Microsoft’s mixed reality is for developers, not the public
HoloLens, the augmented reality headset Microsoft’s been touting as a future pillar of its Windows business, isn’t “fun” to use. At least, it wasn’t for me during my whirlwind round of developer-focused demos at Microsoft’s flagship store in New York. That’s to say, any and all comparisons to emerging virtual reality tech and related gaming or entertainment applications should be excised from the conversation for now. It’s not “immersive” as one Microsoft rep stressed to me, clearly keen to avoid the confused commingling of AR and VR buzzwords. It’s “complementary.”
If anything, HoloLens is very much a powerful tool for business, science and education — both Volvo and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are actively experimenting with it. And as Microsoft demonstrated at its brand new HoloLens developer experience, set to open on the upper floors of its Fifth Avenue shop this Thursday, it’s armed with enough proof of concept to make good on its enterprise promise.
Whereas virtual reality replaces your physical world with a simulated one, augmented reality complements it with added holographic overlays. And unlike the constrained atmosphere required to enter VR, HoloLens is designed to be a free-roaming experience — there are no wires to get tangled in or dangling cords to distract you. The headset, which runs Windows 10 and is cosmetically similar to the unit developers will be receiving come Q1 next year (at a cost of $3,000), sports a clean design and is battery-operated (Microsoft isn’t ready to comment on just how long a charge will last). It’s also relatively easy to put on and adjust once you’re given the initial tutorial and have had your eyes measured for interpupillary distance — the latter of which was required to properly set up each demo.
There is no “wow” factor when engaging with HoloLens, not even when playing Microsoft’s Project XRay game, one of three demos the company had arranged for the showcase. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because the experience takes place in the real world, it’s not confusing for your brain to accept and navigate — it truly is a “mixed reality.” Even the tap gesture, which requires users to hold one finger upright and “click” the air to select, is easy enough to grasp and replicate.
All of the holographic action — in this instance, metallic, insect-like enemies pouring out of the walls and shooting lasers — takes place in a small widescreen window hovering just in front of you; your peripheral vision is left intact. Looking to the far left or far right, however, can very easily break the AR-illusion.
‘Project XRay’ looks like more fun to play in this photo than in the actual demo.
The gameplay in Project XRay is somewhat frantic, due in part to the insects’ rapid movement around the room. This, in turn, had the unfortunate effect of shifting the holographic window, which continually dipped lower as I dodged and twisted, making it harder to find and destroy the enemy bugs. It’s a problem remedied easily enough by tightening the headset using an adjustable wheel on back. I, however, opted for a looser, more comfortable fit, so mea culpa.
Though you can rely on voice- and gesture-control to manipulate most HoloLens apps, Project XRay makes use of an Xbox One controller, the triggers of which are mapped to the player’s weapons. It’s a stark contrast to the “wearable” wrist-mounted laser cannon, overlaid on a physical, wand-like controller, the company showed off during the game’s initial reveal. That this playable demo of Project XRay relies on an Xbox One controller doesn’t detract from the gameplay, but it is another example of how Microsoft is managing expectations for its AR tech: publicly showcasing its massive potential and privately demonstrating its more practical reality.
Certainly, Microsoft’s enhanced and tightly controlled presentations at E3 and its BUILD developer conference haven’t helped matters much. Those HoloLens demos paint an ambitious and far-reaching future portrait of how AR will integrate into our lives and not necessarily how the limited tech functions at present, as we’ve noted when playing HoloLens versions of Minecraft and Halo 5.
Project XRay might not be the killer gaming app to sell Microsoft’s AR tech to developers, but there is an, admittedly, less exciting software that should do the trick: HoloStudio. The app is a more accurate representation of what HoloLens can do as a tool and indicative of what early partners are likely doing with the headset. HoloStudio is, quite literally, a creative toolbox that should appeal to designers seeking to build 3D models in a physical space and retail brands that want to offer “virtual” product tours at luxury showrooms.
