Pro's 2400 x 1600 Quad HD LED display "is virtually indistinguishable from my Mac screen," Forbes' Carpenter said.

The display "makes the entire device taller than most 16:9 laptops and two-in-ones," observed Palladino.

That allows a larger palm rest and more space for the user's hands, but a huge bottom bezel and a hardware strip for the hinges to attach to the lid leave "a bunch of empty space," he pointed out.

The display offers a much higher resolution than typically found in 11- or 13-inch Chromebooks, Song said, but the 3:2 aspect ratio means it's more square-shaped. That leaves little room on either side of the keyboard, making the typing experience somewhat awkward.

The Stylus and Android Apps

Although the included stylus drew generally favorable remarks, "the quality of the inking wasn't as impressive as Windows or iOS devices at similar price points," Strategy Analytics' Smith told TechNewsWorld.

Reviewers liked the Chromebook Pro's access to the huge number of Android apps in the Google Play store.

However, some Android apps don't play well with Chrome, they noted.

"Some apps don't recognize the keyboard and trackpad; others seem unable to handle a touchscreen," Wired's Pierce pointed out.

"Most crash constantly," and switching between apps can be clumsy, said Song.

Still, "I was able to do most of my daily work on the Chromebook Pro without major problems," Palladino remarked, adding that it "performed faster than my MacBook Air."

Right Direction

The convertible Chromebook segment is expanding rapidly, according to Linn Huang, a research director at IDC.

"Most have been underpowered, small-screen, low-cost offerings, [and] Samsung's Chromebook Pro marks an evolution towards the premium end," he told TechNewsWorld.

In general, Chromebooks "have largely been a K-12 phenomenon," suggested Huang, and they need more work to succeed in the larger consumer market as a category.

Cybersecurity startup Capsule8 this week announced that it has raised US$2.5 million to launch the industry's first container-aware, real-time threat protection platform designed to protect legacy and next-generation Linux infrastructures from existing and potential attacks.

CEO John Viega, CTO Dino Dai Zovi and Chief Scientist Brandon Edwards, all veteran hackers, cofounded the firm. They raised seed funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, as well as individual investors Shandul Shah of Index Ventures and ClearSky's Jay Leek.

"The cloud has catapulted Linux to the most popular platform on the planet, and now the use of container technology is exploding," said Bob Goodman, a partner at Bessemer. "Yet there has been no world-class commercial security offering focused on securing the Linux infrastructure -- until now."

Capsule8 is solving the difficult problem of providing zero-day threat protection for Linux, whether it be legacy, container or some combination of the two, he added.

Linux Focus

Windows protection tends to focus on "find the bad executable," which makes sense in that environment because bad executables are ubiquitous in an attack, noted Capsule8's Viega.

However, that approach doesn't work well in a Linux environment, so Capsule8 focuses on detecting and protecting against system compromise, he told LinuxInsider.

The other typical approach in Linux is a network appliance, Viega said. However, there is not much context on the network, particularly as end-to-end encryption starts to become ubiquitous in the enterprise, so this approach doesn't find much and leads to many spurious alerts.

"The result is that most Linux compromises either go undetected or are a surprise -- companies find their data on a forum at a later date and they find they had no clue they were attacked," he explained.

Among the most noteworthy incidents, the company cited the massive breach at Yahoo, which went undetected for years until the stolen data showed up on the Web.

While Linux-based systems present many of the same security problems as Windows-based systems, the biggest difference in attacks can be found around malware, according to Mark Nunnikhoven, vice president of cloud research at Trend Micro.

"While we do regularly see malware targeting Linux systems, it's a more common occurrence that the malware implanted on Linux systems is there to be distributed to Windows clients connecting to that Linux system," he told LinuxInsider.

On the defensive front, there's a stark contrast in the amount of effort required to support the rapidly changing software on Linux platforms, Nunnikhoven pointed out.

"Given the nature of Linux and GNU, release cycles are a bit more erratic, and there's a lot more variation that requires a mature and robust response by security providers," he said.

Customer Base

Capsule8 already has signed up customers for its prerelease product, including SourceClear and Namely.

Capsule8 is the first product that supplements SourceClear's predeployment detection with runtime threat protection for Linux systems, CEO Mark Curphey said.

There are three core principles that should guide decision making when adopting new technology, suggested Daniel Leslie, director of cybersecurity and technology at Namely. They are scalability, maintainability and security.

Protecting infrastructure at scale without sacrificing stability or performance is essential, he said.

Analytics vs. EDR

Capsule8 likely will take an agent-based approach primarily focused on visibility, speculated Adrian Sanabria, senior analyst for information security at 451 Research.

