HTC announces U.S. layoffs as smartphone and VR divisions merge

It looks like HTC’s smartphone business may be shifting away from the U.S. Last week Chailin Chang, HTC’s president of smartphone and connected devices, announced his resignation from the company. Now, it seems as though the resignation was only a taste of what was to come. A source close to the matter told Digital Trends, HTC has laid off a large portion of its U.S. team, leaving only employees for HTC Global in the U.S. office.

It’s currently unclear exactly how many people were let go, but our source notes that it’s somewhere between a few dozen to “maybe 100” people. We reached out to HTC and received confirmation that there had been some “employee reductions,” which were announced internally today.

“We have recently brought our smartphone and VR businesses under common leadership in each region,” an HTC spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Today, we announced a restructure in North America for the HTC smartphone business that will centralize the reporting structure within the region. In doing so, there have been some employee reductions to align the businesses and empower the teams to share more resources.”

The team was reportedly informed that the Vive and smartphone businesses would be operating under common leadership. One week after Chang’s departure was announced, employees were informed they had been let go.

It’s been real, #HTC✌???? https://t.co/0GLZ1lcBW3

— Michael de facto (@miggy_smalls) February 21, 2018

In terms of its smartphones business, HTC has been limping along. The company recently sold a large portion of its smartphone division to Google toward the end of last year, and it hasn’t exactly had stellar sales figures for the past year or so. Perhaps the company’s major standout product over the past year or so is its virtual reality headset, the HTC Vive.

Still, HTC has teased a new flagship smartphone for 2018, which we expect to be the HTC U12. It’s currently unclear what HTC’s efforts in the smartphone business will be after that, though we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the company exit the competitive smartphone business in the U.S. altogether.

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Motorola’s survey confirms we’re addicted to our smartphones

It’s no secret that smartphones take up a large part of our time and attention spans. In an effort to understand people’s “phone-life balance,” Motorola released results from a new survey that examines smartphone habits and how this might impact relationships. What it found wasn’t too shocking — users are putting their smartphones before others.

To gain more knowledge on user behavior, Motorola developed a global study in partnership Dr. Nancy Etcoff from Harvard University and the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry. The study was issued by independent research company Ipsos and looked at behaviors and phone use habits across generations in an effort to understand how smartphones impact our relationships with ourselves as well as others.

The study found that people one-third — 33 percent — of respondents prioritize their smartphone over interacting with other people, like friends and family. But the issues with phone-life balance came specifically from the younger generations who have grown up to only know of a digital world. In the survey, over half — 53 percent — of Gen Z respondents (those born from the 1990s to the early 2000s) described their phone as their best friend.

But the results also showed that people are recognizing the issue and want to find a balance. It was 61 percent of participants who agreed they want the most out of their phone when they’re using it, but also want to actually experience life when they’re off their phones. A majority of respondents — 60 percent — said it was important to have a life separate from their phones.

Within the study, there were also three key problematic smartphone behaviors were identified — compulsive checking, excessive phone time, and emotional over-dependence. Half of the participants agreed they check their phone more often than they like to and feel the need to do it constantly. A third also agreed they spend too much time on their smartphones and feel they would be happier if they cut back.

As for being tied to their smartphones emotionally, two-thirds of respondents admit they feel “panic” when they have lost their smartphones. Even when they are not using their smartphones, 29 percent of participants also agreed they are already thinking about the next time they will be able to use it.

With this knowledge, Motorola recognizes that smartphone users are in need of a better phone-life balance. In an effort to help others, the company has put together a simple 10-question survey that allows you to understand how you compare to other phone users and tips to improve your smartphone habits.

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Want to do some science? Here’s a smartphone microscope you can 3D print

ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics

Over the past few years, citizen scientists have helped illuminate our universe. From mapping refugee camps to cataloging nearby stars, these amateurs often work after hours and without pay, making access to data and the affordability of tools key to their success.

