Google Assistant can now buy movie tickets on your behalf

Google Assistant’s latest trick is ordering movie tickets. It’s a partnership with Fandango that enables the digital helper to assist you with movie night decisions. You can buy tickets with your voice, or you can ask for general showtimes in your area, along with finding out a movie’s cast and maybe even watching a trailer. Google says picking assigned seats is pretty simple too.

It was only a matter of time before Google brought Assistant into the movie mix. Not long ago, the tech juggernaut added movie showtimes and reviews to Search results. The AI has its limits though, and predicting how long, say, MoviePass will stay afloat is probably outside of its purview.

How police are using corpses to unlock phones

If you’ve ever imagined a scenario where police demand you unlock your phone and thought “Over my dead body!” — we have bad news for you. Here in our absurd dystopian future, having a phone means that upon your demise you could find yourself participating — limp and lifeless — in a legal search and seizure of your own digital property.

Police in Largo, Florida recently tried to use a dead man’s finger to open his phone. This was to the complete astonishment of his family and probably also staff at the Sylvan Abbey Funeral Home. Detectives just rolled right in with Linus F. Phillip’s phone and asked staff where his corpse was. They then attempted to unlock his phone by pressing his hands and fingers on to the fingerprint sensor.

The dead man’s fiance Victoria Armstrong told press, “I just felt so disrespected and violated.”

Mr. Phillip, an unarmed black man, was shot and killed outside a gas station after police claimed he tried to drive away during a search. His death was ruled a “justifiable homicide.” His family does not trust the investigation into his death.

“They were trying to open up that cellphone using a dead man’s finger,” the family’s attorney, John Trevena said. “That’s disgusting beyond words.”

Attempts by police to use the dead man’s hands for what they claimed was “to preserve evidence” by unlocking his phone were unsuccessful. The alleged evidence on his phone, press wrote, was “to aid in the investigation into Phillip’s death and a separate inquiry into drugs” according to Lt. Randall Chaney.

“We can’t remember having unlocked a phone in that fashion, either at the scene, the Medical Examiner’s office, or the funeral home,” Lt. Chaney said.

The Tampa Bay Times wrote:

According to Chaney, there’s a 48- to 72-hour window to access a phone using the fingerprint sensor. Police got the phone back within that window but after the body was released from state custody to the funeral home.

Apparently we don’t have an expectation of privacy after we die. It sounds diabolical, but damn if it isn’t America’s newest law enforcement trend. They aren’t just playing with your cold, dead hands, they’re using it to access your selfies, dick pics, cat pics, drunk DMs, and anime porn search history. I mean, “look for evidence.”

Like it or not, what the police did was legal — and it’s becoming a practice. In November 2016, FBI agents used the bloody finger belonging to Ohio State University killer Abdul Razak’s iPhone in hopes of finding information and evidence. They got the timing wrong, missing the window before the phone required a passcode and ended up cracking the device with other means.

Imagine the plot twists if “Weekend at Bernie’s” was released today.

Getty

That was the first publicly known instance of posthumous Touch ID access attempts by authorities, though there have been more since. “Separate sources close to local and federal police investigations in New York and Ohio,” Forbes wrote in March, “who asked to remain anonymous as they weren’t authorized to speak on record, said it was now relatively common for fingerprints of the deceased to be depressed on the scanner of Apple iPhones.”

It’s widely accepted nowadays, then, when a person dies, they may specify to be (or not to be) an organ donor, to be cremated or buried, or even to be wrapped in bedsheets and unexamined. Perhaps now is an era calling for the need of overly specific privacy and security instructions, including no posthumous fingerprinting, no unlocking of private folders, or even “bury me with my phone.”

If it sounds outrageous, think about what could be found on your devices and in your DMs and search history for authorities and family to find if tomorrow was suddenly your day to explore the hereafter.

Let’s imagine law enforcement mistaking your intentions and then the next thing you know, you’re tits-up in the morgue while the cops corpse-finger your phone and then have a frank discussion about what’s in your photo albums. Not cool, right?

With the living, as most know, a regular password or passcode is protected by the Fifth Amendment’s safeguards for self-incrimination. Police can’t force you to give it up. But if your device is only protected by a fingerprint, your phone and all its contents are fair game.

For instance, in May 2016, U.S. Magistrate Judge Alicia Rosenberg made headlines when she issued a warrant to search an Armenian gangster’s girlfriend’s phone by taking her fingerprint and unlocking her iPhone. Things would have been different had the woman been using a regular password or passcode, which is protected by the Fifth Amendment’s safeguards for self-incrimination. Rosenberg’s decision was preceded by a Virginia Circuit Court judge in October 2014, where it was a ruled that giving biometric data is not the same as divulging knowledge.

