British parliament has published a cache of secret Facebook documents.
Lawmakers seized the bombshell papers last month from Six4Three, which is suing Facebook.
The documents are under seal by court order in California, but have been published using parliamentary privilege in the UK.
They show Facebook "whitelisting" firms in return for access to data and taking "aggressive positions" against rivals, such as Twitter's Vine.
They include emails sent by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
British parliament has published a cache of secret Facebook documents which it obtained last month from a company suing the social network.
A redacted version of the papers was pushed live on the website of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which is investigating Facebook's privacy standards as part of an inquiry into fake news.
Damian Collins, the chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, prefaced the papers with a summary of what he sees as some of the most explosive revelations. These included:
Facebook entering "whitelisting agreements" with companies, including Netflix and Airbnb, giving them access to friends data after Facebook introduced new privacy policies in 2014/15.
Collins said a recurring theme of the papers is the "idea of linking access to friends data to the financial value of the [app] developers' relationship with Facebook."
They show Facebook "taking aggressive positions against apps," Collins said. This included email evidence showing Mark Zuckerberg personally approved a decision to deny access to data for the now-defunct Twitter video-looping app, Vine.
Facebook made it difficult for users to know about changes it made to its Android app because they were controversial. The changes enabled Facebook to collect a record of calls and texts sent by users.
British MP Collins secured the documents from Ted Kramer, the founder of a software company called Six4Three, while Kramer was on business in the UK last month.
Six4Three is suing Facebook for killing its business — specifically, an app named Pikinis that surfaced images of people's Facebook friends in their swimwear — when it tightened up its privacy policies in 2015.
The documents are under the seal of a California court order, but the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee published under UK parliamentary privilege, believing them to be in the public interest.
The UK Parliament today released a 250-page cache of previously sealed Facebook documents, revealing internal deliberations at the highest levels of the company, as executives as high up as Mark Zuckerberg made crucial decisions on handling users’ data.
Facebook has long said that it does not sell access to its users’ data, and nothing in the documents directly contradicts that claim. But the documents, released by British lawmaker Damian Collins, give a glimpse into how a company of Facebook’s scope makes decisions about deals surrounding data access, including when it decides to work with other companies — and when it decides to take action against them.
Google has announced that Chrome 71 has left beta and is publicly rolling out for Windows, Mac, and Linux, as spotted by 9to5Google. The latest version of Google’s browser was in the works over the past few months, touting features to help fight against abusive ad experiences by blocking manipulative ad designs and showing billing warning screens.
With Chrome 71, Chrome will filter experiences on websites that fall under Google’s definition of abusive. These include web experiences that aren’t just limited to ads, such as auto-redirects that happen without any action from a user or trick-to-click experiences like a warning notification that actually leads to an ad or another website’s landing page. Sites that are reported to have abusive...
Verizon has expanded access to high-speed data in 54 additional countries in its TravelPass program for travelers who are willing to pay extra. The program allows travelers to pay a flat fee each day for access to high-speed data, texting, and calling. New countries include Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya.
With the new expansion, TravelPass is now available in 185 countries around the world, just 10 short of including every single country on the planet. You get 0.5GB of high-speed data for every 24 hour session, and if you exceed that amount, you have the option of buying another 0.5GB.
If you skip TravelPass for a day, you won’t be charged for that day
Verizon customers can get TravelPass by texting the word TRAVEL to 4004, or...
On Tuesday, chipmaker Qualcomm announced the first mobile chip that supports the 5G mobile network.
5G is the evolution of 4G LTE, and promises faster and more reliable speeds.
Verizon, AT&T, and Samsung also announced that a 5G-capable smartphone will be available in early 2019.
5G will be the biggest differentiating feature of smartphones in 2019, but only a few cities will have access to 5G carrier networks when they begin launching.
Chipmaker Qualcomm announced its new mobile processor, the Snapdragon 855, which will enable mobile devices to connect to the latest mobile networking standard, 5G.
5G is the evolution of the 4G LTE networks that most smartphones connect to for data and internet. The main benefits of 5G include significantly faster data speeds, as well as significantly less latency. If you have any issues streaming a video over the current 4G LTE network, for example, 5G should supposedly fix that.
