Everything you need to know about Google Play Music

There is more music than you can imagine right at your fingertips.

While there are many apps that stream music, and stream it well, Google Play Music is Google’s music service, and as such is an app that comes on millions and millions of devices. While the app has gotten clunkier in recent years, the app is still undoubtedly one of the most useful on the Android scene, and with generous benefits to both paid and free users, it’s an app worth getting to know.

Getting started

Google Play Music is a streaming service that allows users to stream up to 50,000 of their own songs for free across most platforms, in addition to allowing free users to listen to curated stations and paid users to stream up to 40 million songs in their streaming library. It’s an app with a lot of functions, so finding your way around can be a bit of a task. Here’s how to get what your want out of Google Play Music:

Getting started with Google Play Music

The best deal in music — and video

There’s a lot of music services out there that want your money and your music habits. Unfortunately for most of them, Google’s got a secret weapon in their music subscription: YouTube Red. That’s right, the best feature of Google Play Music’s subscriptions isn’t even in the Play Music app: it’s getting rid of commercials in YouTube.

Google Play Music and YouTube Red are the best deal in streaming

Putting your music into Google Play Music

Whether you’re a free user just looking to get your music into the cloud to stream or you just want to get the music you purchased in Google Play Music out of an encrypted cloud and into your hard drive, there’s a few tricks to getting music in and out of Google Play Music’s online locker. Here’s what you need to know before you burn a device authorization downloading or uploading music.

Downloading and uploading music in Google Play Music

Google Play Music needs a change…

No service is perfect, but if anyone tries to tell you Google Play Music, give them a firm smack on the arm, because they’re either lying or delusional. Google Play Music has more than a few flaws that need fixing, from a skewed device policy to an outdated and clunky UI. Before you become chained to Google Play Music and flaws, see what they are and how those flaws could impact your use.

Fixing Google Play Music

…And change is on the horizon

Even with Google currently offering three subscriptions in one with Google Play Music, YouTube Red, and YouTube Music, there’s been speak of yet another streaming service based on YouTube. Rumor has it that with how scattered Google’s current music offerings are, this new service would wrap everything together into one encompassing offering rather than piecemealing it. We’re not sure what’s on the horizon, but we can only hope that whatever comes, Google’s music services only improve in value and experience.

YouTube signs deal with labels ahead of new streaming service

Updated January 2018: This guide was rewritten and updated to make the guide easier to read and include a wider variety of information on Google Play Music’s current standing and possible future.

Best Touchscreen Gloves for Winter 2018

What are the best touchscreen gloves? The ones that keep your hands warm and actually work!

There are still a few weeks left in winter, and that means that using your phone outside is uncomfortable and makes for frigid digits. That is, unless you have some awesome touchscreen gloves that let you use your phone with toasty phalanges.

Not all gloves of this nature work very well, so here are the best of the best to keep you texting even when Jack Frost is nipping at your butt.

• Mujjo double-layered touchscreen gloves
• Agloves
• The North Face ThermoBall Etip
• Glove.ly Classic Touch Screen Glove
• Moshi Digits
• Elma luxury Italian leather gloves
• Women’s Gloue gloves
• Nanotips

Mujjo double-layered touchscreen gloves

These dual-layer gloves are Mujjo’s response to customers asking for something a bit thicker for colder climes. They added a layer of wool (just like grandma used to do!), so you can now have your phone and keep your hands warm too. For $35, that’s not a bad deal at all.

Silicone grips all over the palms of these gloves make sure your phone doesn’t slip out of your hands in slippery weather, and Mujjo has made it so that you can use any fingertip, knuckle, and even the palm or heel of your hand. It’s almost like you’re wearing nothing at all… Nothing at all… Nothing at all!

See at Amazon

Agloves

These acrylic gloves have ten-finger functionality, meaning you can use any finger to use your phone, while keeping warm.

They come in black, red, brown, navy, or white and in a few different sizes depending on the color you choose, with pricing starting around $7. These aren’t the thickest gloves around and probably won’t do the trick when temps drop below zero, but what are you doing standing around long enough to use your phone when it’s that cold anyway?

See at Amazon

The North Face Etip

As a Canadian, I can attest to The North Face’s quality. The Etips are a little on the bulky side for touchscreen gloves, so movement is somewhat difficult, but they work exceptionally well, even in colder weather.

They come in men’s and women’s sizes and styles, so there’s an for everybody, with pricing starting around $40. Pricing starts around $40.

See at Amazon

Glove.ly Cozy Touch Screen Glove

Glove.ly Cozy gloves (around $9 to start) let you use any part of your hand to control your phone. They’re not for arctic temperatures, but they’re warmer than most of the thinner touchscreen gloves you might find.

