Google Pulls Access to YouTube on Amazon’s Echo Show Smart Speaker

Google pulled access to YouTube through Amazon’s display-based Echo Show smart speaker on Tuesday, a move that appears to have angered Amazon and led to conflicting public statements by both companies over the sudden move.

“Currently, Google is not supporting Youtube on Echo Show.” That’s the message Alexa started giving Echo Show owners yesterday afternoon when they tried to access the video service. An Amazon spokesperson later confirmed to The Verge that YouTube was no longer available on Echo Show devices, and offered a statement implying that Google’s decision had been an unwelcome surprise.

Google made a change today around 3 pm. YouTube used to be available to our shared customers on Echo Show. As of this afternoon, Google has chosen to no longer make YouTube available on Echo Show, without explanation and without notification to customers. There is no technical reason for that decision, which is disappointing and hurts both of our customers.

Google issued its own statement to The Verge shorty afterwards, contradicting Amazon’s assertion that the move had been made without fair warning.

We’ve been in negotiations with Amazon for a long time, working towards an agreement that provides great experiences for customers on both platforms. Amazon’s implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience. We hope to be able to reach an agreement and resolve these issues soon.

The move comes as a blow to Amazon’s hopes for its Echo Show smart speaker, given that it has been marketed with a heavy emphasis on the device’s display, which lets users see details related to their Alexa queries and watch online video – food recipes for instance, which are often hosted on YouTube.

Google’s decision to pull access reflects similar moves by the company to protect its vision of how the YouTube service should function and appear to users. Earlier this month, Google forced popular iOS app ProTube off the App Store after serving the developer multiple takedown requests because it said the app violated YouTube’s terms of service.

Tags: Google, Amazon, YouTube, Amazon Echo
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AirPods Shipping Estimates Improve to 3 to 5 Business Days

Apple is closing in on its aim to achieve supply/demand balance for its AirPods, with the popular earphones now shipping from the online Apple Store in just three to five business days in the United States, Canada, U.K., Australia, and several other countries around the world.

According to Apple’s U.S. website, AirPods ordered today will be delivered between October 4 and October 6, while U.K. customers ordering today are being quoted delivery dates between October 3 and October 5. These are the best estimates Apple has offered since the AirPods launched in December 2016.

AirPods have been in extremely short supply since they became available for purchase, with a typical wait time of six weeks from order to delivery. Only in August did stock begin steadily improving, with shipping estimates dropping to four weeks and then two to three weeks. Earlier this month, estimates improved to one to two weeks, before hitting three to five business days today.

During Apple’s third quarter earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple had boosted AirPods production capacity and was “working very hard” to get AirPods to customers as quickly as possible.

Occasionally, Apple retail stores have received stock and third-party retailers like Best Buy have been able to offer AirPods with faster shipping on a regular basis, but those stocks have usually run out fast.

Costing $159, Apple’s “truly wireless” AirPods have gained popularity due to their long battery life, capacious charge case, infrared sensors that detect when they’re being worn, touch-based gestures, and a built-in W1 chip that improves Bluetooth connection. AirPods are also relatively inexpensive compared to rival “truly wireless” earbuds that have launched in recent months.

Tag: AirPods
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Tesco’s mobile payments app is now called Pay+

Tesco is a special breed of highstreet staple that just refuses to broadly support contactless payments — unless you use its in-house mobile payment app, that is. PayQwiq has been around for a few years now, but was only accepted in all Tesco stores from the beginning of this year. PayQwiq also doesn’t roll off the tongue all that well, but today it assumes a new name: Tesco Pay+.

New name, same feature set. It keeps track of your Clubcard points and receipts, but its main purpose is allowing you to brandish your phone at checkouts to pay for up to £250 of shopping. So, kind of like Apple Pay or Android Pay, just a tad less convenient.

Source: Tesco

Twitter workarounds give anyone 280 characters to play with

As you may be aware, Twitter is currently trialing an expanded character count. Yes, the platform known for restrictive tweets, is giving select users 280 characters to play around with, up from its default 140. If you’re not one of the lucky few with access to the new feature, there may still be hope — as long as you’re willing to tinker with your browser, that is. A few enterprising users have found a bunch of workarounds that will double your tweet character count to the 280 limit Twitter is currently experimenting with.

