Samsung collects record profits, again

Last year at this time Samsung’s profits suffered a blow due to exploding Galaxy Note 7s, but this year — despite ongoing executive turmoil as it has appointed new presidents for three key divisions — the product lineup is performing as expected. Not coincidentally, Samsung has announced it set a record high $12.91 billion operating profit for the third quarter (keeping the streak going), more than triple what it notched last year during the same period.

However, while the company called Galaxy Note 8 sales “strong” its mobile earnings actually declined as people opted for cheaper phones. The money is in Samsung’s chips and displays, which into things like servers as well as phones — whether they’re Samsung Galaxys or something else, like its OLED screens that are in the soon-to-debut iPhone X.

The three new incoming executives are:

• Display

  • ​​​​​​​ Kinam Kim joined the Company in 1981 and is an IEEE fellow and renowned authority in semiconductors, having served as the head of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology; CEO of Samsung Display; head of the Memory, System LSI Businesses and until now was responsible for the overall semiconductor business.

• Consumer Electronics

  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​HS Kim is a leading expert in display products, having played a major role in the Company achieving the top position in global TV sales for the 11th consecutive year with numerous display technology breakthroughs.

• Mobile:

  • DJ Koh has recently delivered solid results in the mobile business, having overseen the development of its flagship Galaxy smartphones with differentiated products and services, based on his vast experience as the previous head of mobile R&D.

Source: Samsung, (2)

HTC U11 Life specs confirmed, officially coming to T-Mobile

The only thing missing is pricing and availability info.

Following in the footsteps of the awesome, yet underappreciated HTC U11, we’re expecting to see two more HTC handsets by the end of the year in the U11 series – the U11 Plus and U11 Life. The latter of those two is a budget device that’ll be the second Android One phone available in the U.S., and thanks to a product listing on T-Mobile’s website, we now know everything about the phone ahead of its announcement.

First off, since the U11 Life was listed on T-Mobile’s site, this confirms a report that popped up a few days ago suggesting that the phone would be available on the Un-Carrier in the States. It’s unclear if the U11 Life on T-Mobile will be part of the Android One program or not, but either way, this is an excellent score for the company.

Snapdragon 630, 3GB RAM, 32GB expandable storage, 2,600 mAh battery, Android 7.1.1.

As for the U11 Life itself, a lot of what’s featured here is similar to other rumors we’d previously heard. The phone will be powered by the Snapdragon 630 processor and 3GB of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage (up to 2TB) is available for all of your local files, and a 2,600 mAh battery should offer 13-17 hours of usage before needing to charge up.

Both the rear and front-facing cameras use a 16MP sensor, NFC is available for use with Android Pay, there’s an IP67 rating for dust/water resistance, and Android 7.1.1 Nougat will be available out of the box with HTC Sense.

Also included with the U11 Life is Edge Sense, Amazon Alexa, and a free pair of HTC’s awesome USonic earbuds that shipped with the regular U11.

Pricing and availability for the U11 Life are still unclear, but considering that the phone was already listed on T-Mobile’s site (it’s since been pulled), it’s safe to say we shouldn’t have to wait too much longer for an official announcement.

HTC U11

• HTC U11 review
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• Manufacturing the U11: Behind the scenes
• Join our U11 forums
• HTC U11 vs Galaxy S8
• HTC U11 vs LG G6

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Google Earth is almost ready to work on Firefox

Earlier this year, Google Earth finally became accessible on a browser, giving you a way to virtually explore our world without having to install its application. At the moment, though, it will only work if you’re using Google Chrome, something its developers are working hard to change: their official Twitter account has just revealed that they’re making good progress on bringing the web-based app to Firefox.

Back when the Earth team were working on the app for the web, they only had two ways to bring native code into a browser. They chose a method called “Native Client,” which only Chrome supports but promised to create another version using WebAssembly, the open standard for running native code in the browser that’s still in development. Now that WebAssembly has advanced enough for the team to use, they’re finally been able to show off what the Firefox port of Earth would look like.

The great thing about WebAssembly is that it’s supported not just by Chrome and Firefox, but also by Safari and Edge. So, once Google is done porting Earth over, you might be able to access all of its satellite imagery on almost any browser you want.

Notice anything about this screenshot? Yep, that’s #GoogleEarth on @firefox. Demo only for now, but stay tuned: https://t.co/yIy9gcLyfA 🔥 pic.twitter.com/OedCej5G8y

— Google Earth (@googleearth) October 27, 2017

Source: Google Earth and Earth Engine

AT&T is working on an open-sourced AI project with Linux Foundation

The nonprofit Linux Foundation has announced that is working on an open source AI project, and AT&T is one of the founding organizations. Called the Acumos Project, its goal, like many open source platforms, is to enable a free exchange of ideas and machine learning solutions using an artificial intelligence framework — and eventually become a marketplace for AI apps and services.

The Acumos Project aims to provide tools for casual users, not data scientists, and will focus first on making apps and microservices. While The Linux Foundation’s announcement was light on details, it noted that it will sustain the Acumos Project for some time and AT&T and other founder Tech Mahindra will contribute code.

