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What makes Google's just-announced Pixel phones different from the Nexus products we'e seen before? It's all in the software. Yes, the Pixels will keep current with the latest version of Android and monthly security updates; those are important things! But this is no longer the bare "stock" Android that Nexus devices were always known for. Google has layered on new features exclusive to the Pixel and Pixel XL overtop Android 7 Nougat. A lot of the changes are cosmetic, but there's also some genuinely useful stuff that's reserved for Pixel owners. Here's what's new, and we'll be updating as Google's stage presentation moves along.

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Google's annual phone announcements are always leaky, but this year we had the extra complication of the Pixel re-branding. Well, now it's all out in the open. Google has made the Pixel official, and it looks like the leaks were dead-on. These are aluminum unibody devices, available in three different colors, and the pricing is much more "premium" than the Nexus devices were. Go big or go home, I guess.

The Pixel and Pixel XL share a great deal.

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Google makes the Pixel phones official, pricing starts at $649 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.

Featured App

DigiCal Calendar Agenda

Today's roundup is presented by DigiCal Calendar & Widgets from Digibites.

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16 new and notable Android apps from the last 2 weeks (9/21/16 - 10/3/16) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Google started fiddling with app streaming about a year ago via searches in the Google app, but only for a few specific apps. Then, we spotted some evidence of app streaming in a Play Store teardown a couple months ago. It looks like this feature has started rolling out today, allowing you to stream games to try before you buy. One AP staffer in addition to our tipster has this option available already, but it's a little buggy.

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Streamed game trials have started appearing in the Play Store was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

 Yahoo’s homepage used to be the place where web users started their day, reading the top headlines, sports scores, stock updates, and other news. On mobile, that’s no longer always the case. In an effort to get back into the game, Yahoo this morning is launching a rebranded version of its flagship application, now called Yahoo Newsroom. The goal with the new app is to compete… Read More

 MasterCard is moving from trials of facial biometrics for payment authentication, including one in the U.S. and Canada launched earlier this year, to its first proper rollout of what is colloquially referred to as ‘selfie pay’ (aka MasterCard Identity Check). Read More

Following the Department of Transportation’s timid self-driving regulations, California governor Jerry Brown has greenlit a bill that provides driverless cars with a zone to test without the need for a steering wheel, brake or accelerate pedal, or human test driver.

The new rules are filled with restrictions to avoid Google and Tesla pushing fully autonomous cars throughout California. The cars can only drive in designated areas, must have a top speed of 35mph, and must be insured for $5 million to drive on public roads.

See Also: Californians and New Yorkers most enthusiastic about autonomous cars

That puts testing out of the reach of some self-driving startups, who may not want to fork $5 million on each self-driving car on the roads. Google, Uber, Tesla, and a few others are bound to back the new law, and start testing cars on the roads in the next few months.

Google already has hundreds of self-driving cars in California, but the current public road models have human drivers to take control if the system fails. Google uses two Toyota Lexus models on the road, and plans to add 100 Fiat minivans to its fleet in the near future.

California following US DoT rules

The Department of Transportation revealed its regulations earlier this month, which dealt mostly with semi-autonomous cars on the road. Tesla’s AutoPilot has been in the news over the past few months, most of the regulations covered how those types of systems should be controlled on public roads.

However, not much information was provided on fully autonomous cars, other than to say they are still banned on public roads. That’s unsurprising, given the public’s distrust of self-driving cars, but it could become a problem as the systems become so sophisticated they overlap human driving capabilities.

That’s expected in the next five years, if you speak to Elon Musk or a Google executive working on the self-driving project. Even smaller firms, like nuTonomy, expect to launch a self-driving fleet by 2018 in Singapore.

The post California legalizes autonomous cars for testing on public roads appeared first on ReadWrite.

Google's hardware division has hired Amazon's David Foster as VP of product engineering, according to a report from The Information that says he'll lead future development on the company's new range of smartphones. Google is set to unveil its first branded phones, widely expected to be called the Pixel and Pixel XL, alongside other hardware at a major event in about 12 hours' time.

