Those ‘warranty void if removed’ stickers are illegal, says the FTC

Kyolshin/123RF

No longer will you have to resign yourself to a life in which you refrain from pulling off stickers that read “warranty void if removed.” As it turns out, these stickers are not only ugly, but in fact deceptive and potentially illegal in the U.S., as per a series of warning letters the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent to six companies. These companies deal in a wide range of industries, the Commission noted, from selling automobiles to cellular devices to video gaming systems — but all say that “consumers must use specified parts or service providers to keep their warranties intact.” And this, the FTC says, is a no-no.

“Unless warrantors provide the parts or services for free or receive a waiver from the FTC, such statements generally are prohibited by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, a law that governs consumer product warranties,” the Commission noted. “Similarly, such statements may be deceptive under the FTC Act.”

The Commission has now requested that all six companies take a closer look at their promotional and warranty materials and guarantee that they neither state nor imply that a warranty is only provided with the use of specific parts of services. Moreover, the watchdog group has encouraged companies to revise their practices in order to be legally compliant. If no revisions are made within 30 days, there may be legal action taken.

“Provisions that tie warranty coverage to the use of particular products or services harm both consumers who pay more for them as well as the small businesses who offer competing products and services,” said Thomas B. Pahl, Acting Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

While the FTC has specifically called out six companies, you should bear in mind that this rule actually applies to any device that costs more than $15. While we’re not sure exactly which companies were targeted by the Commission, we do know that entities like Sony and Microsoft include warnings on the edges of their game consoles that claim that breaking the seal also breaks your right to claim a warranty. And now, we also know that such a practice is illegal.

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T-Mobile is celebrating Earth Day with $250,000 and a lot of trees

Earth Day is less than two weeks away, and if ever there was a time to celebrate Mother Nature, April 22 would be it. As one of the few truly global days of celebration and recognition (after all, who on Earth doesn’t benefit from our planet?), it only makes sense that we mark the occasion with the gusto it deserves. Here to help us do just that is T-Mobile, which is promising to make it “easier than ever to make a difference.”

Much like it did last #GivingTuesday, T-Mobile is giving anyone — T-Mobile customer or not — the opportunity to trigger a donation. Anyone who tweets #TreeMobile on the next T-Mobile Tuesday (April 17) will result in T-Mobile turning that tweet into a planted tree. The Un-carrier has pledged to donate up to 50,000 trees (which the mobile service provider says is enough to fill 70 football fields with Long Leaf Pines trees) in order to help the Nature Conservancy hit their target of planting a billion trees by 2025.

Moreover, T-Mobile will donate an additional $250,000 to what the company is generally calling, “the planet.” More specifically, though, it would seem as though customers and employees alike will be able to decide exactly what that means by picking their favorite projects from among four Nature Conservancy initiatives in the T-Mobile Tuesdays app.

The four projects include Clean Energy, which involves building research into innovative clean energy solutions across the U.S.; Plant a Billion Trees, which would help to restore forests around the globe; Restore our Coral Reefs, which aims to strengthen and protect the marine living structures; and finally, Save the Panther, an effort to protect the Florida Panther, which is one of the world’s most endangered animals.

In addition, T-Mobile customers (as well as non-customers) will be able to make an extra impact on April 17 by texting “NATURE” to 50555. This will result in an additional $5 donation to The Nature Conservancy and will appear on your next monthly bill (it’s unclear how non-customers will be charged).

So if you’re looking for a way to give back to the planet, T-Mobile may just have the answers for you on Tuesday.

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Futuremark ditches its name again, will now be known as UL

Futuremark, the developer of benchmarks like 3DMark and PCMark, announced that as of April 23, it will be dissolving its name entirely. Although its business of developing benchmarks and supporting the existing testing solutions will continue and there will be no structural changes to Futuremark itself, it will henceforth be known as UL.

The history of Futuremark is in many ways, the history of 3D benchmarking itself. What began as an offshoot of Remedy Entertainment — the developer of the first two Max Payne games — became Futuremark, which became Mad Onion for a time, and then it became Futuremark again before being purchased in 2014 by UL, a global testing and inspection company. Just as it can provide certification for carpet safety, it can it tell you if your PC is VR-ready.

