Slashdot Mirror

On November 12th, WhatsApp users on Android will be able to back up their messages to Google Drive for free and it won't count towards Google Drive storage quotas. But, as WhatsApp warns, those messages will no longer be protected by end-to-end encryption. ZDNet reports: While Apple iOS users may elect to use iCloud backup storage options, Android users store theirs through Google Drive -- but alongside the changes, WhatsApp has reminded users that once communication, chat, and media is transferred away from the app, end-to-end encryption is no longer in place.

Some users may think that backup services will have the same level of protection as the app. However, this is not the case and the reminder is important for those interested in protecting their privacy. In WhatsApp support documents, this separation is now explicitly mentioned. "Media and messages you back up aren't protected by WhatsApp end-to-end encryption while in Google Drive," WhatsApp says.

The University of Texas at Austin, will soon be home to one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. From a report: The National Science Foundation awarded a $60 million grant to the school's Texas Advanced Computing Center, UT Austin and NSF said Wednesday. The supercomputer, named Frontera, is set to become operational roughly a year from now in 2019, and will be "among the most powerful in the world," according to a statement. To be exact, it will be the fifth most powerful in the world, third most powerful in the US, and the most powerful at a university.

President Donald Trump says Google search results for "Trump News" show only negative coverage about him. From a report: The results present "only the viewing/reporting of Fake New (sic) Media," the president tweeted early Tuesday. He said it's a "very serious situation" that "will be addressed!" "In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of ... " he wrote in the first of two tweets at 5:24 a.m. ET. Update: White House probes Google after Trump accuses it of bias.

Slashdot reader nolaguy quotes the New York Post: Movie subscription service MoviePass has pulled the plug on annual subscriptions, telling those subscribers that they will have to adhere to the same terms as monthly subscribers. The service made the announcement Friday in an email to those members and offered them prorated refunds if they want to cancel their annual memberships.... Until Friday's announcement, subscribers to the $89 annual plans had been able to see a movie a day.
CNET reports that MoviePass "is now forcing you onto its monthly three-movie-a-month plan -- effective immediately...and you'll receive up to a $5.00 discount on any additional movie tickets purchased." They're plannning to apply the $89 annual fees toward the $9.95 monthly fees, but.... To add insult to injury, MoviePass says you'll only have until Aug. 31 -- a week from today -- if you want to get some of your money back in the form of a prorated refund, which you can only get by canceling your plan. And just to make things more ridiculous, MoviePass is preying on your FOMO by saying that if you do take the refund, you won't be able to sign up for MoviePass again for nine months.
CNET's article ends with a link to their list of "the 11 times that MoviePass altered the deal," adding "This is getting sad. And a little shady."

Slashdot reader nolaguy quotes the New York Post: Movie subscription service MoviePass has pulled the plug on annual subscriptions, telling those subscribers that they will have to adhere to the same terms as monthly subscribers. The service made the announcement Friday in an email to those members and offered them prorated refunds if they want to cancel their annual memberships.... Until Friday's announcement, subscribers to the $89 annual plans had been able to see a movie a day.
CNET reports that MoviePass "is now forcing you onto its monthly three-movie-a-month plan -- effective immediately...and you'll receive up to a $5.00 discount on any additional movie tickets purchased." They're plannning to apply the $89 annual fees toward the $9.95 monthly fees, but.... To add insult to injury, MoviePass says you'll only have until Aug. 31 -- a week from today -- if you want to get some of your money back in the form of a prorated refund, which you can only get by canceling your plan. And just to make things more ridiculous, MoviePass is preying on your FOMO by saying that if you do take the refund, you won't be able to sign up for MoviePass again for nine months.
CNET's article ends with a link to their list of "the 11 times that MoviePass altered the deal," adding "This is getting sad. And a little shady."

From a report: On Tuesday, nine Senators introduced a bill that would require state and local governments to use paper ballots in an effort to secure elections from hackers. The bill would also require rigorous audits for all federal elections to ensure that results match the votes. "Leaving the fate of America's democracy up to hackable election machines is like leaving your front door open, unlocked and putting up a sign that says 'out of town,'" Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, said in a release. "Any failure to secure our elections amounts to disenfranchising American voters." The Protecting American Votes and Elections Act of 2018 was drafted amid intense scrutiny of voting systems ahead of the mid-term elections in November. Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election has elevated concern over the security of the country's voting systems. The senators said rigorous audits will ensure votes are legitimate. Currently, 22 states don't require post-election audits, according to the release.

News outlet CNET has two big stories on Microsoft today. The publication interviewed CEO Satya Nadella on the changes he has made since taking the top job. The stories, among other things, talks about Microsoft Hackathon, the diversity pushes Nadella has made at the company, and how Microsoft lost the touch with what made it successful, and how Nadella is trying to fix that. From story one: Nadella dreamed up the Microsoft Hackathon, which the company calls the "largest private hackathon in the world," when he became CEO in February 2014. Just a few of the thousands of projects pitched over the past five years have inspired mainstream products. Most of these let's-change-the-world ideas aren't the kind of business tech that Microsoft makes the bulk of its money on -- at least not today.

That's just fine with Nadella, because the meetup serves another purpose: rebranding Microsoft as a modern, relevant company. When he became the third CEO of the world's largest software company, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella made changing Microsoft's rigid, hierarchical and arrogant culture his top priority. He sort of had to. Though arguably one of the most successful technology companies in history, Microsoft's had a string of high-profile misses in mobile, search and social networking. Additionally, the company's toxic culture, characterized by corporate politics, infighting and backstabbing, fed an image of Microsoft as a fading legend.

Rivals Apple, Google and Facebook were seen as innovators creating shiny new opportunities with their disruptive tech. A generation grew up without ever having used a Microsoft product. "One of the things that happens when you're super successful is you sort of sometimes lose touch with what made you successful in the first place," Nadella tells us when we ask what he was trying to solve with the hackathon."I wanted to go back to the very genesis of this company: What is that sense of purpose and drive that made us successful? What was the culture that may have been there in the very beginning or in the times when we were able to achieve that success? How do we really capture it?" says Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992. It's about "the renaissance as much as about just sort of fixing something that's broken." From story two: CNET: What is the vibe or image of Microsoft you want the world to know?
Nadella: It's in our mission. It's empowering. Any association with this company should be, they put some tools, they put some platforms, they gave me the opportunity to really do something. Whether it's a student writing a term paper, whether it's a startup trying to create a company, a small business that's trying to be more productive or even a public sector institution that's trying to be more efficient and serve its citizens -- [they] should feel that association with Microsoft is empowering to them. That's what I want us to stand for.

