The emoji creators are battling it out over a ‘Frowning Pile of Poo’

Why it matters to you

Emojis are quickly becoming a universal language, but do we really need more poo?

The Unicode Consortium is a serious bunch of people with a serious job. It’s a non-profit organization dedicated to standardizing software text worldwide. As part of that noble goal, the consortium has the weighty task of approving the addition of new emojis, the silly little single-character cartoons we append to our texts. And now, a feud has broken out between the serious typographers and the more frivolous bloc who oversee emojis. And it’s all over a pile of poo.

Following a submission for the June 2018 class — a proposed emoji titled “Frowning Pile of Poo” — the consortium erupted into a fierce debate over whether such a poo emoji was really necessary and, more broadly, whether the emoji creation process had become too frivolous and commercialized.

As Buzzfeed explains, Michael Everson and Andrew West are two typographers who vociferously objected to the latest submission, saying it cheapened the consortium’s image and was damaging to the Unicode academic reputation.

“The idea that our 5 committees would sanction further cute graphic characters based on this should embarrass absolutely everyone who votes yes on such an excrescence,” they wrote. “Will we have a CRYING PILE OF POO next? PILE OF POO WITH TONGUE STICKING OUT? PILE OF POO WITH QUESTION MARKS FOR EYES? PILE OF POO WITH KARAOKE MIC?”

The answer to all those questions is surely a resounding “Yes!” but let’s move on. An argument could be made that frowning poo is a necessary addition for those times when you want to covey your feelings with poo, only with a more dour and unhappy subtext. Emojis can even be misinterpreted. As the proponents argue in their 12-page proposal, it would “fill in the missing gap in emotions and attitudes that can’t be expressed with the smiling poo emoji alone.”

​The typographers weren’t buying it. “As an ordinary user, I don’t want this kind of crap on my phone,” Everson wrote.

​The obvious culprit is Apple. “It is a pity that Apple followed Softbank rather than KDDI in its reference glyph, since a coil of dog dirt with stink lines and flies is surely the only proper semantic,” the rebuttal memo declared.

There is also fear that the renegade emoji group is running roughshod over normal processes, implementing emojis in less than a year’s time with very little scrutiny or oversight. “Why the rush?” asked West.

In the meantime, Apple has just released its latest round of emojis — more than 70 of them if you update your device to iOS 11.1. As always, anyone you send the new emojis to will need the update as well, or they won’t be able to see them.

Regardless, it doesn’t look like this controversy will be flushed away any time soon. The debate over whether a surly pile of poo will one day find a home on your smartphone rages on.

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How ‘World of Warcraft Classic’ will bring danger back to Blizzard’s MMO

After years of fan clamoring, Blizzard has announced it’s working on World of Warcraft Classic, an official recreation of original version of the game, often called “vanilla WoW.” Players have been hosting unofficial versions of vanilla WoW on private servers for years, though Blizzard has shut down popular ones to protect its copyright, most notably fan server “Nostralius,” which shut down in 2016.

We spoke to World of Warcraft executive producer J. Allen Brack and senior game designer Jeremy Feasel at Blizzcon 2017 about the intricacies bringing a 13-year-old version of the game back to life, and what players can look forward to when the World of Warcraft Classic is (re)born.

Digital Trends: During the BlizzCon Opening Ceremony you said you want WoW Classic to reproduce the classic WoW experience, but not the launch experience. How do you achieve that balance?

Allen Brack: The “launch experience” is sort of a joke. The launch experience is not a great experience, so we want the gameplay experience to be great, with those 2004-2005 WoW systems, but have it be very stable, server uptime, not have a lot of server queues, right? All the modern conveniences that we have in modern WoW.

So, content-wise, it will be the same?

Brack: Content-wise it will be identical. Now, “identical” has a lot of nuance, [though], because WoW changed a lot in the two years between launch and Burning Crusade. One of the reasons we are talking about this as early as we are is to get the community’s opinions on which way we should go for certain things.

WoW changed a lot in the two years between launch and Burning Crusade.