After scanning the surrounding area, HoloStudio begins by allowing the user to pin their toolbox to the room, filled with all the drawing tools one might find in a scaled-down version of Photoshop, and then proceed to select or create a holographic object. For the purpose of this demo, Microsoft pre-loaded three holo-objects, so no actual 3D sculpting was involved. One object, a wooden placard, was used to let users get a sense of how a 3D-printed object might look in a physical space. That portion of the demo even offered the ability to upload the design to OneDrive or send it directly to a 3D printer.
The others showcased more rudimentary aspects of HoloStudio: An X-wing starfighter floating in the middle of the room was paired with the painting tool, allowing me to walk around and tilt my head to select portions of it, and tap to paint. And a cartoony underwater scene made use of HoloLens’ many voice commands, giving me the ability to make the 3D model “life size,” “resize” it, or even “copy” and paste certain objects.
Microsoft is managing expectations for its AR tech by publicly showcasing its massive potential and privately demonstrating its more practical reality.
Again, it’s not the most thrilling use case for HoloLens, but it is an honest portrayal of how the tech can be applied and a sufficient lure for interested developers. The same can be said for the virtual showroom demo which offered a device tour of a luxury watch. While it was interesting enough to walk around the watch and even “lean in” to hear it tick, it was the HoloLens presentation editor that had the most appeal.
In that editing mode, developers using HoloLens for product demos can build presentations, restructure them in real-time and even check a “heat map” that highlights exactly where a user was focusing their gaze and then adjust things accordingly.
‘HoloStudio’ offers designers a virtual toolbox for 3D modeling.
There’s another key aspect of HoloLens that should help sell the tech, making good on its mixed reality promise, but is, for the most part, uncelebrated and invisible: its audio. The headset features a “non-occluding” audio system that places speakers near, but not on the user’s ears, making it possible to comfortably listen to HoloLens prompts and the real-world environment. Microsoft reps on hand wouldn’t go into too much detail about the audio tech, but did note it’s an indispensable part of the HoloLens experience, saying that it’s used to guide users’ spatial attention.
Microsoft knows it needs to court developer support for HoloLens, and this extended New York showcase should go a long way towards achieving that goal. Without an ecosystem of apps, HoloLens is, at best, nothing more than collectible fodder for the earliest of adopters and, at worst, a failed sea change for consumer and enterprise technology. It’s why the company’s been so aggressive in hosting a competition to award development kits to academic institutions — for which, a rep says it received seven times the anticipated applications. It’s even recently begun a program to greenlight great HoloLens app ideas from inspired individuals who lack the know-how to develop. At present, a rep says over 4,000 “Share Your Idea” apps have been submitted.
With talk of an eventual consumer release far on the horizon, it’s clear Microsoft’s taking the necessary steps to ensure its AR tech grows up with developers and gets ready to mix with the real world in all the right ways.
These DIY Netflix socks pause your show when you fall asleep
Passing out during a Netflix session is a very real threat. Especially with the incoming holiday season and all those requisite carbs pumping in your bloodstream. So Netflix’s latest make it project attempts to solve the issue with motion sensors built into your socks. (Vaguely festive PR grab, check.) Netflix has provisioned some sock designs if you’re a truly devoted binge-watcher, and offers up all the details for the intermediate-level electronics (Arduino, accelerometers, IR LEDs) needed to make it work. Your handmade wearables might not work all the time, but at least you’ll be a little closer to find exactly which episode of Jessica Jones you unintentionally faded out from.
Source: Netflix
Tesla ‘corrects’ claim that anyone can make a self driving car
Tesla has never been shy about starting fights with publications that claim its technology isn’t all that. This time the firm has windmilled into Bloomberg Business and George “geohot” Hotz, the engineer famous for being the first to hack the iPhone and PlayStation 3. Yesterday, Bloomberg published an interview that showed off Hotz’s latest project, a self-driving car kit that can be retrofitted into existing vehicles. During the course of the piece, the inventor threw shade on Tesla’s own autopilot hardware, which managed to raise the ire of company CEO Elon Musk.