“Artificial intelligence is a critical tool for growing our business. However, the current state of today’s AI environment is fractured, which creates a significant barrier to adoption,” Mazin Gilbert, Vice President of Advanced Technology at AT&T Labs said in a statement. “Acumos will expedite innovation and deployment of AI applications, and make them available to everyone.”

Acumos Project code will become available nearer to the platform’s launch in early 2018.

Source: The Linux Foundation

Like a GoPro for guppies, Spydro captures footage from your fishing line

Why it matters to you

Spydro is a fish-focused action cam which promises to make every fishing trip a learning experience.

Are you looking to make your fishing game a bit smarter? If so, a new Kickstarter campaign could be just what you’re looking for. Spydro is a smart underwater fishing action camera, designed to automatically record the moment a fish strikes, and share this with your mobile device — in glorious 30 frames per second 1080p HD.

In addition, it determine water conditions, such as salinity, temperature, and turbidity, as well as creating a fishing log with all the necessary data to help you learn the maximum amount from every fishing expedition. It’s a nifty way to not only find out more information about the conditions necessary for the perfect catch but to make fishing fun even when you don’t actually catch the fish that you’re after.

“When it comes to fishing, some of the most exciting aspects happen under the water,” Moordan Trablus, founder and creator of Spydro, told Digital Trends. “We’ve all heard tales of ‘the one that got away,’ right? Spydro helps anglers prove it. Anglers can’t see what happens underwater; they can only guess. Spydro brings a new dimension and makes this accessible to the angler. There’s no more guessing of what’s happening.”

Spydro is waterproof to depths of up to 360 feet, claims 3.5 hours of battery life, boasts night-vision shooting, and sports a built-in SD card with a marine-grade resistivity that is fully stabilized for high-speed trolling. While this isn’t the only smart fishing accessory we covered before, it does promise to be an impressively flexible one, regardless of whether you’re trolling, surf fishing, float bait, or kayak fishing. Trablus describes the ideal audience for the product as being any angler who loves fish and fishing, which sounds just about right.

The Kickstarter campaign is aiming to raise $100,000 over the next 40 days, with about 10 percent of that currently pledged. If you’re interested in getting hold of a unit, you can pre-order one for $179 for a Spydro camera, 8GB SD card, USB cable, pouch, a pair of weights, weight holder, and float. Higher price options are available for 16GB SD cards and additional accessories. Shipping is set to take place in January.

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Firefox 58 May Allow Users To Block Canvas Fingerprinting

Why it matters to you

Firefox wants to block canvas fingerprinting, a new way to track users online.

In newest version of the Firefox web browser, users will be given the ability to block canvas fingerprinting, a new tactic websites use to track your online activity.

For many years, Firefox earned a reputation for being the safest and most secure web browser on the internet. As competition between browsers like Firefox, Chrome, and Safari stiffened, the company may again lean on security with version 58 of the browser, in its bid to win back users.

Firefox 58 comes out in January of 2018, and gives users the ability to deny tracking through a new method of online tracking called canvas fingerprinting.

Canvas fingerprinting is a technique used for tracking online activity by websites and advertisers. Data can be pulled from an HTML5 canvas element to identify and track users, which goes relatively unnoticed by most mainstream browsers. While the method can’t identify a user in the traditional sense, it can create a profile of a user based on browser, operating system, and even the kind of installed graphics hardware in use. Over time, this can create a effective tracking profile.

Canvas fingerprinting first earned attention back in 2014 when it was discovered that a wide assortment of major websites and advertisers were using the technique to identify and track online activity.

The situation is not dissimilar to the way advertisers often rely on cookies to track the online behavior of users, stored in the web history of their browsers. Now that most modern browsers block cookies, advertisers have turned to techniques like canvas fingerprinting to follow you around the internet.

As awareness around the issue of internet privacy has increased in the past few years, demand for more extensive tools for protecting oneself will continue to rise. If Firefox’s move is a sign, mainstream browsers are now catching up to bring this protection to the masses.

Firefox isn’t exactly first to the dance, though. Security-focused web browsers like the Tor Browser have allowed users to block canvas fingerprinting for years now. As pointed out by Forbes, there’s also browser plug-ins and apps that provide similar protection for both Chrome and Firefox users.

Editor’s Recommendations

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NVIDIA Shield TV 6.1 update adds IR remote controls, KRACK fix, and more

Here’s how NVIDIA is making your Shield TV better than ever.

The NVIDIA Shield Android TV is easily the best Android TV box that you can buy at the moment, and thanks to the latest 6.1 software update, it’s getting even better.

This isn’t the biggest update in the world, but there are a few big additions – most notably a fix for the KRACK vulnerability that was discovered earlier this month. In addition to the KRACK fix, 6.1 also introduces the latest monthly security patch to ensure that your Shield TV is as safe and secure as possible.

Also new with the Shield TV is the ability to turn your television on and off when using the Shield remote that has an IR blaster and an “improved experience” when you connect a Logitech Harmony Hub to the Shield TV via Bluetooth.

