Google makes its government snooping reports clearer

Google’s Transparency Report can be overwhelmingly tough to navigate, especially if it’s your first time looking at all the data requests the company gets. To make things easier to understand, the big G has redesigned its interface to show clearer data visualizations and add more context for each type of information. More importantly, though, the overhauled report now features a Recent Updates section. You can simply hop over to it to get an overview of the latest government and law enforcement requests since your last visit.

Google also took the chance to make the whole portal look more consistent, since some sections created at different times featured different designs. Finally, Google has added an easier way to download some of its most popular reports from previous years, so you can quickly access old info if you ever need it.

In the company’s announcement, it explained why it decided to give its transparency report a transformation:

“We’re continuing to invest in this report because we’ve seen firsthand how it can help inform and shape the public debate about information online. The data also acts as a lens into significant moments in the history of the web, fundamental changes to security, and our efforts to be transparent about data and how it is used.”

Source: Google

Facebook will allow news subscriptions on Instant Articles

In the face of mounting pressure from publishers, Facebook is launching a news subscription service. The new feature will essentially allow news outlets to erect a paywall on top of Instant Articles. That way Facebook keeps readers locked to its site, while media companies earn a bit more cash from their content. The social network will begin testing the service in October, according to its head of news partnerships Campbell Brown.

If you read The New York Times or The Washington Post online, you’ll probably have come into contact with a paywall. However, they come in different shapes and sizes. Facebook is opting for a metered option, which permits you to read ten free articles per month. Once you hit your quota from a paywalled publisher, you’ll be steered to its homepage to purchase a subscription, reports The Street.

Facebook told Engadget that if all goes to plan, the update will be expanded in 2018. The company added that publishers will be able to implement a freemium model with full control over their articles. Additionally, existing subscribers will be granted full access to paywalled content.

The announcement comes just over a week after a group of 2,000 media outlets turned to Congress for the right to negotiate with Google and Facebook. They claim the web giants hold too much sway over how news content is “displayed, prioritized, and monetized” online. In particular, they’re pushing to receive a bigger cut from the companies’ massive digital ad sales.

Speaking at the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit, Brown said the paywall is a product of Facebook’s meetings with print and digital publishers. In an email, Facebook said several publishers and media execs have been briefed on the feature in one-on-one talks and at roundtable meetings in New York and Paris.

“We are in early talks with several news publishers about how we might better support subscription business models on Facebook,” said Brown. “As part of the Facebook Journalism Project, we are taking the time to work closely together with our partners and understand their needs.”

Prior reports also revealed that the company was in “very advanced” talks with the Wall Street Journal on a subscription model for its articles. The social network has already tried to appease disgruntled publishers by adding more ads to Instant Articles. Now, it seems Facebook will just be another site with a pesky paywall that you’ll probably attempt to bypass.

Source: The Street

AR Startup Blippar Showcases ‘Halos’ Facial Recognition Feature in its Mobile App

Augmented reality startup Blippar today announced a new social feature for its image recognition app that lets users build an AR profile using facial recognition technology.

Called “Halos”, the feature offers users the ability to scan their face into the app and fill various bubbles around their head with personal details, such as their latest tweets, favorite songs on Spotify, YouTube videos, and animated emoji.

Once the facial profile is uploaded, anyone who “blips” the user – or scans their face with the app – sees the information as a halo of bubbles suspended in mid-air. The feature builds on the app’s Public Figure Facial Recognition, introduced last December, which lets users scan 370,000 famous faces to learn interesting facts about them.

The Blippar app generally relies on users aiming their phone camera at everyday objects, products or images and “blipping” them to unlock helpful information, interact with brands, play videos, games, music, and more.

Blippar said in a blog post that the mobile app is mainly its way of showcasing technologies for other companies interested in adopting their visual search engine APIs – or in this case, facial recognition tech, which the company claims has more than 99.6 percent accuracy.

