Android Central 280: Virtual porn, real issues

This week on the Greatest Android Podcast in the world we take on Pornhub’s arrival to 360-degree video and mobile VR. (For those of you who listen with kids around, that’s not until the back half of the show, and there is good warning beforehand.) Plus, HTC’s finally almost nearly ready to eventually show us its next flagship smartphone — and we answer more of your questions on air!

And coming up next week: We’re planning an all-Q&A show. So record your question and send it to podcast at androidcentral dot com — or just do a traditional email if that’s your thing.

Thanks to this week’s sponsors!

• Harry’s: Start shaving better today and save $5 off your first purchase with coupon code AC.
• Mailroute: Get 10 percent off spam-free email from a company that keeps its focus on what matters — stopping the spam!

Podcast MP3 URL: http://traffic.libsyn.com/androidcentral/androidcentral280.mp3

The Honor 7 gets its Marshmallow update in the EU

Honor has announced that the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update is now available over-the-air for Honor 7 owners in the EU. The update comes a few weeks after Honor originally expected, but it’s good to see that it’s actually rolling out now.

From Honor on Twitter:

Finally folks. The Marshmallow update for Honor 7 is out from today forward via OTA. #honor #forthebrave pic.twitter.com/H33b0FNxL2

— HonorEU (@HonorEU) March 25, 2016

Because the update is just starting to roll out, it could be a little while before it’s pushed to your device. You can always head to Settings, then select About phone to check for the update manually.

Your smartwatch still sucks as a boarding pass

Air travel is stressful enough as it is. Don’t make it worse by nerding it up in a setting that’s still not ready for it.

There are two kinds of folks who fly. There are those who do enough to know how to make it as painless as possible. We’re the ones you don’t see crowding around the gate long before it’s time to board, not stressing over which seat we’re in (having taken care of that long before we got anywhere near a plane), and who appreciate that every little thing you do to not slow down the process can make a big difference when you multiply that buy a couple hundred other meatsacks schlepping behind.

And then there’s everyone else.

But even with the gate lice and the power recliners and dude who just has to have a Bloody Mary at 6 a.m., it can still get worse.

You could try to get your watch involved.

Back in August 2014 — just a couple months after the first Android Wear smartwatches became available — I first took a look at using a smartwatch as a boarding pass. “Anything but first class” was the headline. A year and a half later, has anything actually changed?

Face-down scanner, face-up watch. What’s a nerd to do?

From a hardware perspective, it’s funny to look back on that original report. I was wearing an LG Watch — essentially a display on your wrist. There was virtually nothing about it that looked like a watch, design-wise. Hell, you’d be forgiven if you mistook it for the Apple Watch, which didn’t come out for a good nine months after LG’s first offering. There’s just not a lot going on there. But it served its purpose in this case — show a mobile boarding pass on the screen, to be read by the same scanners in airports worldwide.

The problem was — and still is — the scanners themselves. In many instances they’re simply not in a convenient position for shooting an upward-facing QR code. They’re great for giving gate updates while you’re running between terminals — I can’t say enough for not having to take my phone out of my pocket in that instance. But they’re lousy once you get there. If you have to place the QR code face down, then your watch has to be pointed down — on the underside of your wrist. For some, that’s fine. Our Apple Watch-wielding pal Rene Ritchie at iMore had no problem with this.

Since I knew how the scanners worked, and didn’t want to distort my arm, I loosed the Milanese Loop, spun the watch to the inside of my wrist as I was walking to the checkpoint, and then gentle placed it over the scanner.

That’s fine, I guess, if you’re using the magnetic Milanese Loop on an Apple Watch. But that still means you’re essentially taking off your watch in order to get it to do something. And that makes absolutely no sense from a functional standpoint. Might as well use any other mechanism to get onto the plane. Your phone — which can be more easily turned face-down or face-up, seeing as how it’s not attached to your arm. A paper boarding pass — which has the added advantage of not having a display that can dim right as you go to scan it. Or needing to be charged.

That the smartwatch sucks as a boarding pass still isn’t the watch’s fault. Nothing’s really changed in the time since I first gave it a go. When it does work without a hitch you generally find a look of surprise on the face someone nearby. “Cool!” And they’re right. Despite my misgivings, it is cool. When it’s not too awkward to use.

Mostly it has to do with the scanner. They can still be awkwardly placed at TSA for a phone, never mind for a watch to be able to reach. In February I transited PNS, ATL, SFO, LAX, CDG and BCN over the course of a couple weeks. That’s a lot of people in a lot of lines. It’s a crapshoot at the gate whether the scanner’s going to be looking top-down, or bottom-up. If it’s the latter, don’t bother.

