Apple Explores Potential Chat Interactions With Siri in Messages Threads

Apple is looking into integrating its Siri virtual assistant into the company’s Messages platform, according to a patent published today, enabling the AI to provide directions, retrieve movie times, and assist with peer-to-peer payments, among other potential uses.

Picked up by AppleInsider, Apple’s application for a “Virtual assistant in a communication session” appeared on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s website on Thursday, and details a system in which iMessage users can invoke Siri from within chat threads to get answers to relevant queries, complete scheduling tasks, and more.

One scenario describes an instance in which users chatting amongst themselves bring Siri into the conversation simply by including it in the group thread. Using semantic analysis, the AI detects when it may be of help to complete a task and pitches in accordingly – such as finding a place to eat nearby, and telling the user how long it will take for their friends to arrive.

Although Siri’s responses don’t appear to other users, the assistant is able to parse their messages in order to work out whether it can help with a task. For instance, in another example, the user asks “Siri, help us schedule a meeting,” in a group chat thread and the AI cross-checks open calendar dates for the present users to suggest a potential meeting date and time. Participants can then vote for a preferred time and place, after which Siri schedules the meeting in everyone’s calendar.

In another example, chat members are notified that a user is utilizing Siri and are asked if they would like to do the same, and participants can approve or deny AI access to personal data about them during the chat session. Meanwhile other scenarios depict AI interactions during peer-to-peer payments, for example by determining which financial apps are being used by each chat member.

Some of the implementations in the patent bear similarities to actions already offered by Google Assistant in Google’s Allo app, and by chat bots in Facebook Messenger, while third-party apps like PayPal and Uber currently offer Siri functionality following Apple’s release of the Siri SDK to developers. Whether or not Apple decides to integrate Siri in Messages in a future update, the AI is likely to require extensive development before users consider inviting Siri to conversations and extending access to their data.

Tags: Siri, patent, chat bots
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Russian Authorities Order Internet Providers to Block LinkedIn Website

Russia’s communications regulator has blocked public access to LinkedIn after an earlier court ruling found the social networking firm to have violated data storage laws (via Reuters).

LinkedIn, which has over 6 million registered users in Russia, becomes the first major social network to be blocked by Russian authorities after falling afoul of the country’s stringent data storage laws, which require personal information of Russian citizens to be stored on Russian servers.

LinkedIn’s site will be blocked within 24 hours, according to a report by the Interfax news agency. One Internet service provider, Rostelcom, said it had already blocked access to the site, while two others – MTS and Vimpelcom – said they would do so within 24 hours.

LinkedIn has yet to comment on the order by the Russian communications regulator, but the U.S. company warned earlier this month that the court ruling risked denying access to its site for millions of individual and corporate members situated in Russia.

A spokesperson for Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor told Reuters it had received a letter from LinkedIn management on Friday requesting a meeting, but that the watchdog had to get approval from the country’s foreign ministry before the meeting could take place.

The law requiring companies that store the personal data of citizens to do so on Russian servers was introduced in 2014, but has never previously been enforced. The law was adopted on grounds of “overall state security issues” and “increased instances of personal data leakage”, but critics see it as part of a broader effort to tighten control over internet access.

Tags: linkedin.com, Russia
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Trump advisor takes issue with Silicon Valley’s Asian CEOs

Before President-elect Donald Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon was headed to the White House, he was running “platform for the alt-right” website Breitbart News. Aside from overseeing the publication of anti-Semitic and misogynistic articles, Bannon also hosted the site’s Sirius XM radio show. A segment from November 5th, 2015 that featured an interview with Trump has resurfaced thanks to The Washington Post. Mostly, it covers stuff like campaign financing, but at around the 16:23 mark, talk goes to H-1B visas for skilled workers to help keep them in the country after graduating from college.

In response to Trump actually arguing that we need to keep some immigrants in the country, Bannon says, “When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think… A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”

There aren’t many other ways to interpret his comments other than that Bannon is hinting that foreign CEOs, Asian immigrants or a combination of both are a threat to “civic society.” That baseless claim, coupled with the types of articles that Breitbart News publishes and past comments from Bannon himself, his intention becomes clearer yet.