In less than two weeks’ time though, the Futuremark name will be officially retired. It has been very clear in its announcement that nothing about Futuremark itself will change, but the name will be gone. Benchmark brands like 3DMark, PCMark, and VRMark will continue as they are, though the Futuremark website will be dissolved too. All future downloads and key purchases will happen through UL’s website.

You can look at a preview of the “benchmark” corner of the UL website here. Although the URL will change, any attempts to go to the old Futuremark site will still direct you there, so don’t fear losing track of where to download your benchmarks from.

If you’re an avid follower of any of Futuremark’s social media accounts,  you won’t need to worry about finding them. All existing accounts will remain active and will simply be rebranded as UL Benchmarks.

Although this represents the end of an era for a company name that has been around since the late 1990s, it shouldn’t leave fans concerned about ongoing innovations. The same Futuremark team has been working hard to stay on the cutting edge of PC graphics developments and recently announced itself as leveraging new ray-tracing technology for future 3DMark releases. Considering how pretty (and taxing) that benchmark has been in the past, any new developments under the UL banner should be just as impressive.

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Windows 10 Stocks, Weather, and other apps may retire in favor of web versions

Microsoft may be moving to discontinue several first-party apps installed in Windows 10 that aren’t a major priority. Unnamed sources indicate that the company is now shifting internal developers away from the likes of Windows 10’s Stocks and Weather apps to focus on Microsoft Edge. Microsoft is also grabbing employees that previously worked on now-canceled Redstone 5 enhancements to provide them with positions on the Edge browser team. 

The news arrives after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella distributed an email to employees in March that outlined a restructuring within the company. Rajesh Jha now leads a new engineering team focused on Experiences and Devices while Scott Guthrie leads a new team focused on Cloud and Artificial Intelligence. Harry Shum continues to lead the company’s third team dealing with Artificial Intelligence and Research. 

So far, there’s no indication that Microsoft will shift away from its built-in Windows 10 Mail and Calendar apps as well. But complaints recently emerged on Reddit regarding Office 365 advertisements in the Mail app. The company could end up ditching these apps in order to better unify its Office 365 and web-based services, such as Outlook.com. 

Just last week, Microsoft announced its intentions to bring enterprise-grade Office 365 capabilities to its mainstream subscription. These new features include Files Restore pulled from OneDrive for Business, ransomware detection and recovery, password-protected sharing links, email encryption, and means for restricting email recipients from forwarding or copying emails you send from Outlook.com. 

“Starting later this year, links you click in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will also be checked in real time to determine if the destination website is likely to download malware onto your computer or if it’s related to a phishing scam,” the company says. “If the link is suspicious, you will be redirected to a warning screen recommending you don’t access the site.” 

Prior to Windows 10, Microsoft made available two programs for checking email: Outlook in its Office suite, and Outlook Express for those who didn’t purchase Microsoft’s software. The latter, free solution bundled with the likes of Windows 98, Windows XP, and so on was lightweight – much like the current Mail app – while Outlook provided a more robust library of features. 

Presently, Windows 10 customers face a similar scenario: a local lightweight Mail app, a fuller Outlook desktop application in Office 365, and on online version of Outlook if you don’t want to install the desktop client. The company may be working to unify all three in some fashion, pulling developers from non-essential Windows 10 apps to revamp the web-based Outlook client in Microsoft Edge. 

Meanwhile, by default, Microsoft’s baked-in browser already provides weather and stock information on the home page if users have new tabs set as “top sites and suggested content.” Microsoft may deem the related Windows 10 apps as unnecessary at this point, and Windows 10 usage statistics may even show that customers simply aren’t accessing these apps. 

Joe Belfiore, who is part of Microsoft’s Experiences and Devices team, is expected to talk more about how Windows 10 and Office 365 will connect “more deeply” during the BUILD developers conference starting May 7, 2018. 

Google has officially stopped selling the original Google Pixel

The Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL may be the current stock Android kings, but not everyone has $650 or more to spend on a phone. Those who don’t could previously have purchased the last-generation Google Pixel, which is still a very nice phone in its own right. Now, however, that option is gone — Google has removed the device from its online store.