A good example is U.B.E.R.S. — Upper Blackrock Spire is a dungeon that had a 10-person version and a 5-person version. At some point in development, we dropped the 10-person version. Was that the right decision? Do they want a 10-person version? Do they want a 5-person version? Those are the types of things [we’re figuring out].

You’ve mentioned that you are very early in the development process and making WoW Classic will take awhile. What are the challenges [to bringing vanilla WoW back]?

Brack: It’s mostly just huge technical challenges. The database works completely different today than it did at launch. The way the servers actually work is completely different today than it did at launch. Operating systems are really different — the code is really different, so there’s just a lot of technical challenges where we need to figure out the right, sustainable, best decision for going forward.

Blizzard Entertainment

J. Allen Brack

Blizzard Entertainment

Jeremy Feasel

Obviously there’s been a lot of pressure from the community to do this, especially after the private servers were shut down. What are you hoping this will bring to the community? 

Brack: There are several reasons that we’re doing this. I think the community desire is certainly one of the primary motivators. I think there’s also an internal Blizzard employee desire. There are a lot of people who have a lot of fond memories of WoW Classic now, and they worked on WoW Classic, or they wish they could have worked on WoW Classic, and this is an opportunity for them to do that as well.

Jeremy Feasel: There’s also a desire for us to preserve something. You can’t go and play the Blizzard-quality classic experience [now]. That’s just not something that’s available. We’d like to deliver that. We’d like to have a Blizzard-quality experience of the original game.

What will players be nostalgic for in WoW Classic?

Brack: I don’t if there’s anything that’s like, ‘this one thing.’ I think it’s the total package. It’s the package, plus the community. If you think about the way realms work today. The way player reputation is today, and the conveniences that we have today — those didn’t exist before.

So, if your guy was named “Awesomesauce,” and Awesomesauce did something bad on the server, maybe Awesomesauce got a bad reputation. And now maybe people don’t want group up with Awesomesauce, and now he was ostracized by the community. I don’t know if that’s necessarily good or bad, but it definitely was a hallmark of what classic experience was. There was no way to easily move from one server to another, so your reputation mattered. How you made your groups was [also] a very manual process back in the day. I think that’s something people remember.

WoW leveling was a lot more difficult back in the day. […] Get your epic mount at level 60? Don’t even think about it.

Feasel: I think some of the things people remember about classic WoW leveling was a lot more difficult back in the day. If you went down into Moonbrook, you were likely to die. It took a significant amount of work to get your mount at level 40. And get your epic mount at level 60? Don’t even think about it.

To me, those are things I remember fondly. The whole world feeling really big and really meaty, and not being able to run away from a guy on a mount and being in awe of that particular guy who got that epic mount. I think that’s something that players have always glommed onto: That idea of getting to reset the clock, and getting to be that awesome guy that had the swift white mechanostrider when nobody else did. This is your opportunity to be that guy again! [Or], maybe it passed you by because you came into WoW two weeks after your friends started and you were never able to get there. This is another opportunity to do that. To me that feels like one of the most awesome parts of doing this.

I think we will be seeing a huge amount of feedback about things like how long it takes to level and where those danger points are, and how Murlocs are jerks. I can’t wait to hear how players feel about all those concepts again.

World of Warcraft Classic is in development. Blizzard has not set a release date. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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It’s time to stop being afraid of new technology

Concerns about how A.I. will affect our lives are necessary, but so is properly talking about them.

We’re on the cusp of a major change in the way our gadgets do things. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are no longer something you would see in a science fiction novel, and smart machines are being deployed to do even the most mundane tasks, as well as more high-profile things that catch our attention. While I think we’re still at least a few years away from the point where we all have our own robotic butlers and flying cars, the possibilities are no longer in doubt.

Nobody wants computers that are evil and nobody is building them.

Along with the breakthroughs that enable machines to make real decisions comes an inherent fear of the consequences. Some are valid, many are silly, but every one of them makes for a great headline. Whether reporting that Elon Musk’s billion-dollar crusade to stop the A.I. Apocalypse (a real headline) or reminding us how everyone is one breath away from stealing our identity, reporters and publications need to provide both sides of every issue and point us towards resources where we can learn more. Doing neither makes us unnecessarily suspicious of the tech breakthroughs that will be a part of our future.

