Latest Moto Z2 Force leak reveals phone will have a headphone jack

Lenovo might introduce a new phone dubbed Moto Z2 Force.

The phone would be a successor to last year’s Moto Z Force, a version of the Moto Z. It’s thicker and sports a longer battery life, higher-resolution camera, and a shatterproof display. Now, days after photos of the second-generation Z Force leaked, Android Authority has shared more renders and detailed what we can expect from the upcoming smartphone, including that it will have a headphone jack.

• Motorola Moto Z and Moto Z Force: Everything you need to know
• Motorola Moto Z review: A modular muddle

Neither the Moto Z nor the Moto Z Force have a 3.5mm headphone socket. Instead, they offer a USB Type-C connection for audio, data, and charging. Both are however compatible with the Moto Mod accessories. The Z2 Force will not only have a headphone jack but will also support last year’s Moto Mods, as the connectors are in the same place. It’ll also be thinner than its predecessor, at 5.9mm thick

• Motorola Moto Z vs Moto Z Force: What’s the difference?

The new Z2 Force won’t be a Verizon exclusive, either. Reliable leaker Evan Blass claimed it will be offered by T-Mobile too.

Telltale’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ game arrives tomorrow

The first episode of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series, Tangled Up in Blue, arrives tomorrow, and you can get a sneak peek at all the action and space snark in the official launch trailer. The series is a brand-new Guardians story not connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After an epic battle, Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot find a powerful artifact that they all covet for their own reasons, as does a mysterious enemy who is the last of her kind.

This is the first time the Guardians are starring in their own video game. Prior to the 2014 film, they weren’t popular enough to warrant one. If the trailer’s any indication, Telltale’s episodic series will have the same light-hearted tone as the movies, featuring jokes about Thanos’ chin, elevators and creepy Kree temples.

Telltale has a long history of adapting comic book franchises like The Walking Dead and Batman into adventure games. This is the first time it’s tackling a Marvel property though, and it’ll be interesting to see its take on Guardians of the Galaxy. The studio’s already proven it can pull off comedy in video games (see Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island and Tales From the Borderlands), and it looks like Tangled Up in Blue is going to bring plenty of wisecracks and classic rock tomorrow.

The series’ five episodes will be available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Mac, as well as the Apple App Store and Google Play. Episode One: Tangled Up in Blue, and subsequent episodes, will cost $4.99, or you can buy a special Season Pass disc for $29.99 on May 2nd. The disc includes the first episode and will grant access to the others via online updates as they’re released.

Source: Telltale Games (YouTube)

Watch what happens when you put a drone though 1 million-volt lightning machine

Why it matters to you

Besides just being insanely cool to watch, you’re going to want to keep your drone grounded during a storm after this.

What happens when you cross a drone with a lightning bolt? In an experiment that would probably make Benjamin Franklin both proud and a bit jealous, the University of Manchester’s High Voltage Laboratory and YouTuber Tom Scott decided to experiment with electricity and a DJI Phantom 3 drone. Not only did the drone instantly fall out of the sky, but a second attempt to direct the strike with a lightning rod actually made the quadcopter worse off.

The experiment uses the University of Manchester’s High Voltage Lab with a 2 MV impulse generator to conjure up a lightning strike on demand. University staff VDr. Vidyadhar Peesapati and Dr. Richard Gardner set up the lab to create a lightning strike rated at more than 1 million volts of electricity.

For the first experiment, the drone was tethered to keep it in place but otherwise flew like the Phantom would be used under normal conditions. Lightning strikes and the drone instantly drops from the sky. There is no visible damage to the exterior but the team said that all of the internal electronics were fried since the electricity took the path of least resistance. In slow motion, you can watch the lightning enter one end of the drone and shoot out of the bottom.

But what if the drones was a bit more protected, perhaps with a lightning rod to divert the brunt of the damage away from the quadcopter? The team rigged a second drone with a piece of conductive copper tape as a sort of makeshift lightning rod, becoming one of the tallest points on the drone.