But more important, don’t muck up the works. Don’t get to the gate only to find you have to take your watch off. If you’re going to use your phone as a boarding pass, make damn sure it’s on and open and ready. Your fellow fliers and I thank you.

Microsoft’s gigantic Surface Hub pen display is finally shipping

Microsoft is finally shipping to business customers its interactive whiteboard replacement, the Surface Hub. Unveiled at the Windows 10 launch last year, the collaborative machine was delayed last year. But it looks like its about to find its way into a corporate meeting room near you.

The mega display runs Windows 10 and like its tinier Surface Pro cousins, supports multi-touch. It also has a marker-sized pen so you can annotate all your awesome PowerPoint presentations. The giant computer comes with Skype for business and supports all your favorite Office applications.

You can hit up your CFO for either the $22,000 84-inch 4K model or the more reasonable $9,000 55-inch HD display.

Microsoft is keen to make sure you know the Surface Hub is for teams. In a statement about today’s news it said, “we are not just releasing a powerful device. We are releasing a team-empowering solution that will make meetings more productive, modernize workflows, and let people engage with data much better.”

Source: Microsoft

HoloLens TED Talk shows what augmented reality can do

If you think you have a sense of what Microsoft’s HoloLens headset can do, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. The company’s Alex Kipman recently presented a TED Talk on HoloLens that included multiple fresh demos illustrating Kipman’s vision of an augmented reality future. He showed off virtual caves and forests, and a space where you could watch TV at one moment and talk to family in the next. The highlight, however, comes near the end: Kipman talks to an avatar of NASA’s Jeffrey Norris standing on a recreation of Mars. Suddenly, Star Wars’ holograms aren’t so far-fetched.

A question-and-answer session after the presentation also helps explain how Microsoft produces the holographic effect for an external camera at an event. While HoloLens normally maps environments in real-time, Microsoft pre-maps the stage so that it can maintain the demo even when the WiFi invariably bogs down. Also, while the outside camera uses a fisheye lens to create an extremely wide field of view, Kipman is quick to note that the points of light in a given area are identical — the experience is fundamentally the same. In short, you’ll probably feel like you got your money’s worth if you dared to drop $3,000 on the developer HoloLens unit.

Source: TED, Microsoft Devices Blog

LED-lit fishing nets save sea turtles from getting caught

Sometimes, it’s the simplest tech that makes the biggest difference. University of Exeter researchers have crafted fishing nets with evenly distributed green LED lights (one every 33 feet) that warn sea turtles away without spooking fish. While scientists have yet to nail the exact reason the lights steer the turtles clear, one researcher tells Tech Insider that it’s likely just a matter of visibility — the turtles stand a better chance of seeing the net in time to avoid it. It’s not only quite effective in early tests (it reduced green turtle deaths by 64 percent), but relatively cheap at $100 to cover a giant 1,640ft net with 50 lights.

The scientists want to verify the results with larger fisheries, and to experiment with different colors. If they find continued success, they could make a lasting impact on wildlife conservation. Thousands of sea turtles die every year due to accidental catches, many of them from endangered species. If the LED-augmented nets can save at least some of those unwitting victims, they could increase the chances that these species will survive or even bounce back.

Via: Tech Insider

Source: University of Exeter

A ‘Star Trek’ Holodeck in Steam VR was inevitable

Let’s face it: if you grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, you probably see virtual reality as just a stepping stone toward the Holy Grail of simulation, the Holodeck. It’s no surprise, then, that Reddit users illogical_cpt and Bradllez have found a way to bring the Holodeck to VR. Thanks in part to work from Psyrek, they built a Holodeck grid for Steam VR that serves as an extremely appropriate background while you’re between games. It’s not going to be as vast or immersive as the “real” thing, and you’ll need a compatible headset (like the HTC Vive) to even give this a try. Still, it’s a pleasant reminder that science fiction and reality are much closer than they used to be.

Via: Kotaku

Source: Steam (1), (2), Reddit

Microsoft shows what it learned from its Tay AI’s racist tirade

If it wasn’t already clear that Microsoft learned a few hard lessons after its Tay AI went off the deep end with racist and sexist remarks, it is now. The folks in Redmond have posted reflections on the incident that shed a little more light on both what happened and what the company learned. Believe it or not, Microsoft did stress-test its youth-like code to make sure you had a “positive experience.” However, it also admits that it wasn’t prepared for what would happen when it exposed Tay to a wider audience. It made a “critical oversight” that didn’t account for a dedicated group exploiting a vulnerability in Tay’s behavior that would make her repeat all kinds of vile statements.

