Essential Phone picks up 360 livestreaming for YouTube

There’s also “various stability fixes” for the regular camera.

We’ve still yet to see the full potential of the Essential Phone’s two-pin modular system, but the 360-degree camera attachment that launched aside the Phone has proven to be a fun little accessory if you can find it at the right price. With the latest update to the Essential Camera app, the 360 camera picks up one feature that we’ve been waiting on since its release.

The update for the Essential Camera app changes the build number to 0.1.093.003, and with it comes official support for livestreaming on YouTube. Essential added Facebook Live 360 support back in November, and the addition of YouTube is one we’re pleased to see.

Essential also says that this update has “various stability fixes” for the Phone’s regular camera, but the focus this time around is definitely on the 360 one.

With the addition of YouTube Live 360, are you more inclined to purchase the Essential 360 Camera if you haven’t already?

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Choosing the best editing app for your 360 videos

Which VR editor is the right one for you?

When it comes to editing your 360-degree videos, you don’t have to look too far to come across two excellent options. Veer VR Editor, and V360. Both of them are available as apps on your phone, both deliver options for music, text, and trimming, but how do they stack up against each other? We break these apps down piece by piece to give you all the details you need to make an informed decision.

Let’s see which one is best.

Read more at VRHeads

Apple faces two lawsuits over intentional iPhone slowdowns

Well that was quick. Just two days after Apple admitted that it intentionally slowed down older iPhones with older batteries (to prevent sudden unexpected shutdowns), the company is being sued. Both suits claim that Apple does this to force customers into a shortened upgrade cycle.

The Atlas Consumer Law group in Chicago claims that Apple is, therefore, in violation of deceptive business laws in Illinios, as well as in Indiana and North Carolina. “Apple’s failure to inform consumers these updates would wreak havoc on the phone’s performance is being deemed purposeful, and if proven, constitutes the unlawful and decisive withholding of material information,” says the press release for the lawsuit. The California suit is similar, though it focuses on wanting Apple to have asked consumers for consent to slow their iPhones as well as giving them the ability to opt out of such a slowdown, according to Quartz.

Via: Quartz

Source: Justia, Justia, Atlas Consumer Law

Edward Snowden’s Haven app uses your phone to detect intruders

Forget phone calls — a new app from The Guardian Project, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Edward Snowden aims to turn Android smartphones into tiny, unobtrusive security systems. Haven, released today in public beta, was designed to use a phone’s built-in sensors to track sudden changes in the environment around it. Let’s say you’d like to keep tabs on a room while you’re away from it — the app can direct compatible devices to record unexpected sounds, look out for changes in ambient light, and notice if it’s being picked up or tampered with. You can even prop the phone up and set up the camera for use as a motion tracker, just for good measure.

Given the need for some journalists to protect their hard-won information, it’s no surprise that Haven may see use as a means to keep shady interlopers from PCs and laptops containing sensitive data. The Intercept’s Micah Lee helped develop the app, and described how it could be used to deal with so-called “evil maid” attacks, in which an attacker attempts to physically tamper with a machine in order to compromise it.

“Here’s how Haven might work,” he writes. “You lock your laptop in a hotel safe — not a secure move on its own — and place your Haven phone on top of it. If someone opens the safe while you’re away, the phone’s light meter might detect a change in lighting, its microphone might hear the safe open (and even the attacker speak), its accelerometer might detect motion if the attacker moves the laptop, and its camera might even capture a snapshot of the attacker’s face.”

Haven won’t necessarily protect such attacks from being carried out, but the app can be configured to send notifications and recordings via text message and Signal (for end-to-end encryption) when the phone’s sensors detect something out of the ordinary. And even in cases where the phone itself doesn’t have network access and can’t fire off those warnings — say, if the phone doesn’t have a SIM card or isn’t connected to WiFi — every event that triggers an alert is logged locally on the phone. That way, the machine’s owner will still be able to tell that an unauthorized actor may have had access to it.