From @dildog:
Click ‘Tweet’ in the web ui
F12 Remove ‘disable’ on the tweet button
Click it, and go to ‘network’, right click on the request and copy as cURL
Then, add &weighted_character_count=true as a param to the end of the url
Then, resubmit the tweet with curl.

— Rob Graham٩(●̮̮̃●̃) (@ErrataRob) September 27, 2017

User @ErrataRob posted one of the techniques (via @dildog), which involves meddling with the Chrome browser. As you can tell from the thread above, this method requires a bit of legwork. But, there is an easier way.

Here’s a quick TamperMonkey script that force enables 280 character tweets in the Twitter web client.https://t.co/uUhW0CKekS

— Prof. 9 (@Prof9) September 27, 2017

Twitter user @prof9 tweeted a link to a Tampermonkey script for Chrome that’s much easier to set up, and offers the same result: Longer tweets. To get it working, first install Tampermonkey, and then head to this Github repository and click the raw button to install the script. Be sure to enable it in Tampermonkey, and then hit up Twitter.com and tweet away. All the current methods floating around are related to the Twitter web client. And, you’ll probably have to be quick, as Twitter is likely scrambling to find a fix.

Hey, notice anything different? Yep, this tweet is 280 characters, instead of the 140 you get as standard. And, icyw, I’m not one of the chosen few that gets to try this out as part of Twitter’s latest experiment. Nah, I just did some simple DIY thanks to a userscript in Chrome

— Saqib Shah (@eightiethmnt) September 27, 2017

Source: @Prof9 (Twitter), @ErrataRob (Twitter), @Zemnmez (Twitter)

Ford joins Lyft’s expanding group of self-driving partners

Lyft has welcomed one more powerful ally to help it achieve its dreams of adding self-driving cars to its ride-hailing network: Ford. In his announcement post on Medium, Ford Autonomous Vehicle VP Sherif Marakby says the partnership will help them figure out how to tweak their autonomous AI platform to be able to seamlessly connect with the ride-hailing network’s. By sharing data with each other, they hope to figure out the best cities to launch a ride-hailing fleet full of autonomous vehicles, as well as to conjure up the framework necessary to maintain that fleet. Their end goal is to give passengers a way to hail self-driving cars as easily as they would a normal one.

Ford, which has been developing its self-driving tech for a while, joins the growing number of partners in Lyft’s Open Platform Initiative, which already includes heavyweights like Waymo, General Motors, Land Rover and Jaguar. Instead of developing its own self-driving technology, Lyft aimed to forge partnerships with multiple automakers from the start.

Chief strategy officer Raj Kapoor admitted to The New York Times that the company isn’t capable of developing and deploying self-driving cars en masse on its own. “We’re focused on partnering with the auto industry because frankly, we think we can’t do this alone and need each other to be successful,” he said. “It’s one thing to do tests with one or two cars. It’s a whole different world doing this on a large scale.” As NYT noted, though, Lyft’s partners have their own goals that could cause conflicts along the way. GM is already testing its own ride-hailing network, and it won’t come as a huge surprise if Waymo launches its own.

Ford, however, hasn’t made any indication that it intends to launch its own ride-hailing service. Marakby says the company has already begun working with Lyft to program their systems to be able to communicate with one another. After that, the automaker plans to deploy self-driving cars as part of Lyft’s network for testing, but they won’t be taking passengers until both companies are absolutely sure that their system works.

Source: Ford (Medium)

Signal test uses DRM to keep your contacts private

Signal is generally viewed as the most secure encrypted communications app. So secure, that even the US Senate has approved it for staff use. And, to keep privacy experts on its side, Open Whisper Systems (the non-profit behind the app) has kept Signal open source and peer-reviewed. But, the developer is having to juggle robust privacy with all the popular features a chat app is expected to provide in this day and age. It’s proven a tricky balancing act — particularly in regards to access to user contacts. Just like its (now encrypted) rivals, Signal asks to import your phone contacts in order to tell you who’s using the app. For the stricter privacy advocates, that’s always been a niggling issue. But, Signal claims it has a fix. With its latest test, the app is trialling a completely private contact discovery service.