News outlet CNET has two big stories on Microsoft today. The publication interviewed CEO Satya Nadella on the changes he has made since taking the top job. The stories, among other things, talks about Microsoft Hackathon, the diversity pushes Nadella has made at the company, and how Microsoft lost the touch with what made it successful, and how Nadella is trying to fix that. From story one: Nadella dreamed up the Microsoft Hackathon, which the company calls the "largest private hackathon in the world," when he became CEO in February 2014. Just a few of the thousands of projects pitched over the past five years have inspired mainstream products. Most of these let's-change-the-world ideas aren't the kind of business tech that Microsoft makes the bulk of its money on -- at least not today.

That's just fine with Nadella, because the meetup serves another purpose: rebranding Microsoft as a modern, relevant company. When he became the third CEO of the world's largest software company, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella made changing Microsoft's rigid, hierarchical and arrogant culture his top priority. He sort of had to. Though arguably one of the most successful technology companies in history, Microsoft's had a string of high-profile misses in mobile, search and social networking. Additionally, the company's toxic culture, characterized by corporate politics, infighting and backstabbing, fed an image of Microsoft as a fading legend.

Rivals Apple, Google and Facebook were seen as innovators creating shiny new opportunities with their disruptive tech. A generation grew up without ever having used a Microsoft product. "One of the things that happens when you're super successful is you sort of sometimes lose touch with what made you successful in the first place," Nadella tells us when we ask what he was trying to solve with the hackathon."I wanted to go back to the very genesis of this company: What is that sense of purpose and drive that made us successful? What was the culture that may have been there in the very beginning or in the times when we were able to achieve that success? How do we really capture it?" says Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992. It's about "the renaissance as much as about just sort of fixing something that's broken." From story two: CNET: What is the vibe or image of Microsoft you want the world to know?
Nadella: It's in our mission. It's empowering. Any association with this company should be, they put some tools, they put some platforms, they gave me the opportunity to really do something. Whether it's a student writing a term paper, whether it's a startup trying to create a company, a small business that's trying to be more productive or even a public sector institution that's trying to be more efficient and serve its citizens -- [they] should feel that association with Microsoft is empowering to them. That's what I want us to stand for.

News outlet CNET has two big stories on Microsoft today. The publication interviewed CEO Satya Nadella on the changes he has made since taking the top job. The stories, among other things, talks about Microsoft Hackathon, the diversity pushes Nadella has made at the company, and how Microsoft lost the touch with what made it successful, and how Nadella is trying to fix that. From story one: Nadella dreamed up the Microsoft Hackathon, which the company calls the "largest private hackathon in the world," when he became CEO in February 2014. Just a few of the thousands of projects pitched over the past five years have inspired mainstream products. Most of these let's-change-the-world ideas aren't the kind of business tech that Microsoft makes the bulk of its money on -- at least not today.

That's just fine with Nadella, because the meetup serves another purpose: rebranding Microsoft as a modern, relevant company. When he became the third CEO of the world's largest software company, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella made changing Microsoft's rigid, hierarchical and arrogant culture his top priority. He sort of had to. Though arguably one of the most successful technology companies in history, Microsoft's had a string of high-profile misses in mobile, search and social networking. Additionally, the company's toxic culture, characterized by corporate politics, infighting and backstabbing, fed an image of Microsoft as a fading legend.

Rivals Apple, Google and Facebook were seen as innovators creating shiny new opportunities with their disruptive tech. A generation grew up without ever having used a Microsoft product. "One of the things that happens when you're super successful is you sort of sometimes lose touch with what made you successful in the first place," Nadella tells us when we ask what he was trying to solve with the hackathon."I wanted to go back to the very genesis of this company: What is that sense of purpose and drive that made us successful? What was the culture that may have been there in the very beginning or in the times when we were able to achieve that success? How do we really capture it?" says Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992. It's about "the renaissance as much as about just sort of fixing something that's broken." From story two: CNET: What is the vibe or image of Microsoft you want the world to know?
Nadella: It's in our mission. It's empowering. Any association with this company should be, they put some tools, they put some platforms, they gave me the opportunity to really do something. Whether it's a student writing a term paper, whether it's a startup trying to create a company, a small business that's trying to be more productive or even a public sector institution that's trying to be more efficient and serve its citizens -- [they] should feel that association with Microsoft is empowering to them. That's what I want us to stand for.

News outlet CNET has two big stories on Microsoft today. The publication interviewed CEO Satya Nadella on the changes he has made since taking the top job. The stories, among other things, talks about Microsoft Hackathon, the diversity pushes Nadella has made at the company, and how Microsoft lost the touch with what made it successful, and how Nadella is trying to fix that. From story one: Nadella dreamed up the Microsoft Hackathon, which the company calls the "largest private hackathon in the world," when he became CEO in February 2014. Just a few of the thousands of projects pitched over the past five years have inspired mainstream products. Most of these let's-change-the-world ideas aren't the kind of business tech that Microsoft makes the bulk of its money on -- at least not today.

That's just fine with Nadella, because the meetup serves another purpose: rebranding Microsoft as a modern, relevant company. When he became the third CEO of the world's largest software company, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella made changing Microsoft's rigid, hierarchical and arrogant culture his top priority. He sort of had to. Though arguably one of the most successful technology companies in history, Microsoft's had a string of high-profile misses in mobile, search and social networking. Additionally, the company's toxic culture, characterized by corporate politics, infighting and backstabbing, fed an image of Microsoft as a fading legend.

Rivals Apple, Google and Facebook were seen as innovators creating shiny new opportunities with their disruptive tech. A generation grew up without ever having used a Microsoft product. "One of the things that happens when you're super successful is you sort of sometimes lose touch with what made you successful in the first place," Nadella tells us when we ask what he was trying to solve with the hackathon."I wanted to go back to the very genesis of this company: What is that sense of purpose and drive that made us successful? What was the culture that may have been there in the very beginning or in the times when we were able to achieve that success? How do we really capture it?" says Nadella, who joined Microsoft in 1992. It's about "the renaissance as much as about just sort of fixing something that's broken." From story two: CNET: What is the vibe or image of Microsoft you want the world to know?
Nadella: It's in our mission. It's empowering. Any association with this company should be, they put some tools, they put some platforms, they gave me the opportunity to really do something. Whether it's a student writing a term paper, whether it's a startup trying to create a company, a small business that's trying to be more productive or even a public sector institution that's trying to be more efficient and serve its citizens -- [they] should feel that association with Microsoft is empowering to them. That's what I want us to stand for.

