Instant Apps now on 500 million Android devices

Instant Apps now available on 500 million Android devices.

Instant Apps are a way for developers to provide a lightweight, modularized portion of their full app experience when a user opens specific search results. The user has to enable Instant Apps in the Settings menu before the feature will work, however. Announced at Google I/O 2016, the feature was made available to all developers after this year’s I/O.

Google has announced the feature is now available to 500 million users, so developers should feel encouraged to start building for the feature. Instant Apps are available for any user running Android 6.0 and later, or 45.8% of all Android users. While that’s not a majority, that’s still a very large number of users and will continue to grow in the future.

Google also shared that application developers are already seeing a return on their work for Instant Apps. Vimeo increased session duration by 130% following the integration of Instant Apps, while the real estate purchasing application dotloop saw a 62% increase in users using its service to sign documents after integrating Instant Apps into its platform.

Google also provides a list of best practices for developers interested in integrating Instant Apps into their service.

Have you stumbled across an Instant App you like yet? Let us know down below!

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Galaxy Note 8 brochure leaks, confirming rumored specs

A brochure for the Galaxy Note 8 has leaked, listing the device’s specifications.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is expected to be announced at an Unpacked event on August 23, and as we get closer to that date we learn more and more about Samsung’s next flagship. Earlier, we saw super clear images of the device, and now a product brochure shows off the phone’s specifications.

Ausdroid shared the brochure, and the specs are mostly what could be expected by a late 2017 flagship: the phone will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, feature a 6.3-inch QHD+ AMOLED display with an 18:9 aspect ratio, 6GB of RAM, and a 3,300 mAh battery.

Storage is where it gets really interesting: the introductory model will feature 64GB of internal storage, while the more expensive model will include a whopping 256GB of internal storage. If that is somehow not enough, the phone will also include a MicroSD slot for expansion.

Are you excited for the Galaxy Note 8? Let us know down below!

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Google awarded patent on crazy 2-in-1 laptop design

Google patents a wild looking design that may show up in its next laptop.

Back before it became a line of phones, the Chromebook Pixel line was known for setting an example of what a high end Chromebook would look like. The first model had a unique 3:2 aspect ratio, a high-resolution screen and an optional LTE model. That line culminated in the Pixel C, an Android convertible tablet. Since then, ASUS and Samsung seriously stepped up in the design department, with the Samsung Chromebook Plus using a 3:2 aspect ratio screen, Android applications out of the box, and a stylus for note-taking.

Even with those third party options, it appears Google will be releasing its own convertible sometime in the future. Slashgear shared a patent awarded to Google for a laptop with a unique keyboard area. Rather than just opening the screen and seeing the keyboard and trackpad, the user would be greeted by a smooth cover.

Said cover has a hinge that can be opened to reveal the keyboard and trackpad. I’m not sure what Google’s intentions are, but one advantage of this may be to provide a smooth surface for users to grip while using the device in tablet mode. I use my Chromebook C302 in tablet mode regularly, and it’s always a bit awkward to feel the keys when holding the device. It may seem trivial, but providing a smooth surface for users to hold would greatly benefit the tablet experience for the device. The cover is shown to be held in place by magnets, so it should be easy to open when the user needs to get to the keyboard and touchpad. Another possible use for this surface would be pen input, similar to the Lenovo Yoga Book.

The touchpad itself may be related to another patent Google was awarded for a “highly configurable controller is described that includes a number of different types of control mechanisms that emulate a wide variety of conventional control mechanisms using pressure and location sensitive sensors that generate high-density control information which may be mapped to the controls of a wide variety of devices and software.”

ChromeUnboxed has been tracking a new Chrome device from Google with a detachable keyboard. While nothing in this patent suggests the unique keyboard will come to that rumored device, that device is also said to have a fingerprint sensor, a new keyboard layout, and other “firsts” for the Chromebook world. It would make sense for Google to build as many unique features as it can for one “halo” device to serve as an example to third party partners.

Google is likely to hold a hardware event in October to announce the Pixel 2, so that would make for a great venue to announce this new device. We have yet to see any leaks of the device itself, but we will make a post if something does become available.

Would you be interested in a new Google Chromebook Pixel? Let us know down below!

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How to enable and use Instant Apps on Android

Instant Apps make it easier to get things done on Android without downloading apps. Here’s how.

