You can now book an Uber or Ola directly from Google search results in India
Google Maps picked up integration for ride-hailing services earlier this year, allowing customers to see fare estimates and pickup times for Uber, myTaxi, Ola, Gett, and other services from within the Maps interface.
The company is now rolling out the feature to its search results. Just enter your intended destination in the Google Search app or in Chrome, and you’ll see fare estimates and pickup times for ride services within the search results.
For instance, querying for “Uber to airport” gives you a tariff estimate as well as nearby cabs in your location. Prices for various tiers — such as UberGo, UberX, or UberSUV — are listed, and you can tap the Order Now button to book a cab from Uber. The integration is seamless, and lets you quickly book a cab from the search results.
Cops’ facial recognition database has half of US adults on file
American law enforcement agencies have created a massive facial recognition database. If you’re an adult in the US, you might already be in it. According to a comprehensive report by the Center for Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, the law enforcement’s database has 117 million American adults on file. That’s one of two adults in the US or half of the 18-and-above population. The report says authorities used driver’s license IDs from 26 states to build the database, which includes people who’ve never committed any kind of crime before.
That’s already a problem in and of itself, but it’s compounded by the lack of oversight on how it’s used. Clare Garvie, the report’s lead author, said “there are no standards ensuring its accuracy” and “it has no systems checking for bias.”
The team asked 100 law enforcement agencies whether they’re using facial recognition, and 52 admitted that they do. Out of those 52 agencies, only one (the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation) prohibits officers from looking up people “engaging in political, religious or other protected free speech.” Further, only nine out of the 52 log and audit searches for improper use and only one (the Michigan State Police) showed the team documentation that they’re actually auditing their officers’ searches. In other words, most authorities can look up anyone in the database for any reason, and nobody will double check their queries.
All these factors combined could spell disaster, especially for people who tend to be misidentified by the technology. Facial recognition systems are known for making mistakes identifying black people, women and folks aged 18 to 30. And it’s no joke to be misidentified as a criminal — just ask Steve Talley, who went through hell after he was accused of being a bank robber.
That’s why 52 civil liberties and human rights groups sent a letter to the Justice Department after the report came out. They’re asking the DOJ to investigate whether facial recognition tech “has had a disparate impact on communities of color.” The letter also mentioned that facial recognition is being used “at protests and rallies, raising significant First Amendment concerns.”
American authorities and the government have been ramping up the use of facial recognition in the country. New York governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced his plans to install cameras in tunnels and on highways to be able to identify terrorists. Earlier this year, the US Government Accountability Office also discovered that the FBI’s facial recognition tech has access to 412 million photos of Americans and foreigners alike, even those with no prior criminal records.
Via: The Intercept, Ars Technica, Wired
Source: Georgetown Law (PDF), American Civil Liberties Union
Facebook isn’t done trying to copy Snapchat
Facebook’s Snapchat-alike Messenger Day app has expanded to a new test ground: The Land Down Under. “We know that people come to Messenger to share everyday moments with friends and family,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “In Australia we are running a small test of new ways for people to share those updates visually.”
As a bit of catchup, Messenger Day’s main rub is it hosts photos and videos that expire within 24 hours. You can add stickers (of which there are apparently quite a few) and filters to dress up your evaporating stories, too. So yeah, like the Facebook-owned Instagram’s Stories feature, this is a carbon copy of Snapchat — just without that app’s lurid reputation.
How long before the app hits domestic shores, and its life expectancy if and when it does, are up in the air at this point.
Holy crap, they’ve built Snapchat into Facebook Messenger as “Messenger Day”. I must be on some sort of A/B test. pic.twitter.com/hv3I8ubqEG
— Long Zheng (@longzheng) October 18, 2016
Source: TechCrunch
Facebook would like you to endorse political candidates
You don’t have to run a big media outlet to endorse a candidate this presidential election… or other elections, for that matter. Facebook has introduced an endorsement feature that lets you back a political candidate beyond tapping a “like” button, letting others know where you stand. Mercifully, though, you won’t have to endure the wrath of less-than-sympathetic friends if you don’t want to. While you can certainly make a public endorsement if you want to share your views with the world, you can limit the audience so that only your more open-minded (or like-minded) friends will see it.
You’ll also notice an “issues” tab that includes quotes and video clips explaining a candidate’s policies. If you want to know where Hillary Clinton stands on energy or what Donald Trump thinks about taxes, you don’t have to wade through the candidates’ external pages.
The endorsement option may seem a bit superfluous at first, but Facebook has a few good reasons to roll it out. For one, it gets people talking — you may wonder why that buddy from high school is backing someone you didn’t expect. The effort also gives both politicians and Facebook an easy way to quantify the most ardent supporters, those people who aren’t afraid to wear their affiliations on their sleeves. Given that Facebook is already having a significant effect on the US election, we wouldn’t be surprised if this new data gets put to use before long.
Via: Mashable
Source: Facebook
Goat Story Gina Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Traditional pour over is one of three coffee brewing styles the Gina can do.
