The Morning After: Tuesday, November 28th 2017

Tuesday is here, and as you await delivery on any Cyber Monday splurges, we’ve got a substitute phone for app detox and an otherworldly combination of lightning and a volcano. Airbnb is also accused of involvement with money laundering.

It doesn’t seem like Epic knew it was trying to sue a 14-year-old.
Alleged ‘Fortnite’ hacker’s mom fights anti-cheating lawsuit

Don’t mess with mom. Epic Games is suing 14-year-old Caleb Rogers for allegedly modding the game and causing the developer to lose profits from his activity in Fortnite’s free-to-play Battle Royale mode. Rogers’ mother filed a letter with North Carolina’s US District Court saying that Epic “has no capability of proving any form of modification” because her son merely installed cheats he downloaded from Addicted Cheats and didn’t alter the game’s source code himself.

Swipe, pinch and scroll your way to a smartphone-free future.
Kick your smartphone habit with the Substitute Phone

Cigarettes are hard to kick not just because of the nicotine but because they give you something to do with your hands. The Substitute Phone from Vienna-based designer Klemens Schillinger works on the same principle, if you think of content as the drug and your phone’s touchscreen as the tactile addiction. The five models look and feel like phones, but instead of a screen, there are stone beads embedded in slots at various angles. You can just grab it and swipe, pinch and scroll, satisfying that physical need without the nicotine/content.

Boom.
The Big Picture: Catching lightning in a volcanic bottle

Lightning and volcanoes, together at last.

It must be coming soon, surely?
‘Black Mirror’ trailers preview episodes, leave out release date

Netflix continues to drive internet fans of Black Mirror crazy by releasing buzzy new trailers, while still not saying when we can actually watch the damn thing. The first one is for Arkangel, an episode directed by Oscar-winner Jodie Foster, showing the hazards of trying too hard to protect your precious snowflakes.

One more thing to watch out for.
Airbnb is reportedly being used to launder money

According to a Daily Beast report, Russian scammers are leveraging Airbnb to launder dirty cash from stolen credit cards with the help of corrupt hosts. After creating or purchasing the Airbnb accounts, the scammers use them to request bookings from colluding hosts, who then send back a cut of the profits despite no one staying at the property. Sneaky

It called record Black Friday sales ‘a testament to the free and open internet.’
Over 200 companies including Twitter and Reddit warn against undoing net neutrality

FCC chairman Ajit Pai seems determined to go ahead with his plan of removing net neutrality protections, but many businesses that depend on internet connections are speaking out against the move. Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit and Airbnb were among hundreds of firms that signed a letter which said “This would put small- and medium-sized businesses at a disadvantage and prevent innovative new ones from even getting off the ground.”

Sync your scribbles wirelessly.
Moleskine’s smart notebook will work with Microsoft Office

Now there’s a Windows 10 app for Moleskine’s Smart Writing System, a quill with a tiny camera that tracks your scribbles on specially marked paper. It sends a digital version to the PC via Bluetooth, where the app converts your charts, ramblings and doodles into a Word document. Assuming you have a Surface, adding on the pen will cost $100.

But wait, there’s more…

• What’s on TV: ‘Vikings,’ ‘Easy’ and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’
• Bungie’s free trial for ‘Destiny 2’ opens today
• New in our buyer’s guide: Apple, Google and a little Sonos
• The best audio gear to give as gifts

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Google’s lightweight YouTube Go app is out of beta

Google is officially ripping the beta label off YouTube Go: the lightweight app that lets you save vids to watch offline. For now, it’s still only available in India and Indonesia, but there’s every chance it will spread to more countries now that a stable version is ready.

The big G has been tweaking YouTube Go since it first arrived in April, with its current design skewing closer to the original YouTube app, according to Android Police. Elsewhere, it remains unchanged. You still get plenty of compression controls for video quality and data usage — plus, you can send local clips to nearby friends over Bluetooth. Ultimately, it’s tailor-made for low-bandwidth regions. But, as we’ve seen with Google’s offline features for Maps, that doesn’t mean it will remain an Asia exclusive. Too impatient to wait? You can always pony up for YouTube Red instead.

Via: Android Police

Source: Google Play

Bendigo Bank Announces Apple Pay Support in Australia

Starting today, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank in Australia is offering support for Apple Pay. The announcement means account holders in Australia can now use Apple Pay with their Bendigo Blue Bank cards.