Instant Apps are a neat idea: instead of downloading an app from the Play Store that takes time, resources and, in many countries, expensive mobile data, it allows Android users running Marshmallow and above (and soon Lollipop, too) to “try before you buy.” Since rolling out to all developers earlier this year, Google says that 500 million Android devices have access to the innovative feature, but Instant Apps doesn’t work out of the box, at least not yet — it needs to be enabled.

If your phone runs Android 6.0, you can go to your phone’s settings to enable it. Here’s how to do it.

How to enable Android Instant Apps

From your home screen swipe down on the notification shade.
Tap on Settings (the cog icon).

Scroll down and tap on Google.

Tap on Instant Apps.
Toggle feature On.
Confirm you agree to the terms by tapping, Yes, I’m in.

That’s it! Once you’re done enabling Instant Apps, you can then search for a compatible app and begin using it. Right now, there are over 50 apps compatible with Instant Apps, including Jet, Onefootball, Citymapper, Realtor, Jet, Vimeo, dotloop, NYTimes Crosswords and many more.

How to access an Instant App

It’s possible to access an Instant App from any URL, including search, social media, messaging, and other deep links. The easiest way is just to search for an app from Google. In this example, we’re looking to get directions somewhere in New York using Citymapper.

Go to a Google search page.
Enter your search term, such as Citymapper.
Tap on the first result.
Use the app, or if you want the whole experience, tap on Get the app to download it from the Play Store.

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The next ‘Final Fantasy’ brawler ‘Dissidia NT’ heads to PS4 in January

We knew that the next entry in Final Fantasy’s all-star brawler Dissidia series would be coming to PS4, and a possible Amazon mishap clued us in to an end-of-2017 release. Square Enix has announced that Dissidia Final Fantasy NT will arrive a little later on January 30th, 2018 — and there are a couple collector’s editions to choose from, if that’s your thing.

The latest Dissidia comes out almost a decade after the first one launched on the original PSP. The series ventured to arcades in the interim, but NT will be the first on PS4 and feature sweet HD visuals. Notable also is the inclusion of Team Ninja, makers of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive franchises; Presumably, Square Enix brought them on to tool up NT’s combat.

As we noted before, NT will have players picking three-person squads from a 20-character roster of Final Fantasy heroes and villains — including FF XV’s glum prince Noctis, as we heard at E3. Square Enix didn’t have much else to add, but they did add details for two release options beyond the standard version of the game. The ‘Ultimate Collector’s Edition’ gets a 21cm tall bust of the first Final Fantasy’s stock hero alongside a soundtrack, 80-page artbook and season pass for six more characters after launch. There’s also a Limited Edition Steelbook edition of the game for those who just want a fancy case and some extra art.

Source: Square Enix

TCL limits its budget-friendly 4K smart TV to one size

When we picked TCL’s P-Series Roku 4K Smart TV for our Buyer’s and Back to School Guides, we noted a perfectly good television with an “extra-bright screen, good contrast and accurate colors” — a steal for $650. The Wirecutter named it “The Best 4K TV on a Budget,” and CNET loved it. At the time, the TV was also available at a more budget and space-friendly $500, 50-inch model as well as a higher-end 65-inch display for $1000. Now the company has confirmed to Engadget that it is dropping the smaller and larger sizes and will only make the 55-inch version of this budget TV.

TCL told CNET that it was shifting focus to the single model P-Series, adding “new, cutting-edge technology to further enhance the home entertainment experience.” The manufacturer promised to explain why they quit making the larger and smaller sized 4K TVs “at a later date.”

Update, 3:45PM ET: TCL confirmed via email that the P-series would only be offered in the 55-inch size this year.

Source: CNET

Google Home guides you through Vogue’s 125th anniversary issue

Google’s partnerships with media companies for Home add-ons goes beyond advertisements for Beauty and the Beast. For next month’s 125th anniversary issue of Vogue, readers can ask Google Assistant for more information on a quintet of articles. Once they do, the journalists who wrote them will share bits of interviews with Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lawrence, Serena Williams and Oprah Winfrey that didn’t make it to print. No, it isn’t Spotify voice control, but at least it isn’t an unprompted ad for a movie, either.

Options for neo-Nazis on the internet are starting to shrink

If you’re an American who’s ever wondered what it would be like to have had the internet and today’s technology during the time of Nazi ascension in Germany, take a look around. You’re soaking in it.

While a whole lot of us have been aware of this since at least last year’s election, it’s only now starting to sink in for companies who control the internet. Bitterly, only after the literal killing of people in the streets by white supremacists. Who, until this week, enjoyed using online services for their organizing, sharing, harassing, business needs and getting hateful shit done.