In other words, no one (whether nefarious actors, or even Signal itself) will be able to access that data, at least theoretically. To accomplish this task, it’s utilizing an Intel processor feature known as Software Guard Extensions, or SGX. Originally designed for DRM, the tech essentially allocates a “secure enclave” in a processor that is kept isolated from the rest of a computer’s operating system. The code running in that enclave is designated a unique key that only Intel can control.

In the case of the app, SGX will be fitted to Signal’s servers. That way, when your contacts pass through the them, they’ll also be kept in this secure enclave for processing, and will vanish afterwards. If the test feature works as it should, Signal will basically be kept out of your information — as will everyone else. The feature is expected to roll out over the next few months, once the test run is out of the way.

Although the new option sticks to Open Whisper System’s privacy commitments, it is still in its early stages. And, as Wired reports, the server-side use of SGX is relatively untested. To ease concerns, OWS is making the private contact discovery service open source, allowing the security community to nitpick it for possible exploits. All the crypto heads out there can get the low-down on the tech by reading Signal’s blog post.

Source: Open Whisper Systems

Google unwraps 19 past Doodle games for its 19th birthday

Google is no stranger to celebrations. In the past, the festivities have brought new features for Google Photos, and Google Earth, and a montage (with a Rickrolling twist) for YouTube’s tenth anniversary. Today, the party is coming to its Doodle. To mark 19 years of company history, the latest Google Doodle packs 19 surprises from the past. You’ll be able to play a bunch of games, including tic-tac-toe, piñata, and cricket. And access awesome interactive Doodles from the archives, including the lauded DJ and music composition tools launched earlier this year. There’s even a Snake easter egg lurking in the mix, which offers a colorful take on the mobile gaming classic that’s every bit as addictive. Simply spin the wheel to start playing. And, if you don’t like the result, spin again.

Before you know it, you’ll have whiled away the minutes, and hours. And that’s just from sampling a fraction of the treats. Best of all, Pac-Man is also making his return. Back when the game originally landed on the Google home page in 2010, it was an instant success — squeezing 4.82 million hours of play from procrastinators worldwide. Since then, it’s been made a permanent fixture in the Doodles library. Of course, you’d have had to gone looking to find it in the past. Now, it’s back front and center for your gaming pleasure. And, if you’re afraid you’ll get caught playing on your computer, just head to Google.com on your mobile.

Source: Google

Atlus tried to take down a PS3 emulator advertising ‘Persona 5’

Atlus has been infamously protective of Persona 5 even before it came out, and it looks like that hasn’t changed a bit. The game developer has submitted a DMCA takedown notice against the creators of the PS3 emulator RPCS3 and their Patreon crowdfunding page. Emulators typically fall within the legal gray area of copyright law — they don’t infringe on anybody’s intellectual property, but they can run illegal ROMs that do. However, as Kotaku noted, RPCS3’s Patreon included updates about how far they are on getting Persona 5 to run on the emulator.

A company that tried putting streaming restrictions on a much-awaited game would definitely not be happy that an emulator maker is getting donations in part due to its property. As of this writing, the RPCS3 Patreon page has removed all references to Persona upon the crowdfunding website’s request. Patreon advised RPCS3 to get rid of the references after refusing to comply with Atlus’ demands to kill the emulator’s page entirely. According to the emulator maker’s report on Reddit, that seems to have resolved the situation.

Atlus has confirmed that it issued a DMCA takedown notice in an announcement, where it explained its reasons for doing so. The company said it didn’t want people’s first experience with an Atlus game to come riddled with framerate drops, crashes and other issues. It explained that the company thinks a format it didn’t personally oversee won’t deliver the experience and quality it intended. The gamemaker admits that it’s aware of how a lot of fans would like to see Persona titles for the PC, and while it’s not making any promises, it says it’s listening to people’s wishes. Those who’d like to see PC ports of Atlus’ most beloved games might want to cross their fingers and hope for the best.