They reset the lightning machine, zapped the new drone — and the propellers blew completely off. While the first experiment only damaged the drone on the inside, instead of taking to the copper tape, the lightning favored the propellers. The group said the sheer force of the strike took the propellers off before taking a path through the drone’s internal circuits, leaving the second “protected” version worse for wear.

While the experiment is incredible to watch, it also carries scientific significance. The group says that similar research has led to changes in piloted airplane design but little has been done to see how the unmanned aerial vehicles fare in a lighting storm. Small drones typically don’t fly in storms because the wind seriously drains the already short battery life, but as waterproof variations begin popping up, drone flight becomes less of a fair weather activity.

The team’s recommendation? Keep drones grounded during lightning storms if you don’t want a few thousand dollars worth of equipment to go up in one zap.

Latest Xbox One Insider build adds Party Overlay, new Arena game incoming

Why it matters to you

You’ll be able to see who’s talking during group chats on your Xbox One with Monday’s Insider update.

Windows 10 on PCs isn’t the only Microsoft operating system to get the update treatment. The Xbox One’s version of Windows 10 is also getting new features and functionality, particularly for Xbox Insiders, with an update that’s starting to roll out today.

At the moment, Microsoft is continuing to focus on the Xbox One’s community features, to expand on ways to help Xbox fans get together and enjoy competitive gaming. Xbox Arena will be getting its next installment this month and today a new Party overlay will be added for more information during group chats.

Xbox Arena provides Xbox users the ability to join in competitive matches and create their own tournaments. World of Tanks was the first title to be featured in Arena, and this month Killer Instinct will return for select Xbox Insiders. Other games slated to be making their way to Arena include Halo Wars 2 and Smite, and the first Arena-powered tournament with prizes is coming up soon, dubbed The Killer Instinct Battle for New York with $10,000 in prizes.

In addition, Club owners and administrators will be able to create and host tournaments this month using the beta version of the Xbox app on Windows 10 PCs. Simply go to your Club, select the “Tournaments” tab, then “Create tournament.” Once the info has been filled out and published, other members of the Club or invited guests on Xbox One and PC will be able to discover, join, and play in the tournament.

Next up is new Party overlay functionality, which will let users know who’s speaking in a Party during voice chats. Once the overlay is enabled in the Guide, users will be able to decide where to place it on the screen and also set its transparency. The Gamertag of whoever is speaking will then show up and the overlay will disappear when nobody is speaking.

Some other updates making their way to Xbox One, exactly as outlined in the Xbox news post, include:

• Share your Looking for Group post on the Activity Feed or through a message.
• Unfollow a Club or Game Hub directly from your Activity Feed.
• Your profile will display your Arena tournament history and upcoming tournaments.
• For Beam and Twitch broadcasts, you will now have an option in the Guide for your Kinect to locate you automatically.
• Captive Portal support for wireless internet is coming to Xbox One, which allows for Wi-Fi authentication through a browser. Great for colleges, hotels, or public Wi-Fi locations.
• Filter posts on your Activity Feed on the Xbox app for iOS and Android.
• On the Xbox app for Windows 10, we’re adding the option to select the audio input and output sources for Party chat.

You’ll want to make sure that your Xbox One is enrolled in the Xbox Insider program to get today’s update. If yours is ready to go, then check back at 6 p.m. PT for the new features and functionality.

Everything we expect from Facebook’s F8, and how to watch it

Facebook’s big conference for the year is right around the corner, and while it seems like the hype has been a little subdued this time around, we’re expecting some pretty big announcements to come from the show.

F8 will start on Tuesday, April 18 with a keynote presentation at 10 a.m. PT, however different sessions will follow throughout the day. Another keynote will take place the next day at the same time, with more sessions to follow — so there’s plenty to be announced, even if it is largely developer-focused.

How to watch

How can you keep up with all these big announcements yourself? Thankfully, Facebook is live-streaming the majority of its sessions, including the big keynotes. As mentioned, the conference itself will start on Tuesday April 18 at 10 a.m. PT, and will run a full two days.