It wasn’t the post-election spike in hate crimes that turned the tide. It wasn’t the 1000+ hate incidents against minorities within the first month after the election, or the 86% rise in anti-Semitic hate incidents within the last quarter — which the Southern Poverty Law Center attributes to Trump’s emboldening of hate groups.

Nor was it the murders of Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, or other men of color whose lives were denigrated and deaths have been mocked and celebrated in posts on sites (and social media groups) such as Daily Stormer since at least 2014.

The event to finally move the needle for internet companies doing business with hate groups was the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia. More specifically, the tipping point came when neo-Nazi-Republican website/group Daily Stormer ran an attention-grabbing post denigrating the victim.

Compared to the black men listed above, Daily Stormer went light on Heyer, but it was no less repulsive. This makes sense for them because she’s white; Daily Stormer didn’t call her mother a “stupid ape” (Michael Brown, 2014), or say a hero “put down [a] rabid dog” (Tamir Rice, 2017), nor could they call it a “chimpout” (Freddie Gray, 2016).

Ms. Heyer’s awful turn in Daily Stormer’s spotlight just happened to be the thing notoriously skeezy web host, GoDaddy, found to be one bridge too far. As the week unfolded, the same would be evident for Google, YouTube, Twitter, Sendgrid, Zoho, Cloudflare, PayPal, Apple Pay, Discord, Reddit, Spotify, and Facebook.

It began Monday when GoDaddy booted the site from its hosting service, citing a Terms violation.

The rest was a domino effect of companies finally sorta-admitting they’re part of a serious problem. And, entertainingly, hackers making life hell for the online presence of neo-Nazi-Republicans. Which feels good, and is fun to laugh at.

Yet the decision of web providers yanking services and ejecting Nazi scumbags is apparently a controversial and unprecedented issue. It would appear that until now, like Trump, internet companies like Facebook and Cloudflare have not shared the instinctive moral revulsion most Americans, Europeans, and British feel toward white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Their reaction is not unlike Sheriff Bell in No Country For Old Men, whose character hallmark is first-time astonishment that such vileness could exist in a person. While the rest of us have been pursued in a slow-motion nightmare from these people in large part thanks to their internet services all along.

First, let’s roll back to this week’s plot developments. After getting GoDaddy’s boot, Daily Stormer unsuccessfully tried to re-host at Google, which ejected the site after just two hours. Google then terminated the site’s YouTube channel. According to the EFF, “Google also placed the dailystormer.com domain on “Client Hold”, which means that Daily Stormer’s owner cannot activate, use or move the domain to another service.” They added that “it’s unclear whether this is for a limited amount of time, or whether Google has decided to effectively take ownership of the dailystormer.com domain permanently.”

Chat and VOIP app Discord joined the eviction party next, widening the net and shutting down several neo-Nazi servers and accounts. Then email newsletter service Sendgrid and SaaS suite provider Zoho, who confirmed to press they’d terminated services to Daily Stormer. Surprisingly, Reddit was next at bat. The company told press it was actively banning subreddits linked to far-right extremists, though only confirmed it had banned r/Physical_Removal, which openly advocated violence.

To everyone’s shock, Facebook actually did something that may barely impact its lucrative active daily user numbers: It banned eight hate group pages (including one called Genuine Donald Trump).

According to CNET, Facebook also “removed Charlottesville’s Unite the Right event page over the weekend, and is currently removing all links to an article at The Daily Stormer that attacked Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer, unless they explicitly condemn the source material.” One individual had his profiles removed by both Facebook and Instagram, former IT guy and prominent white nationalist Christopher Cantwell, who has been labeled an extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It should be noted that press has simultaneously noted that hate groups and white supremacist memes “thrive, even in wide open, public communities” on Facebook. Don’t worry, it’s still a clean, well-lit place for fascism: Facebook still defends Holocaust denial as free speech as its policy, despite the fact that it is illegal in 16 countries because it is linked to violence against Jews.

That was a hell of a Tuesday. By Wednesday Spotify finally moved to remove a slew of white-supremacist artists that were flagged three years ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center as racist “hate bands.” An article on Digital Music News from Monday called “I Just Found 27 White Supremacist Hate bands On Spotify” apparently prompted the removals.