Now a new smartphone microscope might help make science even more accessible for professionals and amateurs alike. Developed by researchers from the ARC Center of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP) and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University in Australia, the 3D-printable device can be attached to most smartphones to turn it into a fully functional microscope, strong enough to visualize specimens as small as a two-hundredth of a millimeter. That means it can be used to view microscopic organisms and blood cells, making it potentially useful for testing water cleanliness and analyzing blood samples.

The 3D printing files are free to download.

“There’s a lot of great work out there by scientists who have adapted mobile phones into microscopes for use in medical diagnostics in areas where it might be impractical to bring a normal, heavy, expensive microscope,” Antony Orth, the RMIT researcher who led the development of the microscope, told Digital Trends. “Most of these devices are amazingly engineered, but they are more complicated than you’d think. There are lots of little parts you need to make it work, and assembling everything can be a bit daunting if you don’t have access to a lab. We wanted to go in the other direction, to see what was the simplest microscope we could make.”

Since most smartphone microscopes rely on an externally powered light source, Orth and his team tried to find a light source within the phone itself. The camera flash was the obvious choice but posed its own problems, since it would illuminate the sample from the wrong side.

“The challenge is that the flash is facing the wrong way,” he said. “It’s meant to illuminate whatever is in front of you. For microscopy, we actually want it to shine directly through our microscopic sample and into the camera. So we need to turn light around to illuminate the sample.”

Orth and his colleagues realized that the smartphone camera flashes generate a lot of light, making them strong enough to take a detour through a tunnel in the 3D-printed device, and end illuminating the sample from behind. It was a simple solution that lets the microscope work without a mirror.

Moving forward, the researchers want to expand the capabilities of their device, which can already be used to visualize samples with light and dark backgrounds. Orth advised us to stay tuned, saying, “We have some tricks up our sleeves that we think can enable us to see 3D structures, as well as improved resolution.”

A paper detailing the microscope’s development was published this week in the journal Science Reports.

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Microsoft misses another Edge-related 90-day security disclosure deadline

Google’s Project Zero team released a report identifying another security flaw in Microsoft Edge. The team traditionally provides 90 days for developers to fix the uncovered issue(s) and exposes said issue(s) if they are not resolved within that timeframe. That means Microsoft didn’t respond to the team’s initial bug report, thus Project Zero is now coming forward with its findings. 

But Microsoft isn’t simply ignoring the report. The company deems the issue as “important” rather than “critical” because hackers can’t remotely take advantage of the Microsoft Edge security hole. Instead, they must execute code locally on the target PC using a normal privilege level. But the researcher who discovered the vulnerability deems it as “high severity” given it’s still easy to exploit despite the need for local device access. 

As for the actual problem, it provides hackers with administrator privileges on the target PC. That essentially means they can do anything on the device: Install programs, delete files, and so on. Getting administrator privileges through the vulnerability starts with the way a “hard-linked” file receives a security descriptor and is moved to a new destination. Once in the new folder, Windows 10 changes the file’s security descriptor to match the security settings of the current folder. 

That said, if the hard-linked file was originally set to read-only, the flaw allows anyone on the network to edit that file after it’s moved to the new directory. That is a simplified explanation and is apparently only a problem on Windows 10. The Project Zero team successfully exploited the security flaw on Windows 10 version 1709. 

The issue is one of two reported by the Project Zero team. The first problem, Issue 1427, received a fix on February 13, whereas the issue listed in the public report published on Tuesday, February 20, (1428) was not. The Proof of Concept consists of software compiled in C++ executing as a normal user to create a file in the Windows folder using the “SvcMoveFileInheritSecurity” method. 

The issue Microsoft did fix is listed as CVE-2018-0826. According to the filing, Windows Storage Services “allows an elevation of privilege vulnerability due to the way objects are handled in memory.” It applies to Windows 10 versions 1511, 1607, 1703, and 1709 along with Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server version 1709. 