“Our faces are our most unique and expressive form of communication. Through AR Face Profiles we are making the face accessible in digital format for the first time, providing an innovative and dynamic way of expressing ourselves and discovering more about those around you. The technology lends itself to many other forms of implementation, and we are delighted to be able to share our APIs and technology with other companies, who like us, are committed to spurring on innovation in their own industries.”

Apple has previously snapped up smaller companies specializing in facial recognition and augmented reality technology – two tentpole features expected in the so-called “iPhone 8” due to launch later this year.

In February the tech giant bought Israeli firm RealFace, whose proprietary IP could be used to power facial authentication in the upcoming phone, with Apple’s ARKit developer platform likely to be used to showcase the handset’s next-generation augmented reality capabilities.

Blippar is a free download for iPhone available on the App Store. [Direct Link]

Related Roundup: Apple VR Project
Tags: augmented reality, Blippar
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Snap’s Camera Spectacles Now Available Through Amazon

After debuting exclusively inside special pop-up vending machines last year before becoming available as direct web orders, Snap has now begun selling its video-recording Spectacles through Amazon for the first time.

When synced with the Snapchat mobile app, users can tap a button on the Spectacles to begin recording a 10, 20, or 30-second video, which is saved in the “Memories” section of the app and can be revisited and posted to their Story.

As of writing, the $129.99 Spectacles are in stock on July 23 and come in Coral, Black and Teal, and include a charging case, charging cable, cleaning cloth, and Quickstart guide. All Spectacles also come with a one-year warranty.

According to Snap, Spectacles can capture up to 100 Snaps on one charge, and the charging case can hold up to four full charges at a time.

Amazon is an affiliate of MacRumors and this site may benefit if you click product links in the article.

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Google Search update adds more personalization to ‘the feed’

Why it matters to you

Google is making it much easier to find content that is relevant to you and you alone — so there will be less content that you don’t find interesting.

These days, Google is responsible for countless projects spanning all over the tech industry, from self-driving cars, to floating balloons offering internet connectivity. But it hasn’t forgotten its humble beginnings in Search — today, the company is launching an update that should make searching on Google a much more personalized experience.

At the core of the update is the “feed,” or the stream of information you’ll get when you head to the Google app or the formerly-named “Google Now” section on your Google Pixel or Pixel XL smartphone. You won’t see the changes when you head to the Google website on your desktop just yet — though the company says that it’s working on bringing the update to browsers at some point in the near future.

The feed itself was first introduced back in December as a part of the Google app, and the company has slowly been increasing the types of content you see. So what exactly is changing? Well, the feed is about to more personalized, and you’ll be in the driver’s seat for that personalization. You’ll now be able to follow or unfollow individual topics, and the feed will pull in information based on those interests.

Dive deeper

First up is the ability to “dive deeper.” In other words, the feed will help users explore topics they’re interested in, beyond simply reading an article Google presents in the feed. You can tap the header of the card in the Google app to search the relevant topic on Google. From there, as with any search result, you’ll be able to see things like recent news about the topic, related articles, and so on.

Google is also attempting to helping people find multiple different perspectives on a particular topic. How? Well, when you’re presented with a news article, you might see a small carousel section underneath showing other related articles from other publications.

New to you

Google will now present content that it calls “new-to-you.” In other words, that content might not be new on the web, but it might be related to a new interest of yours. If you, for example, start learning the guitar and search about the instrument on the web, Google might pick up on that new interest and present a guide on “how to string your guitar” that was written two years ago. Not new content — but newly important to you.

Follow

The changes so far have been about Google picking up on your interests — but you can also explicitly tell Google about an interest of yours with a new “Follow” button that will show up on topic cards in Google Search. The button is located in an easy-to-find spot on the top left of the card, and once you tap it you’ll immediately start seeing related content in the feed. For example, you might watch Christopher Nolan’s latest film Dunkirk, and find you’re interested in Harry Styles, who’s in the film. Simply search Harry Styles, and you’ll then find the “Follow” button, which you can tap on. It’s as easy to unfollow him if you find too many articles related to One Direction in your feed.

