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After the 2016 US election, social media services have felt increasing pressure to improve the integrity and quality of information its users discover in their ecosystems. This week, Twitter announced US election labels, which essentially act as enhanced verified badges specially made for candidates running in this year's US midterm general election. The company also announced its "Political Campaigning Policy" to make it easier for users to understand exactly who is backing political ads. These are two steps Twitter is taking to make good on its vow to protect its users from misinformation and bad actors abusing its platform.
T-Mobile customers, your data has been put at risk by your carrier, once again. In what seems like copypasta at this point, a security researcher recently found a bug in a publicly discoverable subdomain on T-Mobile's website that gave anyone access to customer data using just a phone number. It's almost like T-Mobile wants to award those bug bounties.
We're not even two months away from the first day the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ officially went on sale, but we've already seen plenty of deals on these smartphones. Both of Samsung's latest flagship phones are solid contenders for the contents of your wallet, and now the dual-SIM variant of the S9+ is here to tempt you at 9.99 on eBay. That's the lowest price we've seen so far.
We're coming up on a year since Google CEO Sundar Pichai showed off a nifty obstruction-removal feature in Google Photos at I/O 2017 — you know, the one where a chain-link fence is magically removed from a photo of a girl at bat. Some Pollyannas were hoping Google would offer an update on the now-mythical feature at this year's developer conference. While the company announced some cool enhancements to Google Photos at I/O 2018, there was no official follow-up on the fate of the buzzworthy feature showed off last year. But now there's word that it has been deprioritized and may not be anywhere close to a rollout.
Sony's Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact flagship smartphones debuted at MWC 2018 in Barcelona back in February, and they went on sale at Best Buy in the US on April 20th. Anyone who's thinking of shelling out $799.99 for the bigger XZ2 probably wants to know how well the device will hold up to everyday wear and tear. Thanks to Zack at the YouTube channel JerryRigEverything, we now know that the XZ2 is pretty much a tank.
By giving more than 2 million customers a way to see multiple movies in theaters each month at a discounted price, MoviePass is disrupting the cinema industry in a big way. While not nearly as much of a household name, Sinemia is vying to do the same. With new subscription plans starting at lower prices and boasting features that its rival doesn't offer, Sinemia may seem like an appealing alternative — and it may be for some types of moviegoers. But as is typically the case, the devil is in the details.
Reliably making phone calls on your smartphone is easy to take for granted, but there's nothing like disrupted and dropped calls to help you appreciate that simple function again. Some Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ owners are having their voices muted or distorted during calls, or having their calls dropped altogether. Now Samsung is starting to roll out a software update in some countries to fix these issues.
The Essential Phone and 360 Camera are in demand around the world — according to Essential. So the company is responding by selling its phone and accessories directly to consumers in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, and Japan. If you live in one of those five countries, it's time to get mildly excited.
Apparently Target has its own line of smart lamps, for which the US retailer released an iOS app called Target Connected back in October 2016. Now that app is available for Android devices, though without Google Assistant integration or any groundbreaking features, it's far from anything to get excited about. Oh, and it tries to sell you stuff from Target.com.
I'm a fairly satisfied Verizon Fios customer with a basic internet and TV package. Sure, it helps that the man who installed our setup somehow gave us a handful of channels we weren't supposed to get (shh), but I've come to prefer it over any of the previous providers I've endured. But one thing I haven't taken advantage of yet is the Verizon FiOS Mobile app, probably because I'm still a bit scarred by visions of the atrocious bloatware defecating all over my phones when I was a Verizon Wireless customer. Well, Verizon has just released a new app for Fios TV customers simply called Fios TV. It's a sleeker, refreshed version of its older Fios app, but it's not necessarily better on the whole.
As a pleased owner of a Google Home Mini, I often find myself wondering why I didn't buy one or two more of these tiny smart speakers to scatter around our apartment unit. When I ask my wife what she thinks of getting some companions for our lone Mini, she aggressively asks "Why?" — and, well, that's the end of that. But now Costco is giving me some new ammunition, thanks to a deal offering members the chance to purchase a Google Home Mini (charcoal or chalk) three-pack for just $99.99, which is $15 off of the normal going price.
Team Win Recovery Project, which you probably know as TWRP, is the most popular custom recovery around. The open-source project makes it easy to flash custom software, including custom ROMs, on compatible phones and tablets. Since our last update a couple weeks ago, TWRP has added support for a handful of other devices, including the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 and Moto E4 Plus.
Asking a Google Home to set an alarm or reminder is a rudimentary use for one of those smart speakers. But it seems some users recently found that their Google Home failed to sound alarms and reminders that were set. Now Google is saying that a fix has been rolled out and those functions are working again.
Back in 2012, the FBI, Department of Justice, and other domestic and foreign entities teamed up to seize three sites that pirated Android apps: Applanet, AppBucket, and SnappzMarket. The fallout for some of the operators of those sites was known within about 18 months of the unprecedented crackdown. For the then-teenager behind Applanet, the largest of the three offending sites, the consequences were not determined until this week: He'll avoid prison time but will be placed under probation with some special conditions.
If you screw up in a way that gets any sort of media attention, chances are you won't like what you see when you run a query for your name on Google. And those unflattering search results could have far-reaching implications for your livelihood. Two businessmen in the UK didn't like some results that turned up when their names were searched for on Google, so they took the company to the High Court of Justice based on the "right to be forgotten" precedent set by the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2014. One of the men won, while the other lost and was granted an appeal. The ruling sets an important bar for future requests to have search results delisted.
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- Google employee and "Chromium evangelist" François Beaufort shared today that this "brand new interface for touch and convertibles devices" is now in the Chrome OS Canary channel by default. He links to a commit that notes this touch-optimized UI will initially be enabled by default for Chrome OS touch devices, and even includes a visual comparison to highlight the changes:
A reference to "Material Design 2" was noticed in a Chromium Gerrit commit back in February, which was made private soon after it was pointed out. That commit has since been reopened to the public and has changed references to a Material Design update to mentions of a touch-optimized UI for Chrome. There is, however, a hint that Google plans to roll out a Material Design 2 refresh for Chrome on the browser's 10th birthday in September.
Developers with apps on the Play Store can set up promo codes to give users a paid app or an in-app product for free — if they live in an eligible country. But the list of countries where developers can issue Play Store promo codes is expanding at a quick pace. Seven countries (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, and Romania) were added to the fold in the past few weeks alone, and now four more countries are part of the list: Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.
Google Play credit just got a little more valuable in some countries, thanks to Google expanding Play balances to cover Newsstand subscriptions. However, this change does not benefit anyone who lives in any of the 31 European Economic Area countries.
If you're champing at the bit to know when the Moto G6 and G6 Play will be available, it's looking like mid-May is a good bet — at least in the US. Someone at American retailer Fry's Electronics appeared to pull the trigger a little early by posting the G6 and G6 Play (no G6 Plus) on its website for pre-orders. Those pages have since been pulled down, but we saved them for posterity. There are also leaked specs for the G6 Plus that confirm what we've heard before, as well as FCC filings for the Z3 Play.
"Machine learning" and "neural network" are familiar terms to anyone who follows what Google is up to these days, but they may not be the most accessible or comprehensible concepts for the masses. And that's fine — you don't need to have a firm grasp of machine learning to enjoy better photos or keyboards, for instance. Still, Google has been quietly showcasing ways for users to get more hands-on with these concepts, and the latest such experiment is a game called Emoji Scavenger Hunt.