If your screen gets smudged and dirty, you can use the built-in microfiber label to keep it clean, and magnets hidden under the logo help to make sure you don’t lose a glove.

They come in small or medium/large, so make sure you choose the right size.

See at Amazon

Moshi Digits

Moshi’s gloves are nice and thick and woolly, making them perfect for places where the winter game is strong. The $30 Digits are the Wirecutter’s top pick, since they work well while also keeping your hands toasty, and in their testing, they found that the raised rubber lines and dots provide such good grip that they could use their phone one handed.

If you’re looking for the best in touchscreen gloves, these may be just that for you. Only available in light gray, but at least it goes with everything?

See at Moshi

Elma Italian leather gloves

If you love the luxurious feel of genuine Italian Nappa leather and wouldn’t mind only paying $25 for that feeling, then have I got the gloves for you.

These gorgeous gloves come in a few different colors and come lined with either fleece or cashmere (for $10 more). Amazon reviews say that the touchscreen fingers work incredibly well, the gloves fit well, look awesome, and keep your hands nice and toasty. Hell, for $20-$30, you could grab a few pair. Just make sure you choose the right size before checking out.

See at Amazon

Women’s Gloue gloves

These cashmere-lined gloves come in red and black are just for the ladies. They feature a touchscreen forefinger and thumb and come in red or black, starting at only $14 for the red pair.

The stylish button cuffs with a bit of the lining visible make these really stand out and the price is right to grab both!

See at Amazon

Nanotips

Don’t feel like buying a brand new pair of gloves? Nanotips makes it so you don’t have to. Just paint a coating onto the thumbs and fingertips of your favorite gloves and they become touchscreen gloves.

The efficacy of Nanotips really depends on the what material your gloves are made of, and you may see varying results with different pairs of gloves. Nanotips does make a leather formula and one for fabric/acrylic, so make sure you choose the correct formula. Pricing starts around $17.

See at Amazon

Got a favorite?

Do you have a favorite pair of touchscreen gloves? Do you even use them? Let us know in the comments below!

Updated January 2018: Added pricing for each item, removed the 180s Sustain, and added the Elma and Gloue gloves to the list.

LG will stop releasing new phones every year

A new strategy to cope with 11 quarters of consecutive losses.

While Samsung and Apple dominate the global smartphone market, LG continues on its never-ending struggle.

The company’s mobile division has been losing money for 11 consecutive quarters at this point, and in an attempt to try and fix this, LG’s Vice Chairman, Cho Sung-jin said that the company will be shifting away from releasing new flagship phones every single year.

As a response to a question regarding the LG G7, Sung-jin said:

We will unveil new smartphones when it is needed. But we will not launch it just because other rivals do. We plan to retain existing models longer by, for instance, unveiling more variant models of the G series or V series.

A few days before this, a spokesperson for LG said that the company would be ditching its G-series branding in favor of something new for the G7 in an effort to help boost sales. Sung-jin’s mention of the G-series has us uncertain what’s going on with the name of the phone, but no matter what happens there, this is a big change for LG.

Yearly flagship releases have become a norm of the industry, and in some cases with companies like OnePlus, a bi-yearly thing. We aren’t sure what to expect from “more variant models” of LG’s phones, but supporting current models for longer than other companies is something that we’re sure some our readers will be able to get behind.

LG G7 (2018 flagship) rumor roundup: Everything you need to know

WhatsApp group chat security flaw: What you need to know

Relax, nobody is going to be hacking your WhatsApp messages, at least not this way.

A lot of talk went down recently about a new way to exploit WhatsApp and bypass the end-to-end encryption the company likes to mention that it has whenever it can. I’ve seen tweets and comments that run the gamut from “it’s FUD” to talking about some backdoor that Facebook had installed.

The good news is that it’s neither. In fact, it’s not really one of those things you need to be concerned about and instead is one of those things that make you wonder how it ever happened in the first place because it’s pretty sloppy. But don’t worry — it will be fixed long before anything happens.

What it is

Researchers Paul Rösler, Christian Mainka, and Jörg Schwenk at Ruhr-Universität in Bochum, Germany released a research paper (.pdf link) that found a peculiar flaw in WhatsApp’s group chat administration. WhatsApp offers the same end-to-end encryption for group chats that it does for individual chats, and that usually means we should be able to feel safe in knowing that the things we say won’t be read by anyone who shouldn’t be reading it unless one of the group members lets it happen.

Apparently, it’s theoretically possible for a stranger to add themselves to a group chat on WhatsApp. “Theoretically” and “possible” being the key words here. I’ll explain.

WhatsApp offers group messaging that uses strong end-to-end encryption.

