Will my phone adjust to Daylight Saving Time automatically?

Let’s do the timewarp again …

Twice a year the clocks change (for most of us). We “spring forward” and “fall back,” and depending on where we live that happens on a different day. It’s all sort of convoluted. And this inevitably leads to folks wondering what they have to do to their Android phone so things work right after the switch. If this sounds like you, we’ve got good news:

You don’t have to do anything.

This is the best thing you’ll never have to do for your phone!

Unless you’ve went into your phone’s settings and switched away from the automatic network time (in which case you already know what to do), you won’t have to do a thing. Your Android will check the network for the correct date and time and switch itself on it’s own, changing the system time so that things like calendars and alarms will still be right. The same thing applies when other parts of the world move an hour forward or back on their schedule, and still apply in six months when we change again. And more practically, it’s also what lets our phones know the right time when we fly or drive to a different time zone.

If you’re worried about your phone’s ability to switch the time automatically, go double check your “date & time” settings and make sure your time zone is set properly and that you have “automatic date & time” turned on. The network and phone will handle the rest while you sleep.

Apple reminds iPhone X owners they’re using an OLED display

Apple’s bezel-less “X” is the first iPhone with an OLED screen — a technology known for its greater contrast and saturation, but also for its tendency to get burn-in. To make sure customers understand that their $1,000 phone might suffer from image persistence in the future, the tech titan has updated the iPhone X’s display support page to explain how an OLED screen works.

The company explains that the “slight shifts in color and hue” when viewing the screen off-angle (read: not straight on) are perfectly normal. It also says OLEDs exhibit slight visual changes with long-term use, such as showing remnants of a high-contrast image displayed on the screen for extended periods of time even when it’s already showing another image.

Those two are also the most common issues Pixel 2 XL owners have with their Android Oreo devices. By pre-empting potential complaints, Apple is most likely trying to avoid facing a similar debacle. In Google’s case, though, some customers’ complaints might be warranted, since they reportedly got burn-in as soon as a week after their purchase.

Despite the warning, Apple assures customers that their pricey new phones aren’t going to have less-than-perfect displays anytime soon. The company says it “engineered the Super Retina display to be the best in the industry in reducing the effects of OLED “burn-in.” And, as AppleInsider notes, iPhone X uses OLED made by Samsung. The Korean conglomerate also manufactures OLED screens for Pixel 2, which doesn’t suffer from the same issues as its bigger sibling.

Via: Apple Insider

Source: Apple Support

Kaspersky’s antivirus software takes non-threatening files

Kaspersky’s attempt to quash collusion fears through transparency isn’t quite reassuring everyone. In an interview with Reuters, founder Eugene Kaspersky has acknowledged that his company’s antivirus software has copied files that weren’t marked as direct threats. In one example, the program removed GrayFish, a tool meant to corrupt Windows’ startup sequence. Reuters sources also claim that Kaspersky’s software once grabbed the photo of a suspected hacker from their computer, although the CEO didn’t confirm this. He declined to talk about too many specific instances out of concern that it might help hackers cover their tracks.

The revelation doesn’t affect the company’s brief possession of classified NSA files (those were part of a larger file deemed suspicious). However, it’s definitely not normal — antivirus software typically only targets files that are direct risks. And in the case of competing antivirus tools, like F-Secure, it’s not uncommon for them to ask permission before they upload anything.

This doesn’t mean that Kaspersky’s tool is doing anything sinister. According to Kaspersky, it’s really about catching “cyber criminals.” However, the revelation certainly isn’t going to allay concerns that Kaspersky might have helped the Russian government conduct espionage. If the company can take files that don’t have an immediate bearing on a PC’s security, what’s to stop it from passing on files that Russian intelligence might want?

As it is, this also highlights a broader issue with antivirus software as a whole. As Trail of Bits chiefDan Guido explained, many antivirus programs collect a large amount of data about the computers that run them, if often out of necessity. It wouldn’t take much for a less-than-upstanding company or a hacker to misuse that info, and you may want to be sure that you’re comfortable with how an AV suite handles your data before you use it.

Source: Reuters

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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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.

Editor’s Recommendations

• If data is the new oil, are tech companies robbing us blind?
• Sharp shooters: The best camera phones you can buy
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• Meet Apple’s Animoji, custom-animated 3D messages for iOS 11

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)
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