JAKA Birsa
Despite having a funny name for a kitchen appliance, the $180 Goat Story Gina coffee maker (£146, AU$235 equivalent) promises to brew seriously good java, and in multiple ways too. Whether it’s pour over, cold brew, or full immersion coffee that floats you boat, Gina claims to have you covered.
Gina’s creators say the brewer will be easy to use, too. Thanks to a built-in scale, Bluetooth wireless radio, and phone connectivity, even coffee novices shouldn’t have trouble following the machine’s brewing directions in real time.
Design and features
Judging by the premium materials Goat Story expects to employ in the product’s construction, this will be one well-appointed coffee maker. For example, a ceramic funnel sits at the top of the appliance and accepts standard cone paper filters. At the bottom of the funnel you’ll find a manual valve to control either water or coffee flow, manipulated by a large copper knob.
Adjust the Gina’s valve to control coffee or water flow.
JAKA Birsa
The Gina’s dual-arm steel frame holds the funnel in place above a borosilicate glass pitcher (25 ounces, 0.75 liters). Closing the valve completely allows the appliance to steep its grounds in hot water, aka immersion brewing. Subsequently swiveling the valve open drains your brew into the glass carafe below.
Alternately, you can attach a glass cold drip module (also borosilicate) to the steel frame, in between the funnel and the pitcher. Cold water dripping from the funnel into coffee grounds inside this module eventually lands within the pitcher as cold brew.
Get brewing advice and info from the mobile app.
JAKA Birsa
The most interesting of the Gina’s features though is its Bluetooth-enabled scale which is built into the appliance’s circular base. So equipped, the machine can sense exactly how much of the grounds you’ve added, along with the volume of your brewing water. This data in conjunction with the Gina’s mobile application (Android and iOS), allows the coffee maker to walk its users through the brewing process step by step.
Related Links
- How to make cold-brew coffee at home
- Why smart coffee makers are a dumb but beautiful dream
- How you make your coffee matters
- Oxo’s simple little pour-over cone brews big coffee taste
Availability and outlook
If you’re excited about the prospect of owning a Gina coffee maker, you will have to wait until Spring 2017. There is a chance you’ll get your hands on one a little earlier (and for less money) by backing the Goat Story Gina through its Kickstarter product launch to the tune of $145.
Before purchasing please be aware that the Gina is not the first in a long line of coffee makers (crowd-sourced or otherwise) to promise both app-connected smarts and the ability to brew excellent coffee. Only a few have actually come to market, with just one, the Behmor Connected Coffee Brewer, mostly succeeding at its mission.
The rest have failed or even imploded spectacularly as in the case of the Arist, a smart coffee machine that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter in 2014, but now faces backlash from bitter backers who still haven’t received their product. So, as in all things — caveat emptor applies.
Nokia wires an apartment complex with 52Gbps fiber
It’s one thing to wire a house with gigabit fiber, but it’s another matter to outfit an entire apartment building — you need a huge pipeline to accommodate everyone. Nokia, however, might have a solution. It just partnered with SK Broadband to wire an apartment complex in Seoul, South Korea with fiber optics delivering aggregate speeds of 52.5Gbps. That doesn’t guarantee that every user will get that speed (only “selected” customers saw those rates), but it increases the chances that you’ll receive gigabit-class bandwidth in your rental.
The trick was to use Nokia’s “next generation” approach to passive optical networks, which lets internet providers implement multiple fiber technologies on an existing line. That, in turn, will save your telecom from having to spend a fortune to upgrade your tenement (assuming it already has fiber, that is).
It may take a while before it’s easy to get gigabit internet access in any one-bedroom. Nokia has the luxury of running this fiber in South Korea, where population density and government plans work in its favor — the country wants gigabit broadband available to all residents by 2020. It’d be a tougher prospect in the US and other countries where gigabit-grade data largely remains a pipe dream. Regardless, it’s an important step towards democratizing ultra-fast speeds that have been limited to a handful of people worldwide.
Source: Nokia
Huawei opens preorders for its Honor 6X phone in China
A month after Huawei started selling its Honor 8 in the US, the company has opened up preordering for its 6X phones in China and to ship out on October 25th. While there’s no news about when that device will reach the rest of Asia, Europe or North America, because the 5X was the first phone in the Honor line to go on sale in the US back in January, it’s a good bed that its successor will follow in time.
As expected, the released spec list describes a beefier 5X, ditching the last generation’s Snapdragon 616 for Huawei’s in-house octo-core Kirin 655 processor. The lowest price tier gets you 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for about $150, the middle boosts memory up to 4GB for around $190, and the top tier expands space to 64GB for about $240.
The 6X has a dual rear-facing camera (12MP and a second 2MP for depth), while its front one is a respectable 8MP. Like its predecessor, it supports dual-SIM functionality with a microSD slot, though 9to5Google couldn’t confirm whether it has a USB-C connector. It runs Huawei’s EMU 4.1 software on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow to start, with an update for Nougat likely on the way.
It’s not as powerful as the $400 Honor 8, which comes with a Kirin 950 processor, but the 6X has enough mid-range hardware at low prices to serve as a decent affordable option. At least its 5.5-inch 1080p display covered in 2.5D glass and all-metal build gives it a little class near the bottom of Huawei’s product family.