Google’s Project Zero team disclosed another vulnerability earlier this week that Microsoft has yet to fix. Originally disclosed to the company in November, the bug resides in Microsoft Edge and centers on a compiler for JavaScript. Hackers can compromise the browser by predicting the path of the compiling process. Unfortunately, Microsoft couldn’t provide a fix before the 90-day deadline. 

“The fix is more complex than initially anticipated, and it is very likely that we will not be able to meet the February release deadline due to these memory management issues,” the Microsoft Security Research Center stated. “The team is positive that this will be ready to ship on March 13th.” 

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Twitter’s new rules prohibit bulk tweeting to fight spam

Twitter’s spam bot issue isn’t new, but it came to a head when it was revealed that thousands of Russian troll accounts used the platform to influence the 2016 Presidential elections. Now, the company has announced a set of changes and new developer guidelines meant to fight off automated actions and to make it harder for “tweetdeckers” to flood the social network. Starting on March 23rd, 2018, apps will need to be able to prevent bulk tweeting or face “enforcement action, up to and including the suspension of associated applications and accounts.”

Twitter has always had anti-spam rules, but its new guidelines clarify what is and isn’t allowed on the website. According to those guidelines, apps shouldn’t permit a user to tweet out the same content or a substantially similar one to multiple accounts. In addition, they shouldn’t allow people to use several accounts to like or retweet a post and to follow a user all at the same time. To prevent bot tweets from going viral, Twitter is also banning apps that can be used to post identical content with a specific hashtag across multiple accounts. Users aren’t allowed to post multiple updates to a trending topic with the intent of inflating its prominence, as well.

The platform is updating Tweetdeck to reflect the new guidance and to show that it’s serious in implementing its rules. Tweetdeck users will no longer be able to bulk tweet, retweet, like or follow using several accounts at the same time. Back in January, Buzzfeed shed light on a practice called “tweetdecking,” wherein users tweet out content across multiple popular accounts added to their Tweetdeck in exchange for payment. Ever seen several famous Twitter accounts tweet the exact same thing? That’s the result of tweetdecking. This update will make it harder to use the dashboard as a tool for their moneymaking scheme and will hopefully prevent the same tweet from appearing on your timeline again and again and again.

Source: Twitter

Roku lays out its plan to please cord cutters — and advertisers

Now that Roku is a publicly traded company, it has to release quarterly updates about how things are going. Today in its first Q4 earnings release (PDF), the company said that revenue is up 28 percent from last year to $188 million, while the number of active accounts grew from 13.4 million to 19.3 million and those users streamed over 4.3 billion hours of video. While investors are concerned about lower estimates for Q1 2018, the report also reveals Roku’s focus going forward.

The Roku Entertainment Assistant with voice commands announced late last year is expected to roll out “this fall.” The company said one in five smart TVs sold in the US last year ran Roku software, and that it plans to maintain its position as the largest licensor of a smart TV OS.

That will be key to the other part of its business, which is advertising. A big part of what it’s doing is taking over as viewers move from broadcast to internet video, which Roku sees as an opportunity to sell advertisers: 1-to-1 or “addressable” ads that go to the right person, house or box no matter what show you’re watching.

Roku says that late last year it started using its Automated Content Recognition (ACR) capabilities to help advertisers know they’re reaching “non-duplicated” viewers, and it plans to expand the use of ACR-related programs throughout 2018. If you use a Roku TV and would like to opt-out of the tech that keeps an eye on what you’re watching, then you should disable the “More Ways to Watch” to watch feature.

Source: Roku Q4 2017 Earnings (PDF)

A Bitcoin exchange bug sees one user try to cash out $20 trillion

As much as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin might have an inherent volatility that encourages investors to jump on great opportunities, exchange bugs aren’t one of them. In the case of Japan’s Zaif exchange accidentally setting Bitcoin prices to $0, one enterprising investor attempted to pull out 2,200 trillion yen from the service, or around $20 trillion.

