Sprint’s Safe and Found combines parental controls with location info

While all major cell providers have some sort of parental control app like AT&T’s Smart Limits or Verizon’s FamilyBase, Sprint may have leapfrogged them all with even more features. The company just announced Safe & Found, a new service that adds in real-time location, geo-fencing capabilities, an SOS button and a way to find, lock and wipe any phone if lost or stolen. The service is available now for iOS and Android users for $7 per month. You can get a free 15-day trial to check it out, too.

If you’ve used an app like Life360, the new Sprint service will seem familiar. You can find any enrolled family member on a map in real time, create geo-fences to let you know when someone comes into or leaves a geographical area, and even check in so your family knows where you’re at. Safe & Found provides all the regular parental controls, too, like restricting phone usage to specific numbers and/or certain times of the day. Like Apple’s Find My iPhone, Sprint’s service also gives you the power to not only find a lost or stolen phone but to also lock and wipe it of personal data remotely. The addition of an emergency alert that will send an SOS to all family phones seems like a pretty handy feature, too.

The app is available on both iOS and Android app stores, and while there are many devices in the marketing images, the app is strictly for phones running iOS 9 and up or Android Jelly Bean and later. Sprint confirmed that you can use a computer and web browser to monitor family member locations and set application permissions on any Safe & Found devices. Smartwatches will get notifications from the app only if set up on the phone in the regular way.

Source: Sprint

The future of surveillance is hidden in airport ads

Public anonymity is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Coming soon to an airport in Dubai is an artsy, colorful video security and customs tunnel that scans your face, adds you to a database, indexes you with artificial intelligence, and decides if you’re free to leave — or not.

By the end of summer 2018, Dubai International Airport’s Terminal 3 will have replaced its security clearance counter with a walkway tunnel filled with 80 face-scanning cameras disguised as a distracting immersive video.

Travellers’ eyes will roam the enclosed tunnel and its virtual shimmering aquarium as they head to their gate, while their biometric data is seamlessly collected, compared, and stored …. somewhere, under unknown terms and conditions. According to officials presenting the security and customs tunnel at the 37th Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX) Technology Week at the World Trade Centre in Dubai, its video shows will not be limited to chicken of the sea. The airport plans to also distract its very captive audience with desert scenes, majestically galloping white horses, or … advertisements.

“The fish is a sort of entertainment and something new for the traveller but, at the end of the day, it attracts the vision of the travellers to different corners in the tunnel for the cameras to capture his/her face print,” Major Gen Obaid Al Hameeri, deputy director general of Dubai residency and foreign affairs, told press.

Travellers are expected to “register” their faces at kiosks throughout the airport so they may travel. The tunnel will replace the terminal’s security control desk. “At the end of the tunnel,” The National reported, “if the traveler is already registered, they will either receive a green message that says “have a nice trip” or, if the person is wanted for some reason, a red sign will alert the operations room to interfere.” You can watch a video of their reporter’s walkthrough here.

Australia is currently considering the same thing, where passengers are filtered through a tunnel that seamlessly captures their biometrics (facial scanning) as they go through the airport.

The “virtual aquarium tunnel” was four years in the making, and debuted this week at GITEX. Other stars of the GITEX innovation conference included a flying autonomous taxi and drone motorcycle for police. This year the theme at GITEX is “Re-Imagining Realities” with a focus on smart cities.

When surveillance becomes “look at the pretty fish”

The best dystopian fiction frightens because it shows us our future in a hideous funhouse mirror; we know it’s based on reality yet its contortions are too despotically insane to seem possible. Such was the vibe in the sci-fi film Minority Report, and its memorable scene of Tom Cruise continually being recognized and served intrusive, personalized ads as he’s desperately trying to escape a smart city of the future. To avoid the intertwined systems of intrusive, tailored advertising based on his identity and having his movements tracked and sent to police, he gets surgery from a black market doctor.