But when you die, so do a lot of your rights. No heartbeat? No warrant needed. Tampa Bay Times wrote that a deceased person “can’t assert their Fourth Amendment protections because, well, you can’t own property when you’re dead,” according to Charles Rose, professor and director of the Center for Excellence in Advocacy at Stetson University College of Law.

If this seems backwards and problematic, then you’re noticing how badly the law needs to catch up with new technology, as well as new corridors of abuse for authorities. Think of our laws around tech, privacy, and the demands of authorities like an old building. A building that has every inch of usable space utilized. But with new technologies, that building needs to be expanded. The only thing really guiding it is the structural bits that can’t be moved (like the Fifth Amendment). To expedite growth into the next room, cops are basically just punching through walls. Until someone tries to stop them, anyway.

Here’s the thing. Generally speaking, authorities can get into your device if they really want to, meaning if they have the budget to spend on phone cracking software or shady, ethics-free hacking teams. But most departments don’t have that kind of budgeting, so when push comes to shove, sometimes a cop is gonna pull rank with the goths at the morgue.

Should you be worried? Yes! You should totally be worried! Look around! Between ICE and Facebook, it’s a free for all with rights and privacy right now. We lost net neutrality, the internet left sex workers to die, Russia runs the country, and the wrong Terms agreement could land you in a bathtub of ice missing a couple necessary organs!

Seriously: Don’t lock your phone with your fingerprint. These things were designed by people who never leave the house.

Images: Getty (Weekend at Bernie’s / Fingerprint identity)

HTC Shares Teaser for New Phone That Inexplicably Features iPhone 6 Parts

HTC today sent out emails and updated its website with a teaser image for an upcoming event that will see the launch of its next flagship device.

The image in question features smartphone components overlaid with a date, and given that HTC is teasing a new smartphone, it would be logical to assume these are HTC components, but as AnandTech points out, HTC’s image features iPhone 6 parts.

HTC’s teaser image
It is not clear why HTC is teasing its next-generation smartphone with components from an Apple device that’s four years old rather than the upcoming device or at least an HTC smartphone, but it’s an embarrassing mistake for the company to make.

iPhone 6 components, via iFixit
HTC’s May 23 event will likely see the debut of the HTC U12, the successor to the HTC U11.

Tag: HTC
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Apple will fix bug affecting iPhone 7 and 7 Plus microphones

Some iPhone 7 and 7 Plus models running iOS 11.3 or later are experiencing an issue with their microphones. Some users have reported that after updating, their phones’ microphones stopped working, affecting voice memos, calls, FaceTime and speakerphone. Some also reported that Siri was no longer accessible. But Apple has apparently acknowledged the problem — though not publicly — and an internal document obtained by MacRumors instructs Apple Authorized Service Providers how to proceed if faced with an affected phone.

The document notes that in some cases the phones’ speaker buttons will be greyed out and service providers should first ask customers to disconnect any Bluetooth accessories connected to their phones. If that doesn’t help, they should run audio diagnostics. In the case that “device could not detect dock” or “accessory not supported” alerts come up, the service provider can repair the phone. MacRumors also reports that if the affected iPhone 7 or 7 Plus is no longer under warranty, Apple says the repair providers can request an exception for this issue.

The document is apparently light on the details as to why this issue has come up. But since a repair might be warranted it seems like the software update is leading to a hardware defect. MacRumors says it verified the document — which was distributed to Apple Authorized Service Providers this week — with a reliable source and suggests that users escalate their cases to a senior AppleCare advisor if repair technicians say they can’t fix the problem.

Last month, Apple released an update that addressed a bug causing some replacement displays to be unresponsive to touch.

Via: VentureBeat

Source: MacRumors

What to expect at Microsoft’s Build 2018 conference

Fresh off of Windows 10’s major April update, Microsoft is gearing up for its Build conference in Seattle Monday. The annual event, like Google I/O (which starts just one day later), is a celebration of the company’s developer community. That means you can expect plenty of technical details and (gasp) on-stage coding during the two keynotes, which will be led by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and operating systems head Joe Belfiore. But of course, we’ll also hear more about the company’s broader goals for the next year, and we’ll get a first look at new features for Windows, Office and the rest of its product line. Here’s a brief glimpse at what we expect to see.

