Facebook is replacing Photo Sync with its Moments app
If you’ve been storing pictures with Facebook’s Photo Sync feature, those will soon be moved to another property from the social network. As spotted by TechCrunch, Facebook has started notifying people that, on January 10th, content from Photo Sync is now going to live in its Moments app. The company didn’t mention why it decided to phase it out, but this move is likely to encourage users to try a newer service.
Moments was introduced this past June and lets you easily create photo albums, which can be shared privately with friends. At the same time, those are curated using location information and facial recognition of the places you visited and who you were with. The Moments application is available for Android and iOS.
Source: TechCrunch
Recommended Reading: The story of ‘The Father of Video Games’
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you’ll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.
How a WWII Refugee Became the Father of Video Games
Arthur Molella, Slate
If you’ve read up on video game history, you know that Ralph Baer widely regarded as “The Father of Video Games.” What you may not know is Baer was a World War II refugee who came to the US in 1938. He fled persecution with his family before bringing games to our television screens decades later.
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Google and Facebook Race to Solve the Ancient Game of Go With AI Image and pattern recognition isn’t the only thing AI is good at. |
Multiplayer-Only Games Shouldn’t Cost $60 If you don’t think multiplayer-only games aren’t worth the same as their campaign-based counterparts, you’re not a lone. |
[Image credit: Kris Connor/ Getty Images]
The tech industry teams up to take on Donald Trump
Inexplicable presidential candidate Donald Trump has spoken loudly about his distaste for immigration, as well as the mass-deportation he would institute if elected. That puts him squarely at odds with much of the tech industry, which is pushing for immigration reform and a pathway for undocumented immigrants to gain citizenship. Now, lobby group FWD.us has released an emotive video speaking out against Trump’s dystopian vision by showing the human cost of such a policy.
The clip is entitled The Truth of Mass Deportation and features figures like Sophie Cruz, the five-year old who asked the Pope to prevent the deportation of her parents. The video shows how families would be torn apart, especially when immigrant parents with citizen children could be forced to leave the country. The group also wants to make the point that the people targeted often have valuable skills, and FWD.us believes that, if given citizenship, they’d contribute $329 billion to the economy.
The move comes a day after Mark Zuckerberg announced that he’d stand up for the rights of communities like the one Trump seems to enjoy monstering in public. FWD.us is often spoken about in the same breath as the Facebook CEO, but it was co-founded by Bill Gates, Sean Parker and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman. The group can also call upon the founders, CEOs and/or major names from a whole host of brand-name tech firms like Google, Qualcomm, YouTube, Instagram, Netflix, Yahoo, AirBnB, Evernote, Jawbone, Zynga and even Aol.’s own Tim Armstrong. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos isn’t a signed member of team FWD, but we can imagine where his sympathies (and rockets) would lie if this went to a fist-fight.
Via: The Hill
Source: FWD.us (YouTube)
Google Wallet now lets you send money over text messages
If there’s anything that makes you feel like you’re living in the future, it’s sending and receiving money over your smartphone. Tap, tap, bing… Capitalism! Now Google Wallet is making it even easier than before by letting you send and receive cash over text messaging.
See also: Google Wallet now supports multiple bank accounts
In a blog post today on Google Commerce, the company announced their app’s new update enables you to make a payment to someone even if the only information you have about them is their phone number. All you have to do is tap the contact, enter an amount, and Google Wallet does the rest. The recipient receives a text message with a secure link, and after entering a debit card number, money will appear in their bank account within just a few minutes.
This comes on the heels of Facebook Messenger’s relatively new ability to send and receive money through the popular instant messaging platform. Some decried the feature as risky, citing security concerns and the fear that cyber criminals would manipulate it to drain bank accounts. However, since the feature’s debut in March, there have been no major scandals to match these worries. It looks like mobile currency is here to stay, and may even become the primary transaction medium for some people in the years to come.
If you want to give Google Wallet a spin, click the button below to download it from the Google Play Store. What do you think of Google Wallet and Facebook Messenger’s payment features? Security risk or wave of the future? Let us know in the comments!
Next: 10 best texting apps for Android
Facebook’s offline news feed lets you continue your obsession even in the subway
Anybody who uses public transport on the regular knows the frustration of having to stop obsessively scrolling through their Facebook news feed whenever they’re underground. Folks living in places with sketchy internet access are all familiar with the irritation that comes with composing a well-articulated political argument, only to have their internet go out right as they hit the “Post Comment” button. Facebook is working on a solution to this problem by giving you access to your news feed even if you’re offline.
See also: Facebook makes its best effort at being a shoulder to cry on post-breakup
Although they’re still testing this feature, the concept seems very workable. The idea is that your Facebook app will keep a cache of recent stories posted to Facebook. If it detects that you don’t have an internet connection, instead of just showing you an error message, the app will shuffle through the cache and pick out some stories you haven’t read yet. Whenever you get even the barest trickle of internet, Facebook will attempt to grab new content for you.
The update also gives you a little bit of interactivity as well. You can post comments or statuses even without internet, and the app will store them for the next time you’re online. Once you get data service or a wifi connection, Facebook will post the content for you. I guess you just have to cross your fingers that what you had to say will still be relevant to the conversation.