Amazon's Kindle e-reader family seems to have lost a member along the way, with the disappearance of the Voyage from its Kindle Family listing. From a report: The site now lists just three models in its lineup of eight configurations, the Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Oasis. Good e-Reader first noticed this a few weeks back, saying the Voyage seems to have vanished in July. In years past when Amazon has refreshed its Kindle e-readers and Fire tablets, it has done it in the summer or fall. The high-end Oasis was last updated in October 2017, but the most recent midline Paperwhite last saw changes in 2015, and the basic Kindle in 2016. Chances are one or both of the older models will receive an update in the near future.

OnePlus' next flagship smartphone will be backed by T-Mobile, marking the first time the Chinese-company has partnered with a carrier in the U.S. "T-Mobile will be the exclusive U.S. carrier partner for the OnePlus 6T when it launches in October," reports CNET. "That includes a specific version of the OnePlus 6T optimized for T-Mobile's network." From the report: The company, however, will still sell its standard global version that's unlocked and able to run on either AT&T or T-Mobile. The price of the OnePlus 6T is tentatively set at $550, although that hasn't been finalized. The partnership underscores the progress that OnePlus has made in the U.S. The Chinese phone maker isn't a household name, but has long attracted diehard Android fans for its mix of high-end specs and affordable prices. Having a place at T-Mobile stores means it'll attract more mainstream awareness.

T-Mobile's version of the OnePlus 6T will be optimized for the carrier's network, including the new 600 megahertz band of spectrum being rolled out that promises better and faster coverage. T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray has often boasted about the improvement to the quality of the network thanks to the new swath of spectrum. The only hiccup with the U.S. launch could come from the testing required by T-Mobile to get certification on the network. OnePlus is still in the process of getting what's known as "technical approval" at the carrier, according to one person. Failure to get the approval could cause a delay with the carrier launch.

According to The New York Times, "Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company's decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China, have signed a letter demanding more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source)." In the letter, the employees wrote that the project and Google's apparent willingness to abide by China's censorship requirements "raise urgent moral and ethical issues." They added, "Currently we do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment." From the report: The letter is circulating on Google's internal communication systems and is signed by about 1,000 employees, according to two people familiar with the document, who were not authorized to speak publicly. The letter also called on Google to allow employees to participate in ethical reviews of the company's products, to appoint external representatives to ensure transparency and to publish an ethical assessment of controversial projects. The document referred to the situation as a "code yellow," a process used in engineering to address critical problems that impact several teams.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: President Donald Trump on Monday signed a $716 billion defense policy bill that weakened efforts to punish Chinese telecom giant ZTE for violating trade laws. The bill, named for ailing Arizona Sen. John McCain, prohibits the U.S. government and its contractors from buying certain telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from ZTE, Huawei and a handful of other Chinese communications companies. The ban covers components and services deemed "essential" or "critical" to any government system. Some lawmakers had hoped to use the bill to reinstate tough penalties against ZTE, but the compromise bill removed a provision that would undo a deal the Commerce Department struck in June for ZTE to pay a $1 billion penalty to resume business with U.S. suppliers. But lawmakers agreed to abandon that effort in late July. Huawei called the inclusion of its products in the bill "ineffective, misguided and unconstitutional." They added: "It does nothing to identify real security risks or improve supply chain security, and will only serve to stifle innovation while increasing internet costs for U.S. consumers and businesses. We believe that the American people deserve equal access to the best possible connections and smart device options, and will keep working to make this happen."

The encryption that protects your browser's connection to websites is getting a notch faster and a notch safer to use. From a report: That's because the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) on Friday finished a years-long process of modernizing the technology used to secure website communications. You may never have heard of Transport Layer Security -- TLS for short -- but version 1.3 is now complete and headed to websites, browsers and other parts of the internet that rely on its security. "Publishing TLS 1.3 is a huge accomplishment. It is one the best recent examples of how it is possible to take 20 years of deployed legacy code and change it on the fly, resulting in a better internet for everyone," said Nick Sullivan, head of cryptography for Cloudflare, which helps customers distribute their websites and other content around the world, in a blog post.

TLS 1.3 brings some significant improvements over TLS 1.2, which was finished 10 years ago. Perhaps first on the list is that it'll mean websites load faster. Setting up an encrypted connection on the web historically has caused delays since your browser and the website server must send information back and forth in a process called a handshake. The slower your broadband or the more congested your mobile network is, the more you'll notice these delays. Firefox and Chrome already support a draft version of TLS 1.3.

Claire Reilly, writing for CNET: After spending a night in an underground rock cave in the middle of the Australian desert, I learned three things: The silence is deafening. Your eyes never adjust to the darkness. And if nobody brushes the ceiling before you arrive, that clump of dirt is going to scare the living hell out of you when it drops on your face at 2 a.m. I've flown 1,200 miles for the privilege of sleeping in a hole in Coober Pedy. There's no Wi-Fi down here. The glare of my MacBook feels obnoxious in the subterranean stillness. The TV plays ads for a "local" cleaning service from the next town over, but that just happens to be 400 miles away. Australia is a country defined by "the tyranny of distance," but traveling to the underground opal mining town of Coober Pedy feels like taking a holiday on Mars.

In the middle of the South Australian desert and an eight hour drive in either direction from the nearest capital city (Adelaide to the south or Alice Springs to the north), Coober Pedy is off the grid and mostly hidden underground. More than half the residents live buried in the bedrock in cavelike homes called "dugouts" in order to escape freezing winters, scorching summers and the occasional cyclone. Often, the only sign you're walking on someone's roof is the air vent that's sprouted up next to your boots. While first nation peoples have lived in the central Australian desert for thousands of years, the Coober Pedy we know today wouldn't exist without opals. Miners rushed here in the 1920s, enduring extreme conditions to hunt for the multicolored gems, digging, bulldozing and eventually blasting out earth in a bid to find the elusive seam that would make them rich. Living in Coober Pedy is not just about surviving. It's about carving out a way of life in one of the harshest environments on the planet.

[...] "It's not like we're living thousands of kilometers under the ground," he tells me. "It's pretty similar to living in a normal house." Sam's family, who live in a dugout close to Crocodile Harry's, have solar panels for power -- but those generate only enough electricity for a few hours a day. Diesel handles the rest, he says. "We have to rely on tourists to pay for our fuel," he says. "Gasoline is valuable out here. Fuel is really expensive." That means no fridge running all day and night -- they keep nonperishable food and get the rest from town every day. Otherwise, life is pretty similar to what other 18-year-olds in the city experience. Sam says he can still charge his phone and use the TV "for a bit." "We have internet when the generator's on. Dad's got an Xbox but we don't even try to use the solar for that."

