‘PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ is getting a mobile port in China

It was only about a week ago when Tencent announced that it’s bringing a localized version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds to China, and earlier today, the tech giant added that it’s also porting the PC game to mobile platforms — an interesting move given that there are already several Chinese mobile clones of PUBG (even smartphone maker Xiaomi has one). While it’s hard to imagine how one could enjoy a chicken dinner on much smaller screens and sans keyboard or mouse, Tencent said together with PUBG Corp, they will ensure that this authentic mobile port of PUBG will remain faithful to its PC counterpart in terms of gameplay method, core elements and compliance with local content regulations.

Tencent didn’t say when PUBG for mobile will be ready. All we know for now is that development is making “very good progress” and that, surprise, surprise, China will get first dibs. There’s also no word on whether the port will eventually make it to other markets around the world, but it’d be silly for Tencent and PUBG Corp not to do so: with the PC version having already shipped over 21 million copies so far, its mobile port can potentially come close to that figure, depending on how good the modification is. It’ll also be interesting to see how this figure compares to that of the upcoming Xbox One version, especially given that the latter likely won’t be released in China any time soon, if ever.

Via: Engadget Chinese

Source: Tencent Games

Uber may have to answer to Congress about data breach coverup

Five states are already investigating Uber’s breach that exposed data on 57 million of its users, which the company hid for a year. But now the ridesharing titan will have to explain its actions to Congress. Five Democratic and Republican Senators sent a series of letters to Uber asking why it didn’t inform customers sooner, whether it’s working with law enforcement and how it will help the users affected.

Four Republicans headed by John Thune (R-SD), who lead committees overseeing tech, telecom, finance and data security, sent a letter to Uber asking when the company discovered the data had been stolen, when it had alerted authorities and if users’ Social Security numbers were compromised. The lone Democrat Mark Warner (D-VA) inquired as to why Uber didn’t have better security and why it didn’t inform affected users earlier.

Uber is “working to respond to their inquiries and address their concerns,” the company told Recode. At the least, we know that Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was told about the breach two weeks after he assumed his office on September 5th, sources informed The Wall Street Journal. Between learning about it and informing the public over two months later, Uber determined exactly how many users were affected and fired the executives who covered up the breach.

When reached for comment, an Uber spokesperson said: “We take this matter very seriously and we are happy to answer any questions regulators may have. We are committed to changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make, and working hard to re-gain the trust of consumers.”

Via: Recode

Source: Letter, Mark Warner (D-VA) to Uber, Letter, John Thune (R-SD), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to Uber

WhatsApp Just Made It Easier to Record Long Voice Messages and Watch YouTube Video Links

WhatsApp received an update on Tuesday introducing a couple of notable feature additions, namely, a more convenient way to record long voice messages, and a picture-in-picture mode for viewing YouTube videos.

WhatsApp’s voice message recording ability has been a popular feature on the chat platform for a good while now, but the fact that you had to hold down the microphone button to keep recording could get frustrating if you wanted to send a particularly long chunk of audio in one go.

So, starting today, WhatsApp is introducing Locked Recordings. Now, when you hold the mic button to record a message, a padlock UI element soon appears along the right-hand side of the chat window which allows you to slide up and lock the recording to give your finger a rest. When you’re done, tapping the send button ends the audio recording and sends it on its way.

A couple of things that might be obvious to some users, but are still worth noting: when making a Locked Recording, you can’t view media in a thread unless you use a 3D Touch action, and you can’t navigate to another chat.

The other worthwhile addition in version 2.17.81 is the ability to watch YouTube videos you’ve received in a chat right from within WhatsApp. Thanks to picture-in-picture, you can also keep watching the video as you navigate to another chat. At the time of writing, PiP doesn’t seem to be working for all users who have updated, so WhatsApp could still be working to roll it out more broadly behind the scenes.

WhatsApp is a free download for iPhone from the App Store. [Direct Link]

Tag: WhatsApp
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Tumblr CEO and founder David Karp decides to call it quits

If you’re going to quit the top role at the blogging service you founded 10 years ago, there’s only going to be one place to announce it.

And so it was in a Tumblr post on Monday that David Karp revealed he was quitting as the company’s CEO “after months of reflection.”

Karp launched Tumblr in 2007 at the age of 20, and the platform soon became a hit with younger adults and creatives as a place to share a vast range of often quirky material. At its peak in early 2014, users were adding around 115 million posts a day, but as Facebook and predominantly mobile services like Instagram and Snapchat gained in popularity, the daily post count has fallen steadily and stands at around 35 million for 2017.

Thirty-one-year-old Karp said he looks back with pride “at a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders that have redefined our culture and who we have helped to empower.”

