Apple rolls out Find My AirPods to iOS, Night Shift to Macs

Apple has released new software updates that bring much-requested features.

The first update, called iOS 10.3, is for iPhone and iPad users. It’s the third major update to the iOS 10 operating system since it released in September. Apple has been testing iOS 10.3 since January. It is now available as a free over-the-air update for all iOS 10 users. The most significant change it brings is Find My AirPods, which has been added to the Find My iPhone function.

With this new feature, AirPods owners locate a lost earphone should one be accidentally lost or stolen. The feature basically plays a sound to help users find an AirPod nearby. You can read more about how the feature works from here. The latest version of iOS also adds a new Apple File System, which is optimised for flash/SSD storage and includes improved support for encryption.

Apple has also released MacOS Sierra 10.12.4, the fourth major update to the MacOS Sierra operating system, which debuted in September. It has been in testing since January. It is now available as a free over-the-air update for all customers who are running macOS Sierra. It can be downloaded using the Software Update function in the Mac App Store on your Mac laptop or desktop.

The biggest change it brings is Night Shift mode to the Mac. We first saw Night Shift on iOS devices, with the release of iOS 9.3. It can subtly shift the display of a device from blue-emitting hues to more yellowish, thereby reducing your exposure to blue light. Blue light is thought to interrupt your circadian rhythm and may disrupt sleep patterns and may even cause insomnia.

To activate Night Shift, go to the Displays section of System Preferences. It can also be enabled through the Notification Center or Siri. The latest version of MacOS Sierra and iOS 10 add several other changes and smaller tweaks. We will update this post when we’ve had a chance to comb through all the additions and can better tell which ones are worth mentioning.

Talk to Cortana even when your Android phone is locked

Windows Phone is basically dead, but that hasn’t kept Microsoft’s excellent voice assistant Cortana from finding a home on mobile. Cortana has been available on iOS and Android for a while now, and users of Google’s mobile OS will find that the app has gotten a helpful new upgrade today. Android users can now talk to Cortana directly from their phone’s lock screen. Previously, you could swipe to pull up some info stored in Cortana from the lock screen, but you couldn’t actually interact with it or ask it questions.

That restriction has been removed — Microsoft says that you can ask Cortana questions, set reminders and basically do anything else you might usually ask the app direct from the lock screen. Microsoft has also made some updates to the default Cortana home screen, showing glanceable info like weather, upcoming calendar items, commute times and so forth. It sounds handy, but given that Android basically does this in the Google Search search app, it’s also a bit redundant. For those that use Cortana a lot on their Windows computers and want easy access to that info on their phone, though, this updated app should do the trick. The latest version of Cortana for Android is available now in the Google Play Store.

Source: Microsoft

Samsung will sell refurbished Galaxy Note 7s… somewhere

Last month, a report claiming that Samsung would refurbish and sell the many Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that were returned following a global recall. In case you forgot, the Galaxy Note 7 had a battery problem that was causing the device to overheat and catch on fire. Now that Samsung finished its investigation into the root cause of the problem, the company is detailing how it plans to deal with the millions of returned phones. Refurbishment and resale is at the top of that list: Samsung says it’ll consider if devices are in suitable condition to be sold or used as rental devices.

Samsung doesn’t have a lot of details on how that program will work just yet, though. The decisions on where and how these refurbished phones will be sold will depend on “consultations with regulatory authorities” in each country — because it’s likely that some locales will not be interested in letting the phone hit the market after all the past troubles. The original report claimed the target markets for these refurbished phones would be Vietnam or India.

If that’s not an option, Samsung says it’ll detach salvageable components for reuse and do some metal extraction using “environmentally friendly methods” to get as much useful material out of each phone as possible. Specifically, Samsung will be trying to extract semiconductors, camera modules as well as precious metals like copper, nickel, gold and silver before passing the rest of the device on to recycling.

We’ll be waiting to see how the process for selling refurbished Note 7 devices winds up, but we have to give Samsung some credit here for trying not to be wasteful. The phone wasn’t on the market for long, but millions were sold and then returned, and that’s a lot of material that could have gone to waste. Hopefully Samsung will be able to get as much out of these returned devices as possible. And hopefully they won’t try and sell these with the Galaxy Note name — it’s about as toxic of a brand name as you can find in the smartphone landscape right now.

Source: Samsung

An AI taught me how to be a better tweeter

My name is Daniel Cooper, and I tweet… a lot.