The bug in question meant that the government registered Zaif exchange had a 20-minute window last week whereby Bitcoin prices were locked at $0 for all purchases. Unsurprisingly, many customers took advantage of this flaw and tried to buy up mountains of the scarce digital commodity, only to try and resell it later for an enormous profit. Nobody was quite as ambitious as one customer though, who attempted to profit more than 100 times that of Bitcoin’s entire global market value.

Once the bug in its system was discovered, Zaif quickly voided all transactions that took place during that window, as Reuters reports, but that hasn’t stopped the potential Bitcoin trillionaire from trying to hold on to their impossible returns.

This exchange bug and related fallout come at an interesting time for cryptocurrency relations in Japan, which recently announced it as an accepted means of payment. That is a move that is rare in all economies, let alone first world ones, and is likely to be used as a case study by others in the effectiveness of such a tactic.

Although we aren’t particularly concerned about global attempts to ban or regulate cryptocurrencies, countries like China have taken extreme measures to do so and there is a wonder of which precedent will have the biggest impact moving forward.

Zaif and 15 other exchanges have been registered in Japan so far, with plans for all of them to form part of a regulatory body for the cryptocurrency industry come April. Together they will set out rules and regulations to help maintain a healthy industry whilst helping to prevent the illegal practices cryptocurrency is occasionally used for, such as online purchasing of illicit substances and money laundering.

It’s not clear yet what such a regulatory body would do to exchanges that were found in breach of its rules, though penalties of some sort would be implemented.

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Pricing leaks for Intel’s upcoming 8th-generation processors

While some of Intel’s eighth-generation Core processors have already hit the market, there is still a sizable number we are waiting to see hit store shelves, and now we have some idea of what they might cost. According to Tech Report, a number of online retailers have posted product pages for upcoming eighth-generation Core i3, i5, and i7 chips in addition to lower-end Celeron and Pentium chips.

First up, according to these leaks, the i3-8100 will retail for around $117, and feature four cores and four threads, with a base clock of 3.6GHz. The i3-8300 is listed at $135, with four cores and four threads, and a base clock of 3.7GHz. Last but not least, the unlocked i3-8350K will reportedly retail for $180, feature four cores and four threads, and a base clock of 4.0GHz.

The eighth-generation i5 lineup is a bit more expensive and, according to these listings, will feature six cores and six threads and no hyperthreading. The Core i5-8400 is listed at $190, with a base clock of 2.8GHz, the Core i5-8500 is listed at $180, with a base clock of 3.0GHz, the Core i5-8600 is listed at $208 with a base clock of 3.1GHz, and the unlocked Core i5-8600K is listed at $250 with a base clock of 3.6GHz.

Finally, the upcoming Core i7 models, the Core i7-8700 with a base clock of 3.2GHz and the i7-8700K with a base clock of 3.7GHz, are listed at $310 and $370, respectively. Unlike the lower-end i3 and i5 models, these i7 processors both feature hyperthreading, with six cores and 12 threads.

It is important to take these leaks and price estimates with a grain of salt; it’s likely these retailers jumped the gun and these figures might not reflect exactly how other retailers might price these same items. Though it is interesting to see that Intel is abandoning hyperthreading for its mid-range models in favor of loading them up with more cores. It remains to be seen how PC builders will respond to the change, whether they will stick with seventh-generation models and keep the hyperthreading, or if they will jump ship to the new models with more physical cores.

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Here’s what Android apps look like in Chrome OS split-screen view

If Chrome OS is going to continue to make headway in the market, then it needs a strong ecosystem of apps to let users get what they want done on the platform. Allowing Android apps to run on Chrome OS has been Google’s main approach to solving that problem, and the company has done a decent job of making it happen. Now, it seems that an important milestone is being reached — enabling Android apps to run in split-screen mode.

That’s a very important capability as Google and various manufacturers work to push out Chrome OS tablets, to go with the increasing number of convertible 2-in-1s with displays that can flip around into tablet mode. Chrome Unboxed reports in with a demo of just this functionality, with split-screen Android apps running on a Samsung Chromebook Pro. Check out the video above for the demonstration.

