Watch Acer’s April 21 event here!

Acer is all set to show off some new tech in New York City tomorrow, April 21. While we don’t yet know what the company has up its sleeve, Acer will be live streaming the next@acer event on its website.

It’s likely we’ll get a look at everything from new notebooks, tablets and even, possibly, some new smartphones. We’ll be bringing you the latest on what Acer announces, but if you’d like to follow along with the event, tune in at the link below tomorrow at 11 a.m. EST.

Watch the next@acer event live

Live TV listings are headed to Google search results

Google has revealed that you’ll soon be able to quickly check live TV listings inside of Google Search. While there’s no timeline on when to expect the feature to pop up, Google says you’ll be able to check air times and channels for any given TV show with a simple search. From Google:

Today, I’m excited to announce that, coming soon, Google Search will have live TV listings. So now when you’re looking for The Big Bang Theory, we’ll not only show you the apps and sites where you can find the latest episode, but also show which channel you can turn your tv to later in the evening or week to catch it live.

This is in addition to information that Google already surfaces for TV shows, such as where they’re available online, cast information and much more.

Google also made a number of announcements geared towards its ad industry partners, including ways it’s making its DoubleClick ad platform much better at targeting and managing its ads. For more on that, be sure to check out Google’s full blog post.

Apple iOS 10 release date, rumours and everything you need to know

Apple released iOS 9 to the public alongside new iPhones last autumn, and since then it’s rolled up multiple updates, but now we’re looking ahead to see what the next major version of Apple’s mobile operating system will include.

We’ve rounded up all the speculation, rumours, leaks, patents, and general information about when the software will release and just everything you need to know, basically. We also plan to continually update this piece as more details comes to light. In the meantime, let us know in the comments what you’d like to see from iOS 10 – like a feature wish list of sorts.

iOS 10: When should it release?

Apple first unveiled iOS 9 at WWDC 2015 last summer and then released it months later in September. It included transmit maps for Apple Maps, a News app, a Proactive assistant, and more. Later updates added Night Shift mode, Touch ID protection for Notes, and a number of new 3D Touch shortcuts, which would normally be included in a major update to iOS.

If Apple sticks to its typical release cycle, as it has done for years, we can expect the company to unveil iOS 10 at WWDC 2016 this summer (on 13 June), followed by a release next autumn. Apple tends to unveil the software about three months before releasing it for consumers, because it wants to give developers a chance to understand the update, improve their apps.

Check out Pocket-lint’s WWDC 2016 round-up for more information about the annual developer conference and how to watch the live-stream.

iOS 10: What might it feature?

The rumour mill doesn’t know too much about iOS 10, but there are a few interesting nuggets it’s managed to churn out in recent months. Keep in mind none of this information has been confirmed by Apple.

Delete stock apps

Apple’s iPhone and iPad come pre-loaded with Apple-developed apps, such as Compass and Stocks, but unfortunately, you’re unable to remove these apps. Unlike third-party apps, which you can long-press on the home screen until they vibrate and become removable, stock iOS apps are permanent and can only be stowed in folders should you want to declutter your screen.

All that could soon change, according to App Advice, which recently spotted new keys in iTunes metadata that suggested some stock apps might be removable one day. The keys are found on every app in the App Store and appear as “isFirstParty” and “isFirstPartyHideableApp”. They are now set to false but could be turned on during WWDC 2016.

It’s worth noting Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, told Buzzfeed News last autumn that Apple is considering letting consumers remove stock apps

Rootless security system

Redmond Pie has claimed iOS 10 will be difficult to jailbreak due to a new security system that Apple is working on called Rootless. The system is meant to stop administrator-level users from gaining access to certain file systems on an iPhone and iPad. Apple has been fixing holes in iOS for years – holed that jailbreakers use to gain access to parts of the system.

Apple’s Rootless technology would make it harder for jailbreakers to exploit iOS. But Redmond Pie has said it doesn’t know if Rootless will make an appearance in the next major software update.

HomeKit hub

HomeKit is Apple’s framework for home automation.

Manufacturers can implement HomeKit into their smart accessories. It was first announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in 2014. The name is a combination of “home” for home automation and “kit” for software developer kit (SDK). HomeKit-enabled accessories are secure, easy to control (commanded by a single interface: Siri), and work with Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

The idea is you’ll use a HomeKit-compatible app to set up your home and all the rooms with accessories, and then you’ll set up actions and triggers to control those accessories. If you’d like to know more about HomeKit, Pocket-lint has explained everything you need to know here. But the key thing to remember is we’re still waiting for an accompanying iOS app.