People who use Apple Pay with their Bendigo Bank MasterCard will continue to get the rewards and benefits that their Mastercard credit and debit cards provide.

Eligible cards also include:

• Act. Mastercard® debit
• Basic Black Mastercard credit
• Blue Mastercard debit
• Business Mastercard credit
• Business Mastercard debit
• CSB b-entertained Mastercard
• CSB b-packaged Mastercard
• Low Rate Mastercard
• Low Rate Platinum Mastercard
• Platinum Mastercard
• Pokitpal Mastercard debit
• Qantas Platinum Mastercard
• Ready Red Mastercard credit
• RSPCA Mastercard

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank was one of several banks that lost a fight in March to gain access to the NFC chip used in iPhones so they could offer their own integrated digital wallets to customers.

They also unsuccessfully lobbied the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to be allowed to collectively bargain with Apple and boycott Apple Pay.

(Thanks, Adam!)

Related Roundup: Apple PayTag: Australia
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Apple Support YouTube Channel Launches With Videos Featuring iOS Tips and Tricks

Apple has launched an official Apple Support YouTube channel, uploading a series of videos that cover assorted iOS tips and tricks to help out customers new to iPhone and iPad.

First noted on Reddit, the Apple Support YouTube channel was registered on October 5, but had remained dormant until yesterday when the channel was quietly populated with its first 10 short how-to videos, which are between one and two minutes in length.

The videos offer quick-fire iOS tips such as “How to send and save GIFs on your iPhone”, “How to change the wallpaper on your iPhone or iPad”, and “How to delete call history on your iPhone”.

Apple Support video “How to print from your iPhone or iPad”
The support channel joins Apple’s existing official YouTube channel, and complements the official Apple Support Twitter account, created in March 2016, as well as the Apple Support iOS app, released in November 2016, and the main Apple Support website.

The Apple Support YouTube channel can be found here. And don’t forget, you can also subscribe to the official MacRumors YouTube channel here.

Tags: YouTube, Apple Support
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Google can catch shoulder surfers peeking at your phone

Imagine you’re in town waiting for a friend. With time to kill till they arrive, you do what most people do and get your smartphone out. You might flick through your Twitter timeline, check Facebook, open Instagram, or tap out a message on WhatsApp. You fail to notice the stranger standing right behind you, looking at your display.

How about if the your phone flagged up such an occurrence with an on-screen message along the lines of: “There’s someone else looking at your display,” or perhaps something more direct like, “Hey! Stop looking at my phone right now, creep!” though such harsh words may admittedly cause an unwanted altercation on the street.

It’s emerged that researchers at Google have been developing such a privacy-focused feature, and have posted a video demonstrating how it works.

It uses the front-facing camera to scan the faces of anyone looking toward the phone. If the software spots someone it doesn’t recognize, it flashes up the message: “Stranger is looking alert!”

In Google’s recently posted demonstration video (below) spotted by Quartz, the researchers have had a bit of fun by adding a stream of Snapchat-inspired rainbow-colored vomit coming from the stranger’s mouth.

According to the video’s introduction, it seems like this may be more of an experimental project, or possibly the seed of an idea that could one day be offered as an option on our phones.

It’s set to be presented at next week’s Neural Information Processing Systems conference in Long Beach, California, by Google researchers Hee Jung Ryu and Florian Schroff.

The technology can work for a range of “lighting conditions and head poses,” according to the researchers’ notes, and recognizes a face in two milliseconds, so you’ll know pretty darn quick if someone is peering over your shoulder.

A feature like this would come in handy if you’re in a busy place and you’re reading or writing personal messages, or if you’d simply prefer to keep your smartphone display to yourself.

It might work better in some situations than others, though. On a crowded train, for example, a fellow passenger may just glance at your screen simply because it’s human nature to do so if there’s one right in front of you when you look around. That could result in the alert popping up with annoying regularity, in which case it’d prove more useful if it showed after a few seconds once the technology determined that the shoulder surfer is taking a proper look rather than a fleeting one.

With facial recognition technology already well developed and front-facing camera technology improving all the time, we imagine such a feature could be added to most smartphones with little effort, though whether shoulder surfing is enough of a problem that users would find it useful is another question entirely.

‘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