Instagram shopping is about to get dangerously easy

Last year, Instagram revealed an upcoming appointment-booking feature, another step towards the company’s larger plans of becoming a shopping service of sorts. Now TechCrunch reports that the photo-sharing service is quietly adding an electronic payment option for some users, something not mentioned with the previous appointments feature.

Instagram confirmed with TechCrunch that payments for booking appointments for restaurants or salons is currently live “for a limited set of partners.” The site notes that dinner reservation app Resy has clients whose Instagram Pages offer native payments for booking a table. Instagram also told TechCrunch that users can look forward to buying things like movie tickets in the future. The feature is different from shopping tags, a feature Instagram added in 2016 that pulls up a retailer’s website when you tap through a photo of a product you want to purchase. Given Instagram’s emphasis on shopping, it’s easy to see native payments being used for even more things in the future.

Update 5/3/18 4:21 PM ET: This post has been updated to clarify when the appointment system was first introduced; it was last year, not last month.

Source: TechCrunch

Wirecutter’s best deals: Save $70 on Samsung’s SmartThings Home Monitoring kit

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read their continuously updated list of deals here.

Logitech Harmony 650 Universal Remote Control

Street price: $50; Deal price: $33

At $33, this is the lowest price we’ve seen for a non-refurb model of the Logitech Harmony 650 universal remote, our longtime top pick in our guide to the best universal remote. This model still regularly sees pricing around $50, so this is a solid bargain for it. If you’ve been looking for a simple-to-use but capable universal remote setup for IR devices, this is a great option.

The Logitech Harmony 650 is our top pick in our guide to the best universal remote control. Darryl Wilkinson and Grant Clauser wrote, “If you’re looking for an easy-to-use universal remote to control up to eight devices, we recommend the Logitech Harmony 650. It’s the best option for most people looking to simplify the operation of their home theater or media system. It’s easier to program than any non-Harmony remote. Its backlit hard-button layout makes it simple to use, even in the dark, and it’s way cheaper than other systems that are equally comprehensive.”

Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit

Street price: $200; Deal price: $130

At $130, this is one of the lowest prices we’ve seen for the Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit. This kit, which includes a smart outlet, a motion sensor, two window sensors, and a control hub is an option we like in our guide to the best smart hub, especially for those who don’t want to pull a system together piecemeal.

The Samsung SmartThings Hub is our top pick in our guide to the best smart hub. Jon Chase wrote, “After researching more than 20 smart hubs—the brains that let all of your smart-home devices work together—and then living with a half-dozen of them for a few months while putting them through their paces with an array of smart locks, thermostats, room sensors, switches, lights, and more, we think that the Samsung SmartThings Hub is the best hub for most people who want to buy right now. It’s competitively priced, is compatible with a large number of third-party devices, and supports most of the major wireless protocols relied on by smart devices.”

Of the SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit here, Chase wrote, “…the Home Monitoring Kit, a starter kit that includes a selection of sensors for a lightweight home security/monitoring system, is also a worthy option…”

Crucial MX500 500GB SSD

Street price: $130; Deal price: $115

This is the lowest price we’ve seen so far at just $115 for the 500GB SATA 2.5 Inch version of this SSD. The Crucial MX500 500GB SSD is our top pick in our guide to the best SSDs. This drive, released at around $135, has seen its price drop steadily, typical of SSDs, but still offers tremendous value at this price and we expect to see it go back up. The 256GB is also down to a new low at $70.

The Crucial MX500 500GB SSD is our top pick in our guide to the best SSDs. Andrew Cunningham wrote, “The Crucial MX500 is just a little slower than Samsung’s more expensive SATA SSDs in most benchmarks, but most people wouldn’t notice the difference. It’s as good as or better than the rest of the competition, and it performs better when full or near-full than its predecessor, the MX300. It supports full-disk encryption, and Crucial offers a five-year warranty on the drive for more peace of mind (three years is typical). A 2.5-inch version is available now and an M.2 SATA version will be available soon. And even though it’s a brand-new model, it still sells for significantly less than Samsung’s SSDs.”

Instant Pot Ultra 6 Quart

Street price: $150; Deal price: $110

At $110, this is the lowest price we’ve seen for the Instant Pot Ultra 6 Quart and drops this upgraded model into the price range of our top pick. Usually $150, the Ultra 6 Quart is a tremendous bargain at this price. It offers a more advanced display and even more cooking options (including low temp sous vide!) than our top pick.