Not only does the phone seem to be out of stock, but it’s been completely removed from the store. If you hit a link to the Google Pixel on the Google Store, you’ll be redirected to a generic landing page for the Pixel lineup — which only shows the Google Pixel 2 and related accessories. Google confirmed directly to Digital Trends that the Google Pixel and Pixel XL will no longer be available from the Google Store.

It does somewhat make sense, even if it’s a little disappointing. Google probably wasn’t selling all that many Pixel units at this point, especially considering the fact that it only gave it a discount of around $100 when the Pixel 2 came out. Users that want a cheaper stock Android device can still turn to the likes of eBay, where the phone comes a lot cheaper. Some third-party retailers are also still selling the phone, though we’re not sure how much longer that will last. Currently, Amazon is selling both new and refurbished versions of the Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL

Of course, there are plenty of rumors that the move is more to make room for a new generation of Pixel devices than anything else. We expect the Pixel 3 to launch sometime around October, which is when the first Pixel and the Pixel 2 launched. This time around, however, Google is rumored to be working on three Pixel devices, one of which will likely be a more midrange device aimed at those who want a stock Android phone from Google but don’t want to spend the ton of cash needed for the flagship device.

When the Google Pixel was launched, it marked a change for Google, which wasn’t previously really a hardware manufacturer. Since then, the company has seriously begun embracing hardware, not just through phones, but also with the Pixelbook laptop, Pixel Buds, and more.

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Google plans to give your Gmail account a much-needed makeover

In an email sent out to G Suite administrators earlier on Wednesday, April 11, Google announced plans to roll out a new look for Gmail with a host of new features — most of which will be outlined in the future. The new features will first be rolled out to G Suite via an early adopter program, with plans for the update to roll out to all Gmail users at a later date.

“In the coming weeks, we’ll be announcing an Early Adopter Program (EAP) for a new experience in Gmail. This EAP will introduce a new design for the Gmail web interface, as well as several new features,” the email from Google reads. “These changes will also be made available to users with personal Gmail accounts, so we want to make sure you’re adequately prepared for questions from your G Suite users in advance of the public announcement.”

A few key features Google promises the new Gmail will sport include a fresh clean look for the Gmail web client, easier access to G Suite apps, smart reply — a feature which already exists on Gmail’s mobile version — and the ability to snooze emails for a set duration when they show up in your inbox. On top of that, Google will reportedly be moving the existing stand-alone app, Gmail Offline, to a web-based variant.

“We previously announced that we’re moving Chrome apps, like Gmail Offline, to the web. As part of this effort, we’ll introduce native offline support in the new Gmail experience by June 2018,” Google said. “We’ll provide more details about this new offline setting and the eventual shutdown of the Gmail Offline Chrome app in future communications on the G Suite Updates blog.”

It’s been a long time coming, especially since Google Calendar recently received a revamp, but what about your Chrome extensions that interact with Gmail? Google admits some of them might not work with the new Gmail experience.

“Many popular Chrome extensions already work with the new Gmail experience, but we can’t guarantee that all will. We recommend testing any critical Chrome extensions before more broadly enabling the new Gmail experience within your organization. If the extension doesn’t work, you can contact the extension developer directly to request an update.”

For any G Suite administrators curious about how to opt-in to the early access program, just keep an eye on Google’s G Suite Updates blog. The announcement should be soon.

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Move over pesticides! This new RNA vaccine could help keep crops safe

Chemical pesticides play a vital role in modern agriculture by helping to protect crops against a range of pests and diseases. However, while there is no denying how useful they are, they also come with potential negatives. Fortunately, researchers from the University of Helsinki in Finland and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) may be ready to help with a new high-tech solution.

They have created a new eco-friendly RNA-based vaccine, designed to help plants fight back without damage to the surrounding environment. The vaccine works by triggering RNA interference. This describes an automatic defense mechanism found in plants, animals, and other eukaryotic organisms.