“You got to remember, we’re Breitbart,” he said to Trump. “We’re the know-nothing vulgarians. So we’ve always got to be to the right of you on this.”

Via: The Washington Post

Source: Breitbart (Soundcloud)

Amazon Prime Membership for $79 Tomorrow Only, £59 for U.K. Customers Starting Today

Amazon is set to cut its Prime annual membership price from $99 for a year to $79 on Friday, November 18. The one-day sale will run from 12am ET until 11:59pm PT and is only available for new members.

Amazon customers in the U.K. can take advantage of a similar promotion beginning today: Anyone who signs up for Amazon Prime between now and the end of Friday will receive a year’s subscription for £59 instead of the usual £79 asking price, essentially amounting to three free months of the service.

The promotion coincides with the release of Amazon’s new motoring show “The Grand Tour”, the first episode of which can be streamed or downloaded on Friday morning by Prime members in the U.K., U.S., Germany, Austria, and Japan. Amazon says the show will be available to watch in 200 countries from December.

The benefits of Prime membership include free one-day delivery on eligible items, access to Amazon Prime Video and Prime Music, unlimited cloud photo storage with Prime Photos, access to the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, and early access to Amazon’s Black Friday “lightning” deals.

Members also get an exclusive discount on subscriptions for Amazon’s new Music Unlimited streaming service, giving them access to 40 million songs, compared to the 2 million included in the standard Prime Music package.

Related Roundup: Black Friday
Tag: Amazon Prime
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MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: A touch of brilliance or totally brainless?

Apple has revamped its MacBook Pro range, delivering a laptop that is thinner, lighter and more powerful than before.

Rather than just roll out the typical annual revamp of new and improved internal specs, the company has added a new feature to its top-spec machines, called Touch Bar. This configurable OLED screen strip with integrated Touch ID fingerprint sensor replaces where the F-keys are on a conventional keyboard.

We’ve been using the laptop for the last couple of weeks to find out whether the Touch Bar is a gimmick or a must-have essential for the future of work. 

What ports does the new MacBook Pro have?

• No USB, SD card, or HDMI sockets
• Four Thunderbolt 3 ports
• Thinner and lighter design than before

Now available in grey or the traditional silver, the new MacBook Pro comes in 13- and 15-inch models. The Touch Bar is standard on the 15-inch, but only available on the higher-spec 13-inch models.

That’s not the only big change though. The new Pro models ditch the USB sockets, the SD card slot, DisplayPort, the Magsafe power adapter – in fact everything except the headphone socket (clearly not enough courage to drop that one just yet). It’s following in the footsteps of the 2015 MacBook, which also did away with its conventional ports.

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Don’t panic though, the new MacBook Pro does have connections. There are four Thunderbolt 3 sockets (just two such ports without Touch Bar) that can be used to power and connect to an array of different devices, supporting standards like USB Type-C, DisplayPort, HDMI and more.

Those changes mean the laptop is now smaller and thinner than before. Apple has shaved 3mm off the thickness without resorting to the MacBook Air trick of a thin wedge design.

• Apple MacBook Pro (2016): Release date, specs and everything you need to know

So its the port situation a conundrum? The lack of USB connections only becomes a problem when you need to connect something – which for the most part, so goes Apple’s reasoning, is that you don’t. But if you’re used to plugging in no end of different devices to your laptop that you’ll need to invest in a bevy of dongles – from Apple, obviously – to solve your connection problems.

We remember when Apple removed the optical drive: we whinged, but then found ourselves never really needing to use CDs. Then Apple removed the Ethernet dongle and the same thing happened. The first batch of users will have to invest in dongles, that’s a given, but in the future we suspect the issue about what will and won’t fit won’t be as big a issue as it is today.  

What’s new in the 2016 MacBook Pro refresh?

• 13-inch: 2560 x 1600 / 15-inch: 2880 x 1800 resolution
• Firmer keyboard (similar to 12in MacBook)
• Much larger trackpad with Force Touch

Flip the lid and the new MacBook Pro has undergone some distinctive design changes too.