The Instant Pot Ultra 6 Quart is our upgrade pick in our guide to the best pressure cooker. Lesley Stockton wrote, “If you want a nicer electric pressure cooker with more functionality, we recommend the 6-quart Instant Pot Ultra. With a dial and a large LCD screen rather than a bunch of buttons, Its interface is more streamlined than that of the Instant Pot IP-DUO60. It also has more options, including low-temperature sous vide and a warming function that keeps food at a specified temperature for up to almost 100 hours. If you live above 3,000 feet, you’ll likely appreciate the altitude-adjust function, which allows you to enter your elevation so that the machine can adjust cooking time and temperature accordingly. The Ultra offers more functionality than the Breville Fast Slow Pro at less than two-thirds the price.”

Because great deals don’t just happen on Thursday, sign up for our daily deals email and we’ll send you the best deals we find every weekday. Also, deals change all the time, and some of these may have expired. To see an updated list of current deals, please go here.

‘Beyond Good & Evil 2’ ditches Jade in favor of a character creator

Ubisoft pulled the curtain back a little further on the massively ambitious Beyond Good & Evil 2. During a Twitch stream, a trio of developers led by creative director Michel Ancel explained the game’s narrative timeline and showed off work-in-progress footage of combat, player movement and divulged some details about how character creation/customization works.

You won’t play as Jade, the protagonist from the first game. Instead, you can create a custom character. The interface for doing so wasn’t shown off, rather, the team used a still image featuring anthropomorphic chameleons, panda bears, elephants and more to tease it out. Ubisoft said that there will even be options for hybrid characters.

As far as combat goes, once again, you’ll have a sort of bow-staff as an available weapon. You’ll also have a jetpack for getting around, which should make hopping between your ship and an enemy craft pretty easy. And since you’re playing as a pirate rather than a journalist this time out, the camera from the first game has been replaced with a spyglass, which you can use to take photos and get more info about the world around you.

It still sounds like we’re a ways from actually playing this at home, though. A lot of what was talked about and shown off today was incredibly ambitious — much like last year’s surprise E3 debut. For a peek, check out the video embedded below. Ancel said his team has made additional hires in the last month and, more than that, recently tapped into Ubisoft’s worldwide network of studios to assist with development.

With no platforms announced for the game, the fidelity of the pre-alpha footage combined with where we are in the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One’s lifecycle, maybe don’t expect to play the full-fat version of Beyond Good & Evil 2 on current hardware. With E3 around the corner, at least we won’t have to wait too long for more info.

Source: Ubisoft (YouTube)

Twitter warns all users to change passwords following internal bug

Twitter announced today that a bug allowed users’ passwords to be stored internally without being masked. When things are working correctly, Twitter stores hashed passwords, turning them into random letters and numbers so that no one at the company can see what any user’s password is. But a bug caused passwords to be stored within an internal log before the hashing process was complete. Twitter says that it spotted the problem itself and fixed it. But while it claims there has been no evidence that the passwords were misused or that they left the company’s systems, Twitter is recommending that everyone change their passwords just to be safe.

We recently found a bug that stored passwords unmasked in an internal log. We fixed the bug and have no indication of a breach or misuse by anyone. As a precaution, consider changing your password on all services where you’ve used this password. https://t.co/RyEDvQOTaZ

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 3, 2018

In a blog post about the issue, Twitter suggests its users also use a strong password that’s not used on other sites, enable two-factor authentication and use a password manager to keep track of unique passwords — typical recommendations for online security. The company said that the password problem was uncovered recently, but didn’t say exactly when or how long the passwords had been exposed.

“We are very sorry this happened,” Twitter said. “We recognize and appreciate the trust you place in us, and are committed to earning that trust every day.”

Source: Twitter

US charges Ex-VW CEO with fraud over Dieselgate scandal

Volkswagen’s former CEO Martin Winterkorn has been formally charged with conspiracy and wire fraud in US federal court over the corporation’s diesel emissions-cheating scandal. It’s part of a probe into the company’s efforts in the so-called Dieselgate fiasco that revealed the German automaker had installed software that faked favorable results on vehicle emissions tests.