Of course, Haven could — and should — see use outside of those very specific scenarios. Guardian Project founder Nate Freitas calls Haven “the most powerful, secure and private baby monitor system ever,” and it’s not hard to imagine leaving a spare room in a room with a child to relay every anguished crying jag to parents. None of the data captured by Haven is relayed to third-party servers, so parents and paranoiacs can rest easier knowing they’re in full control of this highly personal data. Meanwhile, Wired reports that Haven provided peace of mind to some 60 social activists in Colombia, a country that has seen more than 100 activists assassinated in the past year alone according to a recent UN report.

Via: The Intercept

Source: The Guardian Project

MacRumors Giveaway: Win a HomeKit-Compatible PureSwitch Wireless Smart Plug From PureGear

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with PureGear to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win a HomeKit-enabled PureSwitch Wireless Smart Plug.

PureSwitch fits in any standard U.S. outlet, and it’s designed to let you manage your energy use by allowing you to wirelessly control whatever’s plugged into the Smart Plug. It can turn any appliance or lamp into a smart device that can be controlled alongside the rest of your HomeKit products.

The PureSwitch Smart Plug connects to your HomeKit setup over WiFi, and it can be controlled with the PureSwitch app, Apple’s Home app, or Siri voice commands. It can also interact with other HomeKit products and it can be used in scenes for automation purposes.

At $39.99, PureSwitch is priced competitively with other HomeKit-compatible smart plugs on the market, and at one side, there’s a built-in 2.1A USB-charging port you can use to charge your iPhone, iPad, or any other USB device.

Like any other HomeKit product, the PureSwitch can be controlled on all of your devices, including iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, and with Home hub functionality enabled through an Apple TV or an iPad, it can be controlled remotely.

We have seven of the PureSwitch Wireless Smart Plugs to give to MacRumors readers. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winners and send the prizes. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years or older and Canadian residents (excluding Quebec) who have reached the age of majority in their province or territory are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (December 22) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on December 29. The winners will be chosen randomly on December 29 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

Tags: HomeKit, giveaway
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An unpredictable blinking star appears to be a planet eater

From dark matter to UFOs, outer space is full of mysteries. One such mystery has surrounded RZ Piscium, a star that’s been acting pretty weird by dimming unpredictably. Astronomers said it appeared to be winking. But a new study made have cracked the code and, as it turns out, RZ Piscium’s winks aren’t come-ons. They’re more likely signs the star has been eating planets for lunch.

“Our observations show there are massive blobs of dust and gas that occasionally block the star’s light and are probably spiraling into it,” said Kristina Punzi, a doctoral student at the Rochester Institute of Technology who worked on the research. “Although there could be other explanations, we suggest this material may have been produced by the break-up of massive orbiting bodies near the star.”

As astronomers have observed the blinking star over the years, they’ve recorded its strange behavior but have struggled for a sure explanation.

In the new study, Punzi and her colleagues suggest that RZ Piscium is surrounded by dense pockets of gas and dust, which dim the star’s light as they orbit it. The astronomers think these blobs of matter might be remnants of rocks that have collided while orbiting the young star, in a chain of reactions that has leveled them to dust. Were the star young, these clouds may be expected to coalesce into planets.

But this explanation wasn’t conclusive. In fact, another explanation suggested the star is actually older than our own and has been devouring its planets as it matures into a red giant. In other words, the dust clouds are table scraps from dead planets.

After analyzing RZ Piscium’s X-ray output and lithium makeup (both higher in younger stars) Punzi and her colleagues determined it’s around 30 million to 50 million years old. That’s relatively young. But other measurements suggest the star is also too old to be orbited by so much gas and dust, unless that matter is the remnants of dead planets. So the researchers settled somewhere in between.

“Most sun-like stars have lost their planet-forming disks within a few million years of their birth,” said Ben Zuckerman, an astronomy professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The fact that RZ Piscium hosts so much gas and dust after tens of millions of years means it’s probably destroying, rather than building, planets.”

A paper detailing the research was published in the Astronomical Journal.

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• Prepare for liftoff! 17 upcoming space missions worth getting excited about
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Voice recognition for kids isn’t child’s play, but this company has mastered it

Voice recognition plays a big part in making our homes and the products in them smarter, and in the same way we are pushing through that period of adjustment needed to confidently interact verbally with a device, the technology behind it is also changing. It has to deal with different languages, accents, and voice characteristics to function reliably. SoapBox Labs, a speech recognition company, is an expert in children’s voices, and has been working on solving the problem of devices recognizing kids when they speak.