Developer platform Twilio also announced it was adding “an explicit prohibition of hate speech” into its Acceptable Use Policy. Apple and PayPal started disabling payment support from some, but not all “websites selling white nationalist and Nazi apparel.” PayPal got explicit about it. Squarespace said it would be dropping white supremacist sites from its hosting service, but declined to say which ones.

Wednesday also saw the final support beam, Daily Stormer’s staunch DDoS protector Cloudflare throwing in the towel. The service announced it would no longer do business with the site because Daily Stormer had bragged that Cloudflare supported its mission. That made Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince change his mind about hosting them.

Prince’s statement said, “Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion. The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.”

Groups who want to spew vileness and incite violence but want to keep their Cloudflare account, take note: Loose lips sink ships, and all that.

Or maybe just don’t be a Nazi

By the time Cloudflare dumped them, Daily Stormer had moved to a .onion address then a .ru (Russian top-level domain) URL, while also trying to move its Facebook following to Russian Facebook clone VK. The Verge noted that at time of publishing the beleaguered Nazi-Republican site’s VK page had “only 88 followers.” Thursday saw even the .ru domain suspended when the Russian government’s media regulator said it needed to review the site’s “extremist content.”

From the moment images of Charlottesville hit Twitter, Anonymous and associates activated faster than the internet’s notoriously racist and diversity-challenged powerhouse corporate darlings. It’s no surprise; this wing of hacktivism hates racists with a historic passion and loves to act on it.

Anonymous was knocking various neo-Nazi and KKK sites offline Sunday night and continues as we publish this column; the #OpDomesticTerrorism hashtag on Twitter charts the activities. They pwned single and multiple fascist and Nazi sites, the Daily Stormer BBS, and other bits and pieces, as well as directing anger at the city of Charlottesville. This carnage isn’t letting up anytime soon.

The internet’s rejection and ejection of neo-Nazi and white supremacy sites this week has tensions high about issues of speech, on top of tensions being at a breaking point with fascist viewpoints, their enticements to violence, and their backing in the White House.

The problem is that the same companies we’re cheering at to take a bite out of Nazi privilege and access are the same companies whose takedown and censorship processes are muddy — which is what gives them play to censor people they simply don’t want on their services. Like people who work in the sex industry, and LGBT people, who are most often silenced at the censorship end of these policies. One need only read the news over the past several years to see that legitimate voices get silenced online far more than those of aging skinheads and young Nazis.

But there’s a huge difference between talking about sex or questioning corruption in a democracy, and saying that the Holocaust wasn’t real or advocating race war.

It’s of course made worse that they’ve done nothing about it until now, and that content policies are unclear, hypocritical, and unevenly enforced (or left to user reports, which are always abused).

But it all leads to where we are now.

Internet companies like Facebook have been pretending to hold themselves to a country-level bar of “free speech” when we know it’s only ever been about the bottom line, because all the while they’re censoring other topics at the behest of governments or to save face for top-tier users (like Donald Trump). So until now, no businesses were being called out on accountability, or put to the real test of “it’s a business so they can actually do as they please, right to refuse service to anyone, etc.”

It’s definitely fuel for the neo-Nazi fires, because they see themselves as persecuted. Right now they’re crying oppression, that their “free speech” is impinged upon. Poor Nazi: Facebook kicked you off? You lost your Instagram? PayPal won’t do business with you? Don’t cry “free speech” for me, Argentina. Welcome to the world of the rest of us, especially sex workers, adult performers, LGBT people, and all of us who write about, talk about, make art about or anything else having to do with sex.

Interestingly, this week, three local ACLU chapters of California have all broken rank with ACLU National saying categorically “White supremacist violence is not free speech.” Holocaust denial is illegal in 16 countries for a reason: That it inspires violence against Jews. And yes, those arguing to keep it alive — like Facebook — say it is a matter of free speech.

But to what end is “free speech” justifiable for a company?

White supremacist violence is not free speech. https://t.co/PSgvd9iXiH

— ACLU of Northern CA (@ACLU_NorCal) August 16, 2017

Nazis getting kicked to the online curb isn’t the end of free speech or the beginning of a slippery slope. It was kind of the whole point of World War II.