As for what’s happening next? Microsoft is focused on fixing the immediate problem, of course, but it stresses that it’ll need to “iterate” by testing with large groups, sometimes in public. That’s partly an excuse for its recent behavior — surely Microsoft would be aware that encouraging repetition is dangerous! However, Microsoft is right in that machine learning software can only succeed if it has enough data to learn from. Tay will only get better if she’s subjected to the abuses of the internet, however embarrassing those may be to her creators.

Source: Official Microsoft Blog

Advertising’s hottest surveillance software is surprisingly legal

You may have heard that the FTC this week sent out a dozen strongly worded letters to apps using the SilverPush framework. The FTC politely told twelve app developers that they needed to let users know that SilverPush was collecting data and selling it to third parties.

SilverPush responded two days ago by issuing a statement claiming it no longer uses the “Unique Audio Beacons” (UAB), and has “no active partnership with any US-based developers.”

Well, if this is true, then perhaps SilverPush should remove UAB as a core product from its website — and from the heart of its business model, as well.

SilverPush is in a predicament of its own making. That’s because, in the interest of serving advertisers, the company has created and implemented spying technology that goes above and beyond most modern surveillance tools.

If you’re online and come across a SilverPush advertiser, while the ad drops its tracking cookie on your computer, it also emits an (inaudible) Audio Beacon sound. If your phone or tablet has any app that uses the SilverPush software development kit on it, your device will be “listening” for the advertiser’s Audio Beacon. If you’re watching TV, commercials from SilverPush’s ad partners will also emit their own identifying tones for your devices to hear.

Then, it identifies what ads you’re looking at while matching the information with your phone, tablet, and computer, and you as the user. German anti-virus security company Avira analyzed the SilverPush tracking code and found an upsetting level of detailed data being collected and sent insecurely back to SilverPush. This included “the exact ID of the device, the Wi-Fi router MAC address, details about the device’s operating system, and best of all – the user’s phone number.” Because of this, Avira’s security software now detects SilverPush as Trojan malware.

Co-founder Mudit Seth told press in 2013 that SilverPush identifies a smartphone device (as in, its user) “through 50 parameters, based on data collected through ad exchanges, app owners and advertisers.” So if someone looks at sites that sell plane tickets, later they’ll be shown airfare ads on a different device, within a game, or on social network.

With this, the company claims it has the most accurate cross-device tracking tool in the business. The service it delivers to advertisers is to create a complete and accurate up-to-the-minute profile of what you do, what you watch, what sites you visit, all the devices you use, and more.

It’s like having someone look over your shoulder pretty much all the time, anxiously waiting for you to look at a product so it can tell its advertising clients what you’re seeing. SilverPush runs in the background of apps, so you’ll never know it’s there. Repulsively, it also runs when the apps aren’t in use.

All of this information is compiled into a machine-learning massaged profile on you, along with device information and other details, to create a dossier that SilverPush’s parent company SilverEdge tells its advertising clients is both “immediate and accurate.”

When the Center for Democracy in Technology (CDT) first raised the alarm about SilverPush last November, the internet reacted by being predictably angry and creeped out. The CDT elaborated on the technology’s implications saying:

“For example, a company could see that a user searched for sexually transmitted disease (STD) symptoms on her personal computer, looked up directions to a Planned Parenthood on her phone, visits a pharmacy, then returned to her apartment,” the letter stated. “While previously the various components of this journey would be scattered among several services, cross-device tracking allows companies to infer that the user received treatment for an STD. The combination of information across devices not only creates serious privacy concerns, but also allows for companies to make incorrect and possibly harmful assumptions about individuals.”

With this in mind, the FTC’s letters to developers this week seem tepid. It seems the only thing the FTC might take action on is that SilverPush is doing all of this this without a “we collect your information and share it” note to users. This is a surprisingly mild reaction to technology that’s so invasive, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg here.

But maybe “just the tip” is all the FTC can see (it certainly didn’t seem to acknowledge the company’s internet ad surveillance practices). When the CDT’s letter started making a few headlines last November, SilverPush hustled to pull detailed information about its product off the Internet. A researcher who was examining code in the company’s demo apps grabbed screencaps as SilverPush pulled its YouTube channel, all of its Library videos, and its “help” page on Google Plus.

The company has given the impression that it’s only doing business in India. This was echoed in its statement to press this week, saying that it’s not currently working with US-based devs.