“To reduce the application of chemical pesticides, our technology proposes the treatment of plants with nature-derived double-stranded dsRNA molecules,” Manfred Heinlein, a cell biology expert who worked on the project, told Digital Trends. “These molecules strengthen the plant’s own pathogen defense systems through a natural mechanism that relies on nucleotide sequence homology between the dsRNA and the invading pathogen. We have developed a novel dsRNA production system in bacteria, allowing easy design and scaling up of dsRNA production upon demand — and demonstrated the utility of the system in plant protection against a viral infection.”

The RNA-based vaccine was shown to be most effective against virus infection when applied through small wounds in the surface of the leaves. To fight intracellular viruses and other intracellular pathogens, such vaccines could be applied via high-pressure spraying. But the vaccines may also be effective if sprayed directly onto a plant’s leaves without wounding, to fight pathogens and insects that take up dsRNA from the leaf surface. Since many viruses are carried by insects, this has the potential for controlling such viruses. Unlike regular pesticides, the vaccine is biodegradable and therefore doesn’t risk accumulating in the way that other pesticides do.

“It would be great to see this technology further developed and commercialized,” Heinlein said. “However, so far we have applied our RNA-based plant protection technology only in small scale for a proof of concept, using a model plant and a model virus. For practical applications, it will be important to demonstrate that this approach is also efficient against important pathogens in field crops. Moreover, to produce dsRNA at low cost, the minimum degree of dsRNA purification required for efficient protection must be determined.”

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Plant Biology Journal.

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The best ARCore apps to try out on your Android smartphone

It hasn’t been long since Google launched ARCore 1.0, its framework for augmented-reality (AR) apps on the Android operating system. Similar to Apple’s ARKit on iOS, the technology allows you to place virtual objects in a physical space using your Android phone. Developers recently released more than 60 apps on the Google Play Store that use Google’s ARCore platform, which works across 100 million Android devices running Android 7.0 Nougat or higher.

Whether it’s gaming, shopping, or art, there’s an AR app for a variety of categories. To help you get started, we’ve rounded up some of the best ARCore apps for you to try out yourself.

My Tamagotchi Forever

Aside from being able to raise your own Tamagotchi in My Tamagotchi Forever, you can also play hide and seek with it in AR. Set in Tamatown, you can place the village on any surface to play. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see the different Tamagotchis you need to find throughout each level. Once you’re all set up, you can use your phone to walk through the town and search for the characters among homes, buildings, trees, and more.

Just a Line

For those who want to get in touch with their more creative side, Just a Line from Google lets you bring drawings to life — quite literally. Using the camera, simply point at the area where you’d like to draw and press your finger on your smartphone screen to begin doodling. While there’s only one color you can draw in, you’re able to choose the thickness of the lines to add different details to your sketches. The app is reminiscent of Google’s Tilt Brush virtual reality app, which allows users to paint in a 3D space and is only available on expensive VR devices. Even though Just a Line only lets you make simple drawings, having it on your smartphone makes it far more accessible. After you’re done with a drawing, walk around it to see it from various angles. You can also record your creations via the app and share the short video with others.

Pottery Barn 3D Room View

Looking for new furniture? Pottery Barn 3D Room View lets you virtually place furniture inside an empty space. You can choose from pieces like rugs, sofas, coffee tables, ottomans, and more. Zoom in to see the details on each furniture set, and change up colors to match your house’s color scheme. If you’re satisfied with the furniture, you then have the option to purchase it. After adding what you like to your shopping bag, you’ll see the quantity of each item, the price breakdown, and the total amount. When you’re ready, the app will direct you to Pottery Barn’s website to complete the transaction.

ARuler – AR ruler app

With ARuler, you can measure spaces with your smartphone camera by aiming it on the detected horizontal plane. You can measure distance and angles on detected 3D planes, volume of 3D objects, length of a path on a planned route, and height relative to the surface. There’s an on-screen ruler included in the app as well, to help measure smaller objects.

