Uber is taking the next step to push its well-funded brand into the prepared food delivery space — launching the UberEATS service as a standalone app today, in Toronto. Read More
In a family of music lovers, there’s a soundtrack playing throughout our daily lives. My husband likes to listen to The Smiths radio while he works; I like Entering Beast Mode stations when I hit the gym; and we listen to Michael Bublé as a family while we cook dinner. What can I say, we’re a pretty fun bunch! But it means my family ends up paying for multiple subscription music accounts which can add up over time.
For families like mine, we’re happy to start offering the Google Play Music family plan today. With the family plan, you and up to five family members can subscribe to Google Play Music - together - for just $14.99 per month. You’ll unlock all of the same features you’d get from having individual subscriptions, including ad free, unlimited access to more than 35 million songs and the ability for each family member to stream simultaneously on any device, all for one low price. Now, you can keep your listening experiences separate from your partner and get music recommendations tailored to the music you like. So, my husband’s Depeche Mode singles will never show up in my account - only my true favorites will be front and center. And a family plan on Google play will also get your family access to YouTube Red in the US.
You and your family will be able to sign up for a Google Play Music family plan in the coming days on Android devices in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, France and Germany, with more countries coming soon. You and your family members can listen on Android, iOS and the web.
Posted by Eunice Kim, product manager for Google Play
Every release of Android comes with some bug fixes, but they aren't usually worth going over one-by-one. That's not the case with the infamous Marshmallow MMS bug, which has slowly driven many of us insane over the last few months. Thankfully, it was fixed in Android 6.0.1.
This bug was triggered mostly when installed apps had access to the MMS database. Pushbullet users were particularly vulnerable. Whenever it did happen (usually after a few days of use), MMS messages would just hang when downloading.
Pushbullet has introduced a new feature for both free and paid users, Remote Files. With this, you'll be able to both browse and request files from other devices and have them pushed right to the phone you are using. You can browse and request any file, as long as the machine is on, so they don't have to be located in a certain folder or anything.
A smile can speak a thousand words but those words may remain in the wilderness if the recipient doesn’t speak human. Of course animals have many ways in which to interpret our emotions and intentions. They can listen to our voices, smell our bodily chemicals, touch us with their paws, hands and claws, taste us with their overworked tongues and they can see us with observant eyes.
They can see us.
This final sense is quite curious when we are thinking about animals watching us. What is it they are actually seeing? We know they understand many forms of visible body language but what about our faces? Is there any evidence they understand anything from our facial expressions and if there is, what would they be basing their understanding on? Is there anything we could do to aid their understanding of our facial expressions? Racing ahead, what would any inter-species facial communication between humans and animals mean for possible future meetings with extra-terrestrials?
Let’s begin by looking at some of the evidence available. In 2004, the Journal of Comparative Psychology published the results of a study that showed dolphins instinctively comprehend human gazing to the extent that they understand the difference between what the study called static gazing and dynamic gazing. Static gazing being an idle stare with no action required and dynamic gazing meaning a gaze that prompted the dolphins to interact with an object. No verbal commands or prior training were needed for the dolphins to comprehend the difference.
If you think that’s impressive, check out the work of Professor John Marzluff at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 2008, Professor Marzluff led a group of researchers for a walk in the park. He separated the group in to two teams with one team wearing a particular type of mask and the other team wearing another type. The park has a population of crows and one team were charged with trapping the crows while the second team were just asked to walk on by. In 2013, Marzluff led two teams with the same masks in to the same park. The team wearing the masks that were worn during the trapping of 2008 were ambushed by shrieking, hysterical crows, many of whom were not even present at the original trapping five years earlier.
Marzluff also worked with Dr. Barbara Clucas of Humboldt State University on a study that proved that American crows react differently to approaching people according to whether or not the person is gazing at them or away from them. If an approaching person is looking at them, they take off a lot faster. Interestingly, whether the person is smiling or scowling seemed irrelevant.
Dr. Clucas also has experience studying squirrels in unrelated studies. Aside from gazing, I asked Dr. Clucas if there was any evidence that some crows or squirrels interpret human facial expressions in a particular way.
“Apart from that study with crows, I have not done other studies on the topic. Anecdotally, I have noticed similar behaviour in other bird species (ravens, jays, etc). Although I haven't tested it in squirrels, I would suspect that because their vision is not as good as that of birds, they probably wouldn't be able to detect if a human eyes were looking at them versus looking the other way. They might react to a human whose face is facing them versus being turned away. Indeed there are many studies showing that mammals and reptiles react differently when a human face is facing them.”