Which is weird, because the company announced its expansion into the US market in 2013, when SilverPush received 1.5 million in seed funding from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups and IDG Ventures. That was followed by a couple years of press citing the company as based in San Francisco, plus the company’s LinkedIn page saying they’re based in SF, the Philippines, and Guragon.

Making it even more difficult to get clarity on the situation, SilverPush was quoted in the CDT’s November letter to the FTC saying, “SilverPush’s company policy is to not ‘divulge the names of the apps the technology is embedded.’”

Well that’s convenient. Though in the years before that, SilverPush was pretty happy to brag about its clients and connections to press outlets interested in writing about the company.

Two years ago, SilverPush told press that the company “is now serving mobile ads in six countries for 50 global brands including Google, Dominos, Samsung, Candy Crush, Airtel, P&G, Kabam and Myntra.”

In a 2014 feature about its Audio Beacon technology, TechCrunch reported that “some SilverPush advertisers (including Procter & Gamble and messaging app Line) are already using these capabilities, as are ‘a few’ mobile publishers (mostly game developers). It works on both iOS and Android.”

Just one year before that, SilverPush’s founder didn’t mind naming the ad networks it partnered with. In an interview with Business Standard, Hitesh Chawla explained rattled off names that included MoPub (acquired by Twitter), and that SilverPush had ad inventory from publishers / app makers Facebook and Angry Birds.

The 2013 article explained that SilverPush bids for this inventory through ad exchanges. “We process a billion ad requests a day for India alone; now, we are starting in the US as well,” Chawla said.

So those apps that tell you they need to use your microphone in order to use the app at all, even when you’re not sure why? Yeah, those are now an out-of-control problem.

The FTC’s letter hinted that SilverPush is naughty to do the spying for companies and data dealers while the apps are off, and that it should really look at the FTC’s 2013 Mobile Privacy Disclosures guidelines — which are sadly only just suggestions — for behaving better toward users.

But what’s particularly troubling is that among the many egregious issues here, the only real problem the FTC seems to have with SilverPush is that the apps using it aren’t telling users they’re being spied on. You know, like when you’re required to agree to Terms that make you uncomfortable (or wonder if you’re being exploited) in order to use an app. For this, the company could be in violation of section 5 of the FTC Act (Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices, .pdf).

That’s right: Apparently if any of these apps would just put a few lines about using your microphones to sell amazingly detailed data about you to third parties somewhere in their 6,000-word terms of use, then it’s all greenlit. We reached out the FTC to help clarify the issue and what action it planned to take, but so far we haven’t heard back.

And here’s our problem of the ages: Intimate and individual privacy violations at scale, agreements we don’t understand, and that “Agree to our Terms” mistakes compliance for informed consent, all enacted by companies doing everything possible that’s technically not illegal.

Meanwhile, our shadow profiles — our doppelgangers in the clouds, who invisibly bleed out our secrets and personal moments for pennies on the dollar — only grow more monstrous with the privacy they take.

MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Pad & Quill Woodline iPhone Case or Roll Top Leather Backpack

For this week’s giveaway, Pad & Quill, the maker of premium MacBook, iPhone, and iPad cases and other accessories, is graciously offering its Woodline iPhone cases and Roll Top Leather Backpack as prizes to the lucky winners.

The Woodline iPhone cases are made of real hardwood, which is polished and scratch-resistant, with a polymer core. The cases are thin, coming in at just .9 millimeter thick, and allow access to all ports and buttons. Four wood choices are available: American Cherry, Rosewood, Premium American Walnut, and Zebra Wood, with retail prices ranging from $49.95 to $59.95. The Woodline cases are available for the iPhone 6/6S and iPhone 6 Plus/6S Plus.

The Roll Top Leather Backpack is made of full-grain tumbled American bridle leather with hand-pounded copper rivets. The roll-top closure weatherproofs the backpack and it can accommodate laptops up to 15 inches. The backpack has a 25-year warranty and each bag is hand signed by the artisan who crafted it. Available in chocolate, black, or whiskey colors, the Roll Top Leather Backpack retails for $319.

Six winners will be chosen. The first four winners can choose one Woodline Case in the color of their choice for the iPhone 6/6S or iPhone 6 Plus/6S Plus. The last two winners can choose one Roll Top Leather Backpack in the color of their choice.

To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter your email address. Your email address will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winners and provide prize shipping information. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page. Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThis contest will run from today (March 25) at 12:00 pm Pacific time through 12:00 pm Pacific time on April 1. The winners will be chosen randomly on April 1 and will be contacted by email. The winners have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address. The prizes will be shipped to the winners for free.

Tags: giveaway, Pad & Quill
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