DeepMind, Google's artificial intelligence business, is planning clinical trials of technology that can help diagnose eye disease by analyzing medical images after early tests showed its results were more accurate than human doctors. From a report: Published in the scientific journal Nature, the study claims that DeepMind, in partnership with Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, has trained its algorithms to detect over 50 sight-threatening conditions to the same accuracy as expert clinicians. It is also capable of correctly recommending the most appropriate course of action for patients and prioritise those in most urgent need of care. In a project that began two years ago, DeepMind trained its machine learning algorithms using thousands of historic and fully anonymized eye scans to identify diseases that could lead to sight loss. According to the study, they can now do so with 94 percent accuracy, and the hope is that they could eventually be used to transform how eye exams are conducted around the world. You might be wondering why we need AI to do this job that has up until now been carried out by medical staff. But diagnosing eye diseases from ocular scans is incredibly time-consuming for doctors due to their complexity. Due to the aging global population, eye disease is also becoming more prevalent not less, increasing the burden on healthcare systems.

The social network's initiatives to connect people to the internet, including Internet.org and new data analytics tools, are now part of Facebook Connectivity. From a report: A half decade after launching Internet.org, seen by many as the coming-out party for Facebook's connectivity programs, the company said it's shaking up its efforts to bring internet access to the 4 billion people who still don't have it. On Friday, Facebook rounded up all its disparate broadband and infrastructure projects and housed them under a new umbrella organization called Facebook Connectivity. "There's no silver bullet for connecting the world," Yael Maguire, vice president of engineering for Facebook Connectivity, said in an interview Thursday. "There isn't going to be a magic technology or business plan or single regulatory policy change that's going to change this. We really believe that it is a wide and diverse set of efforts that's required to do this."

The Connectivity group houses projects including Terragraph, which aims to connect high-density urban areas; OpenCellular, an open-source platform working on rural connectivity; and the Telecom Infra Project, a joint initiative with the wireless industry for creating faster networks. Facebook said the umbrella will also include Internet.org, which drew controversy with its Free Basics product that offered a pared-down version of the internet in emerging markets. While Internet.org has been synonymous with Facebook's connectivity efforts for the past five years, the new Connectivity brand may signal the company trying to distance itself from the backlashes surrounding Internet.org.

The Galaxy Note 9 touts a slightly larger 6.4-inch end-to-end screen, a 4,000mAh battery that promises "all-day" use, and a minimum 128GB of storage -- there's also a 512GB version that, with 512GB microSD cards, can give you a full terabyte of space. It runs Android 8.1 Oreo -- not Android Pie, which Google and Essential rolled out to some of their devices earlier this month. Engadget: Samsung is also bringing over welcome improvements from the Galaxy S9 family, including stereo speakers and the variable aperture f/1.5-2.4 primary camera (there's a second camera on the back, of course). This year, though, the most conspicuous change revolves around the S Pen. This is Samsung's first S Pen to incorporate Bluetooth, and that lets you do a whole lot more than doodle on the screen. You can use it as a remote control for selfies and presentations, and Samsung is providing a toolkit to let app developers use the pen for their own purposes. And no, you don't need to load it with batteries or plug it into a charger -- it'll top up just by staying in your phone. The base model of the Note 9, featuring 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM, is priced at $999. The other variant will set you back by $1,250. Preorders begin on August 10th, and the phone will be available on August 24th at all major carriers or direct (and unlocked) from Samsung. CNET writes about the camera sensors on the new handset: The Galaxy Note 9 keeps the same hardware setup as the Galaxy S9 Plus. That is, dual 12-megapixel cameras on the back, one of them that automatically changes aperture when it detects the need for a low-light shot. (Samsung calls this dual aperture, and it's also on both S9 phones.) There's also an 8-megapixel front-facing camera for your selfies. What's different is AI software that analyzes the scene and quickly detects if you're shooting a flower, food, a dog, a person. There are 20 options the Note 9's been trained on, including snowflakes, cityscapes, fire, you get it. Then, the camera optimizes white balance, saturation and contrast to make photos pop.

After earning the moniker "tech's most secretive startup" from Wired and telling Forbes in 2016 it was going to ship its system "soon-ish," the company is finally releasing the $2,295 Magic Leap One. For now, it will be available for purchase in limit U.S. markets. CNET: It includes a high-powered, moon pie-shaped computer called the Lightpack, a handheld remote called Control and a steampunk-inspired headset with round lenses and patented optics. That's called Lightwear. There's just one thing: Regular folks like us aren't the intended audience. At least not yet. This "Creator Edition," says CEO Abovitz, is part of a "controlled market release" in just a handful of cities in the United States for the developers and creative types Magic Leap will woo this year and next. The goal: for those makers to dream up the experiences (aka content) it needs to convince us to become Leapers. The company is already showing investors and partners prototypes of its smaller (and hopefully less expensive) Magic Leap Two and Magic Leap Three, but won't say when they'll be released. Magic Leap, valued at $6.3 billion as of two months ago, counts Google, Alibaba, Warner Bros, AT&T, and several top Silicon Valley venture capital firms and about a dozen other big names as its investors. More about the product going on sale here.

After earning the moniker "tech's most secretive startup" from Wired and telling Forbes in 2016 it was going to ship its system "soon-ish," the company is finally releasing the $2,295 Magic Leap One. For now, it will be available for purchase in limit U.S. markets. CNET: It includes a high-powered, moon pie-shaped computer called the Lightpack, a handheld remote called Control and a steampunk-inspired headset with round lenses and patented optics. That's called Lightwear. There's just one thing: Regular folks like us aren't the intended audience. At least not yet. This "Creator Edition," says CEO Abovitz, is part of a "controlled market release" in just a handful of cities in the United States for the developers and creative types Magic Leap will woo this year and next. The goal: for those makers to dream up the experiences (aka content) it needs to convince us to become Leapers. The company is already showing investors and partners prototypes of its smaller (and hopefully less expensive) Magic Leap Two and Magic Leap Three, but won't say when they'll be released. Magic Leap, valued at $6.3 billion as of two months ago, counts Google, Alibaba, Warner Bros, AT&T, and several top Silicon Valley venture capital firms and about a dozen other big names as its investors. More about the product going on sale here.