Maybe, like today’s social media sites like to tell us, the science fiction dystopia of Minority Report was just trying to make his advertising experience better. But considering that the Dubai International Airport is already talking about its security scanner as an advertising surveillance tunnel, it feels like science fiction is letting our current world off the hook by comparison.

You have to wonder where this is leading, all dystopian things considered. I mean, are they being considered? We know that Facebook, ever servile in its advertising greed, has created the world’s largest database of biometric identity by way of its nonconsensual facial recognition program performed on all its users. And this is where we have the first clear instance of law enforcement and advertisers mingling in a facial scanning, AI-run security network. And that, according to Major Gen Obaid Al Hameeri, surreptitious retinal scanning will be added to the 80-camera tunnels in the near future.

It’s scary because dystopian science fiction was supposed to be cautionary tales. Blade Runner was meant to be far-out sci-fi about the brutal contradictions of identity ownership and creating a disposable, trackable working class.

Yet here we are. Even one of the inventors of facial recognition is agonizing about his Frankenstein monster. “It pains me to see a technology that I helped invent being used in a way that is not what I had in mind in respect to privacy,” said Joseph Atick, who helped create facial recognition in the 1990s.

“I can no longer count on being an anonymous person,” he told Daily Beast, “when I’m walking down the street.” Atick has called for regulations to protect the privacy of citizens, because without it Americans are left with “a myriad of state laws,” he said. “And state laws can be more easily manipulated by commercial interests.”

We don’t know who the airport’s officials are that will be accessing the facial recognition data, what database sharing is in the background, or what safeguards will be in place to prevent misuse. Dubai’s government arms are also no stranger to being hacked.

Maybe a 15% chance of cavity search

On one hand, the point of the aquarium surveillance tunnel, they tell us, is to streamline the security experience — to make it “smarter.” It’s not like travelers will have a choice in the matter, but the rubric is that security and convenience outweigh privacy and personal security in the heat of the moment every time. The TSA is living proof of that; good luck finding an American that will tell you the TSA is convenient and efficient. Though when it comes to data security, when last we checked, the TSA was failing spectacularly at that, too.

Half the people I’ve talked to about the aquarium tunnel are profoundly excited about this futuristic convenience. Security professionals one and all, they are not deterred by the lurid bait-and-switch attention for surveillance aspect. Nor are they disturbed by the implications of inevitable database security madness that will surely ensue, or troubled by questions of accuracy (the FBI’s face recognition is only 85% accurate and has trouble with black faces).

Are they jaded after riding from breach to breach, year after year, watching the effects of companies collecting our information only to squander it by giving it less importance than happy advertisers? Or are they just yearning for cities of the future and their magical conveniences?

I can’t fault them for either reasoning. Yet I still can’t shake the sense that Philip K. Dick, he of the Minority Report and the Blade Runner, was trying to tell us something.

Images: AFP Photo / Giuseppe Cacace (Tunnel); Matt Brian/Engadget (Facial recognition); REUTERS/Bob Riha Jr (TSA)

Amazon postpones Prime Video showcase after suspending studio head

More and more companies are dealing with the the poor behavior of their executives. According to a report at Variety, Amazon is cancelling a scheduled Prime Video showcase in Europe next week that was reportedly headlined by Roy Price, disgraced chief of Amazon Studios. Both decisions come in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein debacle, which has raised a ton of important awareness of the rampant sexual harassment perpetrated by powerful men in the entertainment industry.

Amazon sent a short statement to people invited to the showcase, according to Variety, that said, “We wanted to let you know that the planned European Prime Video autumn season showcase and party in London next week have been postponed.” Amazon planned to show off new footage from various current shows and upcoming series at the event. No other explanation was given.

Price has been suspended for allegations of harassment towards Issa Hackett, the daughter of late sci-fi author Phillip K Dick and a producer on both Amazon-led television shows using her father’s work. She revealed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that Price propositioned her repeatedly and allegedly yelled “anal sex” in her ear. Weinstein has been fired from his own company after a landslide of accusations and stories of his inappropriate behavior from the past several decades have surfaced.