“While we’ve been getting better at understanding your interests, it hasn’t always been easy for you to choose new topics for your feed,” said Google in a blog post. “To help you keep up with exactly what you care about, you’ll now be able to follow topics, right from Search results. Look out for a new “FOLLOW” button next to certain types of search results—including movies, sports teams, your favorite bands or music artists, famous people, and more.”

All this might sound a little familiar. Google Now has been personal to you for years now. But Google sees this as more of a natural evolution of Now rather than anything groundbreakingly new.

“We’re fine-tuning and improving all of those interest signals,” Emily Moxley, product manager for Search, told Digital Trends. “So we’ve worked a fair amount on ensuring that those algorithms work really really well. Plus, if you see an article that interests you can deep dive into that entire topic.”

If successful, the system could one day be used for advertising — though the company says that it has “nothing to share” about advertising in the feed at this point.

The update to the feed is available in both the Android and iOS version of the Google app, and Google Pixel owners will be able to experience the updated feed by swiping left on their home screen.

Google’s new feed uses your searches for a more personal homepage

Last December, Google made a change to its mobile search app: the addition of a news feed. Based on your search history and location, it started showing you news, sports and weather that it thought were relevant to you. Today, Google is taking the feature one step further by making it more comprehensive and more personal than ever. While it’s only available on mobile for now, get ready for this to be a part of Google on the desktop, too. And if it does, it’ll be the biggest change to Google search in quite some time.

While Google tries to make its current feed as personalized as possible, it can’t always figure out exactly what your likes and dislikes are. That’s why, starting today, you’ll see a new “Follow” button next to certain search results. Interested in Beyonce? Crazy about Jeff Bezos? Obsessed with Radiohead? Just search for them in Google, and hit the “Follow” button next to the results header. Now whenever you check your Google feed, you’ll get news and stories about those particular topics.

The feed itself will look and feel pretty different too — and it will enable you to take a deep dive into a particular subject. Let’s say Google figured out you’re a Star Trek fan based on your search history. The next time you check the Google Feed, you might see a card about the new Star Trek series. Click on the header of that card, and it’ll essentially do a search query on that topic automatically. And, hey, while you’re there, you can hit that aforementioned Follow button, too.

Google also took pains to say that the new feed gives you broader context on certain topics and interests. The simplest example is with movies — when you tap on the title, you’ll get the trailer video, the latest reviews and your local theater’s movie times. Another example is with sports; you’ll not only get the latest scores, but also an inline video that’ll show you a related clip, like a recap of a great play at second base.

What’s particularly interesting is when it comes to how the feed handles current events and news. In some cases, you’ll get a “Related Stories” tray underneath certain articles, which you can scroll through by swiping horizontally. Shashi Thakur, a VP of engineering, says Google tries to have this cluster of stories show different viewpoints about the news. “This allows you to make up your own mind, by giving you a diversity of perspectives,” he says.

This sounds pretty similar to what already happens in Google Newsstand, a separate newsreader app on Android, but Newsstand is much more focused on, well, news. Google’s feed, on the other hand, is more about your personal interests based on your search results. So in your personal feed, you’d get stories about puppies and kittens (if you tend to search a lot for those) right next to your late-breaking news stories.

Google also plans to introduce a “New-to-you” function to the feed later this year, which surfaces much-older links to new personal interests. So if you’re just getting into Japanese music, for example, you could very well get a link to a months-old story about J-Pop. You generally don’t want such an old story in your newsreader, but it’s OK if it’s in the personal feed context.

Some hot-button stories, like the health-care bill or the investigations into Russia and the elections, might have an additional breakout box underneath the story that says “Fact Check.” This would link to PolitiFact, Snopes or other fact-checker sites. It’s a system that Google implemented back in April, and only publishers that have met Schema.org’s stringent ClaimReview markup criteria get the nod as reliable sources.

