Recommended posts could soon make Instagram more like Facebook

Instagram’s feed is changing with new options to follow hashtags but that is not quite all of the changes in store for the photo-focused social platform. Instagram recently confirmed the test of  “recommended for you” posts that will display images from users that you aren’t already following.

While only in testing for a handful of users, the recommended feature would put posts in the news feed based on posts friends have also liked or commented on and possible suggested posts powered by algorithms. The change would make Instagram a bit more like Facebook by adding recommended posts and not just posts from friends.

Instagram says that the feature isn’t entirely new — users can already find posts that friends have liked or other users that friends are now following by scrolling through the following tab inside the notifications or heart icon. The tested feature, however, would move some of those posts into the regular feed.

Instagram is currently testing a number of different ways that could change what appears in your feed. On Tuesday, December 12, the platform launched the ability to follow a hashtag to get specific topics, rather than specific people inside that feed, a tool it launched about a month after tests of the new feature leaked. Instagram is also testing the option to share posts, another Facebook-like feature that would mean some changes to what users see in the home feed.

The social media platform made the switch from a chronological feed to one based on algorithms last year, a change that was met with mixed reactions. Instagram said the move was to ensure users saw the posts that mattered most. A petition that gained more than 100,000 signatures (but ultimately failed) asked that users be allowed to opt out of the algorithms and keep the chronological feed.

While not as drastic as the switch from chronological to Facebook-style algorithms, Instagram’s new ability to allow users to hashtags could also change the way users interact with the platform — though of course, you don’t have to follow any hashtags if you want to keep your feed the same. In the announcement, the company said the change was just one of the ways it is working to help users discover new content and from the looks of it, some of those changes are already being tested.

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• Facebook used a screenshot of a death threat to promote Instagram

Best AT&T Deals

If you’re on AT&T, these are the hottest deals to keep an eye out for.

AT&T is one of the largest and most well-known carries in the United States, and as a result of this, you can often find some pretty sweet deals being offered. Whether you’re in the market for new phones or television service, AT&T has something for just about everyone. Here are the top deals we recommend the most.

Get a new Samsung phone, get another one for free

Between the Galaxy S8/S8+, S8 Active, and Note 8, Samsung had a pretty incredible year for its smartphones in 2017. Samsung’s handsets are never cheap, so to help out with this, AT&T is letting you get two of Samsung’s latest for the price of one.

This deal is available for all of the phones mentioned above, and it means that if you buy one Galaxy Note 8, you can get another one at absolutely no extra cost. You’ll need to purchase both phones through AT&T Next on monthly installment plans, but you’ll receive a bill credit for one of the phones for a total of 30 months.

See at AT&T

Buy one get one free for the LG V30

The LG V30 might not have gotten as much hype or attention as the Note 8 this year, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad phone by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the V30 is pretty darn great. The phone has a gorgeous design, features excellent dual rear cameras, and performance is top-notch.

Similar to the above Samsung deal, AT&T is letting customers order two LG V30s and then get a monthly bill credit to essentially make one of them free.

See at AT&T

Get an LG K20 for free when purchased with AT&T Next

The LG K20 isn’t nearly as powerful or exciting as the V30, but if you just need a smartphone that can handle the basics of calling, texting, light web browsing, and social media use, the K20 should serve you perfectly well.

AT&T usually sells the K20 for $120, but when purchased on monthly installment plans through AT&T Next, you can get it for absolutely nothing. The discount is applied via monthly bill credits like the other promotions mentioned here, and for the price of free, you’get getting a phone with a 5.3-inch 1280 x 720 HD display, rear-facing fingerprint sensor, 8MP rear camera, removable 2,800 mAh battery, and Android Nougat.

See at AT&T

Save $15 off per month on DIRECTV and get HBO for free

Along with its wireless service, AT&T also sells home phone, internet, and television packages as well. Because of this, you can often find some decent savings when bundling certain services together.

When signing up for an AT&T Unlimited Plus wireless plan, you can get $15 off per month of a DIRECTV or DIRECTV NOW package for life. With that discount, you can get DIRECTV NOW’s base plan with 60+ live channels for just $20/month. As if that wasn’t good enough, you’ll also get HBO included for free (regularly $5/month through DIRECTV NOW).

Also, if you don’t care about DIRECTV and just want HBO, you can sign up for the cheaper Unlimited Choice wireless plan and still get HBO for free.

See at AT&T

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Google Assistant coming to Android tablets and older phones

Available for phones running 5.0 Lollipop and tablets on Marshmallow and Nougat.

The Google Assistant first launched on the Pixel and Pixel XL in October 2016, and then a few months later in March 2017, expanded to all Android phones running Marshmallow 6.0 or newer. Today, December 13, 2017, Google is expanding the Assistant’s availability to even more phones and now tablets.

If you own a phone that’s still running 5.0 Lollipop (which it very well might be), you’ll now be able to jump in on the Google Assistant action. After you get an update on your phone that adds the Assistant and opt-in to you use it, you’ll be able to prompt it by saying “Ok, Google”, long-pressing your home button, or by tapping the Assistant icon that’s added to your “all apps” list.