To watch the keynote and the sessions, you will have to register on the Facebook F8 website, but when you do you’ll be able to live-stream the event, and watch sessions on-demand. You can also join the “F8 Online Experience” Facebook event page for updates on F8, as well as live-streamed video and more information.

The event is hosted by the Facebook for Developers page.

What to expect

The announcements will cover a variety of Facebook products and services, from the Facebook app and Messenger, to the company’s other interests — like virtual reality. While not too much has been announced about the show so far, here’s everything we expect to see.

Group bots

Chat bots were a big focus at F8 2016, and it looks like that might shape up to be the case again this year. This time around, however, Facebook might expand its bots platform to groups — that’s to say, instead of bots only being able to help individuals, they could help groups keep up to date with news, sports games progress, e-commerce, and more.

The news, reported by TechCrunch, isn’t surprising. Facebook mentioned it would be expanding bots to work in group chats a while ago, and since then we haven’t seen that actually happen.

An offline version of Instagram

This one could be pretty helpful for Instagram users with spotty internet connections. A session called “Building Offline Experiences for Instagram” has been posted on the Facebook F8 schedule, suggesting that the platform will get at least some more offline features. It would make sense — Facebook has had quite a lot of success with Messenger Lite and Facebook Lite, which currently sits at 200 million users.

The Camera Effects Platform

Another session on the F8 schedule is called “Introduction to the Camera Effects Platform,” and it could signal a way for developers to submit their own filters and photo frames. The idea here is simple — Facebook’s team is excellent at building great frames and filters, but they can’t make everything. If more developers make filters and frames, the company could potentially outdo Snapchat.

A virtual reality headset

Virtual reality is seriously gaining steam, and Facebook is a major player in that happening. The company launched a 360-degree camera at F8 last year, and now recent rumors from Variety suggest Facebook could also launch its own VR headset — or at least the specifications for a VR headset that other companies could go on to use.

We’ll be on the ground in San Jose at F8, so follow our site for continuing coverage and updates. You can follow us on Twitter at @DigitalTrends. We’ll keep this page updated with all the F8-related info as we hear it, so stay tuned.

LG 27MD5KA‑B Ultrafine 5K review

Research Center:
LG 27MD5KA‑B Ultrafine 5K

It’s finally here, the bold, beautiful 27-inch LG Ultrafine 5K. Designed as a collaboration between Apple and LG, this pixel-packed monitor was built from the ground up to be a companion to the new MacBook Pro lineup.

Featuring a remarkable 5,120 x 2,880 resolution and a unique design, the LG Ultrafine 5K inspires awe and skepticism in equal measure. Even with a 5K display, it’s not without competition, and professional grade monitors make for tough competitors. Can the upstart LG Ultrafine 5K topple the world’s first 5K monitor, the Dell UP2715K? Let’s find out for sure.

Love at first plug

For anyone with a new MacBook sitting on their desk, the connectivity offered by the LG Ultrafine 5K will seem sublime. For anyone else, well, get ready to purchase a few dongles. The LG Ultrafine 5K features four Thunderbolt 3/USB Type-C ports on the back, and nothing else, aside from a plug for the power cord. It’s a glimpse at the elegant simplicity USB Type-C offers, and it’s an absolute joy to use.

When you plug the LG Ultrafine 5K into a MacBook Pro, two things happen immediately. One, the monitor will start charging the MacBook, and two, the monitor will automatically set itself up as a second display. This monitor showcases the very best Thunderbolt 3 offers. After the LG Ultrafine 5K, using any other monitor seems like a chore, especially for MacBook users.

Additionally, the Ultrafine 5K benefits from some standard MacOS features that contribute to an already luxurious experience.

With 5K resolution, and 220 pixels per inch, even text appears inky, smooth, and as sharp as a pen stroke.

When the Ultrafine 5K is plugged into a MacBook, MacOS automatically detects and configures the monitor to act as a second display, like it does for most external monitors. Additionally, when that massive 27-inch screen-space is filled with windows and apps, MacOS will remember where they were if the laptop is unplugged and plugged back in.