Hotz reserved specific criticism for Mobileye, the firm that supplies Tesla and other car makers with gear necessary for self-driving cars. As far as the 26-year-old was concerned, that technology was outdated compared to what he himself could knock up in his garage with off-the-shelf components. He’s been able to demonstrate some limited success, and the included clip shows his Honda Acura driving itself along a highway in San Francisco. In the near future, Hotz is planning to show his alternative outperform a Tesla along Interstate 405, but there’s no word on when that’ll be.
In response, Tesla posted a rebuttal to the piece on its blog, saying that Bloomberg’s descriptions of Mobileye and its own Autopilot were wrong. In the necessary legalese, the post says that Bloomberg “did not correctly represent Tesla or Mobileye.” The company goes on to say that the implication that it simply packages Mobileye’s technology and bolts it onto a Model S is false. Instead, its self-driving technology is the result of years of research and numerous components that are blended together into a “groundbreaking experience.”
In addition, Tesla says that it has doubt that a “single person or even a small company” would be able to produce a production-ready autonomous setup. The shade-returning continues with the suggestion that Hotz’s system would work well on a “known stretch of road — Tesla had such a system two years ago,” but that wouldn’t cope with the rigors of all driving. The company signs off by hinting that Hotz’s offering wouldn’t be safe enough to put into a vehicle, since getting something right 99 percent of the time isn’t great if the error takes place at 70 mph.
Of course, there’s a wider story here that goes beyond just a pair of Silicon Valley names going toe-to-toe with each other. That’s because Elon Musk has had previous with both George Hotz and Ashlee Vance, the author of the Bloomberg story. Hotz was previously in talks to join Tesla to help design its self-driving car tech, but those broke down after Musk “jerk(ed)” Hotz “around for three months.” As The Verge points out, Vance also recently wrote a biography of the SpaceX CEO that painted him in a somewhat unpleasant light. Is there a Silicon Valley equivalent of couples therapy?
[Image Credit: Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg via Getty]
Via: The Verge
Source: Bloomberg Business, Tesla
Yu Yutopia with Snapdragon 810 and 4GB RAM launched for Rs. 24,999
Smartphone manufacturer Yu, which is partly owned by Micromax, has launched its latest handset for the Indian market today. Its top-of-the-line Yu Yutopia packs in some pretty serious hardware and won’t break the bank either.
The Yu Yutopia boasts a 5.2-inch QHD (2560×1440) display, which is manufactured by Sharp and packs in a whopping 565 pixels per inch. The phone is powered by an equally high end octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC and 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, specs that you would normally attribute to this year’s high-end flagships. The phone also comes with 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot that supports an extra 128GB of space.
The phone extends its high-end features with a 21 megapixel rear camera based on a Sony Exmor RS IMX230 sensor, which is paired up with a 5P lens, optical image stabilization and a dual-LED true tone flash. There’s a 5P lens 8 megapixel front facing camera on the handset too. That’s not all, the handset boats a 3,000mAh battery, Quick Charge 2.0 technology to take your battery from 0 to 60 percent in just 30 minutes, dual-SIM slots, and 4G network support. The phone runs the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop based Cyanogen OS 12.1.
Along with the new phone, Yu has also announced its Assured Upgrade Programme, which guarantees purchasers a 40 percent cashback discount if they exchange their new Yutopia for a Yutopia 2 in the future. This can be taken advantage of during a specific “upgrade window” whenever the handset’s successor actually launches.
The Yu Yutopia will be sold exclusively through Amazon India with a price tag set at a quite reasonable Rs. 24,999 ($376). Pre-bookings open up on Thursday (today) and the handset will begin shipping out to consumers on December 26th.
Is anyone planning to pick one up?
Apple Music Estimated to Have 8M Paying Subscribers, Predicted to Hit 20M by End of 2016
Apple’s streaming music service Apple Music will have 8 million subscribers by the time 2015 comes to a close, according to music business analyst Mark Mulligan (via Music Business Worldwide). Mulligan also forecast that Apple Music should hit 20 million total users by around this time next year, ultimately making it the second most popular streaming music service behind Spotify.