Here’s Atlus’ statement in full:

“You might have heard earlier today that we issued a DMCA takedown notice involving emulation developer group RPCS3 and their Patreon page. Yes, it’s true. We settled upon this action for two reasons:

1. We believe that our fans best experience our titles (like Persona 5) on the actual platforms for which they are developed. We don’t want their first experiences to be framerate drops, or crashes, or other issues that can crop up in emulation that we have not personally overseen. We understand that many Persona fans would love to see a PC version. And while we don’t have anything to announce today, we are listening! For now, the best way to experience Persona 5 is on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3.

2. We appreciate the awareness generated by the emulation community for Persona 5 and know that it is a fantastic example of how much people are loving our game. We want to keep bringing you titles like Persona 5. Unfortunately, when our content is illegally circumvented and potentially made available for free, in a format we do not think delivers the experience and quality we intend, it undermines our ability to do so by diverting potential support from new audiences.”

Via: Kotaku

Source: Atlus

Kuo: Reports of iPhone 8 Sales Woes ‘Overdone’ and ‘Excessively Negative’

Reports of lower than expected first weekend iPhone 8 sales are “overdone,” KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told investors in a new note sent out this evening. Kuo says that based on estimates of iPhone 8 production and research data from Localytics, the market is “excessively negative” on iPhone 8 sales.

According to Kuo, first weekend sales of the iPhone 8 were not weak, but stable. He believes Apple is expecting a 50/50 demand split between iPhone X and iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, and sales of the latter two devices are on target when taking that into consideration.

We previously estimated the production weighting of new 2017 iPhone models at roughly 50% iPhone X and 50% iPhone 8/ 8 Plus. This matches what we believe is Apple’s (US) estimate for demand. At first glance, the combined first-week adoption rate for the iPhone 8/ 8 Plus might appear low (about half that of iPhone 6s/ 6s Plus and 7/ 7 Plus). However, this is due to the fact that the iPhone X is not included, not because iPhone 8/ 8 Plus first weekend sales have been weak.

Recent data from Localytics found that the iPhone 8 Plus is more popular than the iPhone 8, which Kuo says aligns with KGI’s production-side observations. While sales were lower overall, the iPhone 8 Plus saw the strongest first weekend adoption rate of any Plus-sized iPhone to date.

We note that production of the iPhone 8 versus 8 Plus in 3Q17F is roughly split down the middle of a total of 16-18mn units. This reflects Apple’s thinking that demand for these two models will be similar, at least in the early stages. In reality, according to Localytics, iPhone 8 Plus sales fared slightly better than those of the iPhone 8 during the first weekend, while the former’s shipping time was longer, according to Apple’s online store.

Kuo believes the market is negative on first weekend iPhone 8 sales because market analysts rely overmuch on observed sales momentum in unlocked/SIM-free channels such as the Apple Store, while overlooking sales momentum within carrier channels.

iPhone 8 lines outside of Apple retail stores were indeed shorter this year than in past years, says Kuo, but there was stable first weekend demand within carrier channels. Most people who camp outside of Apple Stores to purchase devices are “presumably hardcore Apple fans and heavy users” who are waiting for the iPhone X, which he says explains the perceived lack of demand.

Though Kuo believes first weekend sales of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are on track, he warns that iPhone 8 and 8 Plus shipment momentum may not be stable and needs to be closely monitored as the launch of the iPhone X approaches.

Related Roundup: iPhone 8
Tag: Ming-Chi Kuo
Buyer’s Guide: iPhone (Buy Now)
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Amazon’s Echo Show loses its access to YouTube

In an unexpected turn, Amazon’s Echo Show has suddenly lost its ability to stream videos from YouTube. The Verge points out that the ability disappeared this afternoon, quoting Amazon and Google blaming each other for the issue. While YouTube claims that the Echo Show feature “violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience,” Amazon says “there is no technical reason for that decision.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Google regulate access to its video site — Windows Phone and Roku were two notable skirmishes — but it seems awkward that the Echo Show launched with access and now suddenly loses it. Previous fights centered around a lack of ads (remember, that’s Google’s actual business), and it’s possible that is the problem once again, either with displaying them or tracking data. Whatever’s missing in the arrangement, the Echo Show is suddenly less useful as a quick distraction for the kids or recipe helper, hopefully, things go back to normal soon.

Source: The Verge