To be fair, it’s important to point out these two features are handled inside MacOS, not in the monitor. Plug in a standard LG, Samsung, or Dell monitor, and the same will happen. What’s different here is the single-cord experience. It’s a small thing, but taken together with MacOS’ already intuitive second-display performance, it feels smooth and easy. Windows go back to where they were, and the monitor starts charging your laptop, as soon as a Mac is plugged in.

Using it with Windows 10 a device is another story. Windows has trouble recognizing the monitor. It defaults to the wrong resolution, putting black bars on either side of the desktop. Going into the Settings menu to change the resolution presents another issue. Windows doesn’t recognize that this monitor is capable of 5K, and caps out at 4K.

Frankly, the decision to design a monitor that only works right with MacOS is an arbitrary limitation, and it hurts the value of the monitor. If you decide to switch to Windows, or must use a Windows machine for work, the LG Ultrafine 5K becomes near-useless.

A fly in the ointment

The LG Ultrafine 5K is surprisingly robust. It’s heavy for a 27-inch monitor, in part due to its solid metal stand and base, which provide remarkable stability during everyday use. Even shaking the desk barely made this thing move.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

After setting up the monitor, we gave it a once-over and wanted to make sure it was restored to factory settings, which is normally done by hitting a button on the back to bring up the hardware menus. From here, we’re normally able check resolution, refresh rate, cycle through brightness and color options.

We didn’t get far with this monitor, though, because there aren’t any buttons on the Ultrafine 5K. No power button, no menu button, no hardware brightness controls, nothing. Apple and LG have sacrificed yet another essential feature in the name of simplicity. Hardware buttons join the headphone jack and USB Type-A ports in Apple’s mass grave of prematurely abandoned hardware standards.

Aside from the conspicuous absence of buttons, it’s a bit of a surprise that the LG Ultrafine 5K is an Apple collaboration. It’s not stylish in part because the bulk of its body is made from plastic instead of a more premium material like aluminum. The bezels here are also uncharacteristically large, and the extra-thick top side — or forehead — makes the entire display look like it’s upside-down. It’s not a good look for a $1,300 monitor.

Objectively eye-catching

Full 4K displays are a feast for the eyes. Everything appears lush, hyper-real, and impossibly detailed. The LG Ultrafine 5K takes image fidelity a step further and the results are astounding.

Going back to any other monitor feels like a lesser experience.

To the naked eye the Ultrafine 5K’s display is nothing short of superb. Text appears inky, smooth, and penstroke-sharp. Photos and videos are richly detailed, vibrant, and lifelike. Not to mention, 5K content is just breathtaking on this display. Even a simple landscape wallpaper becomes a compelling argument for the Ultrafine 5K’s premium pricetag.

After running a few tests, it’s easy to see why this display is so eye-catching — because it’s good, right out of the box. At 1020-to-1 the Ultrafine 5K’s contrast ratio lends everything a unique sense of depth, and eclipses even the stellar Samsung CFG791, which came in at 910-to-1.

The Ultrafine 5K is also capable of reproducing an admirable 92 percent of the AdobeRGB spectrum. That’s not a perfect 100, but it puts the Ultrafine in the same league as its nearest competitors. The Dell UP2715K, for instance, managed 96 percent. The BenQ PV3200PT and LG 27UD88-W 4K managed 72 percent and 77 percent respectively.

For professional users, the four percent difference between the LG Ultrafine 5K and the Dell UP2715K could be a critical factor when determining which monitor to purchase, though both are just slightly short of a perfect 100.

Moving on to color accuracy, the Ultrafine 5K managed a respectable average color error of 2.75, which isn’t bad compared to a typical desktop monitor, but it’s a little high for a professional grade monitor.

Just look at how it stacks up to the competition. The Ultrafine 5K’s score of 2.75 is better than the LG 27UD88-W 4K, but significantly worse than the BenQ PV3200PT professional monitor. The Dell UP2715K is a little better, but not by much.

Overall, the LG Ultrafine 5K looks great to the naked eye. Yet when compared to other professional-grade monitors it, falls a bit short of the mark. To be clear, it’s not a bad display by any measure. It simply fights in an arena where the best monitors are found, and it doesn’t have a clear edge over its competitors.