In a WhatsApp group chat one or more of the original members is an administrator. From the server’s point of view, that means that these people are able to add and remove people from the group. Everything is good so far, even though the way it works — an administrator sends a signal to every member of the group with his or her signing keys and in return, each member sends a return message with their signing keys then the originator of the message notifies each member that there is now a new person in the group — is a bit of a kludge in order to create a good user interface. If you’re not an administrator, the only thing you know is that you see a message that Jerry is now a member of the group. You can either accept that or leave the chat.

A similar flaw was found with group messaging through Signal.

The problem is that WhatsApp isn’t properly authenticating these group management requests on its own servers. A WhatsApp server needs to properly ID the sender of a message that would add a person to a group chat. The person sends a message that IDs both the group and the member it wishes to add and the server checks to make sure the person who sent it is actually a chat administrator. These messages aren’t end-to-end encrypted, and instead use standard transport encryption — the message coming from a chat administrator and going to a server that requests a user be added to a chat is not signed by the sender with their encryption key.

This means a WhatsApp server can add any user it wants to any group, at any time. The server can, not another user. That’s important, and it means any privacy expected in a WhatsApp group chat depends solely on trusting the WhatsApp chat server. That defeats the entire purpose of end-to-end encryption, which is designed so that privacy is guaranteed even if a server is compromised because only the sender and recipient can decrypt a message.

And then the internet loses its collective mind because that’s what the internet is really good at doing.

This won’t happen but still needs fixing

The only way this flaw can be exploited is by someone with access to the server doing it. That means a server gets compromised, or an employee goes rogue, or a three-letter government agency files a warrant. Any of those things could happen, might have happened in the past, and could even be happening right now. But one other thing needs to be considered — you’ll know if it happens to your chat.

You are notified whenever a person is added to a group chat, encrypted or not.

The first thing that a server does after a member is added is notify every other member of the group that “Jerry was added to the chat.” You will see the message telling you someone was added, and so will everyone else. When Jerry arrives to the private chat party with his bad jokes and cheap beer, and nobody invited him, that’s going to be a sign that something’s wrong and nobody should consider anything they are about to type as private. Pack up and move to another chat without Jerry and maybe even a different service that won’t let him crash.

So nobody is going to be able to secretly check out your encrypted group chat, but this still undermines end-to-end encryption in every possible way. It needs to be fixed right away, and maybe even the whole group management method needs to be revamped. At the bare minimum, we all need to scratch our heads and wonder how something like this slips by programmers and code auditors. It’s a ridiculous premise that will never be exploited, but still.

What you need to do

Nothing, really. Appreciate the work done by Rösler, Mainka, and Schwenk in finding this flaw because security researching is a thankless and often mind-numbing job, but past that you don’t really need to change your routine at all. A method of authenticating the request to add a member to an encrypted group chat will be sorted out by the folks who keep WhatsApp’s wheels spinning shortly and this will change from a flaw that will never be exploited to a flaw that can no longer be exploited at all.

What’s important is that you were paying attention, because the next flaw might very well be one that does need action on your part. And there will be another flaw, so make sure you keep paying attention.

Yup, the LG V30 is beautiful in its new ‘Raspberry Rose’ color

I wish more manufacturers took risks with colorful phones like this.

LG just announced it was making a new V30 color, dubbed “Raspberry Rose,” a week ago — so naturally, we tracked it down at CES 2018 to see what it was all about. And yes, it’s absolutely stunning in this new color.

Now most people would agree the V30’s design is quite good, and the combination of shining glass and smooth lines suits it in just about any color. But this new Raspberry Rose is so different from the rest of the current crop of V30 colors that it’s wonderful to see.

The only bad part about the Raspberry Rose V30 is that it won’t be available worldwide.

Oddities with custom brand names for colors aside, “Raspberry Rose” is actually a pretty accurate description of what this color looks like. It definitely isn’t just a plain red, nor is it light enough to be considered pink. In regular lighting at a glance it’s more like a light raspberry color, but with less light it gets very deep into a nice red rose color. The color-shifting property comes mostly in the back glass, which actually sports a bit of texture underneath for a neat effect when it shines in the light.

Of course the metal frame is also a matching red shade, though without some of the color shifting properties it has a narrower range of color depending on lighting. It’s just barely noticeable when you’re holding the phone from the front, but from some angles you do get those little glimpses of the red, reminding you that your V30 is special.

The only sad part about the Raspberry Rose V30 is that it’s seeing a limited release in only certain markets — a fate bestowed on so many of the best “special edition” colors. South Korea gets it first, of course, followed by a wider Asia expansion and then parts of Europe. No plans are being made for a North American release.

LG V30

• LG V30 review: The no-BS flagship
• Top LG V30 camera features
• Full LG V30 specs
• LG V30 vs. G6 vs. GS8
• The V30 is the first phone to support 600MHz spectrum
• Join our LG V30 forums

Facebook Messenger Kids comes to Amazon Fire tablets

A new way to keep an eye on who your kids are talking to.