Foster has quite the resume, according to his LinkedIn profile: he was a senior director at Apple from 1998 to 2004, spent a year at the Gibson guitar company as CTO, then moved onto Microsoft as a general manager for hardware. He left for Amazon's Lab126 in early 2011, leading development on the Kindle and Kindle Fire lines; as VP of hardware engineering he...

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The Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones from Google will be carried by Verizon Wireless, according to an enterprise sales page spotted this evening by Gizmodo. It's long been rumored that the number one US carrier will sell "the Google phone," but this is the most direct confirmation yet. It's Verizon's own website, so there's not much room to dispute — though the premature phone listings appear to have been removed.

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Netflix's highly anticipated Iron Fist series now has a premiere date for next year: March 17th, according to Variety. Finn Jones (Game of Thrones) will play Danny Rand, who returns to New York City to take down some bad guys after having been presumed dead for 15 years.

As Variety points out, Iron Fist is Netflix's fourth Marvel superhero series, after Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Daredevil. A Daredevil spinoff series, The Punisher, is also in the works. The 13-episode Iron Fist will also star Jessica Henwick (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), David Wenham (The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King), and Jessica Stroup (The Following).

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Curious British Telly has done the work, finally, to assemble the penultimate collection of 1980s fashion errors and exaltations: 22 of the Most Hideous Jumpers on British TV in the 80s. Noel Edmonds is the presumptive winner, of course, but there are many more in store for aficionados of the era after UK scientists learned the dark art of fluffy polyester. [via Metafilter, where Devonian notes the sad omission of legendary British yarnlord and former politician Gyles Brandreth, imaged below by a probe orbiting dangerously close to the cultural event horizon.] (more…)

Sunbeam heating pads are great for soothing your sore muscles after (or during) work, and two different models are on sale in today’s Amazon Gold Box.

You get your choice of the Sunbeam XL Renue for $35, or a massaging version of the same pad for $42, both all-time lows, and $15-$18 less than usual. I will add that these are also great for sticking under your covers before going to bed on a cold night. Just remember that like all Gold Box deals, these prices are only available today, or until sold out.

https://www.amazon.com/Sunbeam-Renue-…

https://www.amazon.com/Sunbeam-Massag…

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Facebook is getting more deeply involved in e-commerce with the launch of Marketplace, its new user-to-user exchange for buying and selling goods with others in your community. The company says Marketplace — which launches this week in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand — is an evolution of an existing behavior on the social network. Up to 450 million people already use Facebook to buy and sell used goods every month, mainly through its groups feature, according to project manager Bowen Pan. With Marketplace, Facebook is now giving users a more formal process to conduct these exchanges.

The icon for Marketplace should over the next few days replace the Messenger icon in the center of the bottom row on Facebook’s mobile app. Tapping...

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You’re a functioning adult with a reasonable intelligence. So why do you keep getting tripped up on a basic thing like opening a door? It’s not just you. Some doors are designed to confuse you.

As explainer site Vox points out, we subconsciously look for certain design cues on the doors we go through. You’ve probably never gotten confused and tried to pull open a door with a push plate or push bar. That’s because the very design of these doors is obvious. However, other doors that try to emphasize style over function can end up confusing.

In design circles, these bad doors are known as “Norman doors,” named for designer and author Don Norman. In his book The Design of Everyday Things, he explains that a well-designed door wouldn’t need a sign to indicate how to open it. You would be able to tell just by looking at it how to open it.

Unfortunately, not all doors are designed well. For example, in office buildings you might find a glass door with a large vertical handle on both sides. A handle would suggest you might be able to pull it open, but on at least one side of doors like this, you can’t. These handles probably exist to keep people’s hands off the glass, or to adhere to a certain design aesthetic, but they come at the cost of user confusion. Signs can help, but if you and other people regularly get confused by certain doors, it’s probably not you. It’s just not a well-designed door.

It’s not you. Bad doors are everywhere. | Vox

After years of study, the US Fish and Wildlife Service have placed seven species of Hawaiian yellow-faced bees on the endangered species list, the first time any bee has received such classification.