What’s more, Google’s new feed is highly customizable. You can go into preferences and select the kinds of topics you don’t want to see, and you can also make sure certain search results — like when you wanted to know if the mole on your elbow is cancerous — don’t get culled into Google’s algorithm. Plus, Google won’t show certain sensitive content in the feed. A Google spokesperson said in a statement:

“The feed is intended to be your window to the web and to the world, keeping you in the know about the topics you care about. Built on Google’s strengths in machine-learning technologies, we want to help connect you with useful information, but we also want to be careful not to show potentially upsetting or sensitive content when you haven’t asked for it. For instance, we avoid surfacing certain sensitive types of content such as porn or hate speech, and we avoid inferring certain sensitive interests about you in order to tailor your feed (such as topics related to your religion or sexual orientation). We always welcome feedback and also make it easy for you to control the set of interests used to create your feed in the Google app settings and at myaccount.google.com.”

Google’s feed is then highly tailored, highly customizable and is defined entirely by your interests and what you search for. This stands in contrast to Facebook’s News Feed, which relies mostly on your social graph, the people you know and whether or not a story has high engagement (aka what’s popular). And while Google didn’t say it explicitly, the appearance of the “Fact Check” box on hot-button topics is clearly a way the company is addressing the increasing criticism against fake news.

Seeing as Facebook has come under fire for being too much of an echo chamber and promoting news from unreliable news sources (which is really where the fake news phenomenon originated), it’s easy to see how relying on your social graph for news might not be such a great thing. Facebook has done a lot in the past year to address this by hiring more fact-checkers and surfacing more diverse stories, but it still has quite a steep hill to climb to mend its reputation.

Yet, Google’s personalized solution might not fix the echo-chamber issue either. Earlier this year, Facebook attempted to address its echo-chamber issues by changing the Trending Topics so that it doesn’t match your personal interests — now, everyone in the same region will see the same Trending Topics. The idea here is to encourage people to expand their horizons.

Still, it’s a criticism that Google foresaw. As we said earlier, the company has expressed a desire to show a diverse set of viewpoints in the feed, especially in the Related Articles section. In a statement, Google said: “We’ve been thoughtful about designing a user experience that highlights a variety of perspectives on these topics: showing multiple viewpoints from multiple sources, as well as other related articles. Users will be able to fact-check, see other relevant information and get a more holistic understanding about a story.” Whether or not users will want such diverse viewpoints in the first place (they might decide to block them in the app) is another story.

Over the years, both Google and Facebook have attempted to dive into unfamiliar territories, with varying levels of success. Google tried to get into social with Google+, which ultimately proved to be something of a failure (it still exists, but more as a community site than a social network). Facebook, on the other hand, has shifted from a social network to become more of a source of news. It’s certainly made a lot of money doing so (thanks to advertising), but it suffered significant community backlash by not taking this responsibility seriously.

Now Google is turning to the feed business too, but this is something well-rooted in something the company knows best: Search. And Google’s new and updated feed is basically just an extension of search. “Your feed keeps you in the know even when you’re not searching,” says Ben Gomes, another Google VP of engineering. “It’s a stream of updates on topics are interesting to you.” And who better than Google, to know exactly who you are, and what you like.

Turn10 reveals the first 167 cars of Forza Motorsport 7

The latest installment in the Forza racing game series, Forza Motorsport 7, will feature more cars than any of the past titles, at over 700 cars. In the lead-up to the game’s release, Turn10 Studios and Microsoft will be revealing portions of the massive car list. The first chunk is a whopping 167 cars, and it features supercars, track machines, and racecars.

The most numerous automaker on the list is Ferrari, with 46 cars. It includes everything from a 1948 Ferrari 166MM Barchetta to the Ferrari LaFerrari. It’s followed by Porsche, with 29 models including both the 918 Spyder and the 700-horsepower 911 GT2 that made its debut at the Xbox E3 conference. Aston Martin and Lamborghini each have strong showings, too, with 14 and 18 cars respectively. There are a wealth of racecars from McLaren as well, including Ayrton Senna’s 1988 F1 car. Aside from major supercar builders, there are many smaller marques including Koenigsegg, Lykan, Pagani, Noble, Donkervoort, and more. Check out the full list below.