Not much room for improvement

So far, we’ve talked about out-of-the-box settings. Many professionals use calibration to enhance a monitor, so can a few tweaks remedy the LG Ultrafine 5K’s weak spots?

Its bezels are uncharacteristically large up top, making the entire display look like it’s upside-down.

Not so much. Some displays have hidden potential which can be revealed with calibration, but unfortunately the Ultrafine 5K isn’t really one of them.

After calibration, we saw a small uptick in overall color accuracy — the Ultrafine 5K’s average color error came down from 2.75 to 1.96 — but that was about it.

It’s an improvement, but it’s negligible in everyday use, and not quite enough to eclipse other pro-grade monitors. For instance, the BenQ PV3200PT and Dell UP2715K both saw significant improvement after calibration. The BenQ PV3200PT went from 1.14 to 0.98 and the Dell UP2715K went from 2.15 to 1.41.

With the Ultrafine 5K, what you see is pretty much what you get. Out of the box performance is good, but not quite good enough to stack up to other pro-grade monitors, and calibration doesn’t do much to move the needle.

Big monitor, mediocre sound

The LG Ultrafine 5K has speakers, but they won’t lavish your ears with rich, velvety sound, and they pale in comparison to the speakers in the MacBook Pro 15. Neither set of speakers, however, quite stands up to a good pair of external speakers or headphones. It’s a very narrow complaint, but it’s a little unfortunate that the included speakers aren’t at least as good as the ones in the laptop it’s designed to pair with.

LG 27MD5KA‑B Ultrafine 5K Compared To

Samsung CF791

Dell U3417W

Samsung CFG70

LG 38UC99

Dell s2417DG

BenQ PV3200PT

Samsung CF591

Acer Predator Z35

LG 4K UHD 27UD88-W

Eizo Foris FS2735 gaming monitor

LG 34UC98 monitor

Dell S2716DG

Philips 276E6ADSS LCD monitor

Dell SE2716H

Asus ROG Swift PG279Q

Warranty

The LG Ultrafine 5K features a standard one-year manufacturer warranty, with an important caveat – it’s covered through LG, not through Apple. While meant for use with a Mac, you can’t take the Ultrafine 5K into an Apple Store for repairs. Apple recommends users contact LG instead.

Even if Apple Store repair is not considered, the warranty remains a disappointment. Most competitors offer a three-year or even five-year warranty on monitors in this price range. We’ve had this complaint with past LG monitors, and hope the company will reconsider its policy.

Our Take

If LG were to take the 5K panel out of this display and put it into a slimmer, better-looking frame, then the Ultrafine 5K would be nearly flawless. That might seem nitpicky, but this is a display that costs about as much as a new laptop, desktop, or half of a MacBook Pro 15.

For a desktop monitor, a $1,300 price tag demands examination with a microscope. It enlarges existing flaws that cheaper displays could easily get away with, and makes them seem bigger than they are.

Is there a better alternative?

Dell’s 5K monitor is a bit hard to find these days, but generally sells for slightly more. It works with Windows and MacOS and beats the LG Ultrafine 5K in both color gamut and accuracy, though it does lose in contrast. Ironically, it has a far more attractive aesthetic, and pairs nicely with a new Mac — though you will need a video adapter.

The DT Accessory Pack

Apple Magic Mouse 2

$76.50

Apple Magic keyboard

$96

Beats Solo3 Wireless On-Ear headphones

$219

CableCreation Gold USB 3.1 Type C adapter

$14

If 5K isn’t a must have, there’s several great 4K options on the market. We still recommend the Dell P2715Q, which is less than half the price and provides excellent all-around performance. The BenQ PV3200PT is also a solid option, if you want a larger 32-inch screen.

How long will it last?

The Ultrafine 5K will probably outlast any laptop or desktop you use with it. This 5K display panel isn’t going to reach obsolescence any time soon. And while a longer warranty from LG would be preferred, monitors tend to be reliable. They often last over a decade.