We’re not sure yet if Facebook is rolling this feature out for all app users or if they’re just testing it with a limited audience. It seems like a feature with more pros than cons, so I think it’s safe to say that we’ll be seeing offline news feeds pretty soon either way.
Gimmick or useful update? Let us know in the comments!
Facebook makes the hardware it uses for AI open-source
You might not think of it often, but behind the scenes Facebook uses a lot of artificial intelligence. The company leans heavy on AI, using machine learning to curate a better news feed, sort through photo and video content and even read stories or play games. Now, the company is making Big Sur, the hardware it runs its AI experiments on, open-source.
Facebook says it will release its AI hardware design to the Open Compute Project soon, promising to give the community a system designed specifically for AI tasks built from off-the-shelf components. This design features eight NVIDIA Tesla M40 GPUs seated into an easily serviceable motherboard. “The CPU heat sinks are the only things you need a screwdriver for,” the company says.
“We want to make it a lot easier for AI researchers to share techniques and technologies,” the company said in a statement today. “We believe that this open collaboration helps foster innovation for future designs, putting us all one step closer to building complex AI systems.” Sounds pretty good. Check out the source link below for Facebook’s official announcement.
Source: Facebook
Zuckerberg: Facebook will fight to protect Muslim rights
It’s hard to open a laptop or cellphone these days and not be appalled by the latest awful or just plain factually incorrect thing Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has said on the campaign trail. Thankfully, the list of prominent voices speaking out against him (even among his own party) continues to grow. The latest addition? None other than Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. The Social Network head responded to the priapic real estate mogul’s calling for a “total and complete” shutdown of Muslims immigrating to the United States, saying that his Jewish upbringing means he was raised to stand up against attacks on all communities.
Trump might regret poking this particular hornet’s nest, since Zuckerberg is regarded as one of the most influential people in the world. As well as having the attention of a billion Facebook users — almost a million Like the public post — the CEO was recently crowned number one in The Guardian‘s Media Power List thanks to Instagram and WhatsApp. In addition, Zuckerberg is slightly more tech-savvy than the world’s premier lover of bad combovers, so we doubt there’ll be any Jeb Bush-style domain hacks. Of course, if you’re curious about how Trump deals with the issues we care about, you can always check out his report card here (spoiler: he scored a D-).
I want to add my voice in support of Muslims in our community and around the world.After the Paris attacks and hate…
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Source: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Facebook’s News Feed is gentler on your flaky phone connection
Facebook might depend on the internet, but the social network knows that people don’t always have good internet connections. You may be knocked offline in a subway tunnel, or live in a part of the world where fast internet access is rare. The company should soon have your back, though. It’s testing a mobile News Feed update that sees which stories are already on your phone, and shows the ones you haven’t seen based on relevance. On top of that, the test will periodically grab new stories while you have a good connection — ideally, you’ll always have something fresh to read.
You’ll even have some limited interaction while you’re offline. Facebook will let you comment on posts when you don’t have an internet connection, and will sync up once you’re back online. If you want to wish someone a happy birthday while you’re stuck on a flight without WiFi, you can. It’s not clear when this or the core News Feed update will be ready for prime time, but don’t be surprised if you start seeing posts even in those moments where you’re not even close to having a good signal.
Source: Facebook
Facebook’s Security Checkup tool comes to Android
Facebook unveiled their Security Checkup tool for the desktop back in July, but it got so much praise that Facebook decided to make it for mobile too. With the tool, you will be able to start securing yourself today.
You will be able to do things like turn on Login Alerts, log out of Facebook from unused browsers and devices, and protect your password better.
In only a few minutes, Security Checkup helps you log out of Facebook from browsers and devices where you haven’t used Facebook in a while, turn on Login Alerts in case someone else tries to log into your account from a new computer or phone, and protect your password.
Currently, there is an Android version only with an iOS version in the works. The Security Checkup tool on Android or the desktop can be accessed via the Facebook Help Centre.
Source: Facebook
Come comment on this article: Facebook’s Security Checkup tool comes to Android
Facebook’s 2015 review video puts the year in perspective
One of the internet’s greatest achievements is its ability to connect disparate global communities in discussion and, at times, compassion — and a lot of that conversation takes place on Facebook. The company’s Year in Review, a video and list released today, outlines the top 10 stories of 2015, including the US presidential election, Paris terrorist attacks, Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, Nepal earthquakes, Baltimore protests, and marriage equality. It’s a snapshot of a year with extreme peaks and valleys, ultimate joy and devastation.
Facebook says it composed the 2015 Year in Review as follows: “Year in Review top 10 lists were measured by how frequently a topic was mentioned in Facebook posts made between January 1st and December 1st, 2015. To put this list together, Facebook posts were analyzed in an aggregated, anonymized way, and then ranked to create a snapshot of the year on Facebook.”
https://player.vimeo.com/video/148313339?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0
The most-discussed topics in 2015, according to Facebook:
1. US Presidential Election
2. November 13 Attacks in Paris
3. Syrian Civil War and Refugee Crisis
4. Nepal Earthquakes
5. Greek Debt Crisis
6. Marriage Equality
7. Fight Against ISIS
8. Charlie Hebdo Attack
9. Baltimore Protests
10. Charleston Shooting and Flag Debate
Source: Facebook Year in Review
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