• 2013 Ariel Atom 500 V8
• 2016 Ariel Nomad
• 1958 Aston Martin DBR1
• 1960 Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato
• 1964 Aston Martin DB5
• 1977 Aston Martin V8 Vantage
• 1998 Aston Martin V8 Vantage V600
• 2006 Aston Martin #007 Aston Martin Racing DBR9
• 2008 Aston Martin DBS
• 2010 Aston Martin One-77
• 2012 Aston Martin V12 Zagato
• 2012 Aston Martin Vanquish
• 2013 Aston Martin V12 Vantage S
• 2016 Aston Martin Vantage GT12
• 2016 Aston Martin Vulcan
• 2017 Aston Martin DB11
• 2014 BAC Mono
• 1992 Bugatti EB110 Super Sport
• 2011 Bugatti Veyron Super Sport
• 2013 Donkervoort D8 GTO
• 1948 Ferrari 166MM Barchetta
• 1952 Ferrari 375
• 1953 Ferrari 500 Mondial
• 1957 Ferrari 250 California
• 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa
• 1962 Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso
• 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO
• 1963 Ferrari 250LM
• 1964 Ferrari F-158 F1
• 1967 Ferrari #24 Ferrari Spa 330 P4
• 1968 Ferrari 365 GTB/4
• 1969 Ferrari Dino 246 GT
• 1971 Ferrari #2 Ferrari Automobili 312 P
• 1976 Ferrari #1 Scuderia Ferrari 312T2
• 1982 Ferrari #71 Ferrari France 512 BB/LM
• 1982 Ferrari #72 N.A.R.T. 512 BB/LM
• 1984 Ferrari 288 GTO
• 1987 Ferrari F40
• 1989 Ferrari F40 Competizione
• 1990 Ferrari #1 Scuderia Ferrari 641
• 1992 Ferrari 512 TR
• 1994 Ferrari F355 Berlinetta
• 1995 Ferrari F50
• 1996 Ferrari F50 GT
• 1998 Ferrari #12 Risi Competizione F333 SP
• 1998 Ferrari #30 MOMO Doran Racing F333 SP
• 2002 Ferrari 575M Maranello
• 2002 Ferrari Enzo Ferrari
• 2003 Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale
• 2004 Ferrari 612 Scaglietti
• 2007 Ferrari 430 Scuderia
• 2008 Ferrari California
• 2009 Ferrari 458 Italia
• 2010 Ferrari 599 GTO
• 2010 Ferrari 599XX
• 2011 Ferrari #62 Risi Competizione 458 Italia GTC
• 2011 Ferrari FF
• 2012 Ferrari F12berlinetta
• 2013 Ferrari 458 Speciale
• 2013 Ferrari LaFerrari
• 2014 Ferrari #51 AF Corse 458 Italia GTE
• 2014 Ferrari #62 Risi Competizione 458 Italia GTLM
• 2014 Ferrari California T
• 2014 Ferrari FXX K
• 2015 Ferrari 488 GTB
• 2015 Ferrari F12tdf
• 2012 Hennessey Venom GT
• 2011 Koenigsegg Agera
• 2015 Koenigsegg One:1
• 2016 Koenigsegg Regera
• 2013 KTM X-Bow R
• 1967 Lamborghini Miura P400
• 1986 Lamborghini LM 002
• 1988 Lamborghini Countach LP5000 QV
• 1988 Lamborghini Jalpa
• 1997 Lamborghini Diablo SV
• 2008 Lamborghini Reventón
• 2010 Lamborghini Murciélago LP 670-4 SV
• 2011 Lamborghini Gallardo LP 570-4 Superleggera
• 2011 Lamborghini Sesto Elemento
• 2012 Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4