We have reached out to Amazon for comment and will update this post when we hear back.

Source: Variety

IGN acquires pay-what-you-want game and book retailer Humble Bundle

Media conglomerate IGN has acquired Humble Bundle, the pay-what-you-want gaming, book and software collection retailer that raises money for charitable causes. In a blog post, Humble Bundle cofounder and CEO Jeffrey Rosen noted that his company will “keep our own office, culture, and amazing team with IGN helping us further our plans.” Aside from noting that the retailer will get additional resources and help out of the deal, no details were disclosed.

Welcome to the family, @humble! We can’t wait to help others with you ✌️ https://t.co/MlxUoFi2nk

— IGN (@IGN) October 13, 2017

In the post, Humble Bundle noted that the platform has raised $106 million for various charities in the seven years since it launched its first bundle. While the platform could do a lot with funding from a media titan like IGN (owned by J2 Media), there’s obvious concern over potential conflicts of interest between a game-reviewing publication owning a game-selling retailer. (We’ve reached out to both IGN and Humble Bundle for comment and will include their responses when we hear back.)

From Humble Bundle’s blog post, it seems IGN will leave it to operate more or less independently.

“The idea is just to feed them with the resources they need to keep doing what they’re doing … We want to stick to the fundamentals in the short term. We don’t want to disrupt anything we’re doing right already,” IGN executive VP Mitch Galbraith told Gamasutra. “Because of the shared vision and overlap of our customer bases, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities.”

Via: Gamasutra

Source: Humble Bundle (blog)

MacRumors Giveaway: Win MagicGrips for Your Magic Mouse From Elevation Lab

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Elevation Lab to give MacRumors readers a chance to win some MagicGrips that are designed for Apple’s Magic Mouse.

MagicGrips, made from a solid silicone rubber, are designed to make the Magic Mouse a lot more comfortable to work with by making it wider and giving you more to hold onto. MagicGrips cover 75 percent of the sides of the Magic Mouse, but don’t interfere with click travel thanks to a precise fit.

Elevation Lab says the MagicGrips are designed to create a big concave surface for your fingers, for a more relaxed grip that makes the mouse easier to use for long periods of time. When the MagicGrips were in development, the company tested more than 100 prototypes to find the ideal design that was most comfortable for the widest number of users.

MagicGrips work with all hand sizes and for both left and right-handed users, and they’re compatible with both Magic Mouse 1 and 2 models. There’s also an XL thumb grip for an even wider grip if desired.

The MagicGrips attach to the sides of a Magic Mouse using 3M adhesive that can be removed at any time.

Elevation Lab normally charges $12.95 for the MagicGrips, but we have 50 of them to give away, so we’ll have a lot of winners for this giveaway. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winners and send the prizes. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (October 13) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on October 20. The winners will be chosen randomly on October 20 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

Tags: giveaway, Elevation Lab
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Deals: Target Takes $100 Off iPad Mini 4 In Store, While Sprint Discounts iPhone 8 Monthly Leases

This week Target has a $100 discount on Apple’s 128GB Wi-Fi iPad mini 4, with the caveat of no online shipping available. If you have a local Target with stock on the 7.9-inch iPad, however, you can get the latest iPad mini for $299.99, down from $399.99 in Space Gray, Silver, and Gold.

If you want some accessories to go with your iPad mini 4, Target has also discounted two first party Apple accessories. There’s the iPad mini 4 Smart Cover with discounts between 10 and 40 percent, and the iPad mini 4 Silicone Case with discounts between 10 and 50 percent. The savings depend on your choice of color, and some models do have shipping options. When paired together, the accessories provide full front and back protection to the iPad mini 4.

For those interested in the iPhone 8, Sprint has a $350 discount on Apple’s latest iPhone, with a few stipulations. You’ll have to trade in an eligible smartphone towards the new iPhone 8, as well as sign up for the Sprint Flex leasing program. If you do, Sprint will mark monthly installments down to $9.72/month for the 64GB model, with an initial payment of $0. The 256GB model requires $150 down but retains the $9.72/month price.