Apple's new patent applications hint at more touch-sensitive surfaces and virtual keyboards. From a report: In the wake of user complaints and multiple lawsuits concerning problems with the "butterfly switch" keyboard Apple has used in its laptops since 2016, the company may be developing new user interfaces that depend less on moving mechanical parts. The company has filed three new keyboard-related patents, Mashable reported on Monday. One of the patent applications describes a laptop with a digital panel where a keyboard traditionally sits. This could be interpreted as a plan to replace the conventional keyboard with technology similar to the Touch Bar -- the row of virtual, customizable buttons that Apple debuted on the Macbook Pro in 2016. The patent also includes information about sensors and haptics embedded beneath the envisioned digital panel, which would allow it to detect and respond to user inputs such as keystrokes, taps and clicks.

Critics scoffed Apple when the company priced the iPhone X at $1,000. But the way the market has responded to it, there is a good chance that the upcoming flagship smartphones from Apple and those of its rivals -- Samsung, Google, and HTC -- will be pricier. From a column: The critics were wrong. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in July that the iPhone X had outsold every other Apple device in each week since it went on sale Nov. 3, 2017. With strong iPhone X sales, Apple proved that mainstream buyers are willing to pay almost as much, if not more, for their cell phones as they would for a powerful laptop. And with rumors of an even pricier 2018 iPhone X Plus-style phone coming down the pike this September, Apple's moves to usher in the era of the $1,000 phone may just be getting underway. Apple isn't alone in boosting mobile phone prices ever higher. Creeping prices on high-end handsets from Samsung, Huawei and even "value" darling OnePlus signal that price hikes are here to stay. In just two years, the cost of Samsung's Galaxy phone for US buyers has spiked 15.1 percent from the Galaxy S7 in 2016 to this year's Galaxy S9, while the Huawei P series has climbed 33 percent since 2016 -- and that doesn't even account for the existence of a "Pro" model. [...] The trend of increasingly costly handsets in the top tier underscores the cell phone's importance as an everything-device for communication, work, photography and entertainment. And as processing power, camera technology, battery life and internet data speeds improve generation after generation, the value people attach to a phone is sure to swell.

Toyota is actively working to make vehicles powered by alternative energy sources. Last year, the Japanese automaker unveiled Project Portal, a novel hydrogen fuel-cell system designed for heavy-duty truck use at the Port of Los Angeles. Today, Toyota announced that it built a second hydrogen fuel cell-powered heavy-duty truck with 50 percent more range. CNET reports: Project Portal gets its power from a pair of hydrogen fuel-cell stacks borrowed from the Mirai sedan. Combined with a 12-kWh battery, the truck put out an impressive 670-plus horsepower and 1,325 pound-feet of torque. Its total combined weight rating is a hefty 80,000 pounds. The first version's range was about 200 miles, but this second version pushes that range north of 300 miles. The new Project Portal also packs a sleeper cab and a revised powertrain that boosts cab space without requiring a longer wheelbase. Project Portal 2.0 will begin its drayage work this fall. The pioneering variant has already clocked more than 10,000 miles as it transported goods over short distances in and around the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. As with every other hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle, the only emissions byproduct is pure potable water, although I don't blame you if you're not comfortable enough to pour a glass and take a sip of tailpipe juice.

An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Massachusetts plans to protect net neutrality by naming and shaming internet service providers that don't adhere to open internet principles. Lawmakers in the state Senate have proposed a bill (S2160) that would create an "internet service provider registry" to track whether broadband and wireless providers adhere to policies that keep the internet open and neutral.
Motherboard reports: In the wake of the FCC's repeal of net neutrality, more than half the states in the union are considering their own, state-level net neutrality rules. Some states are tackling the problem with legislation (California, Oregon, Washington), while others (like Montana) are signing executive orders banning state agencies from doing business with ISPs that behave anti-competitively... when the FCC repealed net neutrality, it included a provision attempting to "pre-empt" (read: ban) states from protecting consumers. As a result, large ISPs have threatened to sue any states that stand up for consumer welfare, and at least one ISP (Charter Spectrum) has tried to use the repeal to wiggle out of state lawsuits for terrible broadband. Charter's efforts on that front have failed, and the the FCC's authority to tell states what to do has been highly contested.

Still, Massachusetts thought it might be a better idea to try and publicly shame ISPs into behaving.

An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Opera, an underdog in a browser market dominated by Google's Chrome, raised $115 million in an initial public offering Friday. The company sold 9.6 million American depositary shares at $12 each, the high end of the $10-to-$12 range it expected for the IPO. When the stock started trading more broadly at about 7:30 a.m. PT, it rose as high as 28 percent above that before settling in at a 10 percent rise, to $13.24, during midday trading.... In fact, Opera raised a big notch more, because at the same time as the IPO, it also secured a $60 million private funding round from Tospring Technology, also known as Bitmain, which makes Bitcoin mining computers, IDG Capital Fund and IDG Capital Investors. And the financial firms underwriting the IPO had an option to release another 15 percent of shares -- 1.44 million. "It gets us roughly up to $190 million," Chief Financial Officer Frode Jacobsen said....

In the first three months of 2018, Opera reported net income of $6.6 million on revenue of $39.4 million. The company makes money through partnerships with search engines, including Google and Yandex, that pay for search traffic it sends their way and through advertising deals like promoting websites on the browser's bookmarking, or speed dial, page. Opera has 264 million monthly active users on smartphones and 57 million on personal computers, Opera said in regulatory filings. Starting in 2017, it built an AI-powered news service into its browser and now offers it as a standalone app called Opera News. That has 90 million monthly users. The news app and service has been responsible for the turnaround in Opera's recent financial fortunes, Jacobsen said.

Popular movie-ticked subscription service MoviePass experienced an outage on Thursday, still ongoing for some, which the company attributed to "technical issues with our card-based check-in process," on its Twitter feed. But its SEC filing Thursday indicated that the problem was really cash flow. From a report: The filing by its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, explained an emergency loan the company had taken out: The $5.0 million cash proceeds received from the Demand Note will be used by the Company to pay the Company's merchant and fulfillment processors. If the Company is unable to make required payments to its merchant and fulfillment processors, the merchant and fulfillment processors may cease processing payments for MoviePass. ("MoviePass"), which would cause a MoviePass service interruption. Such a service interruption occurred on July 26, 2018. Such service interruptions could have a material adverse effect on MoviePass' ability to retain its subscribers.

hackingbear writes: Qualcomm officially terminated the deal to buy Dutch semiconductor giant NXP after failing to get a decision from regulators in China by its deadline. It must now shell out a previously agreed upon $2 billion termination fee. The Chinese market accounts for 30% of Qualcomm's revenue. China's refusal of the approval can also be a retaliation against an $1.4 billion penalty against ZTE imposed by the U.S. Department of Commerce over technicalities of ZTE's violation of Iran sanctions, a move viewed by China as a U.S. excuse to launch a trade war. "It's a reminder that trade wars are maybe not that easy to win," says Steven Roach of Morgan Stanley. "And China has a lot of ammunition up its sleeve." Roach urged the Trump administration to understand that the U.S. and China "need each other," saying low-price Chinese imports are needed to "make ends meet" for cash-strapped Americans. Separately, in a hearing at the Office of United States Trade Representative for imposing additional tariffs on Chinese imports due to the alleged intellectual property theft by China, an accusation that the U.S. itself had committed, out of some 61 figures from the country's chemical, electronics, and solar energy sectors, only six expressed their support for the move.