“Apple might not have found the subscription market quite the plain sailing it had anticipated but it has still managed to establish itself as the second player with astounding pace. Its platform and marketing assets are well known, but its clear commitment to making Apple Music work have surprised some.”
As Mulligan pointed out, however, the exact numbers in his prediction can vary as we head into the new year. With Apple Music’s three-month free trial that could have led to some accidental paid subscribers and Spotify Premium’s $1 a month three-month trial system, the analyst stated that there are enough “wildcards” in the equation to unbalance his prediction.
If the analyst’s estimation of 8 million Apple Music subscribers by the New Year becomes true, that would be about 1.5 million growth during the fall, after Tim Cook confirmed the service had 6.5 million in October. Normally $10/month, Mulligan believes if Apple has trouble with getting subscribers to stick around, they could return to convincing record labels in lowering that monthly cost.
“If Apple finds growth tough going, expect it to throw everything it has got at getting the labels to agree to lower price point products so it can open up large chunks of the iTunes music customer base.”
In the meantime, Apple is pushing Apple Music onto more supported third-party products, including a beta for Sonos speakers that brought support for the streaming music service onto the speakers for the first time. The Cupertino company is also still dealing in exclusives, recently announcing a project with Taylor Swift that will include a made-for-Apple Music concert film debuting on the service this Sunday, December 20. Recently, Apple began rewarding its retail workers with gifts for the holidays, which included a free nine-month subscription to Apple Music.
Discuss this article in our forums
T-Mobile slashes $100 off top Samsung phones along with free Netflix subscription
This holiday season, T-Mobile is playing Santa of sorts. As part the Un-carrier Unwrapped promotion, T-Mobile offering a $100 discount off Samsung’s premium Galaxy devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, Edge+ and Note 5. If that was not good enough for you, the wireless carrier is also throwing in a full year’s Netflix subscription for free.
“Today we’re putting the final bow on a fantastic month of gifts to all wireless customers. Starting this weekend, we’re giving you $100 off the top on Samsung’s hottest phones, plus a year of Netflix. Period. Happy Holidays Everyone!”
– John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile
There is just one catch – the deal is only valid for T-Mobile’s equipment installment plan, which means you can’t avail the offer on the purchase of unlocked Galaxy devices. But if you don’t mind staying bound to one service provider, it is indeed a sweet deal.
To make the most of this offer, you must make a purchase between December 18th and December 23rd. While the $100 discount may not be available after December 23rd, customers still get up to a free year of Netflix though December 31st.
Source: T-Mobile
The post T-Mobile slashes $100 off top Samsung phones along with free Netflix subscription appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Fleksy partners with ZTE to put its keyboard on millions of phones worldwide
Among the best keyboard replacements is Fleksy, which was named an Editor’s Choice 2015 by Google. And its quality is met with popularity as more than 1 million people have installed it to date. This morning, Fleksy announced it is ready to push become an international force by partnering with one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of mobile device. ZTE, the Chinese company that is silently the fourth largest smartphone brand in the United States, is helping Fleksy extend its reach internationally by pre-installing the keyboard on devices.
Adam Zeng, CEO of ZTE Mobile Devices, said this about the deal:
“At ZTE, we are constantly listening and working with both our consumers and partners to enhance our smartphone feature offerings. As such, we are delighted to work with Fleksy to incorporate their award winning user typing interface to give our end users the best possible smartphone experience.”
Owners of ZTE devices will gain everything that Fleksy has to offer, including its custom theme builder that presents users with a personalized keyboard visually and in operation.
Fleksy is adding ZTE to a portfolio of partners that already includes Samsung, Xiaomi, and Meizu. With its various partnerships, Fleksy expects that 50 million branded installs to be performed in 2015 alone.
Fleksy partners with ZTE, bringing a great text input option to ZTE customers worldwide!
San Francisco, CA, December 17, 2015 — Fleksy, holder of the Guinness World Record for typing, announces a new partnership with ZTE, a global manufacturer of smartphones and mobile devices.
Fleksy, which provides a unique and powerful user interface, will be providing more than just an award-winning typing experience to ZTE users, it will also bring rich content to users’ finger tips all around the world. Rich content includes thousands of GIFs, stickers and emoji for every occasion.