Last December, Facebook launched Messenger Kids as an app for youngsters to safely communicate with one another and family members. Following this, it’s now expanded to Amazon’s line of Fire tablets.

Messenger Kids is targeted at kiddos 13 years and younger, and it allows them to have access to a lot of Messenger’s regular features in a more secure environment. They can send GIFs, use stickers to add to photos that they take, and even make group calls over Wi-Fi.

The UI’s been tweaked to be brighter and more kid-friendly, and to help give parents/guardians some added peace of mind, messages can’t be deleted or hidden and you have full control of contact lists to ensure your young ones aren’t talking to people they shouldn’t be.

Facebook Messenger Kids is available to download from Amazon now.

Amazon Fire tablets

• Amazon Fire 7
• Amazon Fire HD 8
• Amazon Fire 7 Kids Edition
• Amazon Fire 8 Kids Edition
• Amazon Fire HD 10

See more at Amazon

Skype is adding an option for encrypted conversations

Soon, your chats on Skype can be just as secure as conversations on Signal, the service used by US Senators. Microsoft is integrating the open source Signal protocol, used by WhatsApp, Google, Facebook and Signal itself, into test versions of Skype as ‘Private Conversations’ for end-to-end encrypted communications.

There are a few restrictions: You can’t turn an existing chat into a Private Conversation, and must start each one by sending a request to one of your contacts. They don’t carry over between devices, so if you switch platforms, you’ll have to send a whole new request. And finally, Private Conversations are currently available in preview only for Skype Insiders, the service’s beta tester community.

Via: Windows Central

Source: Signal blog, Skype: Private Conversations

Kodak slaps its name on a sketchy bitcoin-mining business

Kodak’s attempt to ride the cryptocurrency wave isn’t limited to offering its own virtual coins. CES attendees have learned that Kodak has attached its name to a Spotlite-run bitcoin-mining business that will lease you a Kodak KashMiner computer for a two-year contract. It’ll cost you $3,400 plus half of the value the machines earn, but Spotlite argues that it’s effectively a license to print money. If you believe the company’s math, you’d be paid $375 per month if bitcoin maintains an average price of $14,000. However, there’s just one problem: The math ignores the very nature of how bitcoin works.

Bitcoin becomes progressively more difficult to mine over time, reducing the amount of coins a computer can generate without upgrades. Kodak and Spotlite, however, pretend this mounting difficulty doesn’t exist: They incorrectly assume that you’ll generate the same amounts forever. Economics Professor Saifedean Ammous noted to BuzzFeed that the price would actually need to hover around $28,000 to offset the increased challenge — in other words, you’re unlikely to come anywhere close to the promised earnings.

Kodak has so far declined to comment on the calculations behind the claims. However, the dodgy math casts doubt on not only the bitcoin-mining strategy but also its own KodakCoin currency, launching later in January. The two launches suggest that Kodak is treating cryptocurrency as a short-term revenue boost to shore up its struggling finances rather than a sustainable, trustworthy business. And that’s a big problem for both investors and KashMiner customers, as they may be expecting returns that might never materialize.

Here’s a photo of Kodak’s magic money making machine. pic.twitter.com/wjWeJqMUBF

— Chris Hoffman (@chrisbhoffman) Jan. 9th, 2018

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: BuzzFeed, Business Insider

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo is almost ready for powered tests

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo might be best known for its horrific crash in 2014, which killed one of its pilots, but the company has slowly been coming back from that setback. Now, the company announced that the reusable craft, called the VSS Unity, has successfully completed its eleventh glide test. The company used used water as a ballast to replicate the conditions of a rocket-powered flight.

It’s still not clear when Virgin Galactic will conduct powered tests, but it seems to be close. Initial projections estimated that the craft would need between eight and 15 glide tests before the company was ready to progress to the next stage. The company has also been tight lipped on when commercial operations would begin, but it already has customers lined up. The Italian Space Agency has signed up to do suborbital science research on an upcoming SpaceShipTwo flight. Just how soon that will happen, however, is unclear.

Source: Twitter

Sony’s plan for Xperia phones in 2018 includes dual cameras

It took Sony until 2018 to finally add fingerprint sensors to its Xperia phones, which is beyond fashionably late to the party. Now that that overdue feature is (thankfully) out of the way, the company needs to focus on how else it can catch up to its competitors. We chatted with Don Mesa, Sony Mobile’s vice president of marketing for North America, to see what’s coming next and why it took the company so long to get here. Oh, and we got a closer look at the latest version of the quirky Xperia Ear Open Style concept wireless earbuds too. Check out the video to see it all.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.