Winterkorn stepped down days after the scandal became public in 2015, and his charges were filed secretly in March and revealed today. He’s the highest-profile executive to be charged for Dieselgate thus far. Previously, Volkswagen alleged that a rogue engineer had been a mastermind of sorts uploading the software to 11 million vehicles.

But Winterkorn’s indictment alleges that he knew about the emissions issue and that US regulators were threatening to hold off certifying VW’s 2016 cars for sale in America, according to Bloomberg. In January, the automaker pled guilty to lying to get its cars into the US and were served a $4.3 billion fine. Five other executives have been indicted by the US but have stayed in Germany to avoid arrest. Meanwhile, almost 300,000 VW cars installed with the software slowly rot in parking lots across the US.

Source: Bloomberg

Instagram Adds Native Payments Option for Some Users

Instagram has added a native payments feature that’s currently available to some Instagram users, reports TechCrunch.

The payments feature allows Instagram users to add a credit or debit card to Instagram to make purchases of advertised products and services directly within the Instagram app.

Instagram already has a shopping feature through Shoppable tags, but it requires users to access a third-party website to complete payments, so it is not the same as the new native option.

An Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch that native payments are currently available to some users for booking appointments at locations like restaurants and salons.

Users who have access to the Payments feature will find it within the Instagram settings. A Profile tab allows a Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, or Discover credit or debit card to be added to the app, while a Security tab allows users to set a PIN for authorizing purchases. A separate Activity tab lists anything that a user has purchased on Instagram.

Instagram has enabled Payments for a select number of retail partners, such as dinner reservation app Resy. Businesses that use Resy can accept in-app reservations and bookings using stored payment methods.

Payments will expand to other products and services in the future, according to Instagram, allowing users to do things like purchase movie tickets and other items.

Tag: Instagram
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TSMC Details Technology Roadmap With Multiple Offerings to Benefit Future Apple Devices

As part of its recent Q1 earnings call, TSMC announced that its 7-nanometer FinFET process node has entered into high volume manufacturing (HVM), meaning we could see consumer devices featuring the process as soon as the second half of this year.

Previous reports indicated that TSMC is expected to have sole production responsibility for Apple’s upcoming A12 chip and its variants expected to debut in new iPhone and iPad products starting this fall. The 7nm node (referred to as CLN7FF, 7FF, or simply N7) is expected to have an approximate 40 percent power and area benefit over TSMC’s 10nm FinFET process, utilized in Apple’s A11 processors.

Additionally, as reported by EETimes, TSMC has offered insight into its technology roadmap, both for its silicon processes and for its device packaging technologies. TSMC is believed to have wrested sole ownership of production for Apple’s processors away from the dual-sourcing arrangement with Samsung due to its advancements in wafer-level packaging. (What also went largely unnoticed at the time was TSMC’s introduction of land-side capacitors attached directly to the substrate.)

Building on the packaging leadership established with its InFO packaging offerings, TSMC has now announced six new packaging types aimed at a variety of devices and applications.

The InFO technique is getting four cousins. Info-MS, for memory substrate, packs an SoC and HBM on a 1x reticle substrate with a 2 x 2-micron redistribution layer and will be qualified in September.

InFO-oS has a backside RDL pitch better matched to DRAM and is ready now. A multi-stacking option called MUST puts one or two chips on top of another larger one linked through an interposer at the base of the stack.

Finally, InFO-AIP stands for antenna-in-package, sporting a 10% smaller form factor and 40% higher gain. It targets designs such as front-end modules for 5G basebands.

But that’s not all. TSMC introduced two wholly new packaging options. A wafer-on-wafer pack (WoW) directly bonds up to three dice. It was released last week, but users need to ensure that their EDA flows support the bonding technique. It will get EMI support in June.

Finally, the foundry roughly described something that it called system-on-integrated-chips (SoICs) using less than 10-micron interconnects to link two dice, but details are still sketchy for the technique to be released sometime next year. It targets apps from mobile to high-performance computing and can connect dice made in different nodes, suggesting it may be a form of system-in-package.

The announcement of these packaging technologies is important because they will enable a variety of different package and interconnect structures for Apple’s SoCs, with the immediate benefit being novel interfaces to in-package memory. While InFO offers height, performance and thermal advantages for Apple, they still must interconnect to the RAM seated on top of the application processor through the use of wire bonds in a package-on-package configuration.

