Court says police don’t need warrants for phone location data
You would think that police would require a warrant to get your phone’s location info, right? Not according to the US’ Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. It just ruled that asking a company for cellphone location data you’ve offered to a third-party doesn’t represent a search under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, and thus doesn’t need a warrant. According to the judges voting for the decision, volunteering your position info means you’ve given up a “reasonable expectation of privacy” — if you didn’t want to share where you were, you wouldn’t have handed that knowledge over to someone else, would you?
The ruling is in line with what some other courts have said, and ends a split between courts on the topic. However, it won’t be surprising if there’s an eventual Supreme Court challenge. As many would note, it’s virtually impossible to avoid supplying your location at some point. Making a call will offer some basic positional info to your carrier, and many common smartphone tasks (such as navigation or social check-ins) demand that data. Until there’s a ruling to the contrary, though, you can’t assume that the police will have to jump through hoops to find out where you’ve been.
Via: The Intercept
Source: Amlaw (PDF)
Airbnb allows neighbors to tattle on noisy guests
Airbnb says most of its users are “respectful travelers,” but just in case an issue does come up, it’s giving those who live near a rental a place to voice concerns. The company’s new initiative, Airbnb Neighbors, gives folks a tool for voicing concerns about noise, parking, use of a common space, suspicious/criminal activity and general concerns. Once a complaint is received, it gets a case number and Airbnb reviews the issue. If necessary, the company says it will follow up with the listing’s host.
A neighbor can choose to remain anonymous or provide contact information so that the host can reach out directly. Airbnb says that if submissions include a web link to the listing, it can follow up with the neighbor. It also explains that whenever possible, it will give the host and their neighbor the opportunity to resolve the issue themselves. “Hosting is a big responsibility and those who repeatedly fail to meet our standards and expectations will be subject to suspension or removal from the Airbnb community,” the company said in a blog post.
While the tool will be useful, especially for those who’ve been vocal in their opposition of the service, there’s also potential for abuse. As Airbnb continues to promote its style of short-term rentals and lodging though, it’s important that both hosts and their neighbors feel like their concerns are addressed. That’s particularly important in areas were illegal listings are a big problem and places like Arizona where the government is deciding whether or not the service will be allowed to operate at all.
Via: The Verge
Source: Airbnb
Facebook Considering Optional End-to-End Encryption for Messenger
Facebook is planning to introduce an optional end-to-end encryption mode for its Facebook Messenger chat platform, currently used by more than 900 million people, reports The Guardian.
Citing sources “close to the project,” The Guardian says the encryption will be an opt-in feature because turning it on will impact some of the new machine learning features being built into the Messenger app like chat bots. Google’s upcoming “Allo” messaging app also offers an opt-in end-to-end encryption option it calls “incognito mode.”
Many major technology companies have taken a stronger stance on privacy, embracing end-to-end encryption following Apple’s standoff with the FBI. Earlier this year, the FBI demanded Apple unlock the iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook by bypassing Apple’s own passcode security features.
Apple refused, and the FBI eventually found an alternate way to access the iPhone, but the dispute has scared technology companies into bolstering security. Dozens of major technology companies supported Apple during its fight with the FBI, all of whom were concerned about the precedent the FBI’s demand could set.
Popular Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp enabled full end-to-end encryption in April, and in March, Swiss software developer Proton Technologies released ProtonMail, an email app offering end-to-end encryption. Apple is also rumored to be working on enhanced security measures for its software and hardware, and apps like Telegram Messenger have grown in popularity.
It is not clear exactly when Facebook might introduce new encryption options for Messenger, but the feature is said to be planned “in the coming months.” Facebook declined to comment on the rumor, saying it does not respond to rumor and speculation.
Tags: Facebook, Facebook Messenger, privacy, Encryption
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2016 Lexus ES 350 review – Roadshow
The Good The ES 350 upholds traditional Lexus tenets — it’s quiet, it’s comfortable and it’s plenty spacious.
The Bad It’s far less stylish than its stablemates, the powertrain feels old, and even the bare-bones base model is quite expensive. It also has the worst satellite radio antenna known to man.
The Bottom Line If you plan on stretching your bucks to slide into the luxury-car life, you’re probably better off going with a fully equipped, non-luxury competitor, like a Toyota Avalon or a Nissan Maxima.
Luxury automakers constantly assault you with advertisements, claiming that it’s never been easier to nestle into the lap of luxury. With base models offering ridiculously attractive pricing, it all seems rather attainable. But let me tell you — what you get for that advertised price ain’t always exactly luxurious, and it might make more sense to avoid going with a premium badge altogether.