The service worked in conjunction with the Xerces Society, which advocates for invertebrate species, as well as local Hawaiian officials, to study the status of the bees. On its website, the Xerces Society noted seven species of the insect have been listed as endangered: Hylaeus anthracinus, Hylaeus longiceps, Hylaeus assimulans, Hylaeus facilis, Hylaeus hilaris, Hylaeus kuakea, and Hylaeus mana. In 1996, the service listed 33 species as “Species of Concern”.

The bees are native to Hawaii, and have been declining for a number of years due...

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• Update 1: 2016/10/01 8:17pm PDT
  Also adds highlight-to-speak

The Text-to-speech app doesn't see many major updates throughout the year, but when it does, there's often something interesting to see when it happens. Version 3.10 began rolling out yesterday and it comes bearing a pair of new settings to intelligently alter volume based on existing audio playback and to control the intonation of synthesized voices. As always, we've got a link below to grab the latest apk if you aren't among the first to get it straight from Google.

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[Update: Also adds highlight-and-speak] Text-to-speech v3.10 adds options to change voice intonation and boost its volume above other apps [APK Download] was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

iOS/Android: If you’re looking to improve your nutrition but don’t know where to start, popular food tracking app Lose It! now lets you snap a food photo or upload an existing one to your day’s food log. Called Snap It!, the feature makes tracking food more approachable for newbies.

Snap it! works by using the app’s extensive food database in combination with image recognition to identify and break down the nutritional profile of the food you just ate. The hope is that it streamlines the very tedious process of manually entering foods and calories, but it’s not perfect.

I got the chance to try out the beta, taking pictures of my dim sum and my rice-based meals, but it didn’t quite give me correct results. (It thought my broccoli was ravioli.) That said, a Lose It! representative told me that it can learn and improve the more I use it and add my pictures as a custom food. Obviously, this means it takes work initially, but once more foods are entered into the database everyone uses, it supposedly gets better and better.

http://vitals.lifehacker.com/transform-your…

Still, the idea of using pictures to simplify how you log your food is neat. You can also snap a photo and upload it later so you’re not fumbling through your fuzzy memory and being optimistic about how much you actually ate. The evidence is in the photo.

Lose It! (Free) | iTunes Store
Lose It! (Free) | Google Play

In 2014, the US Office of Personnel Management was hacked (presumably by Chinese spies), and leaked 22,000,000+ records of Americans who'd applied for security clearance, handing over the most intimate, compromising details of their lives (the clearance process involves disclosing anything that could be used to blackmail you in the future). This didn't come to light until 2015. (more…)

Online streaming continues to gain in popularity, both from authorized and pirate sources.

Unlike traditional forms of downloading, however, in many countries the legality of viewing unauthorized streams remains unclear.

In the European Union this may change in the near future. This week the European Court of Justice held a hearing during which it reviewed several questions related to pirate streaming.

The questions were raised in a case between Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN and the Filmspeler.nl store, which sells “piracy configured” media players. While these devices don’t ‘host’ any infringing content, they ship with add-ons that make it very easy to watch infringing content.

The Dutch District Court previously referred the case to the EU Court of Justice, where several questions were discussed in a hearing this week. In addition to BREIN and Filmspeler, the European commission and Spain weighed in on the issue as well.

The first main question that the Court will try to answer is rather specific. It asks whether selling pre-programmed media-players with links to pirate sources, through add-ons for example, are permitted.

Not surprisingly, Filmspeler.nl believes that it should be allowed. They argued that there is no communication to the public or a crucial intervention from their side, since these pirate add-ons are already publicly available.

The European Commission doesn’t classify selling pre-loaded boxes as infringing either, and notes that rightholders have other options to go after intermediaries, such as blocking requests.

BREIN, which covered the hearing in detail, countered this argument noting that Filmspeler willingly provides access to illegal content for profit. Spain sided with BREIN and argued that willingly including pirate plugins should not be allowed.

The second question is more crucial for the general public as it asks whether it is illegal for consumers to stream pirated content from websites or services.

“Is it lawful under EU law to temporarily reproduce content through streaming if the content originates from a third-party website where it’s made available without permission?”