This interface presents thermal challenges and limits the width and speed of the memory bus interface due to the type of interconnects. The IC industry has seen quite a bit of effort into novel memory technologies such as High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), but this technology has largely been relegated to graphics processors aimed at scientific, research, and extreme enthusiast use due to the high cost and low yield associated with the silicon interposers that enable the chip-to-memory connections. The fact that TSMC has unveiled a variant of InFO directly aimed at this solution bodes well for its increased adoption in the industry in a variety of products.

The InFO-oS process is of much more near-term interest for mobile device makers such as Apple, where the memory bus widths would be much lower, but the per-pin bandwidth is much higher, as seen in LPDDR4. According to a TSMC report, the “oS” portion this technology refers to on-substrate, where die-partitioning would take place.

This would seem to allow for a 2.5D solution where the memory die is placed alongside the processor die as opposed to suspended above via a mold compound as seen in the original InFO-WLP packaging, enabling the higher interconnect density. However, the retention of a redistribution layer means a mold compound must still be in play, so a more thorough technical disclosure could help eliminate some of the ambiguity with this naming convention. While this would eliminate die-stacking, it would increase the total footprint of the packaged solution, which would still be a concern in a size-constrained mobile package.

TSMC InFO variants
While Apple could eventually move to an HBM solution, which affords much greater memory bandwidth at lower power levels, the wafer-on-wafer (WoW) announcement is a genuine step towards true 3D integrated circuits, where eventually dies would be stacked directly on top of each other and interconnected through vias placed directly in the IC die.

The innovation for TSMC here would be in exactly how it packages these dies together, and what the interfaces look like as well as what type of redistribution layers (RDLs) they offer. While not directly applicable to Apple’s line of processors, the InFO-AIP is also an important development, as radio frequency (RF) front-ends stand to take on another order of complexity with their adoption of much wider frequency bandwidths needed for 5G standards.

Beyond the 7nm node, TSMC also shared its outlook for the foundry’s successive nodes, 7nm+ and 5nm. 7nm+ will be TSMC’s first node to feature extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, which stands to simplify the mask process by eliminating the need for multiple patterning in many areas to define smaller features.

Following 7nm+ will be 5nm, which would enter risk production late next year if current timelines hold, meaning volume production would occur sometime in 2020, though likely too late for a fall 2020 product launch, even with the most optimistic timelines. Though EUV has been long-awaited and will solve many problems in the industry, it brings a host of its own issues and will not bring huge performance jumps in successive nodes, nor will it grant smoother node transitions, as 5nm already presents its own EUV challenges.

The node delivers 35% more speed or uses 65% less power and sports a 3x gain in routed gate density. By contrast, the N7+ node with EUV will only deliver 20% more density, 10% less power, and apparently no speed gains — and those advances require use of new standard cells.

Still, the above news is encouraging, as Apple should be able to enjoy the benefits of a new technology node for at least two out of the next three years. This will offer a boost as its processor architecture gains slow down, and the advent of new packaging techniques will allow Apple to overcome bandwidth and thermal constraints in ways that were simply not possible before.

TSMC has also offered hope for the future, painting the picture beyond 5nm in broad strokes with plans for newer transistor topologies such as silicon nanowires, and moving beyond silicon as the prime semiconducting medium to materials that ultimately offer higher carrier (electrons and holes) mobility.

TSMC also detailed ways to improve the conductivity and reduce the parasitics associated with the interconnects present in the silicon die. Ultimately, these interconnects often dictate how quickly transistors can switch due to the effective line load on them, and that is a concern all the way from the die to the package and on to the PCB. TSMC seems to be diligently pursuing a variety of solutions for its customers on two of those fronts, and its packaging solutions are bringing more and more of those PCB components straight into the device package to combat the third element.

Tags: TSMC, A12
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Twitter Recommends Changing Your Password Following Plaintext Exposure Glitch

Twitter is suggesting that all Twitter users update their passwords following a glitch that exposed some passwords in plaintext on its internal network.

As outlined in a blog post, Twitter says that it recently found a bug that “stored passwords unmasked in an internal log.” The bug was fixed, and an internal investigation shows that there was no breach or misuse.

We mask passwords through a process called hashing using a function known as bcrypt, which replaces the actual password with a random set of numbers and letters that are stored in Twitter’s system. This allows our systems to validate your account credentials without revealing your password. This is an industry standard.