There was a study published earlier this year which showed some dogs understood the differences between human faces showing anger and those showing happiness. I wondered, regardless of what animals would understand from our facial expressions, what might their interpretations be based upon? Dr. Kun Guo of the University of Lincoln in the UK, has done a lot of research on interactions between animals and humans so I thought he would be a good man to ask.
“Very good question. ‘Don’t know’ will be our current answer. If I have to guess, I will say ‘based on the interaction between innate bias and prior learning from humans through experience / development’. You need to test wolf (evolutionary approach) and puppy (developmental approach) to answer this.”
We have established that crows can recognize and remember human faces and they can also comprehend targeted and untargeted gazing. The evidence that they can decipher human facial expressions is limited but there are hints that this might be the case. I asked Dr. Clucas what might they be basing their interpretations of human facial expressions on?
“Well, I didn't find that the American crows responded differently to a smiling versus scowling face, however, laboratory studies have shown that a related species, jungle crows can discriminate male and female faces as well as a smiling face from a blank face. So I believe American crows likely are capable of learning to distinguish facial expressions. They are likely capable of such things because they are very social and use visual signals in their own conspecific communication (within species communication).”
While conducting the research for this article, I learned that the mere idea that our facial expressions represent emotions at all is not a universally accepted fact. Dr Eliza Bliss-Moreau of the University of California has done a lot of work with rhesus monkeys and people interacting together. I asked her some questions on her work but she had a question for me: “Are you familiar with the large human literature which calls into question the fact that faces represent emotions at all? Your questions are all predicated on the idea that emotions correspond to faces in a one-to-one way, and therefore emotions can be "read". But that's not the case.”
Clearly, there are a lot of barriers between inter-species communication and this includes facial expressions. So is there anything we can do to help animals understand our faces better? Many domestic cats have an image of being cold in nature due to them consistently presenting straight faces but it has actually be proven that this usually means they are in a relaxed state. I asked Dr. Guo if mimicking their facial expressions be useful to relay our intentions?
“Very interesting thoughts. It could work if we can understand animal’s emotion first and the relations between animal’s emotion and their facial expression. Some animals, like cats, have limited ranges of facial muscle movements, which make their facial expressions less informative about their emotion / feeling / mood.”
I think this is a subject worthy of further exploration, especially in an age when we are now putting some serious money into searching for extra-terrestrial life in the universe. What if some intelligent life in the universe does not use verbal language? Carl Sagan once made the valid point that dolphins have learned to understand many words in English but no human has ever learned one word of Dolphinese. Until we do that, it could be useful to study animal understanding of our facial expressions more, even if only to eliminate possibilities of facial communication between species.
Meghan writes, "You've probably never been kept awake at night worrying about a European Commission communication. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be. Today the Commission published its roadmap for EU copyright reform, and despite the fanfare around portability of Netflix, it's clear that the bad idea known as 'ancillary copyright' has come back -- from the dead! -- to haunt us."
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Yahoo has today confirmed rumors it is scrapping a plan to spin off its stake in Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba. Its shares are up in pre-market trading on the news. Read More
After months of testing and feedback, Microsoft is bringing its Cortana digital assistant to iOS and Android today. It's the latest part of the company's Windows 10 push, combined with an increased focus on cross-platform services and apps. Microsoft originally launched Cortana exclusively for Windows Phone last year, but the service has now evolved into a new way to connect Windows 10 PCs and smartphones running Android or iOS.
That connection debuts today in the US and China, with new Cortana apps that allow Windows 10 users to share data across PCs, Android phones, and iPhones. While the Windows version of Cortana will still be more powerful than its iOS and Android counterparts, Microsoft has been working on ways to improve the...
Google's finally rolling out the six-person, $14.99 family plan for Google Play Music that it announced over two months ago. In a blog post, the company announced it'll start taking signups via Android "in the coming days." People in the United States, UK, Canada, Australia, France and Germany will be able to sign up at launch, with more countries planned for later.
The family plan allows up to six people on an account to have individual Play Music profiles, maintaining their own libraries, recommendations, playlists, and listening history. It works across Android, iOS devices, and the web.
In terms of people and pricing, it's fundamentally the same thing you get with Apple Music's family plan — also priced at $14.99. But Google does...
You might have heard the old adage “renting is throwing money away.” It seems like common sense. You don’t buy anything when you rent, but you keep to keep the house you buy. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
As personal finance blog Afford Anything breaks down in massive, incredible detail, buying a home is a lot more complicated than “Rent, except you get to keep it.” Not only are there major additional costs that you’ll be paying for the rest of your life (like repairs, renovations, and property tax), but for the first several years of your mortgage, you’re barely even gaining any equity!