The keyboard feels firm, certainly compared to the current MacBook Pro range, as it’s based on the tech and shallow keys found in the current 12-inch MacBook keyboard. It’s improved on the Pro, though, and feels more comfortable to type on.

While the keyboard is identical in size on both the 13 and 15-inch models, the trackpad has doubled in size compared to the previous generation. It’s now huge. But don’t let its bigger scale put you off – we find the extra real-estate of both models makes swiping and navigating around the screen even better. It also doesn’t physically click, yet feels like it does due to haptic feedback, similar to the iPhone 7’s Home button.

The screen is also much brighter, crisper, and more colourful than before. The 13-inch model offers a 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution, while the 15-inch model offers 2880 x 1800 pixels. Both are 500-nits, so nice and bright.

The tighter keyboard is sandwiched between two speakers that promise to be louder and clearer than ever before. Rather than bounce the sound off the screen, Apple has reverted back to the speakers being on the side of the keyboard, something that is even more pronounced on the 15-inch model. Given the size of the speakers the sound is pretty good and comparable to the iPad Pro in terms of performance, if not slightly better. It’s certainly good enough to watch a video on, listen to music while you work, or hear a presentation over a video conference. 

Is the Touch Bar a gimmick?

• OLED strip above the keyboard
• Touch ID sensor 
• Not supported by all apps

The biggest change of all – and one that is likely to get the biggest wow – is the introduction of the new Touch Bar. Well, unless you choose the entry-level 13-inch Pro model. 

The Touch Bar is an OLED strip that replaces the system and F-keys, running across the top of the keyboard, so if you’re used to those shortcut keys then you might find yourself struggling without them. However, the Touch Bar’s display dynamically changes based on what apps you’re using and what you’re doing with them.

That means it can go from offering volume keys one minute to displaying an array of smiling emoji the next. It’s very cool, very responsive, and very easy to use. We especially like the ability to scroll through pictures in the Photos App or picking the right emoji in a tweet – although as you might have gathered it’s all a bit supplemental.

Pocket-lint

Not all apps currently support the Touch Bar feature and there’s no guarantee that they will in the future. Even then you might find yourself not really wanting what it offers. You can customise the Touch Bar to help that, but it’s not hard to press CMD + B when you want to bold something rather than reaching up to the Touch Bar to press the B button to do the same thing. Some of its features seem superfluous.

However, the real power will come when your favourite app gives you a series of shortcuts that will maximise your workflow fully, but from the Apple apps we’ve used, it’s just as easy to use a keyboard shortcut or the trackpad to do the same thing. 

The visual performance is similar to the Apple Watch; it is beautifully crisp and clean even in daylight conditions. And it’s designed to be touched (although there’s no haptic feedback), acting as Apple’s way of avoiding the main display being a touchscreen.

Is Touch ID in the new MacBook Pro useful?

• Touch Bar models include Touch ID fingerprint scanner

Furthermore, the Touch Bar has a Touch ID sensor buried beneath it at the far right-hand side, hidden under a small piece of sapphire crystal (presumably to stop it scratching).

That means you’ll not only be able to unlock your Mac in the same way you do your iPhone, but also use Apple Pay on the web. Shame the entry-level 13-inch model doesn’t get this addition – it’s part an parcel of the Touch Bar.

• Apple Touch Bar: What can I do with it and what apps are supported?

The Touch ID button is physical and doubles as the power button for turning on the laptop. Like with the iPhone and iPad, the sensor is very good and recognising your registered fingerprints, so using it to unlock your laptop is a lot easier that typing a password every time.

How powerful is the 2016 MacBook Pro?

• 2GHz to 3.6GHz Intel Core i5/i7 processor options 
• 8GB – 16GB RAM options
• Storage from 256GB to 2TB SSD
• Radeon Pro discrete graphics for 15-inch model only

It’s not just about the exterior, though, the internals gets a refresh too. There are the latest processors, new graphics, discrete graphics options for the 15-inch model, and faster storage. Configuring the MacBook Pro to suit your needs will add considerable price premiums though.