A bigger focus on AI

Microsoft hasn’t been shy about throwing the term “AI” around over the past few years, but it’s clear by now that’s not just marketing fluff. In particular, we expect to hear a lot more about Windows ML, the machine learning platform that arrived alongside last month’s Windows 10 update. It lets developers take advantage of pre-trained AI routines in their apps, which they can run either locally or over the Azure cloud. Windows ML can also take advantage of hardware acceleration from GPUs, something Build attendees will likely appreciate.

Microsoft has made huge strides in bringing artificial intelligence to its consumer products recently. Its Cortana virtual assistant is steadily getting smarter (it’s certainly more useful on a desktop than Siri). AI also sits at the core of the Translator app, which can now tap into AI even when it’s offline. Meanwhile, the company’s XiaoIce chatbot in China has learned how to politely interrupt conversations, making it more like a natural speaker, instead of a voice-powered computer. We’re a long way from Hollywood-level superintelligent AI, but the pieces are falling in place for the next generation of computing.

Windows 10 and the evolving Microsoft Graph

Microsoft

With Timeline in Windows 10, Microsoft not only created a way to track your work across multiple PCs, but also on your iPhone or Android device. So far, that’s mainly limited to synchronizing your Edge browsing history, along with Office 365 apps on Android. But the company has hinted in the past that Timeline will eventually be more far reaching. At Build, we can expect to hear more about how that’ll happen, as well as how the Microsoft Graph, which stores all of your progress, can evolve. In particular, it’ll be interesting to learn how Timeline can better integrate with iOS, which is notoriously restrictive when it comes to third-party integration.

And of course, we’ll definitely learn more about other upcoming features for Windows 10. Remember, Microsoft has committed to updating the OS frequently, instead of the annual (or even longer) updates from past versions of Windows. For one thing, we’ll probably hear more about Sets, the experimental feature that lets you run apps in tabs, similar to web browsers. Microsoft hasn’t talked much about Sets since its unveiling last year, but developers will need to understand it better before they can implement it in their apps.

What’s up with Windows Mixed Reality?

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

No really, what’s going on? After launching Windows Mixed Reality last fall, alongside a slew of headsets from PC makers like HP, Acer and Samsung, Microsoft has been surprisingly quiet about the state of its VR and AR platform. Perhaps there’s just not much to say, though. The fact that many headsets have gotten drastically cheaper in just a few months (Lenovo’s was on sale recently for half-price — $200) is a clear indication these things aren’t flying off the shelves. At Build, Microsoft has yet another chance to convince developers to give Mixed Reality a shot (though the people they really need to reach will be at E3 in June).

Expect a lot of Azure talk

Take one look at Microsoft’s last few earnings reports, and one thing is clear: its cloud business is booming. So don’t be surprised if the company spends a large chunk of time at Build talking about how it can make Azure better for developers. For the most part, that’s not something consumers will notice directly. But for brands and businesses, it’s yet another way to insure their apps and online services are stable, secure and can withstand a potential onslaught of demand.

YouTube music app gets a streamlined now playing screen

With YouTube Remix on the horizon and Google Play Music on its way out (not to mention Google I/O next week), it’s not a surprise that YouTube Music, the app that the company rolled out in 2015, is getting a bit of a refresh. Originally spotted by Redditor c2fifield, the redesign includes some streamlined changes to the “now playing” interface as well as the queue lists below it. Only some users are seeing this new update, so be patient.

We were able to try out the redesign ourselves and confirmed that the screenshots from Reddit are indeed accurate, for both iOS and Android. The new player window looks more like other music apps, and the Now Playing queue can be easily rearranged. Whether these changes presage a YouTube Remix takeover or whether there will be a new app is unclear. For now, though, you can at least enjoy the changes while you listen to your tunes via YouTube.

Via: The Verge

Source: Reddit

F8 proved there’s no escape from Facebook

During a keynote about privacy at F8, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos shared an image of the world that used light to show the sheer size of the company’s network. It was intended to highlight all the places where people are using a Facebook product, and as you might expect, there weren’t many dark spots.

This year, Facebook’s F8 developers conference was bound to be different. After all, the company is still dealing with the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica (CA) data privacy scandal. But, Zuckerberg said during the opening keynote he was ready to “move forward,” and instead he came to talk about how Facebook plans to light up the rest of Stamos’ map.

The goal, Zuckerberg said, is to make the world smaller by building products that will help people connect in “meaningful ways,” no matter where they are or what device they’re using. With more than 2.2 billion monthly active users, Facebook alone is already hard to escape. How else will you find out about your next high school reunion or when your distant cousin has a baby? For millions it’s their preferred means of communication, and for an alarming amount of people, it’s how they get their news.