Twitter is an extension of my subconscious, a pressure valve that lets half-baked thoughts escape my mind. In the last seven years, I’ve tweeted 73,811 times, and yet none of those 140-character messages has made me internet famous. For all my efforts, I’ve accrued just 5,635 followers, most of whom are in tech and were probably made to follow me by their boss. It seems that, no matter how much I try, I’m never going to become a celebrity tweeter.

That gnawing neediness in my soul explains why I was intrigued by Post Intelligence, a startup with a deep learning algorithm that can supposedly make you better at social media. For now, Post Intelligence works with both Twitter and Facebook, but there’s potential for it to engage with several other platforms in the future. The algorithm is the brainchild of Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan, two former Google product managers. Reddy can count Blogger, Google Video and Google+ on her record, while Sundararajan helped develop Gmail and AdSense. Together, they previously founded media agency MyLikes and Candid, a Secret-esque anonymous network.

Pi, as Post Intelligence is nicknamed, studies your record to learn how you tweet and then looks for patterns to help improve your strategy. The first thing it does is slurp down your most recent 3,000 or so posts, it determines your most commonly used words, calculating the scope of your influence and analyzing the sentiment of said tweets. Alas, Pi managed to overestimate my legendary levels of miserableness by marking these jokey tweets as having a negative tone.

Why does Doctor Strange insist on being called Doctor when every other surgeon in history gets arsey unless you use Mr / Mrs?

— Dan CoopEUr (@danielwcooper) March 7, 2017

The juxtaposition of these two makes me think that alt-J is just a Jamiroquai covers band for racists. pic.twitter.com/bybIXfFCEB

— Dan CoopEUr (@danielwcooper) March 6, 2017

Leader Desslok accusing Obama of wiretapping him is pure distraction.

Guys, it’s time for some Gamilon theory.

— Dan CoopEUr (@danielwcooper) March 5, 2017

The platform also examines what times of the day your messages are most likely to get good traction. Given that the bulk of my audience is in the UK and in the eastern US, it’s little surprise that my posting windows are 11am, 1pm and 4pm GMT. So, when I write an explosive tweet with the potential to make everyone in the world chuckle, I should schedule them for those times for the best potential results.

But it’s the main interface that’s the most interesting, since it encourages you to look for trending topics to glom onto. The day that I gained access to the platform, a British politician announced that he would take on his sixth concurrent job: editing a daily newspaper. I’d already made several unsuccessful attempts to write a joke on the subject, but this time I could use Pi’s rating system as a guide.

Before posting each tweet, I ask myself: Does it bring me joy? Will it bring joy to others? I never wait for the answer.

— RM (@dorsalstream) February 5, 2016

You see, rather than issuing a prescriptive system that will tell you what to tweet, Pi’s algorithms will give you a rough idea of your tweet’s potential. A “Prediction Bar” sits below the compose field, giving you a score out of 10 for the messages that you write. It’s almost a game unto itself, as you trial-and-error your way toward a hot tweet in the hopes that the system will bless it.

My next attempt was to try and satirize Cosmopolitan’s decision to go all-in on Jamie Dornan. The Fifty Shades of Grey furniture was plastered above the magazine’s Twitter page, presumably in celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day. Unfortunately, a tweet with a measure of subtlety can fly past the algorithm’s senses and, no matter what combination I tried, I only ever got a score of two out of 10. Or, and this is the more outlandish theory, my weird sense of humor isn’t actually funny and my whole life has been a lie.

I think someone has a crush. pic.twitter.com/qoxhGL7xs0

— Dan CoopEUr (@danielwcooper) March 17, 2017

There’s another issue too: Pi can’t be used as a full-blown Twitter client — only as an adjunct to the main site. You can’t see the firehose of tweets as the day unfolds, and you have to stop yourself from reacting as you normally would. Rather than firing off a response, you have to pause, switch tabs and then tweet inside the Pi window, checking for your tweet’s virality. That’s both a blessing, since you’re forced to tweet more thoughtfully, and a curse, because you lose the instant gratification that Twitter provides.

But what’s interesting, at least to me, is how having Post Intelligence in my life has redefined my relationship with the site. Whereas before I would use it almost exclusively upon instinct, typing whole tweet threads upon instinct, now, I just… don’t. Instead, I’ll try and work out the neatest, highest-scoring phrase for my new master in the hope of getting a higher score out of 10. It’s not yet made me internet famous — my follower count still remains hopelessly low — but perhaps I’m not far from my big break.

Source: Post Intelligence

PS4 Pro plays your 4K video files

So far, watching 4K video on a PS4 Pro has meant streaming from the likes of Netflix and YouTube. But what about all the 4K footage you shot on your phone? You should be covered after today. Sony is rolling out an update to the PS4 Pro’s Media Player app that will let you play locally-stored 4K videos. They’ll have to be encoded as MP4 files, but you can play them either from a USB drive or from a media server on your home network. And if you happen to own both a PlayStation VR headset and a Pro, you’ll see support for 4K VR videos.

