Google has posted new factory images for build LMY48I, which contains fixes for the Stagefright security exploit, for several Nexus devices. In all, the new build is available for the Nexus 6, Nexus 9 (LTE and WiFi), Nexus 5, Nexus 7 (2013, WiFi), Nexus 10, and Nexus 4.
We've heard rumors last month suggesting that Huawei would manufacture the next Nexus smartphone, with the handset reportedly featuring the upcoming Snapdragon 820 processor along with a 5.7-inch QHD display. A phone purported to be the Nexus handset has now been revealed in a leaked video, with the footage giving us a look at what could be a fingerprint scanner at the back beneath the camera sensor.
Windows 10 has some handy new features, but if you believe the rest of the internet, it also comes with features that eviscerate any semblance of privacy. But that view is a little overblown. Let’s take a closer look at what each of these settings actually do—and which ones are actually a privacy problem.http://lifehacker.com/5904966/why-yo...
Windows 10 has a reputation for “phoning home” more often than its predecessors, and while that’s primarily true, much of this was already present in Windows 8—and an awful lot of it is present in other products like Android, iOS, and Chrome. That’s not to say all of those settings are good, just that there’s very little new happening here.
You can read the privacy statement for Windows 10 here. It’s not quite as sweeping as the Windows Insider Preview policy that caused so much commotion, but it’s still very broad (as most privacy policies are).
Plenty of sites have published lists of all the features you should turn off in Windows 10 to protect your privacy, but many don’t explain in detail what each of these settings do, which makes it hard to separate FUD from fact. So let’s go through those settings and explain what we know about them, where the real problems are, and how to turn everything off.
Let’s start with the obvious. Open up Windows 10’s Settings app and head to Privacy > General. Most of these features are actually pretty self-explanatory, but here’s what each one does:
In short, most people can probably turn off these settings and not be affected.
Windows 10, much like iOS and Android, can use your location to provide a better experience in certain apps. For example, it can check your location so you don’t have to type your zip code to get the weather, or so you can pinpoint your location in the Maps app. However, to do this, it may share your location with certain “Trusted Partners” (like the aforementioned weather service, or...well, anyone else).
On a normal desktop computer, you probably won’t use this as much as you would on a phone, so it’s up to you if you want to turn location off entirely. Head to Settings > Privacy Location and look at the list of apps at the bottom. You can turn off individual apps or, if none of them look like they need your location for anything, you can turn location off entirely at the top of this window. (Note that location must be on for Cortana to work.)
Cortana has some of the most sweeping privacy-related settings, but it’s also one of the most useful new features, which means you have to decide whether turning it off is worth the privacy. In order to work, Cortana logs your voice (to process what you’re saying), location (to give you location-specific answers), your writing (to answer questions), your contacts (so you can reference them), calendar events (so it can create, delete, or give information about your upcoming appointments), and more. That’s a lot of stuff!
Of course, it’s also very similar to Siri and Google Now, which collect a lot of the same data (but on your phone instead of your PC). Thankfully, like those services, Cortana is easy to turn off if you’d rather keep it close to the chest. To do so, here are the settings you should change:
This, coupled with the “Send Microsoft info about how I write” setting mentioned earlier, is the biggest privacy concern in Windows 10, primarily because the language is so vague. The “Getting to Know You” setting does not specify where or when it can collect, say, “typing history”, which is troubling. We contacted Microsoft, who had this to say:
This is the inking and typing function, which users can turn off at any time. Microsoft does not collect any personal information via inking or typing. It is gathered for product improvement purposes, for example, to improve the handwriting visual translation engine, or to improve the user dictionary, language library and spell check functions in Windows. The data is put through rigorous, multi-pass scrubs to ensure it does not collect sensitive or identifiable fields (e.g., no email addresses, passwords, alpha-numerical data, etc.). Data is also chopped into very small bits and stripped of sequence data so it cannot be put back together or identified. The data samplings collected are limited; Microsoft is not capturing everything you write, nor is it capturing data every time.
So it’s not a “keylogger”, it’s more of a text analysis engine that takes already written text, scrubs it and takes words out of sequence, and analyzes them for dictionary and spellcheck purposes. However, once again, the language is extremely broad, and this is probably the most troubling privacy setting on the system. As it is, if you’re worried about Microsoft collecting data and can live without Cortana, turn this setting off.