Google Assistant on phones currently supports the U.S., UK, India, Australia, Canada, and Singapore in English, the U.S., Mexico, and Spain in Spanish, as well as Italy, Japan, Germany, Brazil, and Korea.

In addition to this, Google Assistant will also be making its way to Android tablets running 7.0 Nougat and 6.0 Marshmallow over the coming weeks. Its availability is far more limited as Assistant will only work if you’re in the U.S. and your tablet’s language is set to English, but considering how unpopular Android tablets are these days, this likely won’t be too big of an issue.

How to set up and customize Google Assistant

HQ Trivia gets its first rival app: The Q brings the excitement of daily trivia to Android!

Finally, Android users can experience the highs and lows (and lag) of a live trivia game show streamed to your phone!

Trivia is back in the spotlight these days, thanks in large part to the viral sensation that is HQ Trivia. Currently exclusive to iOS, HQ Trivia is a daily trivia game show that lets players play with hundreds of thousands of others for a chance to win cash. While HQ Trivia plans to launch an Android app by Christmas, a new challenger has emerged from beta ready to try and challenge HQ Trivia for the hearts and trivia minds of Android users.

It’s called The Q, and the app has just gone live in the Google Play Store. Just like HQ Trivia, it’s free to play with real cash on the line for every game. I’ve been playing The Q throughout its beta-testing phase and I also play HQ Trivia, so I can confirm that it offers a very similar experience to playing HQ Trivia — even down to the laggy video and other technical difficulties.

This is an exciting new breed of live-streaming technology that tries to simulcast a live quiz show to thousands of devices, and there have been a bounty of growing pains. Case in point, The Q currently has one of the worst app store ratings I have seen as people complain about the stream quality. The complaints are valid — in my time playing, I’ve seen games postponed or canceled due to all sorts of behind-the-scenes chaos. But when it works, the concept is pretty amazing.

At this point pitting The Q and HQ Trivia against each other is the trivia equivalent to David vs. Goliath — HQ Trivia has a self-imposed cap of just over 400,000 players per game, while The Q draws in just over 4,000 players for its daily games. HQ’s prizes, too, are super-sized compared to TheQ’s modest offerings, but with a significantly smaller pool of players, the odds and payouts are actually better on average. The only downside is that you need to use your Facebook profile to sign up and play.

Most importantly, the folks at The Q have come up with a number of clever ideas such as a Star Wars Trivia Night planned for Thursday along with a Survivor mode planned where the game will continue until only one winner remains. Differences like that will go a long way as The Q try to build a quick following before HQ brings its clout to Android later this month.

Download: The Q – Live Trivia Game Show (Free)

Stack multiple $40 PlayStation Plus 1-year memberships to save for years to come

You’ll be thanking yourself years from now.

PlayStation Plus members know how crucial the subscription service is if you enjoy playing multiplayer on the PS4. Though the price of the one-year subscription was ratcheted up by $10 earlier this year to $60, most PS4 gamers continue to pay Sony monthly or yearly for their membership between $5 and $8 a month depending on the subscription length purchased. Right now however, you can pick up multiple years of PlayStation Plus at just $39.99 each via Amazon, bringing your monthly cost down to $3.33.

Maybe your current subscription still has six months left before it expires – that’s still no reason to hold off on this deal. You could grab two years of PS Plus for just $20 more than one year regularly costs right now, and the codes stack so you can enter them all as soon as they arrive and have your membership locked in for a while. What’s great about PlayStation Plus is that the membership you buy can be used on a variety of PlayStation consoles too, so if you buy five years, you’ll be able to use your membership on your PS5 / PSV whenever that comes out too.

Other than multiplayer, PS Plus subscribers also get access to free game downloads monthly along with exclusive PlayStation Store discounts and more.

See at Amazon

Apple releases iOS 11.2.1 to restore limited HomeKit functionality

Apple has released iOS 11.2.1 for iPhone and iPad following last week’s discovery that HomeKit had a major security vulnerability. The bug, first reported by 9to5Mac, allowed unauthorized users to access connected smart devices like lights, thermostats, locks and garage door openers. Apple’s server-side fix of the issue corrected the problem but also disabled remote access to shared users. That functionality is now restored with the update.

The iOS 11.2.1 update says it “fixes bugs including an issue that could disable remote access to shared users of the Home app.” Apple has also released tvOS 11.2.1, which 9to5Mac says is likely related to the same issue. Both updates are rolling out to iPhone, iPad and Apple TV users now.

Via: 9to5Mac

Mirai botnet creators plead guilty to charges over 2016 attack

The individuals behind the Mirai botnet that caused nationwide internet outages in October of last year have pleaded guilty to federal charges, ZDNet reports. Paras Jha, Josiah White and Dalton Norman were indicted by a court in Alaska earlier this month and have pleaded guilty to charges that carry a sentence of up to five years in prison.