Thus is the conundrum with the 2016 Lexus ES 350, equipped as my review model was, which is to say not terribly well. It represents the least expensive way to pick up any new Lexus sedan, but at $38,000 before taxes and delivery, it’s tough to make the value argument when you’re staring down non-luxury vehicles that can arrive on your driveway with much of its ride quality and way more luxury and safety options and doo-dads for much less money.
A little refresh
This ES 350 should look a little different from the hundreds of others you’ve seen on the road since waking up this morning. For 2016, Toyota updated its midsize luxury sedan’s exterior with slightly tweaked front and rear fasciae and some new wheel designs. It’s a very conservative update for a very conservative car, falling far short of the aggressive styling seen on other new Lexus models, like the NX and RX. In fact, all its sedans are playing catch-up to the crossovers, which is a pretty good metaphor for the state of the auto industry.
Inside, the steering wheel is slimmer and sportier looking, there’s a new in-cluster display and there are new “Enter” buttons on either side of the take-it-or-leave-it infotainment system controller. The interior remains on the conservative side of handsome, although harder plastics creep up the lower you look. The cabin leather is comfortable to the touch, and screen-averse buyers will love the panoply of physical switchgear for radio and HVAC controls.
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That pesky tech
Lexus’ infotainment system is definitely love-it-or-hate-it. Personally, I find the system’s method of mouse-like cursor control to be just as easy to use as any touchscreen, although learning how it works can be difficult, as it’s not like any other system on the market — even Toyota’s.
Devoid of options as my tester was, I didn’t get any connected services that couldn’t be utilized through the satellite radio connection. I had weather updates, but otherwise, my technological experience was quite limited. There are two USB ports up front, however, which is a nice touch, although low current means a slow charge on larger, newer phones.
This knob is now the third different kind of screen manipulator I’ve found on a new Lexus, the other two being a touchpad and a mouse-like knob.
Andrew Krok/Roadshow
The satellite-radio antenna is the worst of any car I’ve ever driven, cutting out at random, far away from tree cover or overpasses. Occasionally, it took 30 seconds or so to find a station’s signal, and when it did, I got a minute of music followed by more seeking. Over my week with the car, it never worked correctly.
The in-cluster screen works as it does on any other Lexus or Toyota product, placing pertinent info (fuel economy, navigation directions when applicable, audio data) in the driver’s line of sight. It’s easy to adjust using steering wheel controls, and I found that it cut down on my center-stack screen glancing to a great degree.
Advanced driver-assistance systems are available, just not on my tester. For the curious, you can opt for a low-cost Lexus Safety System+ option, which gives you adaptive cruise control, forward-collision warning, automated emergency braking, lane-departure warning and automatic high beams.
Dell’s new 2-in-1 PCs run the gamut in screen size
It’s no secret that the PC market has been shrinking due to the onslaught of smartphones and tablets, but if you ask Dell, it’s apparently bucking the trend thanks to its 2-in-1 notebooks and gaming laptops. At Computex, Executive Director Monty Wong told us that Dell saw 13 consecutive quarters of increasing PC market share, to the point where it overtook HP as the number one PC brand in the US back in Q1, according to IDC. As such, it’s no surprise that the PC giant has been mostly focusing on 2-in-1s at this year’s show, with the new lineup running the gamut from the world’s first 17-inch 2-in-1 all the way down to a $249 11-inch device. Let’s take a closer look.
Starting off at the high end, we have the aluminum Inspiron 7000 series 2-in-1s, which come in sizes of 13, 15 and 17 inches. The 17-incher is a first in the 2-in-1 market, with its beastly size making it especially handy for kitchen use, small meetings and maybe movie watching. These are all designed with prosumers in mind. As such, they pack Intel’s sixth-generation Core processor, NVIDIA’s GeForce 940M graphics chip and a backlit keyboard.
These will also come with an infrared camera for Windows Hello’s facial recognition login feature. In addition to the HDMI port, the two full-size USB connections (one of them USB 3.0), the SD card slot and the usual power plug socket, there’s also a USB Type-C port on the left for an external dock, monitor or secondary battery. This series starts at $749 and will be hitting Dell’s US site on June 2nd, followed by retail availability at Best Buy.