Additionally, the 64GB iPhone 8 Plus is available for $0 today and $13.89/month installments, and the 256GB Plus model requires $150 when purchased and $13.89/month afterwards. All savings appear after a $19.45/month bill credit is applied to your account. iPhone models eligible for trade-in include: iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 6s Plus. Visit Sprint’s deals page here for more information.

There are even more discounts to discover in our Deals Roundup, today including savings on the Philips Hue White Ambiance Smart Bulb Starter Kit, an Insignia USB wall outlet, and a combination USB 3.0 and Lightning flash drive. Also be sure to check out our giveaway post this week, where you have a chance to win some MagicGrips for your Magic Mouse, made by Elevation Lab.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with these vendors.

Related Roundup: Apple Deals
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Apple’s Beddit 3 Sleep Monitor ‘Sold Out,’ Suggesting It’s Been Discontinued

Apple in May purchased Beddit, a company that develops health-related hardware. It was an unusual acquisition because Apple continued to sell the company’s Beddit 3 Sleep Monitor on Apple.com, and collected sleep data from the device.

As of early October, though, the Beddit 3 Sleep Monitor has been listed as “Sold Out” on Apple’s website, suggesting it has perhaps been quietly retired. When an Apple product is sold out, that typically means it’s not going to be restocked. Since the Apple acquisition, the device has only been sold at Apple.com and is not available elsewhere either.

With the Beddit 3 Sleep Monitor no longer available, it’s not known what Apple will do with the Beddit sleep technology in the future. Apple could be planning to use the data it’s collected to add more advanced health tracking and sleep monitoring into the Apple Watch, or it could roll the technology into some other kind of wearable device or hardware product similar in design to the Beddit 3.

Sleep tracking could be a planned feature for a future Apple Watch, but it remains to be seen if Apple thinks a wrist-worn sleep tracking device is the optimal solution. It is also not clear how Apple would overcome charging and battery life issues in that scenario, as Apple currently expects the device to be charged overnight. Given those limitations, other hardware solutions could be under consideration.

Apple is presumably continuing to collect, analyze, and utilize sleep-related data from the existing Beddit 3 sleep tracking devices that are in the hands of consumers, even if no additional devices will be sold.

Priced at $149 when it was available, the Beddit 3 Sleep Monitor pairs a thin, pliable under-sheet sleep sensor with an app that’s designed to help users analyze and improve their sleeping habits.

It uses ballistocardiography (BCG) to measure the mechanical activity of the heart, lungs, and other body functions, a non-invasive monitoring technology that’s similar to the light-based photoplethysmography the Apple Watch uses to monitor heart rate. BCG is able to measure the mechanical impulse generated by the acceleration of blood through the circulatory system, providing a wealth of data about the body.

The sleep monitor is able to track metrics like sleep time, sleep efficiency, heart rate, respiration rate, movement, snoring, room temperature, and room humidity. Following Apple’s Beddit acquisition, we did an in-depth review of the Beddit 3 Sleep Monitor and concluded that there are still many hurdles Apple needs to overcome to create a sleep tracking device that’s truly accurate, if a hardware solution is the ultimate goal of the purchase.

We’ve contacted Apple for comment on the availability of the Beddit 3 Sleep Monitor and will update this post should we hear back.

Tag: Beddit
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TouchArcade iOS Gaming Roundup: Project Aurora, Arena of Valor, The Talos Principle, and More

As I mentioned on last week’s roundup, I spent the previous weekend at EVE Vegas, which is one of the many fan events that CCP puts on throughout the world for EVE Online players. It turns out that what they revealed is a game with the working title of Project Aurora. EVE Online is a MMORPG where players fly around virtual spaceships, wage war against other corporations (EVE’s equivalent of guilds or social groups), and all sorts of other stuff.

While it definitely disappointed a few people that Project Aurora isn’t a direct port mobile client to EVE Online proper, it is really cool what a great job they did distilling the EVE experience down into an idle game where you slowly gather resources, upgrade everything, and slowly take over a hex grid space map with the rest of your corporation.