The 13-inch Pro with Touch Bar features a 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3GHz, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD storage. It costs £1,749 – making it a pricey upgrade from the £900 12-inch MacBook or £949 MacBook Air. The lower-power Touch Bar-free model starts at £1,449.

If you want to go big, the 15-inch Pro comes with a 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5GHz, 16GB RAM, discrete Radeon Pro graphics (with 2GB RAM), and 256GB SSD. But that costs £2,349. Configure it with even more power, such as adding the 4GB RAM Radeon Pro graphics, and the price keeps on rising.

The performance is just as you would expect from a “Pro” named laptop: ideal for crunching through video and photo editing with ease, although the reduced battery life of around 10 hours compared to the previous year’s 12-hours does mean you’ll need to find a power socket on long days out of the office. It’s not a deal-breaker, but we did notice the difference in battery life in day to day usage.

Verdict

The MacBook Pro has lots of things going for it. We love the keyboard, the trackpad, the screen, the performance, and the inclusion of the Touch ID sensor. 

We aren’t so keen about losing all those ports – although we’ll learn to live with it. The reduced battery life compared to the previous generation means that the Pro still can’t touch the MacBook Air either.

Adding the Touch Bar is certainly a bold move, one that’s not just visually striking but could also provide lots of potential in the future. But while we were excited about it first, having now used it for some weeks time we’ve actually missed the physical F-keys. We can’t help feel that, for most, it will end up being a frustration rather than a benefit most of the time. 

In some ways we wish the 13-inch Pro offered a Touch ID sensor without the Touch Bar. That might then be the ultimate Pro laptop in the right configuration.

New Bang & Olufsen Cool Modern Collection is bold as brass, see the stunning new look here

Bang & Olufsen has announced a new design theme for its entire high-end range of products, based on the Art Deco movement of the 1920s.

Its Cool Modern Collection adds a touch of brass-toned class to its range, with speakers, its latest TV and music systems all benefiting from a new colour scheme.

All of the products look similar to before, but now come with brass-coloured aluminium styling and, in some cases, darker textile colours.

The collection embraces the BeoVision 14 television, the BeoSound 35 wireless music system, BeoLab 18 speakers, and the BeoSound 1 and 2 wireless speaker systems. The latter two will be available from March 2017.

• Bang & Olufsen embraces 4K Ultra HD and Android TV with BeoVision 14

In addition, you can get Cool Modern Collection versions of the BeoLab 5, BeoLab 17, Beolab 19 and BeoLab 90 speakers. A brass-toned model of the BeoRemote One Bluetooth is available too.

You should check your local Bang & Olufsen retailer for prices and more information, although we’ve been informed that they will cost the same as the standard models. All of the collection (save for the BeoSound 1 and 2 systems) are on sale now.

Bang & Olufsen says that the collection will remain an option for all products permanently.

You can see all of the different products in their new design theme by flicking through our gallery above.

Google is now letting you see the entire world in VR from the comfort of your home

Google Earth already does a great job of showing us places around the world we never even knew existed. It can show 3D images and close ups of places, but it’s never quite the same as being there. Now the company has launched Google Earth VR, which will initially launch on the HTC Vive, to instantly transport you to the world’s most famous landmarks or wherever else you want to go within the world’s 196.9 million square miles.

The VR experience aims to immerse you in different places around the globe much better than if you were just viewing a computer screen. With the VR experience you should be able to get a real sense of just how big, or small, landmarks are.

• What is Daydream and when is it coming? Google’s Android VR platform explored
• HTC Vive review: An experience that’s out of this world

Google has also compiled some cinematic tours to show off the best the world has to offer and hand-picked destinations to quickly whisk you off to, including the Amazon River, Manhattan skyline, the Grand Canyon, Swiss Alps and more.

Google Earth VR is available to download from the Steam Store now for free and is only available for the HTC Vive. Google has said news regarding Earth VR launching on other platforms will be announced next year.