Images: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters (Charlottesville / Heyer memorial); Roberto Baldwin/AOL (Reddit); Carlo Allegri / Reuters (WWII veterans)

Porn site offers to revive ‘Sense 8’ for a third season

Sense8 is one of the more creatively interesting shows available on just about any streaming service. The Wachowski-made Netflix show, now in its second and final season, tells the story of eight people with special powers using very human themes: love, belonging, gender, and (of course) sex. It’s that last bit there that interests internet porn site xHamster. The company sent an open letter to Lilly and Lana Wachowski offering to pick up the tab for an “actual revival of the series.”

xHamster vice president Alex Hawkins writes that his company gets “more visitors daily than the New York Times, ESPN or the Daily Mail.” Hawkins also notes that xHamster has “the eyeballs, and the revenue” to produce the series, promising that xHamster would allow the team a full production budget free of competition from other shows. Further, he says, “we know that a series about polymorphous perversity is a hard sell for a mainstream network like Netflix.” Now there’s an understatement.

While Sense8 isn’t only about non-normative, multi-partnered sexuality, the series does spend an equal amount of time on human beings who have sexual desires, something many other televisions shows that purport to tell our stories could learn from. This also isn’t the first time xHamster has tried to woo people who are in the news for its own gain, including a contract offer for former White House press secretary Sean Spicer. Even xHamster knows it is “an unlikely home,” but Hawkins is undeterred. “…five years ago, people laughed at the idea of Netflix producing original series,” he writes. “We think that our time, like yours, has come.”

Via: TV Guide

Source: xHamster

‘Marjorie Prime’ explores the limits of AI built from memories

Marjorie, 86, is dying. In her final months, she finds solace in an artificially intelligent holographic re-creation of her late husband, Walter, called “Walter Prime.” They talk every day, recounting special moments of their life together. But her memory isn’t perfect, and Walter Prime can rely only on retellings to piece together what happened. He also talks to other people, including Marjorie’s daughter Tess and son-in-law Jon, who move in to take care of her. From all of his exchanges, Walter Prime gathers various bits of information on how to play his part, and pieces together a history shared among all the characters he refers to in his conversations.

We are only human, and our recollections are imperfect. So when we try to create an account of our past, can we trust ourselves? That’s the question at the heart of the new film Marjorie Prime, which opens today in 15 cities (with a national rollout to eventually follow). It is a quiet, contemplative drama that studies our fear of technology and mortality by juxtaposing people with computerized versions of themselves. Thanks to convincing performances by Jon Hamm (Walter Prime), Lois Smith (Marjorie/Marjorie Prime) and Geena Davis (Tess/Tess Prime), the movie forces us to consider if we’re to blame for all the times AI goes awry. It also questions whether we’re entrusting technology with too much responsibility.

In Marjorie Prime, the holograms (usually of the deceased) are meant to provide comfort, although they sometimes act as caretakers. For example, Walter Prime obligingly tells Marjorie stories of how he wooed her and when he proposed, based on the tales she had told him in the past. It’s an unconventional form of therapy, but the act of talking to a loved one without fear of judgment can be just as cathartic as traditional counseling. Walter Prime also reminds Marjorie to eat, calmly questioning the excuses she comes up with to avoid doing so. By contrast, Marjorie’s human caretaker, Julie, sneaks the ailing woman cigarettes when Tess and Jon aren’t around.

Compared with AI, people’s imperfections stand out. These imperfections are passed on to the Primes. The stories that Marjorie shares with Walter Prime (that he later tells back to her) are the versions she wants to remember. For a variety of reasons, she casually changes details like the movie she was watching with her late husband when he proposed, and even the people involved in certain events. The Primes are also designed to mimic verbal signs of hesitation like stuttering or pausing to appear more realistic, and thus more flawed.

The film challenges our mistrust of AI and technology, showing that if anything is untrustworthy, it’s our own memories. We are the ones who contaminate software with our own biases. We don’t need Marjorie Prime to show us that — our own world today is full of examples: Microsoft’s AI chatbot Tay, who was turned racist by Twitter users, and the company’s subsequent bot Zo, who met the same fate. In the US justice system, algorithms that are used to predict a person’s potential to re-offend and thus determine the extent of punishment is reportedly biased. AI is a man-made product, and its flaws are created by us. It is also our fault when we entrust the technology with responsibilities, like making them our therapists, as the characters in Marjorie Prime have done, however unwittingly.

The film eventually takes its central idea to the logical conclusion, where we find out whether AI can even fool themselves into thinking they’re human.

The questions of trusting AI and contrasting humans with machines have already been heavily explored (think: Her or the episode “Be Right Back” in Black Mirror), but Marjorie Prime delves deeper into how human nature is to blame. Yet it withholds judgement and shows how we can’t help our failings, especially as we age. The beauty of humanity often lies in its flaws, and it’s something AI can imitate but not fully replicate.