The result is a new Application Programming Interface (API) for developers to use inside everything from connected toys and VR games, to the Skills that power the Amazon Echo. Soapbox Lab’s API is made specifically to recognize children aged between four and 12 years old, picking up on their unique voices, their tendency to shout instructions, and the speech patterns of someone so young.

Wondering if there is much of a difference between children and adults speaking the same language? The vast majority of voice recognition systems available now were built for adults, by adults, and using speech data collected from adults. SoapBox collected speech data from children, then used its expertise in voice recognition to create custom algorithms and speech models that power the interface.

SoapBox Lab founder and CEO Patricia Scanlon Ph.D told Digital Trends: “Young kids are wildly unpredictable in their speech behaviors. While our team previously had significant experience in speech recognition for adults, building our platform specifically for kids over the past few years was a continuous challenge. It is like dealing with a completely different language!”

Uses beyond interactive toys

Where will SoapBox’s API be used? The most obvious place would be inside smart, connected toys. Kids would soon lose interest in a toy that promised to listen and respond to commands, but failed to catch what they said because the voice recognition was adapted from a program designed for adults. SoapBox’s system could effectively turn the toy into another child, in tune with what other kids say, and has the ability to converse rather than solely react to commands.

Beyond interactive toys, SoapBox Labs sees great potential in schools and learning tools. Scanlon continued:

“We were motivated to build this technology as parents ourselves and realize this technology will play a big part in our children’s lives. We want to make that experience safer, more enjoyable, and [more] engaging for them. Our technology can not only voice-enable home devices, games, and toys for kids, the same underlying technology can also enable personalized learning for reading and language tutors.”

SoapBox Labs founder and CEO Patricia Scanlon

This is important, and gives SoapBox Lab’s voice system a real higher purpose. The system has an assessment tool inside, providing real-time feedback on reading, literacy, and language. Built into tutoring apps, the API could be used in classrooms and other learning environments.

Helping voice controlled devices better understand children is great when whatever it is they’re talking to is designed for them; but not so good when they decide to ask Alexa to deliver all those newly released Lego sets and charge it to your credit card. SoapBox is well aware of the problem, and its technology can be used to help avoid this situation.

“Our technology can be used to detect kids’ voices and direct their commands to a dedicated and safe voice interface just for kids,” said Scanlon, “This can be part of an existing home device ecosystem or app, allowing kids to only access specific skills, and the device to respond appropriately to kids’ voices.”

SoapBox Lab’s cloud-based API is available for developers to use now, and Scanlon is particularly interested in hearing about projects that have a “real social impact,” with the possibility of offering free use of the platform in the right cases. We can expect to see the first products with SoapBox Lab’s voice recognition launch during the first three months of 2018.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Cheetah Mobile’s Android launcher is the first to feature Microsoft’s Cortana
• From Trump haircuts to lawn mowers, ‘Sounds Fun’ is an Alexa game about noises
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• Google’s new kit uses Raspberry Pi to bring image recognition to your project
• Here’s a rundown of Google Home-compatible devices

As bitcoin takes its biggest tumble this quarter, other coins follow suit

As much as the world of cryptocurrencies might be riddled with uncertainties, you can always count on them to surprise you. Just as bitcoin seemed poised to break through the $20,000 mark after weeks of explosive growth and a year of surprising upward inclination, the original cryptocoin is going through its biggest crash in quite some time and the other cryptocurrencies have been dragged downhill with it.

Although bitcoin has existed for the better part of a decade, its stupendous growth in value of close to 2,000 percent in 2017 really propelled it into the mainstream and perhaps that should have been the writing on the wall for those who now lament huge losses on social media. When mainstream publications and those far removed from the deeply complex technological core of cryptocurrencies start talking about investing, the bubble has to be closing in on critical mass.

Other fingers have been pointed at the likes of bitcoin cash, an alternative coin that has seen rumors of insider trading swirl about it in recent weeks. Most notably, largescale exchange Coinbase announced it would introduce trades of the cryptocurrency just hours after it hit a historic high.