An anonymous reader writes: Google launched its own Titan Security Key on Wednesday, a small USB device which includes firmware developed by the omnipresent tech giant itself. This comes days after Google said its workforce has been phish-proof for more than a year thanks to security keys distributed to its 85,000 employees. The new key means new competition for Yubikey manufacturer Yubico which confirmed it is not involved with Google's new key. The product is available now to Google Cloud customers and will eventually be available to general customers, the company announced Wednesday at its Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco. CNET, which tested the device, adds: It'll come in a bundle with both the USB and Bluetooth versions for $50, or you can buy one or the other for about $20 to $25 each, Brand said. The set of security keys should work on any device with a USB port or a Bluetooth connection.

Google is trying out a new Chrome interface that for the first time in a decade presents a very different look for the tabs and address bar at the top of the widely used web browser, CNET reports. It adds: Since its public debut in 2008, Chrome has featured a trapezoidal tab for each website you have open. But tabs now look very different on Chrome Canary -- a very rough-around-the-edges version used to test changes before they reach a broader audience. The active tab has a slope-shouldered look with curved corners. The grayed-out inactive tabs merge with the the browser itself and are separated only by thin vertical lines. In addition, the address bar's text box is a gray oval against a white backdrop, instead of a round-cornered white rectangle with a hairline border.

Commenting on the record $5 billion fine on Google by the European Commission, privacy focused search engine DuckDuckGo said this week it welcomes the decision as it has "felt [Google's] effects first hand for many years and has led directly to us having less market share on Android vs iOS and in general mobile vs desktop." The company said: Up until just last year, it was impossible to add DuckDuckGo to Chrome on Android, and it is still impossible on Chrome on iOS. We are also not included in the default list of search options like we are in Safari, even though we are among the top search engines in many countries. The Google search widget is featured prominently on most Android builds and is impossible to change the search provider. For a long time it was also impossible to even remove this widget without installing a launcher that effectively changed the whole way the OS works. Their anti-competitive search behavior isn't limited to Android. Every time we update our Chrome browser extension, all of our users are faced with an official-looking dialogue asking them if they'd like to revert their search settings and disable the entire extension. Google also owns http://duck.com and points it directly at Google search, which consistently confuses DuckDuckGo users. "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is google," wrote security researcher Mikko Hypponen, summing up the story.

Update: Google makes amends.

Tom Gruber, the last of three Siri voice assistant co-founders still at Apple, has retired from his role as head of Siri's Advanced Development group, The Information reports. From a report: The 59-year-old will pursue personal interests in photography and ocean conservation, the publication said citing unnamed sources. Gruber's departure comes as the Siri group is seeing a major haul in its leadership under new boss John Giannandrea, formerly Google's head of AI and search. Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, with whom Gruber founded the original Siri Inc before it was bought over by Apple in 2010, left the iPhone maker years ago in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

Mark Zuckerberg isn't planning to fire himself. At least, not at the moment. From a report: During an interview with Recode's Kara Swisher published Wednesday, the Facebook CEO touched on Russians interfering with US elections, misinformation, data breaches, the company's business model and more. When asked by Swisher who's to blame for the Cambridge Analytica scandal and related data misuse, Zuckerberg said he "designed the platform, so if someone's going to get fired for this, it should be me." Swisher followed up by asking if he was going to fire himself. "Not on this podcast right now," he said. Zuckerberg also defended the social media platform's decision not to kick off conspiracy theory-peddling websites like the far-right InfoWars. From a report: Zuckerberg said that instead of banning websites outright, the company removes individual posts that violate Facebook's terms of service. Posts promoting violence are particularly likely to be taken down, he added. Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, said even Holocaust deniers have a place on the platform as long as they genuinely believe the content they share. "I find that deeply offensive," he said. "But at the end of the day, I don't believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don't think that they're intentionally getting it wrong."

After multiple lawsuits have been filed over the butterfly-switch keyboards found on the MacBook Pro and MacBook lineups, you would think Apple would fix this issue by including a keyboard in the new MacBook Pros that can't be damaged by a little dust. Unfortunately, while the new 2018 MacBook Pro does have an updated third-generation keyboard, Apple tells CNET it doesn't include any new engineering or tweaks to address the sticky key issue. CNET reports: Instead, the third-generation keyboard's tweaks are about making it quieter. In a brief typing test, CNET's long-time MacBook reviewer Dan Ackerman says it isn't "whisper-quiet" but does "lack the sharp click of the previous design." Technically, Apple has admitted only that "a smaller percentage of the keyboards in certain MacBook and MacBook Pro models" have demonstrated the sticky key issue. If you buy one, you may likely never have that problem. But it's worth noting that when the company launched its free keyboard repair program in June, it made literally every single model of MacBook Pro with the "butterfly switch" keyboard eligible.

From a report: Well, you guys, pour one out for the Tata Nano. The world's cheapest car is all but dead. According to Bloomberg, Tata Motors built one single Nano in June 2018. During the same month in 2017, Tata produced 275. As a final nail in the coffin, Tata told Bloomberg the car "cannot continue beyond 2019." The Tata Nano entered the Indian market in 2008 priced from just 100,000 rupees, or about $1,500. The price increased over time, and according to Tata Motors' website, an entry-level Nano starts at 236,447 rupees today, or $3,435 based on current exchange rates. Right from the get-go, the Nano was plagued with production issues, not to mention poor safety and dismal crash test results. The cars were also known to catch fire, which, uh, isn't good.