• 2013 Lamborghini Veneno
• 2014 Lamborghini #14 GMG Racing LP 570-4 Super Trofeo
• 2014 Lamborghini #18 DragonSpeed Gallardo LP 570-4 Super Trofeo
• 2014 Lamborghini Huracán LP 610-4
• 2014 Lamborghini Urus
• 2015 Lamborghini #63 Squadra Corse Huracán LP620-2 Super Trofeo
• 2016 Lamborghini Aventador LP750-4 SV
• 2016 Lamborghini Centenario LP 770-4
• 1956 Lotus Eleven
• 1966 Ford Lotus Cortina
• 1967 Lotus Type 49
• 1971 Lotus Elan Sprint
• 1976 Lotus #5 Team Lotus 77
• 1990 Vauxhall Lotus Carlton
• 1999 Lotus Elise Series 1 Sport 190
• 2000 Lotus 340R
• 2002 Lotus Esprit V8
• 2005 Lotus Elise 111S
• 2009 Lotus 2-Eleven
• 2011 Lotus Evora S
• 2012 Lotus Exige S
• 2016 Lotus 3-Eleven
• 1939 Maserati 8CTF
• 1953 Maserati A6GCS/53 Pininfarina Berlinetta
• 1957 Maserati 300 S
• 1961 Maserati Tipo 61 Birdcage
• 1997 Maserati Ghibli Cup
• 2004 Maserati MC12
• 2010 Maserati Gran Turismo S
• 2014 Maserati #35 M.Calamia Swiss Team MC Trofeo
• 2014 Maserati Ghibli S Q4
• 1966 McLaren M2B
• 1969 McLaren #4 McLaren Cars M8B
• 1976 McLaren #11 Team McLaren M23
• 1988 McLaren #12 Honda McLaren MP4/4
• 1993 McLaren F1
• 1997 McLaren F1 GT
• 2011 McLaren #59 McLaren GT 12C GT3
• 2011 McLaren 12C
• 2013 McLaren P1
• 2014 McLaren #60 Bhaitech 12C GT3
• 2015 McLaren 570S Coupé
• 2015 McLaren 650S Coupe
• 2015 McLaren P1 GTR
• 2010 Noble M600
• 2009 Pagani Zonda Cinque Roadster
• 2010 Pagani Zonda R
• 2012 Pagani Huayra
• 2016 Pagani Huayra BC
• 1955 Porsche 550A Spyder
• 1957 Porsche 356A Speedster
• 1960 Porsche 718 RS 60
• 1970 Porsche 914/6
• 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS
• 1982 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.3
• 1987 Porsche #17 Porsche AG 962C
• 1987 Porsche #17 Porsche Dunlop 962C
• 1987 Porsche 959
• 1989 Porsche 944 Turbo
• 1993 Porsche 928 GTS
• 1995 Porsche 911 GT2
• 1998 Porsche 911 GT1 Strassenversion
• 2003 Porsche Carrera GT
• 2004 Porsche 911 GT3 (996)
• 2008 Porsche #7 Penske Racing RS Spyder Evo
• 2011 Porsche #45 Flying Lizard 911 GT3-RSR
• 2012 Porsche 911 GT2 RS
• 2012 Porsche 911 GT3 RS 4.0
• 2012 Porsche Cayenne Turbo
• 2014 Porsche 911 Turbo S
• 2014 Porsche 918 Spyder
• 2015 Porsche #19 Porsche Team 919 Hybrid
• 2015 Porsche Macan Turbo
• 2016 Porsche 911 GT3 RS
• 2016 Porsche Cayman GT4
• 2017 Porsche #1 Porsche Team 919 Hybrid
• 2017 Porsche Panamera Turbo
• 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS
• 2011 Radical SR8 RX
• 2015 Radical RXC Turbo
• 2004 Saleen S7
• 2016 Spania GTA GTA Spano
• 2005 TVR Sagaris
• 2015 Ultima Evolution Coupe 1020
• 2016 W Motors Lykan HyperSport
• 2016 Zenvo TS1