No matter who, or what is to blame for this latest downturn though, the fact remains that there are now many struggling to figure out what to do with their swiftly dwindling-in-value cryptocurrency. Bitcoin slumped more than 30 percent in the past couple of days and some of the other most popular alternative coins like litecoin and ethereum have tumbled right along with it, dropping in some cases by as much as 25 percent in the last 24 hours alone.

The general consensus among those who have seen this all before though, is to “hodl,” a deliberate misspelling of “hold.” Often also considered as an acronym as “hold on for dear life,” the idea is that these slumps are expected and that confidence in cryptocurrencies as a future economic model that go beyond a quick cash-grab, means they will soon recover. Indeed, bitcoin has traditionally fallen in value in short periods of time before steadily creeping back upward again.

While nobody can predict the future and certainly not when it comes to bitcoin and its contemporaries, there are millions of people involved in their mining, trading and ‘hodling.’ That alone should suggest none of them are about to be worth nothing. It may take time for them to recover, but it’s certainly possible that before long this latest slump will just be one of many on a road to new highs.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Survey: Bitcoin buyers prefer investing in it over using it as a payment method
• How to buy Ethereum
• Bitcoin reaches new heights, surges beyond $7,000 in value
• How to buy bitcoin
• An estimated $30 billion in Bitcoins may be lost forever

UGreen 2-in-1 Apple Watch and iPhone Portable Charger Review

The Apple Watch charging cable is long, and can be quite annoying to carry around. It gets unraveled in a bag or case, and ends up resembling a very white noodle that gets tangled up in everything. The Apple Watch requires daily charging, as does your iPhone. A battery pack with cables for both is an irritation we’d rather avoid on weekends away. In our UGreen 2-in-1 Portable Apple Charger review, we take a closer look at a convenient solution to this problem.

UGreen’s charger completely removes the need for any cables by having its own built-in Lightning charging cable for your phone, and a magnetic charging disc for the Watch. Inside the battery pack is a 4,400mAh cell, which in our tests charged our iPhone X up to maximum, and topped the Watch up from around 40 percent, with still enough juice inside to add more to either later on.

It has a built-in Lightning charging cable for your phone, and a magnetic charging disc for the Watch.

UGreen said it will charge an Apple Watch eight times over, or will take an iPhone 8 to full, with enough for a second 50 percent charge. In other words, we easily relied on the UGreen charger during a night away from home, as it could charge up both devices to full capacity, without the need to take any other cables or charging paraphernalia. You may get battery anxiety relying on it for two nights though.

That’s a solid benefit and a strong reason to buy the UGreen charger if you own both the iPhone and the Apple Watch. What about the battery pack itself? It has an oblong shape with rounded end pieces, and is covered in that familiar soft-touch material we find on many battery packs. It’s pleasant to hold, has plenty of grip, an the build quality is great. It’s as long as an Apple iPhone X, twice as thick, and weighs 141 grams, so it’s not light. But it’s nowhere near as annoying to carry around as the Apple Watch charging cable.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

The charging system is Made For Apple certified — specifically the magnetic disc and the small Lightning cable stored in the body. It extends out just a few centimeters to neatly charge up your phone, without being a trip hazard. UGreen’s protection systems help avoid over-current, over-voltage, high temperatures, or short circuits. The body is also made of flame retardant material. During our tests the battery pack never went beyond slightly warm, just as you’d expect. On the top of the body are four LED lights. A single light indicates 25 percent charge capacity for the internal battery. A button on the side starts the charging process when you plug devices in. Finally, there is a MicroUSB port on the side to charge up the pack itself.

It’s strictly for Apple owners. There is no USB-out charging port to plug in another cable even if you wanted to; so if you have an Android Wear watch and an iPhone, don’t buy this. For Apple Watch and iPhone owners, we think this is an excellent product with a real problem-solving benefit — it’s great not having to take the silly Watch charging cable with you ever again. UGreen sells the 2-in-1 Portable Apple Charger through Amazon, where it costs $60 in the U.S., and 60 British pounds in the U.K.. At the time of writing there is a $5 off coupon available through Amazon in the U.S., making the deal more attractive.