Should you keep renting? Is renting better than buying? Or should you purchase a home? Is buying the better choice? Your answer is going to depend on a massive number of factors, including:
The local price-to-rent ratio.
How long you’ll live there.
Your alternative investment options.
Your assumptions about inflation and investment gains.
Maintenance, repair, insurance, property tax and capital expense costs.
The rate at which rents rise.
Et cetera, etc., etc.
You get the picture. My goal is to impress upon you — once and for all — that this myth that “renting is throwing money away” is wrongheaded. In fact, it’s dangerous. It oversimplifies a life-changing, six-figure decision. It’s probably caused thousands (or millions) of people to buy houses they later regret.
The entire piece is long, but should be mandatory reading before making the decision to buy versus rent. While it’s true that you’re buying an asset when you purchase a house, it’s an asset that barely keeps pace with inflation, and you lose the opportunity to make other investments. Even if you think you’ve considered this topic top to bottom before, you’ll likely find some information you hadn’t thought of before (like a detailed explainer on the price-to-rent ratio) that you hadn’t thought of before.
On Tuesday, at Mozilla’s Mozlando developer event in Orlando, Florida, the organization announced that it will end development and sales for its two-year-old Firefox OS smartphones.
Although the devices have met their demise, representatives say it will continue exploring how it can work with other connected gadgets and Internet of Things technologies. In a statement to ReadWrite, Denelle Dixon-Thayer, Mozilla's chief legal and business officer, wrote:
We are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform and will continue to experiment with the user experience across connected devices. We will build everything we do as a genuine open source project, focused on user experience first and build tools to enable the ecosystem to grow.
Firefox OS proved the flexibility of the Web, scaling from low-end smartphones all the way up to HD TVs. However, we weren’t able to offer the best user experience possible and so we will stop offering Firefox OS smartphones through carrier channels.
We’ll share more on our work and new experiments across connected devices soon.
When they debuted in 2013, the handsets offered a platform-agnostic premise, positioning itself as an affordable, Web-forward device for developing markets. Unfortunately, adoption never quite matched the promise as Android smartphones, with a broad set of apps available to them, continued to become cheaper and cheaper.
Spotify has roughly 80 million active monthly users, 20 million of whom pay and 60 million of whom enjoy the music for free and listen to ads. The company has always maintained that all of its users would have access to the same catalog of music. Now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Spotify will test a new approach, allowing artists to withhold certain albums from free users.
Earlier this year, Spotify had a very public spat with Taylor Swift, who eventually pulled her catalog. She was unhappy with the amount Spotify paid per stream. The company pays far more for streams from paid subscribers than it does from streams going to ad-supported users. Mega-stars like Swift and Adele believe they can make more money by staying off...
This holiday season, there's no shortage of electronics to choose from. When it comes to picking out what device to use, sometimes you want a laptop to hammer out a lengthy document. Other times you want a lightweight tablet to sit back and watch your favorite video. Starting today, you don't have to choose, because the Pixel C is available on the Google Store. As we previewed two months ago, Pixel C brings together the benefits of a full-size keyboard with the portability of a tablet so it can go wherever you go.
The Pixel C’s high-resolution, 10.2” display is crisp, colorful, and bright—in fact it’s one of the brightest tablets out there—perfect for sharing photos and videos with family over the holidays. Graphics horsepower and stereo speakers mean the Pixel C can keep up with you whether you’re watching a new episode of "Silicon Valley" or playing a new game.
But what really makes the Pixel C unique is the full-size keyboard, which is designed to fit perfectly with the tablet. It attaches seamlessly with magnets, and automatically connects via bluetooth. When the tablet and keyboard are closed together, the keyboard charges wirelessly and automatically—so you never have to worry about it running out of juice. And when you don’t need to type, the keyboard tucks securely behind the tablet with magnets—out of the way but close by for when you need it.
This is the first tablet designed with Android 6.0, Marshmallow in mind. You get added security benefits, smarter and longer battery life (10+ hours) and Now on Tap at your fingertips. To ensure the Pixel C gets even better over time, it will receive regular security and feature updates directly from Google. But what makes a tablet great is the amount of things you can do with it—and you’ve got plenty to choose from with s’more than 1 million apps on Google Play.
The Pixel C is available on the Google Store now starting at $499, and if you order today, you can get it in time for the holidays.