Microsoft’s new browser, like most modern browsers (including Chrome and Firefox), includes a few features that “phone home” as well. You’ll find them in Edge’s Settings > Advanced Settings. Here’s what they do:
If you don’t use Microsoft Edge, these features won’t matter much, but it’s good to know where they are.
Windows 10 includes a feature called Wi-Fi Sense, which allows you to connect to protected Wi-Fi networks without a password from your Facebook, Outlook.com, and Skype friends. That way, you can connect to a friend’s Wi-Fi network without having to ask them for their password. However, that also means they can share your network with their friends, and so on. Correction: Your friend cannot share your networks with their friends. This actually makes it more secure than giving them your Wi-Fi password.
Most of this process is opt-in, so you shouldn’t have much to worry about. You have to check a box to share your network connection with your contacts, and they have to do the same (and they can only do so if you give them your password). However, you can make your network ineligible for sharing by adding _optout to the end of its SSID (for example, mynetwork_optout). By default, though, Windows will give you the option to connect to networks your friends have shared with you. If you’d like to turn that off, you can do so under Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi > Manage Wi-Fi Settings.
Many of Windows 10s features require a Microsoft Account to use, because they either store information online or sync over the internet. Primarily:
Alternatively, you can avoid using a Microsoft account entirely, by either choosing “Sign in with a local account” during setup, or by going to from Settings > Accounts > Your account. Just choose “Sign in with a local account instead”. Note that you won’t be able to download apps from the Windows Store with this turned off, or use either of the above features.
Unlike its predecessors, Windows 10 doesn’t offer a way to turn off automatic Windows updates. Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education users have the option of turning Windows Update off through Group Policy or the Registry, but Home editions cannot. This is done for security reasons, however, so we recommend you leave it on. You can always disable specific updates if they cause problems.
Windows Update also uses BitTorrent-like peer-to-peer file sharing to distribute updates. This is cool, but if you don’t want other people using your bandwidth to download updates, you can turn it off. Just head to Settings > Update & Security > Advanced Options > Choose How Update Are Delivered. From here, flip the switch to “Off” or, better yet, change the radio button to PCs on my local network. That allows your PCs at home to distribute updates to each other, just not to other people over the internet.
Like many apps and operating systems, Microsoft allows you to send diagnostic data to Microsoft so it can better troubleshoot performance problems and improve services. However, that often means inadvertently sending information you’d rather not, like memory snapshots or which apps you use the most often.
If you head to Settings > Privacy > Feedback & Diagnostics, you’ll see two settings:
Microsoft doesn’t let you turn off diagnostics completely, except on Enterprise versions of Windows. The Basic setting, they say, is data that is “vital to the operation of Windows”, including Windows Update and malicious software protection.
So is Windows 10 the worst privacy killer in human history? Probably not, but there are some issues here—primarily:
However, at least Microsoft provides these toggles, which is at least a step in the right direction.
Apart from the language in the “Getting to Know You” setting, though, nothing else here is particularly new. Calling the Start menu nefarious because it provides search predictions seems a bit overblown, especially when we’ve been using that same technology on Google.com, Chrome, and Firefox for years. Most of the other settings exist in other OSes, too, not to mention on your smartphone (which knows just as much, if not more about you than your PC).
That’s not to say you shouldn’t (or should) be concerned—it’s a personal choice. If you’re uncomfortable with any of the settings above, or if you don’t trust Microsoft with certain types of data, you should absolutely turn them off. But you’ll have to give up a few features.
Just keep in mind also that Microsoft is far from the only company doing this, so if you turn them off in Windows, be sure to turn them off in the other apps and devices you use too (including OS X and your browser). Of course, the only way to keep all your data is to never connect to the internet at all—so good luck with that.
Title illustration by Jim Cooke.
So says Jennifer Granick, who gave the keynote address at the (somewhat infamous) Black Hat security conference today. Once, techno-utopians could say things like “The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it.” Today, though, the ongoing centralization of the Internet in the name of security and convenience “increasingly facilitates surveillance, censorship,… Read More
Harald Range was due to retire this year, but he was fired first when he refused to end his ridiculous treason witch hunt against Netzpolitik, who published revelations from the Snowden docs.