From a report: Visitors to Disneyland and other Disney resorts could end up seeing robots tackling some pretty crazy, death-defying stunts usually reserved for Marvel superheroes and Star Wars Jedi Masters. Disney's latest Stuntronics experiments with robots include teaching them to crawl, row and now, more impressively, perform daring aerial acrobatics. A new video features the robots propelled into the sky to spin and leap like robotic superheroes. And they look even more advanced and human-like than the last time we saw them. The robots, initially nicknamed Stickman, work by using on-board accelerometers, gyroscopes and laser range-finding data to determine how to perform impressive stunts like single and double backflips.

Uber is planning to partner with the bike-sharing company Lime to start renting scooters through its app. The announcement was made in Lime's new $335 million funding round. CNET reports: Uber didn't disclose how much it's investing in Lime, but Lime said it's "sizable." With Uber and Lime as strategic partners, the scooters will be co-branded and available in the Uber app. Uber launched a similar partnership with Jump bicycles in January and eventually acquired the dockless bike rental in April.

Scooters have become a controversial topic as they take over more and more cities across the U.S. As regulators hurry to write laws around the new form of transportation, lots of people say they love being able to scoot block-to-block around congested cities. Other residents complain that riders don't follow the laws of the road and endanger pedestrians by riding on sidewalks and leaving the scooters wherever they feel like it -- blocking parking spots, bike racks and wheelchair accesses. Here's what Uber's head of new modalities, Rachel Holt, had to say about the partnership: "Our investment and partnership in Lime is another step towards our vision of becoming a one stop shop for all your transportation needs. Lime already has an expansive footprint, and we're excited to incorporate their scooters into the Uber app so consumers have another fast, affordable option to get around their city, especially to and from public transit."

CNET reported this week that a musician, who plays guitar and has lots of viewers on YouTube, received an unusual email from the company alleging that he had copied a tune he wrote himself two years ago. From the report: But last month, Paul Davids says he got a rather unusual email from YouTube. The Content ID system had flagged a tune he wrote himself, two years ago, for infringing on someone's else's newer video. Someone who, it seems, stole his backing track to create a new track of his own. [...] "Someone took my track, made their own track, uploaded it to Spotify, YouTube, whatever, and I get a copyright infringement notice? Wait, what?" said Davids. The story has a happy ending -- Davids used YouTube's appeals system to quickly work things out, and let the other artist keep on using his tune. (Davids tracked him down on Facebook Messenger, and the guy apparently admitted he'd downloaded 'a couple of guitar licks' on YouTube.) But it's weird to think YouTube would flag an old video for infringing on a new one, no?

Netflix may be introducing a new, higher tier of service. From a report: Known as Ultra, the new tier would allow four devices to receive Ultra HD video and audio streaming simultaneously, according to Italian blog Tutto Android. Netflix currently has three subscription plans: $7.99 Basic, $10.99 Standard and $13.99 Premium. Basic allows users to watch Netflix on one screen at a time; Standard allows viewing on two screens; and Premium allows four screens. Screens can be TVs, laptops, tablets or smartphones. "We continuously test new things at Netflix and these tests typically vary in length of time," Smita Saran, a Netflix spokeswoman, said in an email. "In this case, we are testing slightly different price points and features to better understand how consumers value Netflix."

Mark Serrels, writing for CNET: A man [on a train], a human man as he lives and breathes, has put his bag, his stupid goddamn bag on the seat. He thinks his bag is more important than your buttcheeks. Than your tired legs. He is undermining your right to rest those legs, to plank those weary buttcheeks on a seat. This train is busy. He is a bad person. He doesn't care. This is a metaphor. In this metaphor the terrible man-person is a tech company. The bag is their terrible plug. A plug that is not content with taking up one slot on your powerboard, but needs two. Not for power, oh no. It just wants the space to... christ, I don't know. Mess with your day? Piss you off? Make your life worse? Stop you from plugging an extra device into your powerboard for no goddamn reason. Jesus wept. I call this phenomenon "plugspreading" and it's an abomination. [...] This is bad behaviour. This is a problem. That second socket was innocent man, it was collateral damage. He did nothing to deserve this. You ruined its life, starved that socket of its purpose, its reason for existing. Plugspreading is everywhere. It's a disease.

A California law that went into effect July 1 is aimed at making it easier for customers to cancel their subscriptions online. From a report: The law states that customers who accept an automatic renewal or continuous service offer online must be able to cancel the service online. That could include a pre-written "termination email" provided by the company that can be sent by the consumer without the need for more information. The law means you won't have to make anymore phone calls to obscure customer service hotlines to cancel services like news subscriptions, music streaming or meal plans, for example. One person tweeted about trying to cancel a New York Times subscription on the phone and being put on hold for 15 minutes -- twice.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Facebook has admitted providing dozens of tech companies with special access to user data after publicly saying it restricted such access in 2015. Facebook continued sharing information with 61 hardware and software makers after it said it discontinued the practice in May 2015, the social networking giant acknowledged in 747 pages of documents delivered to Congress late Friday. The documents were in response to hundreds of questions posed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg by members of Congress in April.

Facebook said it granted a special "one-time" six-month extension to companies that ranged from AOL to package-delivery service United Parcel Service to dating app Hinge so they could come into compliance with the social network's new privacy policy and create their own versions of Facebook for their devices. Data shared without users' knowledge included friends' names, genders and birth dates. Facebook's documents also said it had discovered that five other companies "theoretically could have accessed limited friends' data" as a result of a beta test. Facebook said in the documents it has ended 38 of the partnerships and plans to discontinue seven more by the end of July.

Twitter will show detailed information about advertisers in an attempt to combat meddling in future elections. You will now be able to search for a Twitter account and see all the ads it has run in the past seven days. "For U.S. political advertisers, users will be able to see billing information, ad spending, demographic targeting data and the number of times tweets have been viewed," reports Bloomberg. From the report: The changes are part of Twitter's broader efforts to clean up its service after lawmakers berated the company for failing to discover Russian influence peddling through fake accounts and divisive ads during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Earlier this week, the company began requiring more authentication from users. In May, it rolled out stricter rules that require advertisers running political campaign ads for federal elections to identify themselves and certify they are located in the U.S. The company has also banned ads from accounts owned by Russia Today and Sputnik.

CNET reports on what happened when a new Uber driver received a call from Uber telling him to cancel the trip and verify his account: The caller asked for his email. He gave it. The caller asked for his Uber account password. He gave him that, too, after a brief hesitation. Then the caller said to tell him the confirmation code he'd be receiving shortly via text. The driver told him the code once he got the text. This was the two-factor authentication needed to get into the driver's Uber account. "Nothing happened for the rest of the week," the driver says. "I didn't think anything of this again until Saturday." But in those following three days, the scammer had changed the driver's account settings and waited for the perfect time to withdraw money.... By Saturday night, his $653.88 in earnings from that week had been nabbed from his account...