The move isn’t going to please everyone when the Pro can’t handle 4K Blu-ray movies like its Xbox One S counterpart. However, this still makes the console a better 4K media center than it was before. You’re no longer limited to that handful of online video released in high-resolution video — if you can get a local copy of a video, you can play it.

Source: PlayStation Blog

Spotify’s latest acquisition could bring better recommendations

Spotify’s recommendations still leave some room for improvement — and that’s bad for both you and the company’s bottom line, since you’re not likely to play an irrelevant song or tap on an off-the-mark promo. It might get better before long, however. The streaming music service has bought MightyTV, a startup that revolves around using artificial intelligence and Tinder-like swipes for content recommendations. While the full scope of what the acquisition will mean isn’t clear, there will be a strong emphasis on ads. MightyTV founder Brian Adams is becoming Spotify’s VP of Technology and will refine the company’s ad and marketing tech.

The buyout is clearly about the talent rather than the brand when Spotify is immediately shutting down MightyTV in the wake of the deal. This follows a mostly consistent pattern for Spotify, too. A number of its nine acquisitions so far have been related to under-the-hood improvements in recommendations, including Sonalytic (a music discovery outfit bought earlier in March) and Echo Nest.

While it’s not clear just how much of MightyTV’s tech will make it into Spotify, it’s not hard to see why Spotify would make a purchase like this. If this leads to smarter music recommendations, you’ll be more likely to press play and generate that all-important song revenue. And while Spotify is taking on many paid subscribers, a large chunk of its audience still listens using the free, ad-supported tier. If Spotify can deliver more relevant ads to those customers, it’s more likely to get juicy ad deals. And that could be good for you, too. You may not be more likely to respond to ads, but they promise to be less grating.

Via: VentureBeat

Source: Spotify

Facebook Messenger can share your location in real time

Plenty of messenger and map apps let you share your location with friends. iOS has its “Find My Friends” app and you can share your location through iMessage, while Hangouts similarly lets you share where you’re at with friends. And that’s just first-party app solutions. But now one of the biggest third-part messengers out there lets you show your exact location to contacts for a full 60 minutes.

Facebook Messenger’s new “Live Location enables” users to share where they are with a specific user or group of friends for 60 minutes. Once activated, you’ll be able to be found on a map by those friends, and Facebook will show how long it would take to reach the friend who shared their location by car if you’re trying to plan a meetup. Naturally, you can stop sharing your location at any time, and a little clock shows how much longer your location will be available for.

Messenger also still lets users share a specific static location without giving continuous updates — that’s good if you’re trying to meet somewhere specific but don’t need your contacts to be tracking your every move. By default, the app now asks you for the “live location” sharing feature, so just make sure you tap the red pin and drop it on your map if you don’t want to activate the tracking option. The features are found in the latest version of Facebook Messenger for Android and iOS — the updates are out now if you want to give it a shot.

Source: Facebook

Facebook will remind you to vote in local elections

Facebook isn’t limiting its get-out-the-vote initiatives to federal elections. The social network is now offering reminders to vote in local US elections, whether they’re at the county, municipal or state level. You’ll see these notices as long as you’re in an area with over 10,000 people, and they’ll include primaries in addition to general elections. It could be crucial to spurring interest in frequently neglected regional elections, especially in tandemn with Facebook’s officially launched Town Hall feature.

If you’re not familiar with Town Hall, we’ll recap: if you visit the new section (under the More menu), you’ll get a list of all your political representatives at federal, state and local levels. You’ll at least get to visit their Facebook pages, but you can also call or email a politician if they volunteer that information on Facebook. You’ll also receive an invitation to contact a rep if you like or comment on one of their posts, and you can share your decision to reach out with others interacting with the same politician. It’s not clear why you can’t share that initiative with everyone, but TechCrunch believes it’s likely to avoid implying that Facebook is advocating for specific political actions.

Both additions are part of Facebook’s broader attempt to take responsibility for its effect on politics. The company doesn’t just want to fight fake news — it wants to promote overall political awareness. While these efforts won’t necessarily sway your opinion, there’s a real chance you’ll be more informed the next time you head to the voting booth.