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Remember those militarized cops who raided a California medical marijuana dispensary, harassed a disabled patient in the store, and were recorded on a security camera gobbling what was almost certainly marijuana-infused edibles that they swiped during the raid?
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Google's totally-not-a-post-it-note app has been an oddity in their ecosystem for a while now. Keep is treated like one of the Drive apps in the way it isn't installed by default, but doesn't really integrate well with much of anything. It's a great standalone note-taking app that syncs across Android and the web — and really when you think about it that's all a simple note-taking app should be doing — but it has never really felt as integrated as the core Google apps.
That changes a little tomorrow, as Google Keep is updated to allow quick export to Google Docs.
Earlier today, Samsung announced that it would now provide security patches for its Android devices “about once per month.” In addition to Samsung, Google also today announced a similar program for its Nexus devices. Both Samsung and Google will release these security patches as over-the-air updates. Read More
Proper posture is critical for preventing pain and looking and feeling healthy. Find your body’s imbalances and work to improve them with four simple moves you can do every morning or before you exercise.
The warm-up exercises are shared by posture therapist Pete Egoscue in an article on The Huffington Post. In the first move, you simply stand against a wall for five minutes, during which time your muscles should start to adapt and your body can get realigned. In the move shown above, you raise and lower the toes of the foot in front, which Egoscue says can counteract the negative effects of wearing shoes all day.
Yoga practitioners will be familiar with the last two moves: a forward fold and cat-cow.
The article also suggests first testing your posture against a wall (we have a video with the same idea here), which can help you understand which areas to work on for better posture throughout the day.
How Important Is Perfect Form in Fitness, Really? | The Huffington Post
The British Library uploaded over one million scanned images to Flickr, designating them as public domain for all to share and use.
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"From the dog's point of view, his master is an elongated and abnormally cunning dog." – Mabel Louise Robinson
I can barely watch, but anyone who has seen "Grizzly Man" will understand that bears are wild animals and should not be trifled with.
We’ve all been there a million times: Flicking through Netflix or Amazon or Hulu with no idea what to commit to watching. Nothing immediately grabs your interest and the plot descriptions aren’t selling any of them. Thankfully a newly-launched site called CharacTour offers a new way to think about movies, TV shows, books, and video games: Through their characters.
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Late last year the UK Government legalized copying for private use, a practice which many citizens already believed to be legal.
The UK Intellectual Property Office noted that the changes were “in the best interest” of consumers and that they would bring copyright law into the 21st century.
However, the new regulation was short-lived. Fearing a loss of income several music groups objected at the High Court, which subsequently agreed that the new legislation is unlawful.
As a result the changes were overturned last month and the previous limitations were reinstated. To find out what the public can and can’t do under the law, TF reached out to the UK Intellectual Property Office, which provided some very clear answers.
“It is now unlawful to make private copies of copyright works you own, without permission from the copyright holder – this includes format shifting from one medium to another,” a spokesperson informed us.
The IPO specifically notes that copying a CD to an MP3 player is not permitted. This means that iTunes’ popular ripping feature, which Apple actively promotes during the software’s installation, is illegal.
Also, under the current law iTunes is actively facilitating copyright infringement by promoting their CD-ripping functionality. This means that the company could face significant claims for damages.
Apple’s iTunes installer offers ripping advice
There is more though, as the law affects much more than just ripping CDs. Simply copying a song in an automated computer backup or storing a copy on a private cloud hosting service is also against the law.
“…it includes creating back-ups without permission from the copyright holder as this necessarily involves an act of copying,” we were informed by the Government spokesperson.
Strictly speaking this means that UK citizens are not allowed to make a backup of their computer. After all, pretty much every computer contains copyrighted media. Needless to say, this turns almost the entire country into ‘outlaws’.
The Government is not happy with the High Court decision but it hasn’t decided whether it will propose revised private copying exceptions in the future. Copyright holders previously suggested allowing private copying in exchange for a tax on blank CDs and hard drives.
“As this is a complex area of law, the Government is carefully considering the implications of the ruling and the available options, before deciding any future course of action.”
As reassurance, the Government notes that that people shouldn’t be too concerned because copyright holders are not known to come after people who make a backup of their computers.
“The Government is not aware of any cases of copyright holders having prosecuted individuals for format shifting music solely for their own personal use,” the IPO spokesperson says.