Partnering with ZTE, one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in China, further extends Fleksy’s international distribution.
“We’re committed to delivering a faster and more expressive input experience for users across the globe,” said Kosta Eleftheriou, CEO and Founder of Fleksy. “ZTE is one of the world’s leading device manufacturers, and we’re pleased to bring Fleksy to their users.”
“At ZTE, we are constantly listening and working with both our consumers and partners to enhance our smartphone feature offerings.” said Adam Zeng, CEO of ZTE Mobile Devices at ZTE Corporation. “As such, we are delighted to work with Fleksy to incorporate their award winning user typing interface to give our end users the best possible smartphone experience.”
Fleksy’s recently launched custom theme builder, which gives users the ability to customize their keyboard with photos, colors, and effects, will also be included in the integration. Allowing ZTE users to make the keyboard look and feel exactly how they like and change it up as frequently as they want.
About Fleksy:
Officially the fastest smartphone keyboard in the world (Guinness World Record, May 2014 & November 2014), Fleksy is already used by millions of people in over 170 countries. It features the world’s most powerful typing technology, an award winning design, and unprecedented customization. Having established partnerships with Samsung, Xiaomi, Meizu and many others, Fleksy is projecting more than 50M branded installs in 2015.
Winner of the CES Award for Design and Engineering, the South by Southwest (SXSW) Award, and a 2014 Golden Stevie Award for Innovation, Fleksy is the world’s most innovative keyboard company. It was the first keyboard to enable blind typing on a smartphone (Access Award by the American Foundation for the Blind), the first keyboard to be deployed on a smartwatch, and the first keyboard to enable typing in a 3D augmented reality platform (Leap Motion).
Fleksy is backed by venture capital including Highland Capital Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Come comment on this article: Fleksy partners with ZTE to put its keyboard on millions of phones worldwide
DisneyLife gets kids’ streaming absolutely right
Despite sinking billions of pounds into the production of blockbuster movies and hit TV shows over the years, Disney decided it was best to let companies like Apple, Netflix, Amazon and Sky handle the online distribution of its content. This has meant that every few years, the company sits down with streaming providers to agree on a licence, allowing you and I to log into our favourite service and access a selection of Disney content. It’s led to fragmentation, where Netflix carries something Amazon doesn’t (and vice-versa), and the only way to access everything is to buy it, one movie, TV series or soundtrack at a time.
This year, however, Disney decided enough was enough. The house that Walt built has finally dipped its toe into the enchanted world of streaming. DisneyLife is a UK-only subscription service designed to appeal to cord-cutters or, more specifically, their children. At £10 ($15) a month, it’s a little costlier than Netflix or Amazon (but on par with Sky Now TV), despite the fact it only offers Disney content. But there’s a reason for that. DisneyLife isn’t just for streaming video; it also hosts soundtracks, e-books and a selection of official Disney-branded apps. I can admit to being a Disney fan, but I know that DisneyLife isn’t really aimed at people like me. Fortunately, I played a part in creating two mini versions of myself (aged four and five) who fit perfectly within Disney’s target demographic.
Getting started
Signing up to DisneyLife is like any other streaming service: Enter a few personal details and fill in your card number to redeem a free month of service. For some reason, Disney sends a lot of emails once you’ve signed up, mostly to remind you how to use the service and the various ways to stream. Currently, DisneyLife can be accessed via the browser (which relies on Silverlight) and on iOS or Android devices. That means by proxy, it works with Apple TVs and Chromecasts too. You can associate your account with up to 10 devices and have four concurrent streams running at any one time.
Once registered, you will be asked to set up a master profile, which lets you manage your subscription, set parental controls and add new devices. It’ll also ask you to add up to five additional profiles, which Disney says “give each member of the family their own way to explore.” Being able to assign each profile a unique Disney character is a nice touch, especially if your child is the world’s biggest Frozen/Cars/Finding Nemo fan.