"They're talking about gathering tons of details about what's going on with the operating system, processes, applications, network connections, file activity, etc.," he told LinuxInsider.

"I think EDR (endpoint detection and response) is actually the best and closest comparison I can find -- it is more like that, based on the details I can find so far," Sanabria maintained.

There's a big difference between security analytics products and EDR, in that "EDR products tend to be workstation-based, and none of them are container-aware that I know of," he pointed out.

"On the container side, there's a lot of competition already," Sanabria continued, "but none of the container security startups are doing Linux security. The one exception would be Trend Micro. The latest release of Deep Security includes container-aware support, and the product actively defends against attacks, whereas it sounds like Capsule8 will initially just be a monitoring product."

Commercial container security is probably Capsule8's best bet for growth, he suggested.

"451 does a lot of enterprise surveying on a regular basis," Sanabria noted, "and I've got to say, 'Linux Security' is one thing I've never seen on the list of 'pain points' -- even at the bottom of the list."

Apple CEO Tim Cook has called for a campaign against fake news.

Its purveyors -- largely interested only in getting the most clicks -- are defeating the people who are trying to tell the most truth, he told the UK's Daily Telegraph in an exclusive interview last week.

Fake news is "killing people's minds in a way," Cook said.

The worldwide epidemic of fake news requires a crackdown by both government and tech, he said, but care must be taken not to step on the freedoms of speech and the press.

Cook suggested the impact of fake news could be curbed by building public awareness with a massive public service campaign.

Tech can do its part to fight the spread of fake news by creating tools to reduce its volume on the Internet, he added, while government can support the cause by bringing the fight into the classroom.

"Kids will be the easiest to educate," he told the Telegraph. "At least before a certain age, they are very much in listen and understand [mode], and they then push their parents to act."

Killing Discourse

The challenge to Cook or anyone else wishing to crackdown on fake news will be nailing down what exactly "fake news" is.

"'Fake news' has gone in six months from a useful description to something that's absolutely meaningless," said Dan Kennedy, an associate professor at the school of journalism at Northeastern University.

Fake news originally was the product of bogus news publishers that posted wildly exaggerated or entirely made-up stories to garner clicks just for advertising revenue.

"Now it's meaningless, because the Trump White House calls anything it doesn't like 'fake news,'" Kennedy told TechNewsWorld.

"What referred to stories that contained misinformation or disinformation is largely a meaningless term," echoed John Carroll, a mass communications professor at Boston University.

"A number of people have appropriated it to mean news that they don't like," he told TechNewsWorld.

"I don't know what 'killing people's minds' means," he added, "but I know fake news is eroding public discourse, and giving people a false impression not only of the news media but also current events."

Weaponizing Fake News

Language is always in flux, and the meaning of terms can shift, observed Mark Marino, director of the Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab at the University of Southern California.

"Right now, the presidential administration is trying to weaponize the term in an attempt to censor the press and create noise to make it difficult for people to critically assess what's going on," he told TechNewsWorld.

Even without that noise, fake news can be difficult to spot.

"It's comparatively easy to produce something on the Internet with little money and little training that looks almost identical to what major, professional news organizations produce," Marino said.

"That means that in addition to the usual critical thinking skills of being able to evaluate arguments and evidence, we also need media literacy skills to be able to identify when a news story is from an organization that's not following professional standards."

Media literacy skills aren't the only ones needed for an informed public, suggested NU's Kennedy.

"Before we can have media literacy, we need to have civic literacy, because people need to understand why this is important in the first place," he said.

Combating Fake News

What can be done to combat fake news? Both Google and Facebook are making efforts to dam the flow -- Google by blocking fake news sites from participating in its advertising platform; Facebook by limiting misinformation on its system.

Enlisting Hollywood in the cause may be another way to squelch fake news.

"A campaign similar to those used for designated drivers and seatbelts, where references were put into scripts of programs to raise awareness of those issues, could be effective," BU's Carroll said.

Tim Cook's concern about the harm fake news can cause is a legitimate one, but the issue could have business implications for Apple, especially if it's too zealous in its crackdown.

"If it's seen as interfering with people's expression or access to information, that's going to hurt them," Carroll noted.

On the other hand, Apple could benefit if it should earn a reputation as being a fake-news-free zone.

"Tim Cook's observation about fake news is right on target," NU's Kennedy said.

Further, "Apple News is a real alternative to people who want to have an aggregated news product but want to make sure that it is vetted and verified news," he pointed out. "There is a business opportunity here for Apple. It has a dog in this race, and it's an increasingly impressive dog."