Source: TechCrunch

Apple’s 2017 Supplier Responsibility Report Highlights Cobalt Supplier Audits, 98% Work Hour Compliance

Apple today released its 2017 Supplier Responsibility Progress Report, outlining progress that the company has made in its supply chain by highlighting its “highest ever” work hour compliance, advocating the success of Apple’s Supplier Education Program, and celebrating more than 2.4 million workers who were trained on their rights last year. Apple releases such progress reports each year as a transparent move to show the strides it takes to improve the work lives of its device manufacturing employees, who work to create products including the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and more.

The company said that over the past year it audited 705 total suppliers and discovered that compliance with its 60-hour maximum work week mandate has reached 98 percent, increasing from 97 percent last year. Throughout the year, Apple tripled the number of suppliers taking part in its Energy Efficiency program, leading to the reduction of over 150,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, “the equivalent of taking 31,000 cars off the road for a year.”

Apple also said that its successes in supplier responsibility included waste reduction, Clean Water initiatives, and more “responsible sourcing efforts” to expand beyond so-called “conflict minerals” to include cobalt for the first time.

Apple’s responsible sourcing efforts expanded beyond conflict minerals to include cobalt for the first time. For the second year in a row, 100% of Apple’s tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold (3TG) smelters and refiners are participating in independent third-party audits. Apple has also partnered with numerous NGOs to drive positive change on the ground, including Pact who are working to provide essential health and safety training to artisanal mining, and are building programs to help children stay in school.

An article by BuzzFeed today highlights Apple’s expansion beyond conflict minerals, which are referred to in that way due to their source within war-torn countries that mine the minerals — tantalum, tungsten, tin, and gold — with little to no respect for workers’ rights. Apple’s transparency on the subject comes at a time when the Trump administration is said to be considering suspending legislation that previously required companies to disclose whether or not their products contained conflict minerals.

According to Apple’s senior director of supply chain social responsibility, Paula Pyers, the company removed three total suppliers (of the 705 audited) for failing to meet its various labor and human rights, environmental standards, and health and safety codes. Conflict mineral suppliers were more harshly cracked down upon, with 22 total suppliers tied to the controversial practice removed from Apple’s supply chain over the past year.

“We’ve been really clear with our suppliers that, notwithstanding any changes to regulations — or deregulation, if you will — we’ll continue to run the same program we’ve been running for the last six years,” Pyers said. “We will continue to drive third-party audit programs. We’ll continue to dig really deep, and stand up accountability and our incident report system. Candidly, we don’t plan any change in that which we are doing.”

The company’s transparency in 2017 has stretched to include cobalt mining for the first time, including a list of every cobalt supplier in its supply chain, all of which are facing third-party audits. Cobalt is not officially considered a conflict mineral, but recent investigations into the cobalt supply chain potentially violating child labor laws has led to tech companies joining up to form the Responsible Cobalt Initiative to fight the human rights abuses.

Pyers told BuzzFeed that, even in the face of lax legislation potentially passed by the White House, Apple will “continue to do what we’re doing” in regards to its annual Supplier Responsibility reports and audits. “We’ll continue to call for collective action because we truly believe, whether it’s regulated or self-regulated, this is the way business should be run, and the way we’ll continue to run our business.”

Read more about Apple’s Supplier Responsibility initiatives here.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: supplier responsibility
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Facebook Launches Location Sharing Feature Within Messenger Called ‘Live Location’

Following in the footsteps of Google Maps and Find My Friends, Facebook today announced that users will be able to track their friends and family within Facebook Messenger using a new feature it calls “Live Location.”

The hour-long location sharing feature is beginning to roll out globally today, and Facebook said it should help friends coordinate with one another when making plans, as well as notifying a significant other when you’re on your way home. The plan-making focus falls in line with Facebook Messenger’s recent Snapchat-like addition “Messenger Day.”

Facebook gave users a step-by-step guide to the process of location sharing within Messenger, which they can follow using the steps below:

• To share your Live Location in a message on iOS, tap the Location icon or tap the More icon and then select Location.
• With today’s update, you’ll see a map of your current location and the option to tap a blue bar to share your Live Location.
• If you choose to share your Live Location, the person or people you share it with will be able to see where you are on a map for the next 60 minutes.
• You’ll be able to see an estimate of how long it would take to get to others’ locations by car. (The ETA is seen by the person with whom the location is shared.)
• You can stop sharing your Live Location at any time; just tap Stop Sharing.
• A small clock in the lower right hand corner of the map will also let you know how much longer you’re sharing your location for.

The social media company also mentioned that today’s location sharing update is “completely optional” and that users “are always in control.” Facebook has been beefing up Facebook Messenger over the past few months, previously adding Reactions, Messenger Day, group video chat, and more into the split-off messaging app.

Tags: Facebook, Facebook Messenger
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