Lastly, v6.1 includes support for the recently released YouTube TV Android TV app. The YouTube TV app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store on your Shield TV, and if you’re a new customer, you’ll be able to test drive the service free for seven days. After those seven days are up, you’ll pay $35/month for access to over 40 channels, cloud DVR, and access for 6 accounts per household.

The 6.1 update for NVIDIA’s Shield TV is rolling out now.

NVIDIA Shield Android TV

• Read our Shield Android TV review
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• Join the forum discussion
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Samsung Internet v6.2 includes Night Mode, Content Blockers, Samsung Pay/Rewards

Samsung Internet v6.2 has a lot of new features – here’s what to keep an eye out for.

Google Chrome is easily the most popular web browser on Android, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t solid alternatives out there if you want to change up the way you access the web while on the go. Samsung Internet has gotten tremendously better since its release, and the latest v6.2 update adds quite a few new features that make it quite appealing.

One of the biggest features is a new Night Mode. This can be enabled by tapping on the menu icon in the top right and then “Turn on Night Mode”, and once you do, white backgrounds will be turned to black, black text is turned to white, and the brightness of your screen is reduced to provide as comfortable of a browsing experience as possible while going through your favorite sites late at night.

To go along with this, there’s also a new High Contrast Mode. High Contrast Mode works similarly to Night Mode, but rather than decreasing the bightness of your screen, it’ll allow you to increase it as much as possible so you can more easily view the content you’re looking at. To turn High Contrast Mode on, go to Settings -> Accessibility.

The other biggest feature that’s included is the ability to download and install adblocking services through the new Content Blockers page. Samsung Internet will suggest new blockers for you to try out, and the default one (powered by Disconnect Inc.) will prevent any site trackers from following your browsing activity.

Along with all of this, v6.2 also introduces the ability to sync your favorite bookmarks from other web browsers, an update to Chromium Engine M56 with support for CSS Grid and better rendering performance, support for Samsung Pay with Web Payments, and the ability to earn points with Samsung Rewards by using Samsung Internet for users in the United States.

Samsung Internet v6.2 will be available in the coming days on Galaxy Apps and the Google Play Store for devices running Android 5.0 Lollipop and later.

6 reasons to use the Samsung browser on your Galaxy S8

Microsoft axes Outlook.com premium features

We hope you didn’t get too attached to Outlook.com Premium — from all indications, it’s already going away. Microsoft is adding most of Premium’s features (tougher email security, ad-free web access, more storage and top-tier support) to Office 365, but in the process has revealed that it’s removing the paid option for Outlook.com users. You can keep receiving the benefits if you renew an existing subscription, but new subscriptions are “closed.” If you took advantage of the custom email domain, which isn’t coming to Office 365, Microsoft is working on a way to transfer that domain somewhere else.

If you still want Premium’s perks, you’ll need to have an Office 365 subscription linked to one of Microsoft’s email domains, whether it’s Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live.com or MSN. You may also have to be patient, as the the features will take “several weeks” to roll out to Office 365 Home and Personal customers.

We’ve asked Microsoft if it can elaborate on the decision to cut Outlook.com Premium and will let you know what it says. Whatever the motivation, it’s clear that Microsoft is putting a lot of stock in Office 365 — the productivity service just became that much more tempting, even if it’s at the expense of another offering.

Via: Thurrott

Source: Office.com (1), (2), Office Blogs

Facebook exposed 126 million Americans to Russia-linked pages

Russian attempts to skew the 2016 US election through Facebook reached much, much further than first thought. Numerous publications (including Axios, NBC News and the New York Times) have obtained Facebook’s prepared testimony for the Senate, which reveals that Russia-linked pages reached 126 million American users between January 2015 and August 2017. That’s over half of the social network’s US base, for those keeping track. About 80,000 pieces of divisive material were shown to 29 million users whose likes, shares and follows spread the content to many more people.

There’s more beyond that. Facebook also deleted over 170 Russia-linked Instagram accounts that had made about 120,000 posts, and it had discovered security threats against politicians that stemmed from APT28, the hacking team regularly connected to Russian military intelligence.

Facebook was quick to downplay the volume of Russian posts in its testimony. There were over 11 trillion total posts from Pages on Facebook between 2015 and 2017, the company said. And it’s true that merely seeing a post doesn’t mean you notice it, let alone that you believe what it says. However, that doesn’t change that a significant portion of those 126 million people interacted with those posts. That’s millions of people who unwittingly played a part in what appears to be a massive Russian disinformation campaign.

The company certainly isn’t alone when Google and Twitter have also found evidence of meddling. This is a broader problem with how underprepared internet companies were to deal with such a broad attempt to influence the American public. However, Facebook doesn’t look good in light of this testimony: it had initially claimed that its content didn’t influence the election at all, and now it’s admitting that Russian operators were wildly successful in sowing chaos (even if only some people fell for the ploy). The company’s rush to fix its ad system before the 2018 mid-terms just took on an added sense of urgency.

Source: Axios, NBC News, New York Times