Facebook has also found ways to inject itself in people’s lives in an almost unthinkable way. If you want to donate to charities, you can do that on Facebook. Want to promote your bands show, it has you covered. And with Groups, which it now plans to make more of a centerpiece of its site, you can be in touch with like-minded individuals who you may never meet in person.

This reach is magnified even further when you remember that Facebook owns some of the other most popular social apps and services across the globe. This includes Instagram, which has more than 800 million monthly users (and will likely hit a billion soon); WhatsApp, which has 1.5 billion monthly users (almost as many as Facebook); and Messenger, the standalone chat app that now has more than 1.3 billion monthly users.

Oh, and let’s not forget about Oculus, which Facebook bought in 2014 and is arguably the most promising virtual reality company. Oculus just launched its first mobile VR headset, the Go, with a $200 price tag that puts it in impulse purchase territory.

VR hasn’t gone mainstream yet, but Facebook has a chance to make that happen with its Oculus Go. One of the ways it plans to do that is by making virtual reality social, with features that will let users “hang out” with others in digital, 360-degree spaces. You can be watching a movie with friends and it’ll be like going to the theater, except you won’t be there physically and you’ll have a headset strapped to your face. Facebook is also rolling out similar experiences for live events, including concerts and sports matches.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

All of this is to say Facebook has something for everyone, whether you want to stay in touch with your older relatives (Facebook), make new friends (Instagram), chat with friends overseas (WhatsApp) or soak in the future of entertainment (Oculus). And as the company continues to grow, it will only collect more data on you and everyone you know.

Simply put, Facebook doesn’t just want to be a part of your life, it wants to be your life.

And the company isn’t done yet. At F8, it announced that it would be taking on Tinder with its own dating service, which is scheduled to launch in the next few months. With the billions of dollars it makes every quarter, Facebook could’ve just bought Tinder and called it a day. But why spend all that money when it can just build a similar experience and, perhaps, make it even better?

Facebook’s hefty user base will make it an immediate threat to other matchmaking offerings. We don’t know yet if Facebook’s matchmaking feature will be a hit, but with the amount of data it already has on people and the resources at its disposal to create seamless apps, no one will be surprised if it simply makes all other dating services obsolete.

Case in point: When the company reportedly failed to buy Snapchat in 2013 for $3 billion, it went ahead and just cloned its most popular feature, Stories, which is now a big part of the Facebook and Instagram apps. It didn’t take long for Snapchat to start losing users as a result, and it also affected its bottom line, as advertisers flocked to Facebook’s product. Instagram is now at 300 million daily active users, compared to Snapchat’s 191 million. It’s clear this has paid off for Facebook, which says Stories will soon be the most popular way people share updates.

We should be concerned with the growing reach of Facebook.

Michael T. Zimmer, Associate Professor at The School of Information Studies, UCM

“We should be concerned with the growing reach of Facebook,” said Michael T. Zimmer, an associate professor at the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “The rise of Messenger — especially once it spun into a standalone app — was a big step in its reach into our daily activities. But more than that, the ubiquity of ‘Like’ buttons and ‘Login with Facebook’ features across the web means it is nearly impossible to avoid touching Facebook in your daily online activities.” Zimmer added that whether or not users take control of their privacy settings when they post on Facebook, which is what Zuckerberg focuses on when asked about privacy, nearly everyone will still be subjected to “Facebook’s immense apparatus of tracking and data collection.”

“Either you give enough people in the world what they want, or you don’t succeed. And Facebook over and over again is giving people what they want.”

Other academics don’t see an issue with Facebook becoming too powerful. “The success of Facebook in these various things that it does, and the fact that it just keeps doing more and more, is a reflection of the fact that [it’s] doing something right [and] that people are enjoying by and large what they’re doing,” said Paul Levinson, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University. He noted that, while it’s obvious that Facebook has made mistakes and it’s not perfect, its success shouldn’t come as a surprise. “Either you give enough people in the world what they want, or you don’t succeed,” Levinson said. “And Facebook over and over again is giving people what they want.”

Some have even raised the “M” word when talking about Facebook. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Zuckerberg directly during his congressional hearing: “You don’t think you have a monopoly?”

“It certainly doesn’t feel like that to me,” the embattled Facebook CEO answered with a nervous smirk, which drew laughs, including from Graham. It may not feel like it to Zuckerberg, but the truth is that Facebook really doesn’t have any competition — Twitter and Snapchat’s combined have around 400 million monthly users. That’s nowhere near Facebook’s 2.2 billion — and that’s not even counting Instagram or WhatsApp.