Spain argued that streaming pirated content should not be allowed in any way. BREIN agreed with this position and argued that streaming should be on par with unauthorized downloading since a temporary copy of the infringing file is made, which is illegal under EU case law.

Interestingly, the European Commission doesn’t believe that consumers who watch pirate streams are infringing. From the user’s perspective they equate streaming to watching, which is legitimate.

Based on the hearing the Advocate General will issue a recommendation later this year, which will be followed by a final verdict from the EU Court of Justice somewhere early 2017.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

California police departments' license to steal cash from innocent people has been restricted, thanks to a new bill signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown. Let's hope the federal government follows suit.

Nick Sibilla of The Institute for Justice says:

Since 1994, California state law has required a criminal conviction before real estate, vehicles, boats and cash under $25,000 could be forfeited to the government. But those requirements are completely missing under federal law. So California police could instead partner with a federal agency, take the property under federal law, and reap up to 80 percent of the proceeds.

To fix this, the new law requires a criminal conviction before agencies can receive forfeiture payments from the federal government on forfeited real estate, vehicles, boats and cash valued at under $40,000.

The winner-take-all economy has turned virtually every industry into a cartel (four record labels, two cable companies, two phone operating systems, etc) who operate without fear of competition regulation, allowing representatives of a few companies to gather in closed-door meetings to cook up operating agreements that end up having the force of law. (more…)

Watch what happens when this gentleman throws a carbonated beverage bottle on the concrete.

Wait for it...

See also: https://youtu.be/qQK00RM3JsI

An investigation by the Associated Press found 675 police officers were jailed or disciplined for misusing police databases from 2013 to 2015, and that's just the ones who were caught.

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Officer Jeff Thompson of the Little Rock Police Department arrested Arkansas state Representative John Walker for recording their treatment of a black man who had been put in handcuffs during a traffic stop. (more…)

In July, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Dr Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute Assistant Professor of Computer Science; now the US government has asked a court to dismiss Dr Green's claims. A brief from EFF explains what's at stake here: the right of security experts to tell us which computers are vulnerable to attack, and how to make them better. (more…)

In order for me to sleep while sitting upright, I tilt my neck to one side and just let it kind of hang there. Then I wonder why I’d wake up with neck pain. That’s all in the past, thanks to the Trtl Pillow, the best travel pillow I never knew I needed.

The Trtl Pillow isn’t like those fat, horseshoe-shaped travel pillows you buy in airports. It’s the only one I can use that doesn’t end up uncomfortably pushing my neck forward when I start to doze off. Unlike travel pillows that offer cushion all around, the Trtl pillow is made for people who prefer to sleep by cradling their head to one side.

It wraps around your neck like a scarf, using velcro to hold the whole thing firmly to your person, like so:

Using your shoulder as a base, the support props up your neck in a way that feels natural and comfortable. If you’re ever confused on how to use it, the pillow has stickers indicating where your jaw or shoulder should rest. If you want to switch sides, simply flip the thing around. The soft fleece material feels wonderful too.

I recently used the Trtl Pillow ($30 on Amazon) on a few car trips and 10-hour flight to Paris, and it cradled my head and neck so well that I easily fell fast asleep, albeit not into a deep sleep. Still better than the zero hours, or some hours with neck pain, I got from long flights before. It’s worth noting that I’m curious to see how the support material, which seems to be made from a hard plastic, will hold up from use over time.

Trtl Pillow

https://www.amazon.com/Trtl-Pillow-Sc…

Image by Stephanie Lee.

 California-based lighting startup LIFX has released a number of smart lightbulbs since completing a successful Kickstarter campaign back in early 2013. The latest from the company is pretty straightforward as far as such things go, offering up the kind of features we’ve long come to expect from the company and competition like the Philips Hue. The bulb’s intensity and color… Read More

 The following is an excerpt from Sarah Cooper’s new book, 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings (October 4, Andrews McMeel) In a brainstorming meeting, the pressure of coming up with incredible new ideas can be debilitating. Luckily, the last thing most corporations want is new ideas. During these largely pointless exercises, the point is to contribute using the mere gravitas of… Read More