If you do own a HomeKit-compatible device, you’re able to control it via Siri in iOS 9. But many critics and reports, including this one by MacWorld, seems to think Apple will unveil a HomeKit app in iOS 10, most likely called Home. It will act as a central hub. It’ll be sort of like the Health app in fact, but for HomeKit devices rather than your diet and fitness data.

iCloud Voicemail

According to Business Insider, Apple is internal testing of a new Siri feature that will allow the virtual assistant to talk to your callers and transcribe voicemail messages into text. The feature is called iCloud Voicemail and could replace standard voicemail, meaning you’ll be able toquickly glance at and read voicemail messages instead of listening to them.

The feature might launch this year, possibly within iOS 10.

Contact availability

A recent patent revealed Apple has worked a new feature that would allow you to view whether your contacts are available to talk. It detects where your friends are, whether they’re available on their iPhone, and displays that information in the Contacts app. We assume both parties would have to enable this feature to work – much like the Find My Friends app.

The abstract of the patent explained how the feature would work:

“A command is received at an operating system of a first mobile phone for displaying contact information of a remote user having a mobile phone number of a second mobile phone. In response to the command, a request is transmitted to a remote server from the first mobile phone over a cellular network requesting an operating status of the second mobile phone. The operating status of the second mobile phone is received from the remote server over the cellular network. The operating status of the second mobile phone is displayed on a display of the first mobile phone as a part of contact information of the remote user associated with the second mobile phone, where the operating status includes current locality of the second mobile phone.”

Photos app

Apple is reportedly working on enhancing the Photos app in both iOS 10 and OS X 10.12, according to Japanese site Mac Otakara. The apps will be updated with new features to put them on par with the now-discontinued iPhoto 2.0.1 for iOS and iPhoto 9.6.1 for Mac.

Mac Otakara said iPhoto 2.0.1 had tools for editing EXIF information and touch-based brushes for adjusting brightness and other parameters. Similar editing tools could be added to the iOS version of Photos.

iOS 10: Which devices will be compatible?

Unlike iOS 9, which didn’t exclude any old iOS devices in terms of compatibility, some reports seem to think iOS 10 will demand more RAM from devices (512 RAM), and could therefore not work with the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Anything newer should be compatible.

iOS 10: Want to know more?

Stay tuned to Pocket-lint’s iOS 10 hub for the latest news and analysis.

That crazy successful Exploding Kittens card game is now an Android app

One of the most-backed campaigns on Kickstarter is now an Android game.

Remember Exploding Kittens? It’s an excellent card game. Because, well, anything with kittens and explosions and cards is perfect. The world seems to agree with us, because within 20 minutes of appearing on Kickstarter last year, it reached $10,000. Then, an hour after going live on the site, over 116,000 pledges helped the campaign hit 1,000 per cent of its funding goal, which is amazing considering that’s for a $20 game.

Exploding Kittens became the most backed Kickstarter campaign in terms of individuals, and it’s the most-funded game ever. It’s now been given an Android launch. The multiplayer card game works much like the physical version but doesn’t use a physical deck. Up to five players can take turns pulling cards from a digital deck, and if they pull an Exploding Kitten, they have to use a card from their hand to defuse it.

Exploding Kittens was created by Matthew Inman (makes The Oatmeal cartoon), along with Elan Lee and Shane Small (game-makers formerly of Microsoft). The others cards in the digital deck allow a player to survive. These include diffuse cards, such as the “diffuse laser”, and action cards, such as the “Cheetah Butt to escape quickly”.Whoever is still around at the end, wins – much like Russian Roullette.

It costs $1.99 to download from the Google Play Store. An iOS version of the app, which launched months ago, is also available for $1.99.

Analyze YouTube war footage with Google’s Montage app

Where information from warzones used to trickle in, the internet has brought a flood of user-generated media. And though there are some tools available that can quickly parse through that data in real-time, they mostly work only with static documents, as videos are harder to analyze. Today, though, Google is releasing Montage, a curation tool that turns masses of video into conclusive data for humanitarian groups, journalists and news junkies.

Simply put, Montage sorts, maps and tags videos — which is normally a huge undertaking for small teams to accomplish. Google let the humanitarian non-profit The Carter Center use Montage for its Syria Mapping Project, as the Syrian conflict continues to produce an incredible volume of user-generated video.

Recently, the Syria Mapping Project team used Montage to help confirm that a flurry of attacks had been caused by a single Jihadi group that wasn’t party to a brokered truce — ergo, a tenuous ceasefire between Syrian government and rebel forces was still in effect. That’s exactly the kind of analysis that benefits from a speedy tool like Montage.

Montage, which is free to the public as a Google web tool or a Chrome plug-in, was built by Google’s humanitarian-focused tech incubator, called Jigsaw. Google’s goal is for Montage to ingest YouTube’s massive, growing collection of user-uploaded videos and quickly turn it around for use by human rights groups.