Even with the massive web it’s already created, Facebook says there are still more than 3 billion people who don’t have access to the internet, and by extension, it’s services. It wants to change that by building fast and cheap networks that will make internet accessible in every part of the globe. Theoretically, whether or not you use Facebook is up to you, though at the end of the day it may not feel like you have much of a choice.

Images: Getty Images

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2018!

MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Rugged 100W USB-C Cable From Nomad

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Nomad to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win a rugged, high-quality USB-C cable designed for Apple’s latest Macs that use USB-C and other USB-C accessories like the Nintendo Switch or Android smartphones.

Priced at $39.95, Nomad’s USB-C cable supports full 100W power transfer and 10Gb/s USB 3.1 data transfer speeds, making it compatible with all of Apple’s USB-C devices. It will charge your MacBook, 13-inch MacBook Pro, or 15-inch MacBook Pro at full speed paired with an appropriate power adapter.

With more and more device manufacturers adopting USB-C, it’s always useful to have an extra USB-C cable around, especially because Apple’s USB-C power adapters designed for MacBook and MacBook Pro models don’t ship with USB-C cables. If you want to pick up a spare, you’ll need to buy a cable separately.

Nomad describes its USB-C cable as “ultra rugged” because it’s made from a braided ballistic nylon and an extra thick wire gauge with a polyamide core, making it resistant to wear and tear from daily use. Nomad has also included reinforced RF shielding for fast data sync, along with a thick fire resistant PVC jacket.

The cable measures in at 1M in length, an ideal size for use at home or when traveling, and you can be sure that it’s going to hold up well even if you’re a little rough with it.

We have eight of Nomad’s USB-C cables to give away to MacRumors readers. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winners and send the prizes. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

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

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (May 4) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on May 11. The winners will be chosen randomly on May 11 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

Tags: giveaway, Nomad
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Mercedes-Benz’s New MBUX System Will Feature Wireless CarPlay

Mercedes-Benz has confirmed that its new MBUX infotainment system will feature support for wireless CarPlay in future vehicles.

The all-new 2019 A-Class will be Mercedes-Benz’s first vehicle equipped with the MBUX system when it goes on sale later this year, according to a spokesperson for the automaker’s parent company Daimler in Germany. Wireless CarPlay will expand to other new Mercedes-Benz vehicles in 2019, the spokesperson told MacRumors.

The automaker previously announced that the 2019 A-Class will be available in a sedan model in the United States, while a hatchback version will also be sold in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and select other regions. The spokesperson said wireless CarPlay will be available in all of those markets.

A spokesperson for Mercedes-Benz in the United States declined to comment on MBUX’s wireless capabilities until midsummer. It’s still early, so it’s possible the company’s exact vehicle and market rollout of wireless CarPlay could change.

Barring announcements from other automakers, Mercedes-Benz will likely become the second to offer vehicles with wireless CarPlay functionality, after BMW rolled out the feature starting with its 2017 5 Series a few years ago. Apple first introduced wireless CarPlay in 2015 alongside iOS 9.

Alpine Electronics also offers an aftermarket infotainment system with wireless CarPlay for self-installations in other vehicles.

Every other automaker that offers CarPlay currently uses a wired implementation that requires connecting the iPhone to the system with a Lightning to USB cable. The platform is available in well over 300 vehicle models, and it’s generally considered to be a highly desired feature with strong customer satisfaction.

Related Roundup: CarPlayTag: Mercedes-Benz
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LG Denies Copying iPhone X’s Notched Design With New G7 Smartphone

LG has denied copying the iPhone X’s notched design with its latest G7 ThinQ smartphone, unveiled on Wednesday, according to The Korea Herald.

“We planned the notch design before Apple,” said Hwang Jeong-hwan, chief of LG’s mobile division, in an interview. “The display design may look similar to that of other smartphones, but boasts differentiated features.”

LG is one of several Android smartphone makers that have unveiled iPhone X lookalikes in the months following the debut of Apple’s flagship handset, alongside the likes of Asus, Huawei, and others. One notable holdout is Samsung, with its latest Galaxy S9 devices retaining uniform top and bottom bezels.

Google introduced support for “the latest edge-to-edge screens” with a “display cutout for camera and speaker” in Android P, the next major version of its mobile operating system that will be seeded to devices like the G7 ThinQ.

Apple has previously said the iPhone X reflects the next decade of smartphones, suggesting the controversial notch will remain for the foreseeable future. However, a questionable report from Korean website ET News recently suggested that Apple may remove the notch from iPhones starting with 2019 models.

Tag: LG
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