At the event we were able to play a test version of the game for the weekend and it was a ton of fun. I’m always a huge sucker for these kinds of eternally upgrade idle progress games, so I couldn’t get enough. There are still no solid public plans on when Project Omega is coming, but it seems likely they’ll do more testing and an eventual soft launch in the not too distant future.

Arena of Valor is an interesting mobile MOBA to follow because in China it is so unbelievably popular that it’s even drawn the eye of the Chinese government. Arena of Valor in China has become the source of debates on whether teenagers should be allowed to play it for long and whether the game is pretty much a threat to social order and cohesion.

In the North American market, few people have even heard of it. Well, US players can now pre-register to get some freebies in the game when it eventually launches in November. I’m super excited to see how it does here, it’s hard to imagine the game becoming as huge as it is in China, but, who knows.

Following right along with the release of The Witness when it comes to surprising but remarkably full-featured “real” games to hit the App Store is The Talos Principle. This is a full port of the console and PC puzzle game, which can be played by either a set of virtual joysticks or a tap to move movement scheme.

Our forum community has weighed in on the quality of the port — it runs well on older iOS devices, and folks have even mentioned the iPad as the best platform (among all the ones the game is on) to play it, which is some pretty high praise. The game itself sports an 88 on Metacritic and explores a story that surrounds sentient robots. If you’re into premium games, don’t miss this one.

World of Tanks Blitz has been a surprisingly popular mobile spinoff of the global sensation World of Tanks where you collect a bunch of different tanks and battle online against other players. Meanwhile, it’s kind of felt like Games Workshop has been way too liberal with who they’ll license the Warhammer 40K universe to. This time around, the licensing deal makes sense as soon you’ll be able to unlock Warhammer tanks inside of World of Tanks Blitz. Details are still vague on when all this is going to be happening, but I’d be way more interested in jumping in with World of Tanks Blitz if I could pilot some giant ork tank.

Last, but not least, Discord this week announced “verified servers” which will serve as the official community chat hubs for developers like Mojang, Supercell, and others. Discord has grown to have a huge community of gamers through constant feature improvements over the years. Recently they added full video chat and screensharing to their existing suite of voice and chat communication systems.

Discord is targeted at gamers, but has all the features of the premium version of Slack. If you’re looking for a Discord server to fiddle around in, come join ours. It’s filled with people talking about iOS gaming 24/7.

That’s about it this week. For way more iOS gaming news, reviews, and all sorts of other things that we cover around the clock, be sure to visit TouchArcade.

Tag: TouchArcade gaming roundup
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Nvidia’s Free GeForce NOW Beta Lets You Play System Intensive PC Games on Your Mac

Apple’s Macs aren’t optimized for gaming and often don’t have powerful enough GPUs to run the latest gaming titles, a problem that Nvidia is aiming to solve with its GeForce NOW service designed for Macs.

GeForce NOW for Mac, currently in beta testing in North America, lets you use a virtual GeForce GTX gaming PC in the cloud to run games that otherwise may not be possible to play on a Mac. The only requirement is a good internet connection, with the virtual gaming PC handling all of the GPU and CPU requirements.

Since Macs aren’t known for being gaming machines, PC makers don’t typically design new titles to run on Macs. That’s also an issue that can be solved with GeForce NOW, because it can stream PC-only games too. So if you’ve been wanting to play Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds on a Mac, for example, you can do so with GeForce NOW.

GeForce NOW integrates with Steam and works with the games you already own, so it’s not a gaming service that provides access to games. You need to purchase the games you play, with GeForce NOW providing the power to play them.

I’ve been testing GeForce NOW this week and while it’s not perfect, it’s promising. Setup is as simple as downloading the GeForce NOW for Mac app and then connecting a Steam account. Since you’re essentially streaming the gameplay from the cloud, when you choose a free-to-play game or a game you’ve purchased on Steam, you don’t need to install it because it’s already installed and ready to go.

With Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, I bought it on Steam, logged into GeForce NOW, and had it up and running on my 2013 iMac in about 30 seconds. GeForce NOW runs a system check when you launch it so you can tell if your connection is going to be good enough for optimal streaming.

GeForce NOW is heavily reliant on a fast internet connection, requiring a 25Mb/s download speed at a minimum and a 5GHz wireless router. Nvidia recommends a 50Mb/s connection or higher to account for other potential internet traffic. Even with a Wi-Fi connection that met those demands, I ran into some problems with frame loss that made the game unplayable a couple of times.

When switching over to a hardwired ethernet connection, the game ran more smoothly, so if you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection that’s robust enough, a physical connection might be necessary to use the service. I was able to successfully play over WiFi for most of my testing, though, as I didn’t see the frame loss issue consistently. To ensure players get a low ping, Nvidia has servers located across the United States.

Playing PUBG using GeForce NOW was just like playing it on a PC. I was able to play right alongside PC gamers, and while there was still a bit of stuttering and lag, it worked. I was using a late 2013 iMac, but GeForce NOW is supported on a long list of machines manufactured in 2008 and beyond.

Along with PUBG, GeForce NOW supports a number of other popular games, and Nvidia is adding support for more on a regular basis. Some of the supported titles include League of Legends, Fallout 4, Overwatch, Path of Exile, World of Warcraft, The Witcher 3, Rocket League, Destiny 2, and Middle-earth: Shadow of War.

Nvidia will be beta testing GeForce NOW for Mac through the end of the year, so it’s free to download and use for the time being. A launch is planned for 2018, and final pricing for the service has yet to be announced. The beta is limited to the United States and Canada.

Tag: Nvidia
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Kmashi’s Victor K7 20,000mAh battery pack is offers a week’s worth of charge in one hefty brick (Review)

We’re celebrating ten years of AndroidGuys with a ton of giveaways!

Build

I think perhaps the best word to describe Kmashi’s Victor K7 20,000mAh external battery pack is solid. At just under a pound (14oz.), with an aluminum case and red rubberized accents, this battery is an absolute brick. At 6.4″x4″, it’s a bit bigger than your average modern phablet, with a pretty slim 0.5″ for a 20,00mAh battery. Slim is relative, though, and this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a pocket battery. It’s definitely better suited to sitting in a backpack, or a purse perhaps. As with many standard externals, there is a single input port (MicroUSB) and two output ports (both Type-A USB), with a small line of LEDs to show the current level of juice in the pack. While there’s no USB-C on this version, I suspect the next generation of external batteries – from Kmashi or otherwise – will make liberal use of USB-C’s reversible connector and dual-use input/output connector.

Performance

When it comes to external batteries, there isn’t really a whole lot to say – so I’ll keep it sweet. Kmashi’s 20,000mAh battery is perfectly adequate, offering a standard 5V/2.4A USB-A output as well as a variable charge 3.6-6.5V/2.4A Quick Charge 3.0 output. The lone input is MicroUSB-A, which is unfortunate for anyone using a smartphone that was purchased within the last year or so. As you’d expect, though, it charges QC devices very quickly and can charge all but the largest of smartphone batteries three times over without breaking a sweat.

Value

At $35.99 from Amazon, Kmashi’s Victor K7 is on the higher end of the 20,000mAh price range, on par with Anker’s own comparable unit at $39.99. There are a number of lesser-known manufacturers that offer the same size batteries for $20 or less, but Kmashi’s reliability is up there alongside Anker and Aukey – in this case, you pay for that consistency and quality. Looking at one of those lesser brands in particular, Vinsic offers a 20,000mAh battery pack for $34.95 that also includes a Type-C port, making it more versatile and future proof than Kmashi’s product.

As such, if you have a phone that has a USB-C connector, I’d wait until Anker, Aukey or Kmashi comes out with their own model of USB-C compatible external batteries. If you’re using a phone with MicroUSB, Kmashi’s battery is a nice balance of cost and quality, for a great value.