Qualcomm's announcement means that some Android smartphones in 2019 are likely to have 5G connectivity, provided manufacturers take advantage of the chip.
There are two variants of the Snapdragon 855 processor: One with 5G support, and one without. While each new generation of Snapdragon usually finds its way into flagship Android phones, it's unclear which models will run the Snapdragon 855 with 5G connectivity.
So far, Verizon and AT&T have confirmed that Samsung will release a 5G-capable smartphone in the first half of 2019. Which device, exactly, wasn't specified, but almost every finger is pointing towards Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S10 smartphone.
With that said, Verizon and AT&T's 5G networks will only be available in a small number of markets when smartphones running Qualcomm's 5G-enabled chips roll out.
So far, AT&T's 5G rollout will only include 12 cities in the USA by the end of 2018: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Waco, Jacksonville, Louisville, New Orleans, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Indianapolis, and Oklahoma City.
As for Verizon, the company has only just begun rolling out its 5G home internet service this year to four cities, including Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. Verizon's 5G service for smartphones will only begin rolling out in "early 2019."
T-Mobile is also developing its 5G network with an estimated roll-out of 2020. The carrier is promising that its own 5G network will be available nationwide rather than in a few cities.
5G poses an exciting prospect, as it promises faster and more reliable connectivity to common data-intensive tasks, like streaming video, video calls, streaming music, and general smartphone use. 5G will, indeed, be the killer feature for smartphones of 2019, and it'll be a big differentiator.
However, 5G won't burst onto the smartphone scene. At first, 5G's rollout is likely to be slow and gradual, with only a few devices having 5G connectivity at first, and it'll only be available in a few markets initially.
We also have yet to see how well 5G will work on mobile devices, as 5G primarily transmits on the "millimeter wave" spectrum that has trouble penetrating walls and other obstacles. It's even been said that a tree's leaves could interfere with the strength of a 5G signal. The potential limitation of 5G could be a reason why it's unlikely we'll see 5G-capable iPhones next year.
Either way, early 2019 will give us a better idea of what to expect with 5G.
Apart from 5G connectivity, Qualcomm also announced its "3D Sonic Sensor," a fingerprint scanner for smartphones that will lay underneath the screen completely hidden from sight. The 3D Sonic Sensor will use ultrasonic waves to register fingerprints, which is said to be more accurate and reliable than similar in-display fingerprint sensors you'd find on phones like the OnePlus 6T.
That’s only partially true. A handful of 5G devices are here on the beautiful island of Maui. But journalists aren’t being allowed to try 5G in any meaningful way. They can’t touch working versions of the Samsung phone, or the AT&T hotspot, or the Verizon hotspot, or run an actual speed test on Motorola’s 5G modded phone. There are demos, like a VR headset plugged into a computer connected to Wi-Fi that’s also technically 5G, but we can’t peer behind the curtain to verify that 5G...
Verizon has confirmed to The Verge that it will be launching RCS Chat on the Pixel 3 and 3 XL on December 6th. Only those two phones on Verizon will have the feature, but the company tells me that it is “committed to bringing advanced messaging to other Verizon smartphones in the future.” In other words, the rollout for Chat on Verizon will probably be a little slow, but it’s still earlier than we were expecting. A few weeks ago, A Verizon executive indicated that support for Chat would come in “early 2019.”
RCS is the text-messaging standard set to replace SMS for Android phones — it supports features that you would expect from any text-messaging client, including typing indicators, high-resolution images and video, and better group...
Microsoft is poised to ditch Microsoft Edge, the default web browser on Windows 10, according to reports from The Verge and Windows Central.
Instead, Microsoft could release a new browser that's based on Chromium, the web engine that powers the leading Google Chrome web browser.
Chromium is a leading web standard, while Microsoft's own EdgeHTML has lagged considerably.
Among other things, this would open the door for Google Chrome to finally come to the Windows Store on Windows 10.
Microsoft is slated to discontinue Edge, the browser that comes built into Windows 10, according to reports from The Verge and Windows Central. Edge was introduced in 2015 as the successor to Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The idea, according to those reports, is that Microsoft is moving away from its own EdgeHTML rendering engine and towards Chromium, the web engine that powers Google Chrome. Chromium, first released by Google in 2008, has become the web's predominant standard, thanks to the wild success of the Chrome browser.