The Chromebook Pro was running Chrome OS Canary, which is a very early pre-release version. That means that split-screen mode for Android apps is likely a few months away. But as you can see in the video, the split-screen functionality works a lot like it does in Windows 10. When you enter the multitask view, you’ll see the available running apps. Grab one and drag it to either side of the display, and it snaps to that side and fills half of the display. Picking another app and pinning it to the side fills the other half.

Also as with Windows 10, you can grab the divider and drag it to re-side the apps. Overall, it looks like welcome functionality that will greatly improve the Android app experience on Chrome OS. As the video points out, apps will need to specifically support the feature, and so that could have some impact on how quickly it’s rolled out.

Split-screen view joins a list of functionalities coming to Android apps on Chrome OS. Another is Android notification badges, which would be huge for Android productivity apps. And as Chrome Unboxed pointed out, Android apps will also be gaining the ability to run in parallel on the platform, which is important for making Chrome OS a true multitasking platform.

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Most Windows 10 devices across the globe now have Fall Creators Update

We’re running Fall Creators Update on Windows 10. How about you? Chances are that is a definite yes, as a recent report provided by AdDuplex shows that 85 percent of the Windows 10 PCs spanning the globe have Fall Creators Update installed. Falling behind that massive number is the vanilla Creators Update with a mere 8.1 percent install base followed by Anniversary Update with a 5.1 percent install base.  

Microsoft launched Windows 10 in July 2015, bringing the coveted desktop back to the forefront. The company also released four feature updates since Windows 10’s debut starting with the November Update in November 2015. After that, we saw Anniversary Update just over a year after Windows 10’s release, Creators Update in April, and Fall Creators Update in October. 

Currently, Microsoft is putting the final touches on what is dubbed as the Spring Creators Update. There is no official name for the upgrade just yet, but it’s locked and loaded for a springtime release. Participants in Microsoft’s Windows Insider program are even beginning to test builds of the feature upgrade slated for late 2018. 

Here is a rundown of the feature updates and their code names: 

Name 

Codename 

Version 

Release Date 

Windows 10 

Threshold 1 

1507 

July 2015 

November Update 

Threshold 2 

1511 

November 2015 

Anniversary Update 

Redstone 1 

1607 

August 2016 

Creators Update 

Redstone 2 

1703 

April 2017 

Fall Creators Update 

Redstone 3 

1709 

October 2017 

Unknown 

Redstone 4 

1803 

spring 2018 

Unknown 

Redstone 5 

1809 

fall 2018 

 Fall Creators Update builds on the feature explosion introduced by the Creators Update. The first “creators” upgrade provided Windows 10 device owners with the tools to make 3D content, including the new Paint 3D app. But the big underlying feature is Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality platform that powers the new virtual reality/augmented reality headsets built specifically for Windows 10. 

Fall Creators Update isn’t quite a grand but provides new features nonetheless. These include the My People feature for pinning shortcuts to friends and relatives directly to the Taskbar. There is also a new “files on demand” element in OneDrive that presents files stored in the cloud as “ghosts” on your local Windows 10 device. 

According to the report, the number of Fall Creators Update installs jumped 30 percent two months ago, another 20 percent in January, and currently sees a 10 percent increase since the beginning of February. In many countries, such as Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland, Fall Creators Update commands more than 90 percent of the Windows 10 market. Meanwhile, that number drops to the 60 percent mark in areas such as China, India, and other countries. 

In addition to the Fall Creators Update numbers, AdDuplex’s report also provides information about the number of Surface devices owned across the globe. The biggest seller is the Surface Pro 4, which commands 34.6 percent of the global Surface device market. Trailing behind is the Surface Pro 3 (19.6 percent), the Surface Pro 2017 model (13.3 percent), the Surface 3 (11.4 percent), and the Surface Book (6.8 percent). 

Right now, the Surface Laptop only commands 1.9 percent of the Surface market despite going retail in June 2017. 

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