In October, 2016, Jha, White and Norman used their botnet to target the domain name server Dyn and the DDoS attack subsequently shut down a number of major websites including Twitter, Reddit and the New York Times. The same botnet was also used to target security researcher Brian Krebs’ site KrebsOnSecurity a month earlier, reportedly a retaliation move against Krebs for releasing information that led to the arrest of two hackers behind the ‘vDos’ attack service. After the attack on his site, Krebs decided to figure out who was behind the botnet and ultimately pinpointed Rutgers University student Paras Jha.

In the plea agreement, the three admit to creating the botnet to, “(1) initiate powerful distributed denial of service attacks against business competitors and others against whom Jha and his co-conspirators held grudges; and (2) provide a source of revenue to Jha and his co-conspirators, who could (a) rent the botnet to third-parties in exchange for payment, and (b) use the botnet to extort hosting companies and others into paying protection money in order to avoid being targeted by denial of service attacks.”

According to the plea agreement, the Mirai botnet included over 300,000 devices and Jha admitted to publicly releasing the botnet’s code in order to establish plausible deniability if it was ever found on his or his co-conspirators’ computers. Along with Jha, Norman also pleaded guilty to using the botnet in a click fraud scheme.

The click fraud charges come with a sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine equal to $250,000 or twice the gain or loss of the offense. For the conspiracy charges related to the authorship and use of the botnet, the three face an additional fine and five year prison term maximum. In addition to the the charges filed in Alaska, Jha also pleaded guilty today to charges filed in New Jersey that addressed attacks Jha enacted against Rutgers University networks between 2014 and 2016.

“The Mirai and Clickfraud botnet schemes are powerful reminders that as we continue on a path of a more interconnected world, we must guard against the threats posed by cybercriminals that can quickly weaponize technological developments to cause vast and varied types of harm,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Cronan of the Department of Justice said in a statement. “The Criminal Division will remain constantly vigilant in combating these sophisticated schemes, prosecuting cybercriminals, and protecting the American people.”

Via: ZDNet

Source: US District Court (1), (2), (3), (4), DOJ

Google Assistant lands on older Android phones

Google Assistant has been available on recent Android phones for a while. However, that still puts it out out of reach of many Android users when a whopping 46.5 percent of active Android users are running a version older than Marshmallow. To help address this, Google is making Assistant available on devices running Android Lollipop. If you’re still rocking an older phone, you’ll get the same AI helper as a shiny new handset.

The update is starting to reach phones with English language settings in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, India and Singapore. It’ll also be available in Spanish in the US, Mexico and Spain, and will hit devices in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea. While that’s a relatively limited deployment, Google reckons that it’ll make Assistant available on more than half of Android devices — in other words, the previous voice system will officially become the minority.

On top of this, Google Assistant is starting to reach Android tablets. It’s frankly surprising this wasn’t available earlier, but it now means your big-screen devices can control your smart home and answer questions just as effectively as the phone in your pocket. It’ll only be available in the “coming weeks” on English tablets in the US, but it’s a start.

Source: Google

Facebook found essentially no Russian effort to sway Brexit vote

In October, UK officials asked Facebook to look into the possibility that Russian groups had attempted to sway the Brexit referendum through the site. They were particularly interested in whether ads were purchased by Russia-linked accounts and how many times they were viewed if so. Now, the New York Times reports that Facebook has found little evidence of Russian interference, at least when it comes to Russian-purchased Facebook ads.

According to Facebook, the Internet Research Agency — the Russian organization accused of using social media sites like Facebook to influence the outcome of the US presidential election — spent less than a dollar on Facebook ads ahead of the Brexit vote. In contrast to the thousands of ads seemingly purchased by Russian actors during the US presidential election, just three were purchased during the lead up to the June 2016 Brexit vote. Those ads were apparently geared towards Americans, though they were viewed around 200 times by British accounts in May 2016.

The New York Times says that a separate study conducted by Oxford Internet Institute researchers and set to be released this week found a similar lack of effort on Russia’s part. “Overall, I think the Russian activity during Brexit seems to have been minimal,” Philip Howard, an author of the study, told the New York Times. “The real source of misinformation about the Brexit debate was homegrown.”

Damian Collins, the chair of the UK parliamentary committee that asked Facebook to look into the matter, didn’t find Facebook’s response adequate. In a statement to the New York Times, he said, “It would appear that no work has been done by Facebook to look for Russian activity around the EU referendum, other than from funded advertisements from those accounts that had already been identified as part of the US Senate’s investigation.” Collins said he would continue to seek more information from Facebook.

Via: New York Times

‘Fez Pocket Edition’ is now available on iOS

The 2D puzzle platformer Fez from the independent game studio Polytron has had a long road in its journey to iOS, but now it’s finally here. You can now purchase Fez Pocket Edition from the App Store for $4.99. It’s designed for both the iPhone and the iPad.

It’s a six-year-old game, but that doesn’t take away from just how remarkable Fez is. It was important for indie gaming because of its popularity and the dedication it inspired in its fan base. The game involves shifting perspectives in order to solve complicated puzzles. It remains to be seen how its designers have adapted it to iOS touch controls, but considering how long it’s been teased, it’s safe to say that they will do it justice.

Via: Touch Arcade

Source: App Store