I’m going to pick on the iPhone X today. Before anyone gets upset, I’ll tell you my impression of the iPhone X without ever having touched one — too bad the cool stuff it can do came from Apple first, because I really don’t want to use an iPhone every day. It’s an iPhone in the Essential Phone’s body with some excellent tech at the top that can do some really interesting things. If you like the iOS ecosystem, it seems like it’s the phone you want to buy. And because of the fascination with all things Apple, it’s getting the lion’s share of attention by the western press. That might be a good thing for other companies though, as much of the press surrounding the things that make it special isn’t necessarily the good kind.

Two recent articles stand out about today’s new smart tech, how it’s used by Apple, and why it’s something to be concerned about, but I’m sure there are countless others. In October, Wired talked about how machine learning “COULD SURFACE YOUR IPHONE’S SECRETS” (yes, in all caps) and Reuters told us how facial recognition “spooks” privacy experts. Both need a very critical eye when reading.

Rene Ritchie did an excellent job discussing the problems with Wired’s article which basically claims that machine learning can find your nude photos and do something nefarious with them, but I still need to point out a bit of text from the article itself.

Researchers are quick to note that while Core ML introduces important nuances—particularly to the app-vetting process—it doesn’t necessarily represent a fundamentally new threat. “I suppose CoreML could be abused, but as it stands apps can already get full photo access,” says Will Strafach, an iOS security researcher and the president of Sudo Security Group. “So if they wanted to grab and upload your full photo library, that is already possible if permission is granted.”

Essentially, Apple’s Core ML system (their machine learning algorithms and the hardware that can process the data) cannot do anything that any other app isn’t able to do. Even if you tell the system to root out photos that appear to be of naked people, it can’t do anything with them if it finds any. Yet the article and it’s alarmist title is there for everyone to see.

Reuters poses the premise that security researchers are afraid of what Apple’s facial recognition means for our data privacy. Specifically, that a third-party developer can somehow use the data from the iPhone X’s camera in ways that intrude into our lives or even use the data as identification credentials. It’s good that security researchers and privacy advocates worry about these things. That’s what they are supposed to be doing. It’s not as good when Reuters doesn’t explain what data is shared with third parties and what can be done with it once they let us know that the ACLU is taking a close look.

The iPhone X is getting the attention but these are the new technologies that every company is using in what comes next.

This isn’t an Apple problem even though it’s their product in the spotlight. We’ve all seen or read about the things Google can do with their advanced machine learning algorithms, whether that means making a better camera and gallery to take and view your photos or diagnosing disease earlier so treatment can begin when it’s most needed. But machine learning plays a big part of things we wouldn’t associate with tech, like disposable pens or tomatoes.

Entire industries already use machines that make rudimentary decisions and will be deploying even smarter ones as they are developed. Many products you use (or even eat!) every day were processed through an automation line that manufactured, sorted and inspected them using cameras and smart computer systems. Then they were packaged using machines that knew what size box to use based on what was dumped into a hopper and put on the right pallet so they could be delivered by the right equipment to the right loading dock.

Sensationalism will lead to unnecessary and unwanted oversight. It always does.

Concern about what even more advancement might mean for unemployment is something that laymen should be discussing, but inherent safety and privacy concerns are best left to the experts until actual problems are found. Sensationalism at this stage will only lead to regulations enacted by people wholly unqualified. Imagine your senator or member of parliament trying to dissect Tensorflow or Cloud ML and find ways to “protect” us from them.

We need highly qualified people to look long and hard at machines that can think. We also need responsible reporting on what those researchers have to say instead of clickbait. Remember, every headline you can see is also one that members of the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law can see. It’s very important that all of us get the facts without the hyperbole. Let’s not kill the next big thing before it gets off the ground.

Space X photograph courtesy of Pushkr – https://www.flickr.com/photos/pushkargujar/23791728242/, Creative Commons 2.0

Internet giants now support bill to curb online sex trafficking

For ages, internet companies have fought changes to the Communications Decency Act’s Section 230, which protects them from liability for content that might pass through their websites. They don’t want to be sued because someone conducted sex trafficking on their sites without their knowledge. They’ve had a change of heart, though. The Internet Association (which includes Amazon, Facebook and Google) now supports the proposed Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, which would explicitly punish online sites that facilitate exploitation, after lawmakers altered the bill to protect innocent sites against criminal charges and lawsuits.