To properly gauge my sons’ usage, I covertly installed the DisneyLife app on their Android tablets and placed the app icon alongside their favourites: Minecraft and YouTube. I didn’t want to get in the way of their experience, just learn from it. When allowed to spend time on their devices (I try to be a responsible parent), they quickly recognised the Disney logo and dove straight in.
All Disney, all of the time
Disney knows its aesthetics. When the DisneyLife homescreen loads, you’re immediately met with a number of banners that highlight collections like Disney villains, Pixar films and Disney classics. Directly below that is a section called “Character Worlds,” which immediately drew my sons’ eyes (one chose Frozen and the other Incredibles). It’s here that we ran into our first minor disappointment.
Click to enlarge.
Upon seeing Elsa, my eldest son immediately assumed he could stream Frozen. The Elsa section certainly contains a lot of Frozen content — including a Frozen Fever mini movie, Frozen as told by emoji, Elsa fun facts, three separate soundtracks and eight e-books — but the full movie won’t appear on DisneyLife until the spring. That’s down to streaming agreements the company has with its UK partners, but my child was unable to understand the complexities of second-window streaming rights. It didn’t stop him from enjoying the other Frozen content, though, with one sing-a-long book becoming a firm favourite.
While Netflix and Amazon’s menus are relatively dull, Disney’s interstitials are vibrant and colorful, enticing the user to get interacting. Pull up The Lion King and you’ll see Pride Rock, click into Monsters Inc. and you’ll see Boo’s bedroom. Subtle animations guide you through each part of a character’s page. In short, Disney nailed the user experience.
While the apps are pretty good, I found they would log me out occasionally, usually after suffering minor performance issues. On the web, loading times are prompt, but you may run into some difficulties nonetheless. Using Chrome on a Mac running the latest version of OS X El Capitan, I was unable to get any movies to stream using the Silverlight plug-in. Google announced last year that it would phase out Silverlight support, so you’ll need a browser that still plays nice with Microsoft’s multimedia plug-in.
Click to enlarge.
Useful features
Disney knows that its apps are where the majority of streaming will happen, so it’s included features that make it easier for parents and children to enjoy its range of content. One of the best is an offline mode, which lets you download anything to your device to keep the kids entertained when you’re out of cellular or WiFi range. It’ll tell you how much storage space the movie or soundtrack will take up, too, just in case you need to make room.
DisneyLife also provides access to a selection of official Disney apps, with one free download each month. Selections include a number of themed storybooks, featuring The Good Dinosaur, Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph, but your little ones can also grab interactive titles like Disney Princess: Story Theatre and a Sofia colouring app.
Selection
With Netflix, Amazon and Sky’s Now TV already offering Disney content, is DisneyLife unique enough to justify another subscription? Looking at the numbers, DisneyLife offered 304 titles; Sky, 158; Amazon, 77; and Netflix, just 48. A wide selection of on-demand TV shows, or box sets, are also available and include programmes from the Disney TV, Disney Junior and Disney XD channels.
While Sky’s buying power has allowed it to negotiate access to newer Disney movies like Frozen and Maleficent, DisneyLife excels because it goes well beyond movies, offering behind-the-scenes clips, making-ofs, featurettes and, of course, all the related soundtracks, mini movies and books. Netflix and Amazon have smaller catalogues, with a smattering of classics and newer films, that can’t hold a candle to what DisneyLife and Now TV offer.
Click to enlarge.
If you already have a streaming subscription, it becomes a question of how often you think you or your family will use DisneyLife. Disney hasn’t yet made it easy to stream its content on the big screen, as you will always need a smartphone or tablet to hand to mirror movies on an Apple TV or Chromecast.
It worked out that DisneyLife was my kids’ flavour of the month for way less than a month, and towards the end of the free trial my sons rarely launched the app. Both prefer the variety that YouTube offers, whether it be illegal uploads of Peppa Pig episodes or Let’s Play Minecraft videos from Stampylongnose. This isn’t to say that DisneyLife isn’t good: It really is. It also bodes well for Disney’s streaming expansion in China next year and major markets like the US after that.