Apparently the scam has hit thousands of ride-hail drivers, and millions of dollars have been diverted from their accounts, according to a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York's federal court last November... [A] couple of key elements about Uber make it possible. When passengers hail a ride with Uber, they see the name of the driver and the car's make, model and license number, and they get an anonymized phone number to call the driver. All of this ensures passengers safely connect with the right driver. But it also makes it possible for the wrong people to see lots of information about drivers.
When one of the scam victims complained to Uber, he "was told he had to wait until Monday when he could talk to a representative in person at one of its driver hubs," although eventually Uber "agreed to credit the $653.88 back to his account as a 'one-time repayment courtesy.'"

Other scammers have gone after Uber directly, CNET reports, using GPS-spoofing apps to simulate long rides as "a way to pocket money via stolen credit cards, essentially using Uber as a makeshift money laundering service." Uber's data science manager spotted the fake rides because "weird" altitude coordinates indicated that the drivers were flying through the sky.

CNET reports on what happened when a new Uber driver received a call from Uber telling him to cancel the trip and verify his account: The caller asked for his email. He gave it. The caller asked for his Uber account password. He gave him that, too, after a brief hesitation. Then the caller said to tell him the confirmation code he'd be receiving shortly via text. The driver told him the code once he got the text. This was the two-factor authentication needed to get into the driver's Uber account. "Nothing happened for the rest of the week," the driver says. "I didn't think anything of this again until Saturday." But in those following three days, the scammer had changed the driver's account settings and waited for the perfect time to withdraw money.... By Saturday night, his $653.88 in earnings from that week had been nabbed from his account...

Apparently the scam has hit thousands of ride-hail drivers, and millions of dollars have been diverted from their accounts, according to a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York's federal court last November... [A] couple of key elements about Uber make it possible. When passengers hail a ride with Uber, they see the name of the driver and the car's make, model and license number, and they get an anonymized phone number to call the driver. All of this ensures passengers safely connect with the right driver. But it also makes it possible for the wrong people to see lots of information about drivers.
When one of the scam victims complained to Uber, he "was told he had to wait until Monday when he could talk to a representative in person at one of its driver hubs," although eventually Uber "agreed to credit the $653.88 back to his account as a 'one-time repayment courtesy.'"

Other scammers have gone after Uber directly, CNET reports, using GPS-spoofing apps to simulate long rides as "a way to pocket money via stolen credit cards, essentially using Uber as a makeshift money laundering service." Uber's data science manager spotted the fake rides because "weird" altitude coordinates indicated that the drivers were flying through the sky.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A major privacy bill on the table in California on Thursday could reshape how Silicon Valley does business. If the bill becomes law, people living in the Golden State can tell companies to stop collecting or selling their personal data. In two votes Thursday, the state's Senate and Assembly both passed the bill in an effort to get it on Gov. Jerry Brown's desk by the end of the day. The tight deadline comes courtesy of an even stricter voter initiative that will appear on California ballots this November if lawmakers can't get the bill through by 5 p.m. PT Thursday. The bill -- AB 375, or the California Consumer Privacy Act -- turns the tech world's business model on its head by letting regular internet users ask for the data a company has collected on them and who it's sold that data to. That alone could be eye-opening for consumers. Most people understand their online activity is being tracked for targeted advertising, but we don't have a broad understanding of what data's being used. If Gov. Jerry Brown signs this bill on Thursday, Californians will have increased control over their personal data -- and one less thing to vote on in November.

Google is moving ahead with Duplex, the stunningly human-sounding artificial intelligence software behind its new automated system that places phone calls on your behalf with a natural-sounding voice instead of a robotic one. From a report: The search giant said Wednesday it's beginning public testing of the software, which debuted in May and which is designed to make calls to businesses and book appointments. Duplex instantly raised questions over the ethics and privacy implications of using an AI assistant to hold lifelike conversations for you. Google says its plan is to start its public trial with a small group of "trusted testers" and businesses that have opted into receiving calls from Duplex. Over the "coming weeks," the software will only call businesses to confirm business and holiday hours, such as open and close times for the Fourth of July. People will be able to start booking reservations at restaurants and hair salons starting "later this summer."

A security researcher claimed he had figured out a way to bypass the passcode lock limit on an iPhone or iPad, ZDNet reported. But it turned out the passcodes he tested weren't always counted. From a report: "The recent report about a passcode bypass on iPhone was in error, and a result of incorrect testing," Apple said Saturday in an emailed statement. Since the 2014 release of iOS 8, all iPhones and iPads have come with device encryption protected by a four- or six-digit passcode. If the wrong passcode is entered too many times, the device gets wiped, explained ZDNet's Zack Whittaker. But Hacker House co-founder Matthew Hickey figured out a way "to bypass the 10-time limit and enter as many codes as he wants -- even on iOS 11.3," Whittaker wrote.

The first iPhone to shed its headphone jack was the iPhone 7, which launched in late 2016. Now it seems like the Lightning port may be the next to go. CNET reports: Apple has considered removing the Lightning port on the iPhone X, according to Bloomberg, citing unnamed "people familiar with the company's work." While earlier rumors suggested that Apple would remove the Lightning port in favor of USB-C, Apple's goal may be to remove all ports entirely.

Bloomberg's report is about the challenges that Apple faces with its AirPower wireless charger, but it also shares some details about Apple's vision for a wireless future. The report says: "Apple designers eventually hope to remove most of the external ports and buttons on the iPhone, including the charger, according to people familiar with the company's work. During the development of the iPhone X, Apple weighed removing the wired charging system entirely. That wasn't feasible at the time because wireless charging was still slower than traditional methods. Including a wireless charger with new iPhones would also significantly raise the price of the phones."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Not much changed at Google over the last year when it came to the diversity of the tech giant's workforce. Google released its annual diversity report on Thursday detailing the composition of its workforce. The percentage of female employees rose by .1 percent to 30.9 percent. The percentage of Asian employees grew by 1.6 percent to 36.3 percent. The number of black and Latino employees grew by .1 percent to 2.5 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively.

"Google's workforce data demonstrates that if we want a better outcome, we need to evolve our approach," said Danielle Brown, chief diversity and inclusion officer at Google, in the report. "That's why from now on ownership for diversity and inclusion will be shared between Google's leadership team, People Operations and Googlers. Our strategy doesn't provide all the answers, but we believe it will help us find them."