However, copyright holders can take people to court over both CD-ripping and computer backups, if they want to.
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and the best VPN services.
While Android is likely your go-to for mobile technology, the desktop-and-laptop world is still largely dominated by Windows machines. If you fall into that category, you've probably heard about this big update to Windows by now. There's a lot to like about Windows 10, including the price tag if you're running a fairly modern version of the OS. If you're wondering how this update will affect your day to day usage, particularly the Android parts, we've assembled this handy guide for you.
Spoiler alert — it's actually pretty good.
If you rely on Chrome notifications to keep you informed without having to pick up your Android phone, or you rely on Hangouts and Gmail on Chrome for Windows daily, you'll find little about the experience has changed in Windows 10. Google has been supporting Windows 10 for quite a while now through the Insider Preview, so there's no need to worry about waiting for things to function. You can update today and everything will work as expected, including Chrome Remote Desktop.
Late last month, LG announced the Gentle, a flip phone running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. The manufacturer is known to launch several clamshell phones in its home market, with the handsets usually restricted to South Korea. That's changed with the Gentle, as LG is now stating that it will make the Gentle — which will be branded the LG Wine Smart — available in select markets around the world later this month, starting with France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Kazakhstan, Japan and the United Kingdom.
EE has identified a small number of incidents where its Power Bar portable chargers have overheated. The company is now recalling a specific batch of Power Bars and is asking consumers to check the model numbers of their chargers.
A routine review of bodycam footage revealed a Wayne County, Ohio, Sheriff's deputy dragging a screaming woman from her home by her feet. Read the rest
Whenever I try to take a photo through a plane or hotel window, chances are there are plenty of reflections that show up on the final image and ruin it. Now, however, Google and MIT researchers have found a way to take these photos and automatically remove these reflections and other obstructions.
In a paper they will present at Siggraph 2015 later this month, Tianfan Xue, Michael… Read More
Ever get the feeling someone’s watching you? Of course you do; you use the Internet… So what’s the answer to pervasive tracking technologies? Well, one answer — at least when you’re able to step off grid entirely because you don’t need to use your kit for a bit — is to put your devices (and connected cards) inside a faraday cage to isolate them from… Read More
The axonometric, not-to-scale diagrams are pretty sweet -- like the castings made of underground ant-colonies, cross with the insane arcology furutism of Paolo Soleri.
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In the past few years, the Windows Start menu has been dangled in front of us and taken away more times than we can count, but it’s finally back—and it’s brought a lot of new tricks. For the first time ever, the Start menu is very customizable, which means you can make it work exactly how you want it to.
We discussed a few of these tips in our guide to tweaking Windows 10, but if you’re looking to dive a little deeper and really change up your Start menu, here’s everything you can to do customize it.http://lifehacker.com/how-to-tweak-w...
By default, the Start menu will adjust its size based on the resolution of your screen. For example, on my 1900x1200 monitor, it’s pretty wide. I don’t want it to take up that much space, so I resized it to be a bit more compact.
Resizing is so easy you’ll wonder why you’re reading this sentence: just mouse over the corner of the Start menu and resize it like you would any other window. You can make it short and wide, tall and thin, or any other dimensions you desire.
The biggest difference between the Windows 7 and Windows 10 Start menus are, obviously, the live tiles. The ones Microsoft includes by default aren’t necessarily the most useful, so you’ll definitely want to rearrange and resize tiles based on what you actually need.
For example, I don’t need anything in the “Play and Explore” section, so I removed it entirely. Meanwhile, the Weather tile is pretty handy, but it’s much too small to show all the useful information it has, so I made it bigger at the expense of other, lesser-used tiles.
Customizing the tiles is easy: click and drag them to rearrange them, or right-click them to unpin them from the Start menu altogether. If you drag a tile all the way to the bottom of the menu, it’ll create a new category, which you can rename whatever you want.
You can also right-click a tile to pick from four sizes—small, medium, wide, and large—each of which will show different amounts of information. If you decide you don’t want a tile to show live info, but want to keep the shortcut, you can right-click it and choose “turn live tile off”.
To add a new tile, find it in the All Apps section or in the left sidebar and right-click it. Choose “Pin to Start”. If you need suggestions for good live tiles, check out our guide to making the Start screen useful.http://lifehacker.com/how-to-make-wi...