On the downside, the monitor didn’t work properly when we tried it with Windows. Buying this monitor means making a serious commitment to MacOS, one that might even outlast the lifecycle of a newly purchased MacBook Pro.

Should you buy it?

No. The LG Ultrafine 5K has a nice panel, and it looks beautiful at a glance. Yet there’s many brilliant 4K monitors available, and Dell offers a great 5K alternative. Other monitors work with either Windows or MacOS and are often less expensive. Worse, Apple has already revealed plans to build “Pro” displays in 2018. Mac fans desiring an Apple-approved monitor should be patient, and wait for their arrival.

Apple will officially test its self-driving tech on this car in California

Apple plans to do to cars what it did to mobile phones.

The last we heard, Apple was ditching the idea of making self-driving cars to focus on self-driving technology only. And now, Apple has obtained an official permit to test self-driving cars in California – and it suggests the iPhone maker really does plan to reinvent century-old automobiles, sort of how it took mobile phones and reinvented them into the modern-day smartphone we all carry in our pockets.

As spotted by Business Insider, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles updated its website last week, adding Apple and 29 other companies to its registry of firms that are actively testing self-driving vehicles in the state. Google is another tech giant on the list. The permit seems to confirm that Apple is definitely developing self-driving car technology, and it plans to test it on Lexus vehicles.

• Apple might make a new MacBook Pro adapter – one we actually want

Any manufacturer of autonomous technology must apply to the California DMV before it can test a vehicle. On 14 April, California issued Apple an a permit that covers three vehicles – all 2015 Lexus RX450h SUVs – and six drivers. Apple confirmed that it was granted the permit, and it pointed to an old statement it made about heavily investing in “machine learning and autonomous systems”.

Apple reportedly has a secret unit of 1,000 employees working on what it has dubbed “Project Titan” in Sunnyvale, California. For years now, the unit has been developing self-driving technology, but last year, it brought on Bob Mansfield, an longtime Apple executive and engineer, to scale back and set new goals. Apple is thought to have ditched the idea of a full-fledged self-driving car as a result.

You can read more about Project Titan from Pocket-lint’s round-up.

What to expect from Facebook’s annual developer conference

Tomorrow marks the first day of this year’s F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference, and it promises to be a big one. After all, this is the 10th anniversary of F8, and you know that CEO Mark Zuckerberg will want to show off just how far Facebook has come in the past ten years. Here’s a look at what we’ll hopefully see in the days ahead.

Facebook traditionally uses F8 to announce new features for its Messenger platform and this year would be no exception. In 2015, Facebook announced that Messenger would be opened to third-party developers, while last year’s big launch was around the arrival of chatbots. For 2017, we expect chatbots will continue to be part of the Messenger conversation, and since Facebook has been investing quite a lot in AI, we expect artificial intelligence to be a big part of this as well. The company already rolled out its new “M suggests” personal assistant a couple of weeks ago, so we expect to see more of what M can do going forward.

And then there’s the main Facebook app, which the company calls Big Blue. We’ve seen some big changes to the app over the past year, like the recent introduction of Snapchat-like Stories, so we’ll likely see more additions announced at the show. For example, Facebook has been experimenting with an alternate news feed marked with a rocket ship icon for the past few months. It apparently consists of posts and articles from sources you haven’t followed, but which Facebook’s algorithm thinks you’ll like. We expect to hear more about this — perhaps a formal rollout — at this week’s conference.

Speaking of news, Facebook has struggled with its reputation as a platform for fake news in the past few months, so we expect Zuckerberg to address this in his keynote. The company has made some strides in the area, like helping to flag fake news, posting educational guides on how to spot it and even going so far as to partner with third-party fact-checkers to suss out a story’s veracity. Whether or not this has been effective remains to be seen, and it would behoove Zuckerberg and co to provide updates in this area. We also expect Zuckerberg to address the recent use of Facebook Live to stream the murder of a Cleveland resident, and how the company plans to deal with problems like this going forward.