The amended bill makes it explicit that a site can’t use safe harbor rules as a shield if it “knowingly” assists with sex trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Also, any charges have to center around federal trafficking laws, not state-level or tangentially-related measures. All told, sites will only face action if they’re either intentionally enabling sex trafficking or receive warnings and choose to do nothing. The previous wording was vague enough (there merely had to be “participation in a venture”) that it could have opened the door to legal action merely because a site technically allowed sex trafficking on its servers.

SESTA still has to clear Congress and the President before it can become law, so it’s not a done deal at this point. And it still has its share of critics. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, maintains that the measure won’t actually stop sex trafficking and may only protect large companies that can afford to fight cases. It may protect Facebook if someone posts an ad for sex slaves, but what about small sites (particularly forums) or consensual prostitution? There’s a concern that the bill may push sex workers and trafficking victims offline. Moreover,critics worry that it might encourage an overdependence on less-than-flawless automated filters as companies scramble to avoid even the slightest hint of wrongdoing.

Source: Internet Association

Estonia freezes resident ID cards due to security flaw

Estonia’s residents use their mandatory national IDs to access pretty much anything, from online banking to online voting. So, it was a huge blow to the program when experts found a security flaw in the IDs’ chip that makes it easy for bad players to impersonate and steal the identities of all 760,000 affected individuals. That might not sound like a huge number, but that’s half the small country’s population. Now, the country has blocked most of its residents from accessing all its online services for a weekend, so it can go in and and fix the vulnerability.

All ID cards issued from the beginning of the program in October 2014 to October 25th, 2017 will be frozen until their owners apply for updated certificates with the fix. They can do that online, but the online service kept crashing over the past week, leading people to flock to police stations and other government offices to get their IDs updated. For now, only medical professionals and the most frequent users will be able to apply for updated certificates online, but Estonia will open up the system to the public again on Monday.

Reports about the IDs’ security flaw started going around in early September. According to the ID program’s managing director, though, there are “still no known incidents of an Estonian digital ID card being misused.” Even so, officials still decided to suspend residents’ cards, since the threat has recently been elevated. Those who were quick enough to authenticate their identities with the Smart-ID app before their certificates were suspended can still use the country’s online services. However, they still have to act fast: the government is only giving people until March 2018 to update their certificates.

Prime Minister Jüri Ratas said in a statement:

“The functioning of an e-state is based on trust and the state cannot afford identity theft happening to the owner of an Estonian ID card. As far as we currently know, there has been no instances of e-identity theft, but the threat assessment of the Police and Border Guard Board and the Information System Authority indicates that this threat has become real. By blocking the certificates of the ID cards at risk, the state is ensuring the safety of the ID card.”

Via: BBC, Reuters

Source: e-Estonia

Animoji Karaoke Takes Over Social Media Following iPhone X Launch

An animated cat, fox, pig, and chicken singing Bohemian Rhapsody is the epitome of a new social media phenomenon dubbed Animoji Karaoke.

Over the past week, both reviewers and customers lucky enough to have the device in their hands have shared fun, humorous videos of Animoji in action, ranging from goofy voiceovers to full-out music videos.

Animoji, for those unaware, are custom animated characters that use your voice and mirror your facial expressions captured by the iPhone X’s new TrueDepth camera system. You can even record yourself as a Pile of Poo.

Creator: Mia Harrison
iPhone X users can create Animoji recordings up to 10 seconds long in the Messages app, but the internet discovered that iOS 11’s new screen recording feature allows for much lengthier clips. Enter Animoji Karaoke.

The idea was conceived by technology reporter Harry McCracken, who decided it might be fun to lip-sync a song and have an Animoji character mimic his performance. From there, similar videos have spread on social media.

To create your own Animoji Karaoke, play a song loudly enough for it to be picked up by the iPhone X’s microphone while lip-syncing. After messaging the Animoji, tap on it, and tap on the iOS share sheet to save it as a video.