Addressing his former colleagues directly, he added: “The internet is at a crossroads of which this team can play a fundamental role in shaping. You are in the driver seat, and I am so excited to see where you go.”

His decision to quit came “after months of reflection on my personal ambitions,” Karp said. He didn’t give a specific reason for why he’s leaving Tumblr, and declined to say what he plans to do next. It’s worth noting, however, that his departure comes in the same year that Verizon acquired Yahoo, which itself bought Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion — Karp’s deal with Yahoo meant that he had to stick around until 2017 to receive his $110 million payout in full.

Verizon’s newly formed media group, Oath, said on Monday that it thanked Karp “for his commitment and passion driving the growth of the platform to almost 380 million blogs and over 155 billion posts.”

Karp will step out of the door before the end of this year, and will be replaced by Jeff D’Onofrio, Tumblr’s president and chief operating officer. Considering Tumblr’s competition and the service’s steady decline, D’Onofrio clearly has his work cut out if he’s going to succeed in bringing back some of the old magic.

Waymo’s autonomous cars have driven 4 million miles

Lest anyone think that Waymo hasn’t been preparing to launch its own autonomous ride-sharing service at some point, the Google spinoff just announced that its self-driving cars have driven a collective 4 million miles on public roads. But it’s not just the milestone the company is celebrating, it’s the pace: While it took the company 18 months to reach one million, then 14 to reach two, then 8 months to reach three and finally six months to reach the four million mile marker.

While these have been on public roads, they’ve been restricted to cities in California’s Bay Area and around Phoenix, Arizona, with some testing in Austin, Texas and Kirkland, Washington. Waymo had been refining its autonomous tech in partnership with Lyft, though it’s unclear how much influence that has had.

In addition to real driving, the company has put its systems through 2.5 billion simulated miles in the last year, Waymo’s blog post boasted. With all that experience, the company says its been able to teach its vehicles enough to pull off ‘full autonomy,’ and hinted that the public would soon ‘get to use Waymo’s driverless service to go to work, to school, to the grocery store and more.’

Source: Waymo Blog

Plex DVR can now automatically remove commercials

Plex, the service that collects media and streaming channels into one application, has been fine-tuning its offerings with new features that have recently improved viewing quality. But its next addition came with little fanfare: Enabling its DVR, which it launched back in June, to automatically remove commercials.

Plex quietly added the feature to its DVR service this weekend, which requires a Plex Pass subscription, in an update with several bug fixes. You’ll have to manually enable the commercial-snipping in the DVR settings, but thereafter it will cut the ads out permanently, deleting them from the file itself. Better hope that it correctly flags material or the setting will cut out parts of your show. Also, be aware that “this process may take a long time and cause high CPU usage,” according to the feature’s description.

Via: Digital Trends

Source: Cord Cutters News

‘Pokémon Go’ legendary Ho-Oh is catchable for limited time

After amassing 500 million Pokémon in less than 48 hours, Pokémon Go players seemed primed to smash the Global Catch Challenge to nab 3 billion pocket monsters. Sure enough, they did, and (as promised) Niantic made region-locked Pokémon Farfetch’d available globally for two days. As it turns out, that wasn’t the only reward the developer was planning. It’s now making Ho-Oh, one of the Johto region’s two legendary Pokémon, up for grabs in Raid Battles worldwide until December 12th.

Thanks to all your hard work last week, Ho-Oh will appear in Raid Battles until 12/12! #PokemonGOtravel #GlobalCatchChallenge https://t.co/YfyBGwfTux pic.twitter.com/mdGoFByyQl

— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) November 27, 2017

As usual, you’ll need a full squad of 20 trainers to stand a decent chance of catching the super-strong pocket monster. Niantic’s fresh changes to Raid battles, and with them the introduction of better prizes, should come in handy too.

Source: Pokémon Go

What’s on TV: ‘Vikings,’ ‘Easy,’ ‘Dark’ and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’

This week Netflix brings season two of its romance-focused anthology series Easy, as well as a new supernatural series, Dark, that’s set in Germany during the 1980s. There’s a new season of Vikings debuting on History, while the various college football conferences roll through their championship games and Curb Your Enthusiasm wraps up its season on HBO. Resident Evil: Revelations 1 & 2 are arriving for Switch, and there’s a collector’s edition Misery Blu-ray for movie buffs. Look after the break to check out each day’s highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).