To change the color of the Start menu and its tiles, right-click on the desktop and choose “Personalize”. Click “Colors” in the left sidebar, and choose your favorite color from the pallette. This will affect other parts of Windows as well, but primarily the Start menu. You can also have it automatically adjust the color to match your desktop background, which is pretty neat.
By default, this will only act as an “accent” color, affecting the tiles on your Start menu. But if you scroll down and tick the “Show color on Start, Taskbar, and Action Center” box, the start menu and taskbar will inherit that color all over.
By default, the left sidebar shows a few shortcuts to File Explorer and Settings, along with links to your most used apps. But you can add a few more folders to this sidebar as well.
Right-click on the desktop and choose “Personalize”. Head to the Start tab. From here, you can uncheck options to show oft-used apps or recently opened items. You can also click “Choose which folders appear on Start” to add shortcuts to your personal folders, like Documents or Music, as well as your Network drives or Personal folder.
(And, if you actually liked the Windows 8 start screen, you can tick the “Use Start full screen” box to get back to a more Windows 8-like experience.)
This setting’s a bit lesser-known, but quite useful. If you have a few settings that you access often, you can pin them to the Start menu too. Just right-click on any item in the Settings app and choose “Pin to Start”.http://lifehacker.com/the-best-windo...
If all this isn’t enough for you, an alternative Start menu might be just what you need. Start menu replacements became really popular in Windows 8 when the Start menu went missing, but they’re still around, and offer a host of features and customizations that the built-in menu doesn’t offer. Classic Shell is still around if you prefer something free and more Windows 7-like, but for Windows 10, we really dig Start10. It’s $5, it blends in beautifully with Windows 10, lets you skin the Start button, and offers a ton of different layouts and tweaks. You can try it out for free before you buy, too, so there’s no reason not to give it a shot.http://lifehacker.com/start10-brings...
Android/iOS/Windows Phone: BitTorrent Sync is a handy alternative to Dropbox if you need a lot of storage space or don’t trust someone else’s servers. The mobile apps have been a bit wanting, but now you can finally create, edit, and share files right from your phone.
The new update which is rolling out today finally allows users to do more than just view their files. While some Android users could use a file manager as a work around, it was difficult. for other phones, it was impossible. Now, however, you can create and edit files, then save them to a Sync folder natively. This should make BitTorrent Sync a lot more useful on mobile devices.
BitTorrent Sync Mobile Update: Create, Edit and Share | BitTorrent Sync
"We have a name for locking people up and forcing them to do real work without wages. It's called slavery."
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Atlas will not always emerge victorious. But today, victory is his. [Atlas the Aussie c/o Jukin Media, via]
As close to seeing it in person as it gets, short of going there—and still astounding at standard HD. Read the rest
Microsoft is planning to launch its Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL Windows Phone devices later this year. Both handsets will be high-end, with the Lumia 950 XL being considered the next flagship for Windows Phone. While we’ve seen specifications leak and mockups, Chinese site WPXAP has revealed a prototype version of the Lumia 950 XL today. Wrapped inside a protective black casing, it’s difficult to see exactly what Microsoft’s upcoming flagship will look like, but it’s clear it will ship with USB Type-C support.
The Verge can confirm these images are accurate, and Microsoft is currently testing the handset in this casing to prevent leaks. The software giant looks set to unveil both the 5.2-inch Lumia 950 and 5.7-inch Lumia 950 XL during an...
What is a Chromebook if it doesn't run Chrome OS? A Cloudbook, apparently. That's what Acer's calling its latest Windows 10 laptops, two inexpensive machines with the kind of minimal storage space and modest hardware you'd normally associate with Chromebooks.
The Aspire One Cloudbook comes in 11-inch and 14-inch varieties (both 1366 x 768) and uses an Intel Celeron processor with 2GB of RAM. The 11-inch model is available with 16GB or 32GB of storage, and the 14-inch model can be loaded with 32GB or 64GB. Both versions are 17.9mm thick. Acer includes a 1-year subscription to Microsoft's Office 365 Personal and 100GB to 1TB of OneDrive storage depending on the model.
Of course, since these Cloudbooks run Windows 10, they're...
Google has been developing self-driving cars for some time but some recently uncovered documents reveal that it has also quietly started its own subsidiary car company, titled (what else?) Google Auto LLC.