Next up we have the more mainstream Inspiron 5000 series. While their bodies are made of plain plastic, I’m digging their clean, understated design. There are only two size options: 13 inches and 15 inches, both offering a full HD touchscreen with wide viewing angle. The infrared camera is here to stay, and these machines will support up to 16GB of dual-channel DDR4 RAM. In terms of sockets, you’ll miss out on the USB Type-C port featured on the 7000 series; instead you’ll get an additional full-size USB 3.0 port. These start at $529 and will be on Dell.com at the same time as the 7000 series.
Finally, there’s the Inspiron 11 3000 2-in-1, an 11-inch convertible laptop aimed at children and budget-conscious shoppers. Given its $249 entry price, there’s not much to expect in terms of performance: It comes with an Intel Pentium chip, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage space and a 1,366 x 768 touchscreen. That said, you still get one USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 connections, an HDMI socket and a microSD slot. It will be available June 2nd, initially in red and blue, followed by gray and white at a later date.
Stay on top of all the latest news from Computex 2016 right here.
Xbox One price drops to $299 ahead of E3
If Microsoft is hoping to quell rumors of new Xbox hardware at E3, it isn’t doing the greatest job. The company has permanently cut the prices of Xbox One consoles by $50 across the board, lowering the base price to $299 — even some of the nicer multi-game 1TB bundles now sell for $319. These are tremendousprices, of course, but they’re coming just a couple of weeks before E3. While this could just be an attempt to goose sales during the historically quiet summer, it’s only going to fuel talk of a possible smaller 2TB system that would become the new flagship. The price drop is great if you’re looking for the most affordable Xbox One possible, but it’s otherwise worth holding off a little while… especially if you want to see what Sony brings to the table.
Via: Polygon
Source: Xbox.com
A closer look at that $14,000 Android phone
How much do you value your privacy, and how worried are you that your calls and text messages are under observation? If the answer to both question is “lots,” then perhaps you’d be interested in Israeli startup Sirin Labs’ first smartphone, the Solarin. The device is a titanium-clad Android smartphone that lets you quickly toggle between a regular Android device and a secure, locked-down communications tool. The headline detail here is that it costs $14,000 (plus tax), or £9,500 in the UK. At that price, it’s intended mainly for titans of industry and the jet set: people with secrets worth stealing. In many ways, it’s the first phone that’s been specifically designed to keep the personal data of the 1 percent safe from everyone else.
The system works like this: By default it’s a beefy, ultra-masculine Android smartphone with a skin that looks like it was designed by the prop department of a spy movie. But once you’ve flicked the tiny toggle on the back of the device, it’ll switch into a secure mode with a green and white, 8-bit skin. In this mode, all but the most essential sensors are disabled, and both calls and text messages are encrypted, only to be read by trusted devices carrying the Solarin Friend app. In this environment, your data is protected by 256-bit AES encryption, backed up by security firms Zimperium and Koolspan. There’s even a secure concierge service that monitors the state of your phone and warns you of incoming attacks.
An Android skin that looks like it was designed by the prop department of a spy movie
When not in this mode, it’s just your average Android smartphone, with a high-end Snapdragon 810 chip and a healthy 4GB of RAM. You’ll also get 120GB of internal storage (no memory card slot) and a 23.8-megapixel, Sony made camera and a quad-LED flash. Hold the 5.5-inch device in your hand and the first thing you’ll notice is how hefty it feels. The pictures convey some degree of chunkiness, but only in real life do you see how pleasingly solid it feels. Imagine a BlackBerry Storm binged on protein powder for a few months and you’ll get the idea. The unobtrusive styling, coated in black “technical leather” (read: leather made to look like carbon fiber), means that Solarin oozes the sort of ultra masculine charm that business types probably fetishize.
The 5.5-inch, QHD IPS LCD display boasts fantastic viewing angles and beautifully rich colors. Like the Snapdragon 810 chip, it isn’t brand new, but the compromise there was intentional. The year-old chipset was chosen to ensure that the company had a year to ensure it was secure. Likewise, the Solarin may not have a 4K display, but the comparatively lower resolution here is surely gentler on the 4,040mAh battery.
Of course, members of the jet set are so called because they’re often found touring the world. The company promises that the device will work with more LTE carriers across the world than any other device on the market. Regardless of the network you choose, you’ll insert your SIM into a single, hot-swappable microSIM card slot on the upper-right hand side. Connectivity-wise, the phone also packs gigabit WiFi and MIMO in order to handle multiple connections at once. Then again, BlackBerry made similar promises back in the day, and those never really amounted to much.