Posted by Andrew Bowers, Director, Product Management & Pixel Perfectionist http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MSxFo36Ms9s/VmcZS04uGoI/AAAAAAAARjk/XXLJgtvRz2M/s1600/NexusRYUKey_O_SILVER_TQF.png Andrew Bowers Director Product Management
Denmark's Antipiratgruppen was formed in the early 2000s to fight the Internet over copyright infringement, with members including the MPA and umbrella groups representing record labels, publishers and other media companies. They hired Johan Schlüter, a law firm, to represent them.
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When I joined The Verge, many of my peers from the video games press congratulated me on a lifetime of writing about internet routers. I laughed at their silly joke. How much, I thought, is there to really say about an internet router?
If only my naive self of 2014 had known the truth, that routers evoke a passion among the citizens of the internet like few pieces of technology. I thought people cared about console wars, then I witnessed a debate about the benefits of Netgear's Nighthawk line.
Frankly, I get it now. As my internet connection speed has increased in the past half-decade, having an internet router that allows my Wi-Fi to make the most of said speed seems obvious. What isn't always obvious is knowing which router to buy.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.
Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.
TeslaCoil Software's Nova Launcher Prime — one of the most popular launchers for Android — is on sale for just $1 on Google Play. The Prime version of the app usually retails for $5, and unlocks several features such as message unread count, gesture-based navigation, ability to hide apps, create custom tabs and folders in the app drawer, and additional scroll effects.
Android 6.0.1's headline feature is a new set of emoji, but did you know it also adds a handy new camera launch mode to older Nexus devices? The Nexus 5X and 6P have had the double-tap power camera launch shortcut since they went on sale (and dropped a twist-to-launch gesture), but now the feature has trickled down to older Nexus models. Specifically, the Nexus 5, 6, 7 (2013) and 9 now all support it as of Android 6.0.1.
Amazon Underground takes paid games and gives them away for free, with all the extra in-app purchases included. For users, it's a tempting way to get around handing over money for games you really want to play. The trade off comes in the form of ads and privacy. Amazon keeps up with every moment you spend gaming, because this is how it determines the amount of money to pay developers.
Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, says it has tripled revenue for four of the games it has published on Amazon's app store by joining Underground.
BBC News: Nicholas Smith, the actor who played store manager Mr Rumbold in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served?, has died aged 81. He had been the last surviving member of the original cast.
If you're a fan of scripted Netflix shows like Jessica Jones and Master of None, rejoice: the streaming service is doubling down on its commitment to original programming. Chief content officer Ted Sarandos announced that Netflix will reach a total of 31 scripted shows over the course of 2016 in a speech at the UBS Media Conference this morning. That's almost double the 16 such shows the service aired in 2015. Sarandos also shared that Netflix is working on 10 new feature films, 30 kids' shows, 12 documentaries, and 10 stand-up specials. "It's not just a lot of volume," said Sarandos. "This is quality stuff."
Protecting your online accounts is important, and 2-factor authentication is the best way to do that. The default method of getting 2-factor codes for most services is SMS, but authenticator apps can be more convenient. Google's own authenticator has been on the Play Store for years, but it's been very ugly until today. This app has finally gotten a material design makeover and a few new features too.
Uber is taking the next step to push its well-funded brand into the prepared food delivery space — launching the UberEATS service as a standalone app today, in Toronto. Read More
You and your family will be able to sign up for a Google Play Music family plan in the coming days on Android devices in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, France and Germany, with more countries coming soon. You and your family members can listen on Android, iOS and the web.
Every release of Android comes with some bug fixes, but they aren't usually worth going over one-by-one. That's not the case with the infamous Marshmallow MMS bug, which has slowly driven many of us insane over the last few months. Thankfully, it was fixed in Android 6.0.1.
Yahoo has today confirmed rumors it is scrapping a plan to spin off its stake in Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba. Its shares are up in pre-market trading on the news. Read More
The Pixel C’s high-resolution, 10.2” display is crisp, colorful, and bright—in fact it’s one of the brightest tablets out there—perfect for sharing photos and videos with family over the holidays. Graphics horsepower and stereo speakers mean the Pixel C can keep up with you whether you’re watching a new episode of "Silicon Valley" or playing a new game.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Protecting your online accounts is important, and 2-factor authentication is the best way to do that. The default method of getting 2-factor codes for most services is SMS, but authenticator apps can be more convenient. Google's own authenticator has been on the Play Store for years, but it's been very ugly until today. This app has finally gotten a material design makeover and a few new features too.