So, is a DisneyLife subscription worth a tenner each month? My answer is simple: It’s not about the quality — Disney left no stone unturned there (except maybe for Frozen). It’s about whether your little ones are mad enough about Disney that having access to nearly everything the company has ever put out will make you the best parent ever.
Source: DisneyLife
No ‘hoverboard’ is safe from UK Trading Standards
“Hoverboards” are getting a pretty bad rap of late, and not just because their common name is annoyingly misleading. Several UK retailers have stopped selling the things due to serious concerns over battery safety — they have a habit of spontaneously combusting, you see — with Amazon even advising customers to bin their potentially dodgy models. A number of airlines won’t carry them, the US is scrambling to regulate the fad, and earlier this month UK Trading Standards announced it had seized over 15,000 unsafe devices at sea ports, airports and postal hubs since mid-October. This hasn’t seemed to dent their popularity much, however, with Trading Standards telling BuzzFeed that figure has now spiked to 32,000 in just a few weeks.
Hoverboard imports have jumped significantly in the run-up to Christmas, and of the 38,800 Trading Standards has inspected at UK ports since October, 82.5 percent have been “detained” over safety fears. High demand for the gizmos has led to an influx of low-quality imports, the vast majority of which have dangerously noncompliant chargers, batteries and cut-off switches. By starving the UK of these highly sought-after products, Trading Standards may have either ruined your Christmas or saved you from a house fire waiting to happen. Either way, we imagine officers are having no fun at all “investigating” the matter.
Source: BuzzFeed News
Brazil temporarily shuts down WhatsApp messenger
If you’ve seen “WhatsApp” trend on Twitter lately, it’s because a judge in Sau Paulo, Brazil has ordered for the messaging app to be shut down for 48 hours, starting at 9PM Eastern yesterday. WhatsApp is huge in Brazil: it has a whopping 93 million users in the country, so this development affects a large number of people. That’s most likely the reason a rival app called Telegram Messenger has been seeing rapid adoption in Brazil, amassing 1.5 million new users in the past few hours.
It’s not quite clear why WhatsApp was shuttered, but there was a request to close it down earlier this year, because it reportedly refused to take down illicit photos of minors. What’s clear, however, is that the country’s telecommunication companies have been trying to convince the government to classify WhatsApp as an unregulated, illegal service. As TechCrunch noted, that’s pretty similar to the taxi industry’s stance against Uber. Telcos are mad that millions of Brazilians have been abandoning their phone lines due to WhatsApp, and if all 93 million users (or 93 percent of the country’s internet population) jumps ship, it will be a huge problem for them.
WhatsApp’s temporary deactivation is pretty mild compared to what the country’s Congress wants to happen, though. Back in 2014, Brazil passed a bill of rights protecting net neutrality and privacy, and we said everyone else could learn from the country’s example. Unfortunately, things have changed tremendously since then. TC notes that the Brazilian congress wants to restrict the use of social media networks and criminalize posting on Facebook and similar websites. Some politicians wrote a law that would require citizens to key in their address, phone number and tax ID in order to access apps and websites. They also want to be able to censor social media posts by giving politicians the right to ask for posts they deem defamatory to be taken down.
At the moment, Mark Zuckerberg says he and his team are working hard to get the Facebook-owned messenger unblocked in the country. He also says he’s stunned by the decision, as Brazil “has been an ally in creating an open internet.”
Here’s his full statement:
Tonight, a Brazilian judge blocked WhatsApp for more than 100 million people who rely on it in her country.
We are working hard to get this block reversed. Until then, Facebook Messenger is still active and you can use it to communicate instead.
This is a sad day for Brazil. Until today, Brazil has been an ally in creating an open internet. Brazilians have always been among the most passionate in sharing their voice online.
I am stunned that our efforts to protect people’s data would result in such an extreme decision by a single judge to punish every person in Brazil who uses WhatsApp.
We hope the Brazilian courts quickly reverse course. If you’re Brazilian, please make your voice heard and help your government reflect the will of its people.
Source: TechCrunch, Folha de S. Paulo
AIVAnet 