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Google Search App Gains Personalized News Feed Section

Google today announced a new personalized news feed for its namesake iOS app, offering a stream of content based on user search history and topics they choose to follow.

The feed appears directly below the search bar in the Google app, where users will see a stream of personally relevant articles and media content powered by Google’s machine learning algorithms.

The feed sits in place of Google Now, the company’s predictive search feature that displays traffic updates, weather, and other information, all of which has been moved to a new tab called Updates.

Going forward, when users perform a search in the app, some results will display a “follow” button alongside them. Content ripe for following will include news, sports, and entertainment articles, with relevance prioritized by the user’s search history and previous follows.

The feed itself can be customized by tapping the three dots on top of a card, from which content can be shared, followed, or dismissed to avoid seeing the subject again.

The feed is the company’s latest effort to encourage users to browse with the Google app instead of thinking of it as a simple search portal. Its introduction in the app is also seen as a prelude to bringing similar personalized elements to the Google homepage proper.

The new feed should start showing up in the U.S. today and will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks. The Google app is a free download for iPhone and iPad on the App Store. [Direct Link]

Tags: Google, Google Now
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WhatsApp Video and Photo Messages Reportedly Blocked in China

China has reportedly started blocking some features of the WhatsApp messaging service, as authorities continue to tighten controls over the country’s internet.

WhatsApp users began reporting problems with sharing content on the chat platform yesterday, with many unable to send video and pictures. Despite initial fears of a communications-wide ban of the Facebook-owned service, text-based messages within the app appear to be unaffected.

WhatsApp’s reach in China is small compared to homegrown chat service WeChat, which boasts 900 million users but is routinely subjected to state monitoring and censorship. However, Chinese users concerned about privacy have increasingly turned to the encrypted WhatsApp platform to communicate with friends and relatives as well as businesses abroad.

Facebook and Instagram have remained blocked by China’s Great Firewall since 2009 and 2014, respectively. Encrypted messaging service Telegram was also blocked inside China after it became popular with the country’s human rights lawyers, while several domestic VPNs – which are commonly used to evade censorship and access services abroad – were recently shut down after authorities said they were unauthorized to run.

China appears to be clamping down on potential sources of politically sensitive news as it prepares for a major leadership reshuffle in Beijing. The event happens every five years and often leads to a tightening of online controls to project an air of stability in the country. The death of jailed Nobel peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo last week also spurred censors into action, with commemorations on WeChat reportedly blocked by authorities.

(Via The New York Times.)

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.

Tags: China, WhatsApp
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Bixby Voice now available for every Galaxy S8 and S8+ in the U.S.

It’s time to start talking to your phone (even more).

A full three months after the Galaxy S8 and S8+ launched in the U.S., its voice-powered assistant Bixby Voice is available for everyone to use. An OTA update with the necessary new software is heading out to every U.S. Galaxy S8 and S8+ starting today, July 19, and once it arrives on your phone you’ll have the same voice control features that many people have been testing the past few weeks as part of a limited beta program.

Bixby Voice is genuinely useful for many functions on your phone, but much of the luster of the feature has worn off as development delays meant it wasn’t ready to launch with the phones themselves back in April. With many of those kinks worked out now to the point of being ready for a consumer launch, Samsung will have to really start its campaign of advertising Bixby Voice as a selling point of the Galaxy S8 and S8+.

The cold truth is the entire Bixby ecosystem just hasn’t taken off with consumers.

Of course the goal of Bixby Voice is to be just one part of a larger set of Bixby features, which up to this point also haven’t really caught on. The Bixby Home interface, often opined as a poor man’s version of Google Now, feels weak and rarely useful. And Bixby Vision doesn’t have the data set or algorithms to be a truly useful part of the camera experience. From what we’ve seen of Bixby Voice, however, there’s at least something there that’s properly unique — it’s meant to help you control things on your phone, not just head out to the internet and answer questions for you. It’s a proper differentiator from the way Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Apple’s Siri work.

If you’re one of the many in the U.S. who have a Galaxy S8 or S8+ and are curious about this whole Bixby experience, it really is worth checking out Bixby Voice once the latest software hits your phone. It could be enough to make you appreciate Samsung’s hard work on the features, and even think that that hardware Bixby button under your volume rocker was worth it after all.

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+

• Galaxy S8 and S8+ review!
• Galaxy S8 and S8+ specs
• Everything you need to know about the Galaxy S8’s cameras
• Get to know Samsung Bixby
• Join our Galaxy S8 forums

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