Via: 9to5Google
Source: FoneArena
Scientists successfully bred baby mice from skin cells
A team of scientists at Japan’s Kyushu University has successfully turned the skin cells of a mouse into mature egg cells used to breed viable offspring. According to a new paper in the journal Nature, the process could eventually be used in human reproduction without the need for egg cells at all.
Similar to how researchers recently developed a process for growing heart tissue from stem cells, the paper’s lead author Katsuhiko Hayashi and his team first turned skin cells from the tails of female mice into stem cells using a Nobel Prize-winning process developed in 2007. The stem cells then became sex cells using a process Hayashi developed back in 2012. Finally, the immature sex cells were placed in a petri dish alongside cells from mouse ovaries, which essentially tricked them into growing as mature egg cells that could be fertilized to produce offspring. Hayashi’s team was also able to create the egg cells using skin cells from male mice, meaning it could one day lead to offspring with two biological fathers.
While the same process could theoretically work with human stem cells, that sort of research and experimentation definitely won’t be happening anytime soon due to high failure rates and ethical concerns. Until then, the next step for Hayashi’s team is to recreate the experiment with primate subjects.
Vimeo’s on-demand TV store is now available in 150 countries
Last month Vimeo, STARZ and Lionsgate Entertainment — makers of such fine prestige TV as Orange is the New Black and Mad Men — announced a new partnership to put all that programming online with an on-demand pricing scheme. While many of the shows are already available via iTunes, Amazon or Netflix in the US, Vimeo is making a play for international audiences by offering the service in 150 countries around the world.
Also unlike Netflix, Vimeo’s TV Store works more like iTunes in that users pay per episode or per season for scripted TV, rather than an all-you-can-eat streaming buffet. For some series, users have the option to stream immediately or download to watch offline later, and users can stream to a web browser or one of Vimeo’s TV or mobile apps. Pricing also varies depending on the title, and some of the marquee series are on sale during a launch promotion, but at least for now they appear to be competitive or lower than the same series on Amazon or iTunes. STARZ shows like The Girlfriend Experience or Ash vs. Evil Dead that were also part of the distribution deal haven’t hit the service yet, but according to Vimeo those should start showing up in the next few weeks.
One final caveat: some series still aren’t available in every region (you can’t get Mad Men in Cuba or Japan, for example). Vimeo does helpfully include a Message button that allows you to send a note to the show’s creator in the hopes that they’ll let you know which streaming services carry that particular show in your region, but it’s currently unclear whether Matthew Weiner will write you back on that one.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Vimeo TV Store
The Pixel’s secret weapon: 24/7 support
Call or chat, any time — and it’s included.
The Pixel and Pixel XL aren’t designed just for the hardcore Android enthusiast. Google has been moving that direction since the release of the Galaxy Nexus, and last year’s Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X were developer phones in name only. Besides a brand change, Google’s new phones are no longer built for the people who know how to flash them or like to tinker with things that go beep. They’ll still be able to flash all the things for those of us who want to go there, but the design and features are aimed squarely at the consumer market. That means customer support is an area where Google has to improve. A lot.
Enter 24/7 live support.
If you have a Pixel, you’ll find a tab in the phone settings that has only one function — a way to get help when you need help. Available all the time through a phone call or a chat, someone from Google is there to answer your questions when things go wrong or you need help figuring out something. Android can be a bit daunting for folks used to something much simpler. It doesn’t stop there, either.
Support is one of the areas Google has to improve if they want to sell a phone to everyone.
A Google support agent will be able to walk you through most any issue and get you on the right track. But if they can’t, you’ll be able to share your screen with them so they can see exactly what you’re seeing and be better able to help you. You have to agree to share some data with Google to use the support features, and you have to accept any request to share your screen — nothing is automatic here. We all have been in a situation where seeing was the best way to be doing.
As mentioned, support is one of the areas Google has to improve if they want to sell a phone to everyone. Ask around and talk to people who have had to contact support for problems with their Nexus phone, and you’ll soon find more than a handful of horror stories mixed in with the satisfied customers. Sending your mom to a Python-powered web page and having her go through a long list of questions to get help with the Hangouts app is as bad of an idea as it sounds. Most folks don’t want to be bothered and just want their phone to work.
Having a live person to answer all of your questions is a great way to garner brand loyalty.
Google’s not the first company to offer something like this. Amazon does it for their Fire HD tablet and the now-defunct Fire phone, and it was one of the highlights of the product line. Giving your customers a real live person to talk to anytime they need some help is a great selling point for a large segment of the people looking to buy a new phone. How you treat your customers after the sale is a big part of any decision to buy from you again. Google’s 24/7 support method looks great, and if the support they offer through it is good they’ll gain plenty of repeat customers.
Google Pixel + Pixel XL
- Google Pixel and Pixel XL review
- Google Pixel XL review: A U.S. perspective
- Google Pixel FAQ: Should you upgrade?
- Pixel + Pixel XL specs
- Understanding Android 7.1 Nougat
- Join the discussion in the forums!
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