Montage’s genesis came from a 2013 Google Ideas summit in NYC when Google staff met with amateur conflict analyst Elliot Higgins, who was already making wartime discoveries almost entirely by analyzing YouTube videos. As Jigsaw product manager Justin Kosslyn told Wired, the meeting “was the beginning of this realization that Syria was the first YouTube conflict in the way that Vietnam was the first TV conflict.”

Images: AP Photo/Andoni Lubaki (lead image); Jigsaw (screenshot).

Source: Wired

Latest ‘Division’ exploit delivers unlimited damage

Just days after The Division community was warned they could be banned from the game for exploiting shoddy code comes one doozy of an exploit for Ubisoft’s hit game. Due to a bug in the “Competent” talent, players can build up a short burst of obscenely high damage in the 1,000,000-plus DPS range.

If you’re currently wandering around the Dark Zone worried about getting blasted by an exploiter armed with a one-shot kill, there is one consolation: The exploit is fairly time consuming. To amass that sort of firepower, a player needs to first equip the talent and then switch back and forth between weapons for a solid five minutes or more. Player “Simplified” shows how it’s done on YouTube:

After last week’s patch put a halt to speedruns that could potentially throw off the game’s balance, there’s hope Ubisoft will make a quick fix here as well. Until then, those ban-happy community managers will likely be on the lookout for players crouching behind cars and rapidly swapping between their weapons for ten minutes.

‘Rocket League’ basketball update lands on April 26th

Rocket League’s quest to include every major sport continues. Psyonix has revealed that its game’s promised basketball mode, Rocket League Hoops, will arrive as part of a free update on April 26th. For the most part, it’s exactly what you’d expect: instead of shooting horizontally to score (as with the existing football/soccer and hockey modes), you have to toss the ball down into a giant hoop. That definitely changes the game mechanics, though, as those fanciful aerial and wall shots are now much more important. The only catch is that it’s a two-on-two mode, so it won’t be quite as wild as you might like.

The add-on only includes one new B-ball-specific arena, but there’s more to the upgrade beyond that. There’s a physics tweak to make the ball behave more like you’d expect, and you can both quick-save replays as well as rename them to help remember classic matches. And yes, there’s some paid content coming as well — you can buy an NBA-themed flag pack if you just have to rep your favorite team in the virtual world.

Source: Rocket League (YouTube)

‘Mr. Robot’ season 2.0 hits USA on July 13

Everyone’s favorite paranoid hacker dreamboat returns to type furiously and maybe destroy capitalism in season two of Mr. Robot, premiering on USA July 13. The show follows Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a genius hacker who gets roped into an underground society of digital anarchists, “F-Society,” led by a shady fellow named Mr. Robot (Christian Slater).

Expect Elliot and crew to deal with the aftermath of last season’s events alongside new cast members, including Craig Robinson (The Office) and rapper Joey Bada$$. If you missed out on the show last year, now’s the time to catch up, if only to appreciate its very realistic portrayal of hacking.

Source: USA

PlayStation Network is adding two-factor sign-ins

It’s about to get much harder for someone to compromise your PlayStation Network account. Sony has confirmed that it’s working on two-factor authentication for PSN, preventing intruders from getting into your games (or worse, going on a spending spree) simply because they have your password. It’s unclear just what that second identifying factor will be, but the odds are that you’ll get an SMS-based code to type in the first time you sign into a device or website.

As Polygon notes, the timing of the news is uncanny — it comes exactly five years after PSN succumbed to a data breach that exposed 77 million gamers and left the network itself out of commission for weeks. While two-factor authentication wouldn’t have addressed the outage, it would have reassured players worried that their data was ripe for the taking. About the only question is why Sony waited so long. Xbox Live added two-factor sign-ins in 2013, so there was certainly precedent for tighter security in the gaming space.

Source: Polygon

Apple Moves Q2 2016 Earnings Announcement to April 26

Apple today updated its investor relations page to note the earnings announcement for the second fiscal quarter (first calendar quarter) of 2016 will take place on Tuesday, April 26 instead of Monday, April 25 as was previously announced last month.

It is not clear why Apple has moved the date of the earnings call by a single day, but it will now take place next Tuesday instead of next Monday.

The earnings release will provide a look at sales of the iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, and SE following Apple’s record first quarter, which saw the company announce 74.8 million iPhone sales and $18.4 billion profit on $75.9 billion in revenue.

Apple has warned that iPhone sales will decline in the March quarter and has provided Q2 2016 guidance of $50 to $53 billion in revenue and gross margin between 39 and 39.5 percent. Should Apple only take in $50 to $53 billion, the company will see its first year-over-year revenue drop in 13 years.

The quarterly earnings statement will be released at 1:30 PM Pacific/4:30 PM Eastern, with a conference call to discuss the report taking place at 2:00 PM Pacific/5:00 PM Eastern. MacRumors will provide coverage of both the earnings release and conference call on April 26.
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