Now, it’s not hard to see who this device is aimed for, but you have to ask: Do they need this device anymore? An Android smartphone with high level encryption and security is highly desirable, but the highest levels of protection is only available within the secure mode. And in this secure mode, the only features you can make are calls and texts — and who does either of those anymore? Sure, there are a handful of people who still need to make calls, but is the NSA really targeting them?
When I spoke to co-founder Moshe Hogeg, he said that the NSA isn’t interested in business people, but the question is: are hackers? How likely is it that the precise details of a forthcoming transaction would be outlined on a voice call that criminals could then use to game the stock market? It’s plausible, sure, but enough to drag people away from the comfort of their Galaxy S7s and iPhone 6Ss? That’s harder to say. This phone will surely appeal to people who feel that they deserve a device this secure — this high-end — but then again, nobody wants using their phone to feel like a chore, right?
Aaron Souppouris contributed to this report.
Amazon Japan adds 12 new original series to Prime Video
Amazon isn’t wasting any time making good on its original programming plans for Japan. As part of its Prime Video service, which launched in September of last year, the company had announced plans to offer about 20 original shows tailored to that market. And today, Amazon Japan has unveiled a slate of originals detailing 12 new series that span a variety of genres, including documentaries, dramas and children’s shows.
Standouts include Magi, a time-traveling historical drama about teens that return to Japan to find Christianity’s been banned; live-action versions of Ultraman and Kamen Rider; and animated fare like the Manga series Businessmen vs. Aliens, and Baby Steps. While some of theses series are already available to stream now, others are planned to debut later in the year or even in 2017. It’s also worth noting that Prime Video subscribers in Japan get access to these originals, as well as other Amazon series like Mozart in the Jungle for the bargain price of $32/year. Doesn’t seem fair, now does it?
Source: The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline
Jawbone refutes reports that it will exit the fitness tracker market
Last week, a report claiming that Jawbone would halt production on its fitness trackers made the rounds. At the time, Jawbone offered us a “no comment,” but today the company has released a full statement noting that it has no plans to exit the market entirely. “Speculation that Jawbone is exiting the wearables business or going out of business altogether is false,” the company writes. “Jawbone remains wholly committed to innovating in and building great wearables products. The company has never been more excited about its pipeline of technology and products and looks forward to sharing them when ready.”
That doesn’t change the fact that it has still been a while since the company released a new device, but it sounds like it at least has things coming up soon. And while it’s still possible that the company is stopping production of its older products, Jawbone says it’ll be making things to replace them sooner or later. This could all change at the drop of a hat, but for now we shouldn’t count Jawbone out of the market that Fitbit and Apple are currently dominating.
It’s also worth nothing that the author of last week’s report is standing by his story, which stated that while Jawbone is stopping production of its current lineup and selling the inventory to third-party retailers, the company wasn’t looking to leave the market entirely.
Jawbone’s full statement is below:
Speculation that Jawbone is exiting the wearables business or going out of business altogether is false. This speculation appears to emanate from wrongful insinuations made in a blog post in which the reporter has since posted a “Correction.” Unfortunately, other media picked it up before the reporter posted a correction and spread this false information. Jawbone remains wholly committed to innovating in and building great wearables products. The company has never been more excited about its pipeline of technology and products and looks forward to sharing them when ready. We manage our inventory positions according to internal business processes, and strategic product lifecycle objectives. This situation is no different and we will continue to support all of our products in the marketplace.
Periscope is using viewer juries to fight trolls
With most social internet services, getting rid of trolls is usually a matter of reporting a post or blocking the offender. But how do you do that in a fast-moving livestream service like Periscope? By asking viewers for help, that’s how. Periscope has introduced a moderation system that creates “flash juries” whenever a comment is up for dispute. If someone flags a message as abuse or spam, five random viewers are asked to vote on whether or not it’s a problem. If the majority believes it is, the offender faces a minute-long ban on comments; a repeat offense mutes the person for the rest of the broadcast.
You should see moderation in effect starting today (May 31st) through app updates.
The system isn’t mandatory. Viewers can opt out of voting if they’d rather not participate in a mini trial, and broadcasters can turn moderation off if they’re comfortable with the occasional outburst. And Periscope is quick to note that this isn’t the sum total of its anti-abuse efforts. You can still kick people out of broadcasts, limit viewers to those you know and report ongoing problems. The new approach primarily tackles Periscope’s trickiest abuse problem: those hit-and-run comments meant only to cause some temporary grief and ruin an otherwise happy stream.
Via: Recode
Source: Periscope (Medium)
AIVAnet 