We also expect to see a lot of news around VR beyond just Oculus. As teased at last year’s F8 and at Oculus Connect a few months ago, Facebook has been experimenting with Social VR. It’ll let you chat with your friends in virtual places around the globe and even take, you guessed it, virtual selfies. We’ll probably see some updates to the software and who knows, it might even be ready for consumers to try before the end of the year.

Perhaps the biggest mystery announcement surrounding F8 has to do with its consumer hardware group housed in “Building 8.” We haven’t heard a lot about it, but rumors seem to point to four advanced technology projects that have to do with brain-scanning, drones, augmented reality and an “early-stage medical device” headed up by a Stanford cardiologist.

And there’s likely a lot more. We also expect news around 360-degree video (perhaps an update to its open-source Surround 360 camera?), Facebook Live and probably Instagram and Whatsapp as well. Though much of the above is just speculation, what’s clear is that Facebook is no longer just a network for your family and friends. With Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, Oculus, live video, VR and a secretive consumer hardware group under its umbrella, Facebook is now so much more. Expect a busy week ahead.

Intel cancels developer events as it moves beyond PCs

We hope you weren’t looking forward to the next Intel Developer Forum… or any Intel Developer Forum, for that matter. After 20 years, Intel has cancelled the Developer Forum program in light of an “evolved” event mix. According to a spokesperson speaking to AnandTech, this is really an acknowledgment that the company isn’t as PC-centric as it used to be. Monolithic events are no longer the best way of spreading info, Intel says. Instead, it’ll run narrowly focused events that cater to specific audiences, such as a particular region or device category.

It’s hard to gauge the impact when Intel hasn’t outlined its replacements. However, it’ll definitely change how and when you hear big news from the chip giant. Instead of getting a slew of announcements all at once, you may see them scattered more evenly throughout the year. And for developers, this could prove to be a headache. If you’re writing apps to take advantage of the latest Intel processors, do you have to go to multiple events to get the knowledge you’d normally find at one? That’s assuming you get an event in the first place, of course.

Those concerns aside, Intel’s decision to axe IDF isn’t shocking. It’s really part of a larger, years-long trend. Apple, Microsoft and other big names have gradually moved away from unveiling everything at a handful of major events (such as Macworld and CES) toward smaller gigs that help them draw more attention to the product du jour. The big difference is that Intel has always been in control of the Developer Forum while other companies were frequently beholden to outsiders. It just wasn’t in a rush to shake up its event strategy until now.

Via: AnandTech

Source: Intel

Facebook reviews reporting process following livestream confession

On Sunday a man posted a video to Facebook detailing his intent to kill another man. Two minutes later he posted another video of the murder. That video was available on the social media site for over two hours before the suspect’s account was disabled and the video was no longer visible. Today Facebook says it is reviewing its reporting flows in order to help people inform the site about content like this.

According to Facebook, the first report about the video containing the shooting arrived one hour and 45 minutes after it went posted. The suspects account was disabled 23 minutes after that report was sent.

The social network also posted a detailed timeline of events:

11:09AM PDT – First video, of intent to murder, uploaded. Not reported to Facebook.
11:11AM PDT – Second video, of shooting, uploaded.
11:22AM PDT – Suspect confesses to murder while using Live, is live for 5 minutes.
11:27AM PDT – Live ends, and Live video is first reported shortly after.
12:59PM PDT – Video of shooting is first reported.
1:22PM PDT – Suspect’s account disabled; all videos no longer visible to public.

In addition to hopefully making it easier to report videos like this, Facebook’s VP of Global Operations Justin Osofsky stated in a post, “we are constantly exploring ways that new technologies can help us make sure Facebook is a safe environment. Artificial intelligence, for example, plays an important part in this work, helping us prevent the videos from being reshared in their entirety.”

The company is also working on its internal review process and says, “currently, thousands of people around the world review the millions of items that are reported to us every week in more than 40 languages.”

Sadly this wasn’t the first death to be broadcast with Facebook Live. As livestreaming and video uploads are adopted by a wider audience, the site will need better tools for reporting and taking down content like this.

Source: Facebook