A few people have gone a few steps further by stitching together multiple Animoji clips and editing in some other post-production effects.

Animoji might end up being a gimmicky feature that fades over the coming months, but for now, Apple is certainly benefitting from a wave of free viral marketing. If you see a singing fox in your timeline, now you know why.

Related Roundup: iPhone XTag: AnimojiBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
Discuss this article in our forums

Apple Watch Bug Causing Restarts When Asking Siri About the Weather

There’s a strange bug with the Apple Watch today that’s causing resprings whenever Siri is questioned about the weather. Asking Siri something like “What’s the temperature?” or “What’s the weather?” or “Is it raining?” causes the Apple Watch to crash.

The issue has been documented in several threads on the MacRumors forums and on reddit, and we’ve also been able to replicate it on our own devices.

Complaints about the problem appear to have started this morning, and the bug is confirmed to be affecting both LTE and GPS Apple Watch Series 3 models as well as older Apple Watch models running watchOS 4.1. Not all Apple Watch owners in all countries are affected, but it appears to be impacting users in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

It’s not yet clear what’s causing the issue, but the weather app itself is working fine, and restarting and resetting the watch don’t appear to fix the problem. From MacRumors forum member SRLMJ23:

It is not rebooting, it is spring-boarding. The App (Siri or Weather?) is crashing but not the entire watchOS. Just time how long it takes for a reboot vs. spring-boarding. Spring-boarding takes way less time than an entire reboot.

However, this bug appeared today because yesterday everything was working fine when I asked Siri “What is the forecast for today” or “What is the temperature right now.”

I am sure Apple will fix this pretty quick!

I have an Apple Watch Series 3 + LTE/GPS. Very odd bug, cannot wait to see what Apple has to say about this.

Curiously, asking Siri about the weather tomorrow or next week doesn’t cause a problem — it’s only questions about the current weather conditions that are resulting in errors. It’s possible that this is an issue related to the upcoming time change, as one reddit user has discovered. Daylight Saving Time is set to end on Sunday, November 5 in many regions in the United States and Canada.

Okay, I think I’ve figured it out. It’s a bug related to the end of Daylight Saving Time. If I ask for the weather in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, it works. If I ask for the weather in Winnipeg, Manitoba, it crashes. Saskatchewan doesn’t observe DST. I think if a time change is set to occur within 24 hours in the city you’re asking about, it will crash.

Apple will likely have this fixed shortly (or it’ll clear up after Sunday), but for now, it’s best to avoid using the watch to ask questions about the weather in order to prevent sudden resprings.

(Thanks, Shawn!)

Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 4Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Buy Now)
Discuss this article in our forums

‘Pokémon Go’ may have its own social network after Niantic’s newest acquisition

Why it matters to you

A social network build around augmented reality games could connect us in a new way.

Niantic Labs, maker of the wildly popular Pokémon Go and the augmented-reality adventure Ingress, has acquired social media startup Evertoon to expand its reach across mobile platforms. Rather than an acquisition, Niantic seems to be hiring all five Evertoon employees for their social media expertise and engineering know-how, rather than a desire to take over the Evertoon property itself.

Their experience in adding social media to digital products was the reason for the hire, Niantic founder John Hanke said in a blog post. “Today I am excited to announce that we have acquired the Evertoon team, who bring with them a wealth of talent and experience in mobile products, tools for creativity, and community building.”

Evertoon released a mobile app that allowed users to create avatars based on their own likeness, which they could then manipulate to perform a variety of actions and create miniature movies or music videos. The company was founded in 2014 by Niane Wang, a Google veteran who co-founded Google Desktop.

“Our mission is to use animation to enable video creation for anyone with stories to tell, regardless of their looks, race, or age,” Evertoon said in a statement. “It has been wonderful seeing this come to fruition in our diverse community.”

The company will be shutting down its online support on November 30, although you can still continue to create animations in offline mode on your phone. “As a thank-you, we recently released 60 new animations and 13 clothing items. We hope you enjoy using these in your future videos,” the company said. The latest version of the iOS Evertoon app is now available in the App Store.