Ikea Place

Similar to Pottery Barn 3D Room View, Ikea Place lets you virtually place specific products and furniture into your space. After scanning the floor space around you, you can choose pieces from Ikea’s catalog to try out. By tapping on the plus sign at the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a list of various collections but you can also browse by category. Once you choose your product, it’ll appear on the screen and you can move it around before tapping on it to securely drop it in place. There’s also a feature that allows you to tap on a piece of furniture you already have, and it will curate similar-looking products from Ikea. Since the Ikea Store isn’t integrated, you’ll have to order the furniture separately — but you do have the option to save specific pieces for when you’re ready to purchase them.

We’ll be adding more ARCore apps over the coming months as we play around with more of them. In the meantime, check out our best Android apps and best Android games guides for new apps to try.

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Apple slapped with $502.6 million in damages in ongoing battle with VirnetX

The Apple patent saga continues. Apple has been ordered by a federal judge in Texas to pay VirnetX, which is often considered to be a patent troll, a whopping $502.6 million. This is just the latest news in an eight-year-long battle that began in 2010 and is likely to continue further.

The original suit was filed in 2010 when VirnetX claimed that Apple had infringed on four patents related to online communications — specifically used in apps like FaceTime and iMessage. Since then, we have seen a number of appeals, multiple suits and countersuits, and so on. The previous appeal was in October 2017, when Apple was ordered to pay $439.7 million.

“The evidence was clear,” VirnetX CEO Kendall Larson told reporters after the announcement. “Tell the truth and you don’t have to worry about anything.”

VirnetX, as a company, is considered by many to be a so-called “patent troll,” which basically means that its entire business consists of taking companies that actually build products to court based on relatively loose interpretations of patent laws. As The Verge notes, while VirnetX is based in Nevada, the suit was specifically filed in east Texas, which is a little more patent troll-friendly than Nevada. VirnetX admits its business model is based on patents in its SEC filing, which notes that its “portfolio of intellectual property is the foundation of our business model.” In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that patent holders can no longer choose where they file their lawsuits.

Still, the Supreme Court has been cracking down on patent trolls, and because of that, it’s possible that the ruling will eventually be struck down. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has also said that the patents are invalid, meaning that VirnetX’s victory could be very short-lived. After the decision was announced, VirnetX’s stock rose by around 44 percent, according to a report from Bloomberg, though Apple’s stock remained largely the same — which is likely due to the fact that $502.6 million is nothing compared to Apple’s overall profits.

If VirnetX does win the suit, it will represent a massive increase in the company’s bottom line. In 2017, VirnetX reported only $1 million in revenue.

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This algorithm can hide secret messages in regular-looking text

Whether it’s hiding messages under the stamps on letters or writing in invisible ink, people have always found ingenious ways of using whatever technology they have available to write secret messages. A new project carried out by researchers at Columbia University continues this tradition by using some deep learning technology to embed encrypted messages in otherwise ordinary looking text.

“Fontcode” works by making incredibly subtle modifications to everyday fonts like Times New Roman and Helvetica, embedding coded messages inside them. These changes are so subtle that the average person viewing the text would be incredibly unlikely to notice them. They include such alterations as slightly sharper curves or a minutely thicker stem on a particular letter. Each letter has 52 different variations, which makes it possible to encode both lowercase and capital letters within every letter of the alphabet, along with punctuation marks and numbers, too.

The researchers then trained a deep learning neural network to recognize these letters and to match them back to the coded letters in the secret message. With the right smartphone app and just a short period of time for processing the data, it’s possible to decode a secret message from the document it’s embedded in. Simply aim your device at the text and, as if by magic, the real message can be extracted.

Would such a technique ever be applied in the real world? Almost certainly not in everyday conversations, where the idea of having to send one another false text documents to embed a short hidden message sounds like way too much work. However, that doesn’t mean that this is relegated to being an impractical, albeit impressive, demo. It could certainly have applications in the security field, as well as potentially as an invisible watermark. Heck, you could even use it as a to- secret QR code to link to a web address.

A paper describing the project, titled “FontCode: Embedding Information in Text Documents using Glyph Perturbation,” will be presented later this year at the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH) 2018 conference.

Someone should probably forward this research on to the James Bond producers before then, though. We can totally imagine Daniel Craig using the “Fontcode” algorithm in the next 007 movie!

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