Blu-ray & Games & Streaming

• People You May Know (VOD)
• Misery
• Logan Lucky (4K)
• Get Out (Steelbook)
• The Woman in Red
• Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
• Rememory
• Doc Hollywood
• The Defiant Ones
• Black Mirror (PC, PS4, Xbox One)
• SOMA (Xbox One, PS4)
• Resident Evil: Revelation (Switch)
• Resident Evil: Revelations 2 (Switch)
• Sky Force Reloaded (PS4, PC, Xbox One)
• Skyforge (Xbox One)
• Star Ocean: The Last Hop (4K & Full HD Remaster) (PS4, PC)
• Star Ghost (Switch)
• Syberia II (Switch)
• Serial Cleaner (Switch)
• Blue Angels Aerobatic Flight Simulator (Xbox One)
• ACA NeoGeo World Heroes (Switch)

Monday

• Texans/Ravens, ESPN, 8:15 PM
• Kevin Can Wait, CBS, 8 PM
• The Voice, NBC, 8 PM
• CMA Country Christmas, ABC, 8 PM
• WWE Raw, USA, 8 PM
• Supergirl, CW, 8 PM
• Man with a Plan, CBS, 8:30 PM
• Angry Angel, Freeform, 9 PM
• Arrow, CW, 9 PM
• 9jkl, CBS, 9 PM
• Ride with Norman Reedus, AMC, 9 PM
• Woman on Fire, Starz, 9 PM
• Robert Kirkman’s Secret History of Comics, AMC, 10 PM
• Scorpion, CBS, 10 PM
• Meth Storm, HBO, 10 PM
• A Very Pentatonix Christmas Special, NBC, 10 PM
• The Good Doctor, ABC, 10 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Tuesday

• Marvel’s Runaways, Hulu, 3 AM
• Glitch (S2), Netflix, 3 AM
• Good Morning Call (S2), Netflix, 3 AM
• Lethal Weapon, Fox, 8 PM
• The Flash, CW, 8 PM
• The 80s (My Music), PBS, 8 PM
• The Voice, NBC, 8 PM
• WWE Smackdown, USA, 8 PM
• Major Crimes, TNT, 9 PM
• The Mick, Fox, 9 PM
• DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, CW, 9 PM
• This is Us (fall finale), NBC, 9 PM
• Inside the NFL, Showtime, 9 PM
• Fantomworks, Velocity, 9 PM
• Brooklyn Nine-nine, Fox, 9:30 PM
• Drunk History: Christmas Special, Comedy Central, 10 PM
• Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, CBS, 10 PM
• The Mane Event, BET, 10 PM
• Who Killed Tupac?, A&E, 10 PM
• Chicago Med, NBC, 10 PM
• Hunt for the Zodiac Killer, History, 10 PM
• The Challenge, MTV, 10 PM
• Drop the Mic, TBS, 10:30 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Wednesday

• Chance, Hulu, 3 AM
• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (S1), Amazon Prime, 3 AM
• Survivor, CBS, 8 PM
• Christmas in Rockefeller Center, NBC, 8 PM
• Riverdale, CW, 8 PM
• Vikings: Recap Special, History, 8 PM
• Speechless, ABC, 8:30 PM
• Dynasty, CW, 9 PM
• Law & Order: SVU, NBC, 9 PM
• Modern Family, ABC, 9 PM
• Star, Fox, 9 PM
• Vikings (season premiere), History, 9 PM
• American Housewife, ABC, 9:30 PM
• Mr. Robot, USA, 10 PM
• 24K Magic Live at the Apollo, CBS, 10 PM
• South Park, Comedy Central, 10 PM
• Chicago PD, NBC, 10 PM
• The Ultimate Fighter, Fox Sports 1, 10 PM
• The A-Word, Sundance, 10 PM
• Broad City, Comedy Central, 10:30 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Thursday

• Washington/Cowboys, NBC, 8:25 PM
• Supernatural, CW, 8 PM
• The Big Bang Theory, CBS, 8 PM
• Gotham, Fox, 8 PM
• Supernatural, CW, 8 PM
• Young Sheldon, CBS, 8:30 PM
• Penn & Tell: Fool US, CW, 9 PM
• The Wonderful World of Disney, ABC, 9 PM
• Van Helsing, Syfy, 9 PM
• Mom, CBS, 9 PM
• The Orville, Fox, 9 PM
• Life in Pieces, CBS, 9:30 PM
• The President Show, Comedy Central, 10 PM
• Ghost Wars, Syfy, 10 PM
• The Menendez Murders (series premiere), A&E, 10 PM
• SWAT, CBS, 10 PM
• The Cromaries, USA, 10:30 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM
• The Rundown with Robin Thede, BET, 11 PM