The Evertoon team will get to work adding a social platform to Pokémon Go and other upcoming Niantic games.

Although Pokémon Go is no longer the global phenomenon it once was, it still has a huge and loyal user base and generates a ton of money. Augmented reality certainly has a big future in gaming, as more than two million trainers participated in a recent “Pikachu Outbreak” event in Japan. With the release of third-generation monsters and ongoing events, this move could help to reinvigorate interest in the franchise.

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Need to zip files in Windows 10? It’s easy – and no new software required

If sharing large photos or video files is part of your daily workflow, you know that file compression is a big part of the process. For instance, if you want to email a large batch of photographs captured during a trip, sending all those files as they are may take a long time to transmit and receive. Plus, the photos will eat up precious space in your outbound box as well as the recipient’s inbox. The same goes if you’re using a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive.

In the old days, you were forced to rely on third-party software to compress and un-compress files. You can still use those programs today, but Microsoft baked file compression capability into Windows back in 1998. While Windows 10 (as well as MacOS and ChromeOS) has you covered for ZIP compression, you’ll have to turn to third-party software for file compression formats such as RAR and 7z.

Unpacking a ZIP file is extremely easy, but packing a ZIP-based suitcase for your files isn’t quite as obvious. We’ll first show you how to compress a file in Windows 10, followed by an entire folder. After that, we will demonstrate how to unpack a ZIP file, so that you can get access to the uncompressed files again. Let’s get started!

ZIP a single file

You’ll want to use this method if a single file is extremely large, such as video shot with a smartphone or digital camera.

Locate File Explorer on the Windows 10 taskbar (the folder icon).
Locate the file you want to compress.
Right-click on the file.
Select Send to on the menu.
Select Compressed (zipped) folder in the next menu.
Rename your new ZIP file, and press the Enter key.

ZIP multiple files

This method is handy for cramming multiple files together, for both size and organizational reasons. This is smart idea when you’re sending files, and also just to keep files together to free up disk space.

Locate File Explorer on the Windows 10 taskbar (the folder icon).
Locate the files you want to add to a single ZIP file.
Select all files by holding down the mouse button and dragging the pointer across the screen. Your mouse will create a blue selection box. All files within this box are highlighted with a light blue color.
Release the mouse button and right-click on the light blue highlighted files.
Select Send to on the menu.
Select Compressed (zipped) folder in the next menu.
Rename your new ZIP file, and press the Enter key.

ZIP an entire folder

If you want multiple files in a single folder, this is the method you choose. When unpacked, all files will unload in a folder created during the compression process.

Locate File Explorer on the Windows 10 taskbar (the folder icon).
Locate the folder you want to add to a single ZIP file.
Right-click on the folder.
Select Send to on the menu.
Select Compressed (zipped) folder in the next menu.
Rename your new ZIP file and press the Enter key.

Finally, let’s demonstrate how you can unpack a ZIP file in Windows 10.

Unpack a ZIP file

Zipping files is only helpful if you can extract them as well. Windows 10 uses an algorithm to scan your file, temporarily remove all repetitive information, and create a new file with a smaller size and a new file extension: ZIP. To revert the file back to its former state, Windows 10 scans the file to see what was removed, and inserts the repetitive information back into the file. Here’s how to do it:

Locate File Explorer on the Windows 10 taskbar (the folder icon).
Locate the file you want to decompress.
Right-click on the file.
Select Extract all on the menu.
On the next pop-up screen, select where you want Windows 10 to unload the files.
Once you choose a location, click the Select Folder

Finally, click the Extract button.

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Master your new iPhone with these helpful iPhone X tips and tricks

Apple’s iPhone X has officially hit store shelves. If you’ve already managed to snag one, it may take you some time to get used to the new design. Have no fear, we’ve got helpful iPhone X tips and tricks so you can get the most out of your new iPhone. Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, brush up on your iOS 11 skills, find a case to protect that fragile iPhone, or even pick up a wireless charging pad.