Due to a bug, passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process. We found this error ourselves, removed the passwords, and are implementing plans to prevent this bug from happening again.

Despite the fact that no one appears to have accessed the plaintext passwords, Twitter is recommending that all users “consider” changing their passwords “out of an abundance of caution” both on Twitter and on any other site where the same password was used.

If you’re a Twitter user, you can change your password on the web by accessing your Twitter settings and selecting the password option. You will need to enter a current password and then choose a new one. In the Twitter iOS app, you’ll need to sign out to initiate a password change.

Using a unique password for every login is the best way to make sure you stay secure in the event of a data breach, something best managed with an app like 1Password or LastPass.

Twitter is recommending users choose a unique, strong password and then protect their accounts with two factor authentication.

Tag: Twitter
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Adobe drops all-apps Creative Cloud price to $5 for K-12 schools

Daven Mathies/Digital Trends

Adobe Creative Cloud has a new lower price point for students. On Thursday, May 3, Adobe announced a price change dropping the entire suite of Creative Cloud apps to about $5 a year per student for K-12 schools. The change is a steep reduction from the previous student pricing, $35 a month per student for institutions. For non-students, an all-app subscription costs $53.

The $5 per student subscription cuts the price for schools to add the program and includes the full suite of programs like Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, Premiere Pro and others. The subscription gives each individual student a license and sign-in, which means students can also use the software at home and not just on school computers. The student licenses will be available to schools beginning on May 15, with the price good for a single school with 500 or more licenses or a full district with 2,500 or more licenses. Adobe says that the student subscription meets the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and other data privacy regulations for students.

Adobe says the change stems from a recent study on creativity in education. In Adobe’s research, more than half of the educators in the survey said they didn’t have access to creative tools because of budget restrictions. Adobe suggests schools should prioritize creative problem solving because positions with requiring those skills are less likely to be replaced by automation.

Along with making the software more accessible for schools, Adobe is also launching new tools for teachers. With Edcamp, Adobe will be launching additional resources for educators focusing on creative problem-solving. Next year, the company is also planning hands-on workshops in schools around the U.S. as well as online workshops for teachers. The classes will launch alongside existing resources like the Adobe Education Exchange.

The announcement comes on the heels of the company’s earlier decision to make Adobe Spark free to all schools. Spark For Education includes the premium features that users typically have to pay for over the free version of the app, to K-12 students as well as colleges and universities for free.

The student plan, available to K-12 schools, joins existing subscription options like the $10 photography plan, $20 single app plan, and $53 all-apps option. For schools, Adobe also has a per-device option to equip labs with the software.

Explore Adobe CC Plans

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Google Pay arrives on desktops — and it lets you choose your browser

Google is extending the compatibility of its Google Pay system to desktops and iOS platforms and it doesn’t care which browser you use. Whether you’re running Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, so long as you’ve saved a debit or credit card with Google Pay, you can use it on any other site or service that supports it.

Google Pay bundles together previous Google services like Android Pay and Google Wallet, which were designed to make online payments on mobile devices faster. That functionality has now been ported over to iOS devices and desktops, which should make online transactions on a variety of sites and services quicker for Google Pay users.

The newly expanded Google Pay system means that if you saved a card through Google Pay on your Chromebook or Android smartphone, you can now use that same system to quickly pay through your web browser, or when shopping on your iOS device. On top of saving your card details, Google Pay can also quick-fill forms like billing and shipping addresses, further speeding up the checkout process.

In Google’s breakdown of the newly expanded platform, it details how some banks will also support the auto-updating of Google Pay details. That means if you were to lose your debit or credit card, when your bank issued a new one, it can be automatically updated in Google Pay — though Google does encourage you to check with your bank to make sure, as not all will do so.

With more than 100 million downloads of the Google Pay app on the Google Play Store, the service is popular already. This latest expansion will only serve to improve that as it makes it available to the wider desktop users and hundreds of millions of iOS users the world over. As Engadget points out though, the Apple platform may be Google’s main target in this update, since its presence on that platform could make Google a solid competitor for Apple Pay, along with fortifying the search giant’s position in the ecommerce market.

If you’d like to learn more about Google Pay, or need a guide on how to use Google Pay, we’ve got you covered.

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