We’ve tried other Apple Watch chargers like the Kanex GoPower that still need a cable for the phone, dual charging docks, and liked products such as Twelve South’s Time Porter, which keeps the cable and other Watch accessories organized. UGreen’s 2-on-1 Portable Apple Charger solves a travel charging problem we’ve endured on several occasions in a way other products have not.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Wirelessly charge your iPhone and Apple Watch simultaneously with Funxim
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• Mophie vs. Belkin vs. RavPower: Who has the best wireless charging pad?
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Google Home Max vs. Sonos

While Google Home Max takes a poke at Sonos’ top-shelf speakers, it’s merely a product. Sonos is a system.

You can’t help but look at Google Home Max — the large, $400 version of Google Home — and come to the conclusion that Google is sticking its nose where Sonos has been for years.

That’s not to say that Google hasn’t done well in the realm of wireless music. Its Chromecast protocol made it ridiculously easy to “cast” music to any compatible speaker, or a speaker affixed with an inexpensive Chromecast Audio dongle.

But Chromecast and Sonos are not the same thing. It’s not meant to be Sonos. And it isn’t Sonos. That’s not the fault of the Google Home Max, which is a perfectly capable speaker and a great entry into the Google Home line. Conversely, Sonos — even in its new “open” incarnation — isn’t Chromecast. It’s way more of a closed loop, with purpose-built hardware married to a software experience that looks to bring together all sorts of audio services.

No, Chromecast isn’t Sonos. Neither is Google Home. And it’s not trying to be Sonos. But maybe it should, if only just a little. And here are three reason why:

See Sonos at Amazon   See Google Home Max

Changing speaker groups on the fly

From left: Changing speakers in Sonos, Cast targets in Google Play Music, and groups in the Google Home app.

I have five Sonos speakers in my house. Sometimes I want them all to crank together. Sometimes I don’t. What I don’t want to have to do is create separate virtual groups for every possible combination, which is what I have to do for Chromecast targets in the Google Home app.

No, Sonos does this better. You just open the app, tick the checkboxes for the speakers you want active in a current group, and that’s it. (Or just toggle “everywhere” to blast everyone.)

And you can do this on the fly. You don’t have to start and stop what you’re listening to or switch from the music app to some other controller app.

And that leads us to …

One app to rule them all

I was never really a fan of the Sonos app until it got a major revision this fall. But the overall idea is great, and that has more to do with Sonos as a system, really.

Sonos brings multiple music sources under one roof. A whole lot of music sources. (Not just music, actually.) Consider:

Apple Music. SiriusXM. Google Play Music. Amazon Music. Pandora. Spotify. Tidal. TuneIn. Deezer. I Heart Radio. Pocket Casts. Slacker. Stitcher. … You can find the whole list here. And it’ll easily do locally sourced music, too, such as on a home server.

All of those music services — searchable — in a single app. I don’t use Apple Music, but my wife does. So we have her account tied in, alongside my Google Play Music account, for starters. Don’t expect the Google Play Music app to ever pull in other music services. (And as a competing service, it really shouldn’t. Sonos, on the other hand, is selling hardware.)

And it’s not just a single mobile app we’re talking about. Sonos also brings the experience to native desktop apps — something Google never really does. That’s an oversight it should at some point rectify. But it’s also something I wouldn’t hold my breath for.

Huge gaps in speaker quality

From left: Sonos Play:1 ($150 at Amazon), Sonos Play:3 ($250 at Amazon), and Google Home ($129 at Google).

Google Home Max competes nicely with the Sonos Play:5. It’s a good, high-end speaker, even though the Play:5 wins out in my ears. Not by a whole lot, but enough that it’s noticeable when the two are side by side.

Where Google falls off is on the low end of the category. The original Google Home can’t hold a candle to the Sonos Play:1, or the newer Sonos One, which has Amazon Alexa built in and will support Google Assistant sometime in 2018.

This has led to some interesting changes at the end of 2017. The original Google Home, which started its life at $129, can now be had for about $80. The Sonos Play:1 is now down to $150. And the Sonos One is $200.

Google Home just doesn’t have anything near the quality of Sonos’ entry-level speaker. And given the price of the OG Google Home, I’m not sure it can.

See Sonos at Amazon   See Google Home Max

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• Google Home vs. Amazon Echo
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