How to switch between apps and go back to the home screen

Prior to the iPhone X, the home button was how you would switch between apps, or go back to the home screen. If you want to view all the apps you have open while on the home screen, swipe up from the bottom edge of your device. This will bring you to the stack of apps that are currently running. To force close apps, hold down on a specific app and red minus signs will appear on the top left of each app. You can either swipe up to get rid of the app or tap on the red sign. If you’re on an app and want to go back to the home screen, swipe up on the elongated bar at the bottom of every app.

How to set up Face ID

When you’re first setting up your iPhone X, you’ll get the option to turn on Face ID and go through the configuration process, just like Touch ID. It requires rotating your head twice so the TrueDepth camera can capture all your facial features. If you somehow skipped this step, you can head to Settings > Face ID and Passcode > Set up Face ID. You’ll have to let it scan your face again twice. Once done, all you need to do to unlock your iPhone X is swipe up the lock screen with your eyes open and you’ll see a padlock icon unlocking. Your iPhone X will not unlock if you do not make eye contact with the phone.

How to activate Siri

On the right side of the iPhone X is an elongated power button — we’ve started to call it the “lock” button, because its primary use is no longer to turn off your phone. You can activate Siri by holding down the lock button on the right for a few seconds. The voice assistant will appear, ready to answer any questions or follow any commands. If you want to exit Siri, press the lock button again.

How to take a screenshot

Brenda Stolyar/Digital Trends

Taking a screenshot on the iPhone X might feel a little foreign without the home button present, especially because now it’s similar to taking a screenshot on an Android phone. All you need to do is press the lock and volume up button at the same time. Once it takes the screenshot, you’ll see it appear in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen. Tap it to mark up or edit your screen shot, and you can then delete it or save it to Photos.

How to access your notifications and the Control Center

The iPhone X brings a “notch,” which is the black space at the top of the phone housing the tech needed for Face ID. The screen flanks the notch, and the right side has a very specific function — it’s how you now bring down the Control Center. Simply swipe down from the top right, and down comes the Control Center. To access the Notification Center, swipe down on the left side or center of the top of the iPhone X. This will pull down your notifications page which you can then swipe back up to bring you back to the home screen. In the Notification Center, you can still swipe left to access the camera, and swipe right to go to your Today widgets.

How to access Apple Pay

To quickly get to Apple Pay on the iPhone X, double tap the lock button on the right edge of the phone. Your card will then appear and Face ID will automatically scan you to verify you’re the card owner. If you don’t want to use Face ID, there’s also the option to manually type in your Passcode.

How to turn off your phone

You can turn your phone off by holding down either of the volume buttons and the lock button at the same time. At the top, you’ll see the “slide to power off” option. This is also how you can access Emergency SOS and Medical ID if you’re in a situation that requires emergency services.

How to take a photo in Portrait Mode

With the iPhone X, you can use Portrait Mode on both the rear and front-facing camera. After opening the camera app, choose Portrait, and you’ll get a carousel of different Portrait Lighting options such as Natural Light, Studio Light, Contour Light, and more. Tap the rotate camera icon to switch to the front-facing camera for a professional-looking selfie.

Tap to turn on display

Brenda Stolyar/Digital Trends

Normally, you’d use Touch ID to turn on the iPhone lock screen. With the iPhone X, all you need to do is tap the display to turn on the screen.

How to turn raise to wake off/on

Whenever you lift up your iPhone X to your face, the screen will automatically wake up. This is called Raise to Wake, and it has been around for some time on iPhones. If you want to turn it off, head to Settings > Display & Brightness and toggle Raise to Wake on or off.

How to send an Animoji

Jeremy Kaplan/Digital Trends

Animojis are animated emojis you can send to any iOS or Android user. The emojis use the Face ID TrueDepth cameras to track your facial animations, kind of like motion capture used in films. To send one, head to the Messages app. Open a chat thread, and you’ll see a bar of apps at the bottom. Next to the App Store icon sits the monkey emoji — tap it. You’re now at the Animoji record screen. You can swipe it up to expand it to the whole screen. Choose your favorite emoji, and you’ll realize it’s already tracking your facial movements. Tap the red record button to capture a 10 second video (with audio), and send it to your friends. This will show up as a video file for people without an iPhone X.

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