Friday

• Dark (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• Easy (S2), Netflix, 3 AM
• Voyeur, Netflix, 3 AM
• East Los High (series finale), Hulu, 3 AM
• Blindspot, NBC, 8 PM
• Macgyver, CBS, 8 PM
• Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season premiere), ABC, 8 PM
• A Football Life: Jerry Jones, NFL Network, 9 PM
• Masters of Illusion, CW, 9 PM
• The Ultimate Fighter (season finale), FS1, 9 PM
• Z Nation, Syfy, 9 PM
• Hawaii Five-0, CBS, 9 PM
• The Exorcist, Fox, 9 PM
• All Def Comedy (series premiere), HBO, 10 PM
• Superstition, Syfy, 10 PM
• Kevin Hart Presents, Comedy Central, 11 PM

Saturday

• Big Ten college football championship: Ohio State vs. Wisconsin, Fox, 8 PM
• ACC college football championship: Clemson vs. Miami, ABC, 8 PM
• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, BBC America, 9 PM
• Michelle Wolf: Nice Lady, HBO, 9 PM
• Saturday Night Live: Saoirse Ronan / U2, NBC, 11:30 PM

Sunday

• No Activity, CBS AA, 3 AM
• Eagles/Seahawks, NBC, 8:20 PM
• Outlander, Starz, 8 PM
• The Carol Burnett 50th Anniversary Special, CBS, 8 PM
• The Simpsons, Fox, 8 PM
• Ghosted (fall finale), Fox, 8:30 PM
• Wisdom of the Crowd, CBS, 8:30 PM
• Outlander, Starz, 8 PM
• Shameless, Showtime, 9 PM
• The Walking Dead, AMC, 9 PM
• The Girlfriend Experience, Starz, 9 PM
• Family Guy, Fox, 9 PM
• Berlin station, Epix, 9 PM
• Shark Tank, ABC, 9 PM
• The Last Man on Earth, Fox, 9:30 PM
• Graves, Epix, 10 PM
• Smilf, Showtime, 10 PM
• Nude, Starz, 10 PM
• Talking Dead, AMC, 10 PM
• Good Behavior, TNT, 10 PM
• Madam Secretary, CBS, 10 PM
• Search Party, TBS, 10 PM
• Curb Your Enthusiasm (season finale), HBO, 10 PM
• White Famous, Showtime, 10:30 PM

[All times listed are in ET]

Google offers real-time search data for news, images and video

Finding out what people are searching for in real time is a trivial matter these days, thanks to Google Trends. Online since 2015, the service is useful for discovering what the world is paying attention to, like why Donald Trump was elected last November or which Halloween costume will be the most played out. Heck, Mac users can even get a screensaver to visualize searches as they happen. Now Google is exposing even more of its real-time data to include news, images, video and even shopping results in your topical search area.

The example Google gives is a search for Taylor Swift. When you type that search term in, you’ll want to pay attention to the subheadings in the search results that drop down; “American singer-songwriter” is what you’re looking for. When you click on that search, you’ll get a page that shows the search interest on that term in the US for the past week. If you want to dig past web-only search interest, click on the button at the top right (which defaults to Web Search) and choose Image Search, News Search, Google Shopping or YouTube Search. In addition to finding out the search spikes around specific events and videos, for example, you can also see where search interest is strongest for your chosen topic and platform.

Source: Google

‘Are you OK?’ Facebook enlists A.I. to spot suicidal users and find help

Artificial intelligence can pick up on patterns — including patterned behavior that could indicate when someone is considering suicide. On Monday, November 27, Facebook shared additional measures that the platform is now integrating to help users that may be expressing thoughts of suicide. The update includes A.I. to detect posts with potential suicidal behavior as well as dedicating more human review staff to the task.

Over the last month, Facebook’s updated algorithms have sparked more than 100 calls to first responders to conduct wellness checks and those numbers don’t include posts that were flagged by users. Facebook is now beginning to roll out the A.I. suicide detection system to additional countries outside the U.S. The social media platform says the program will eventually be worldwide, with the exception of the European Union because of privacy laws.

The new algorithms use pattern recognition to flag posts that could be expressing thoughts of suicide, Facebook says. Along with flagging written posts, the tech works to look for signals inside live video and pre-recorded video as well. The program uses data inside the post itself as well as the comments. Facebook says that comments like “are you OK?” or “can I help?” are often strong indicators.

Facebook said it will be continuing to develop the algorithm to avoid false positives before the post is seen by the human review team. At the same time, artificial intelligence is also being used to prioritize which posts are seen by human reviewers first, which Facebook says is improving their ability to alert first responders quickly.

Updates also help the review staff quickly assess the post, Facebook says, including tools that help reviewers see which portion of a video got the most reactions. Automation also helps the team quickly access information to contact the appropriate first responders.

The update continues to expand the measures Facebook already had in place, including tools for friends to report a post or reach out to the user, worldwide teams working on those reports and tools developed in collaboration with organizations focussed on mental health. Facebook added a number of different suicide prevention tools over the years, including an update earlier in 2017 that brought live chat with groups like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.