The success of Chromium has become something of a headache for Microsoft, both internally and externally — the Verge reports that employees and customers alike have been "frustrated" that the Microsoft Edge browser doesn't work properly with some websites and apps that were optimized for Chromium.
And so, it sounds like Microsoft is poised to release a new browser, based on Chromium, that would leave EdgeHTML in the past. Intriguingly, the Verge reports that this move would also open the door for a version of Google Chrome on the Windows app store — the main thing stopping that from happening, so far, is that Microsoft has required all web browsers in the Windows Store to use EdgeHTML. If EdgeHTML goes, so too will that barrier.
Of note is that this new browser could recycle the Edge name, and it could even take much of its interface. After all, Microsoft Edge may not have been as mature or fully-featured as Google Chrome, but it has a slick interface and pretty solid performance. However, the engine is the very heart of a web browser, and without EdgeHTML, it would really and truly be a whole new piece of software, whatever Microsoft ends up naming it.
Also of note is that such a web browser could play right into a new round of rumors that Microsoft is working on a so-called "Windows Lite." That hypothetical version of Windows would be stripped down to be little more than a web browser, similar to Google ChromeOS, which is Microsoft's chief competitor in the classroom market.
In the same way that Google ChromeOS is based on a Chromium core, a new web browser could give Microsoft the foundation for that supposed "Windows Lite," a stripped-down version of the operating system that could take on Google on its own turf.
Microsoft declined to comment. The Verge reports that there could be more details as soon as this week.
Once again, as we predicted, FOSTA -- a law ostensibly passed to stop sex trafficking -- has been a total disaster. Passed based on totally inaccurate moral panics, it has resulted in online censorship and highly questionable lawsuits. But, worst of all, despite all the rhetoric about how it was necessary to save the lives of young girls, it has actually put them at much greater risk, and increased the amount of sex trafficking, while decreasing the ability of police to track down and arrest actual traffickers.
As this was all becoming clear a few months back, the legislators who pushed FOSTA tried to completely rewrite history to claim it was a success. Chief among them was the original sponsor of FOSTA, Rep. Ann Wagner, who announced that FOSTA was responsible for "shutting down nearly 90% of the online sex trafficking business and ads." This was wrong on multiple levels. That number was based on the shutdown of Backpage, which happened before FOSTA was law and had nothing to do with FOSTA. Even worse, an investigation into that 90% number by the Washington Post showed that even it was not true. At that time, the research showed that, while there was a brief plunge in sex ads after Backpage was seized (again, separate from FOSTA), the volume was coming back up to about the same level.
According to Pittsburgh-based software company Marinus Analytics, there were about 146,000 online sex ads posted per day in the U.S. on leading escort websites from mid-September to mid-October—and the company expects the total for this month to be even higher.
In contrast, there were about 133,000 such ads posted on Backpage in the month before its shutdown, Marinus Analytics found.
Instead of backing away amid the government crackdown on sex trafficking, some escort websites are doubling down on their business model and see the Backpage shutdown as an opportunity to expand, said Emily Kennedy, Marinus Analytics' president and co-founder.
"They're really competing with each other for that spot now and so we're seeing frequent activity at this point," she said, adding that as long as the business remains lucrative, "people are going to figure out a way to advertise it."
Of course, unlike Backpage -- which regularly cooperated with law enforcement to help -- these new sites obviously have zero incentive at all to cooperate with law enforcement who are trying to track down actual traffickers. Because, thanks to FOSTA, these sites now need to try to stay away from any attention from law enforcement.
So, to recap, this law designed to stop sex trafficking by criminalizing sites that host ads around prostitution has:
Not stopped those ads (indeed, they've increased)
Enabled greater censorship of the internet.
Enabled wasteful and dangerous lawsuits against internet companies.
Made it more difficult for law enforcement to track down and arrest actual traffickers.
Put many, many people in grave risk of injury and death.
So, where are all the supporters of FOSTA now that basically everything that we critics predicted has come true?
Over the weekend, violence broke out in France, with more than 280,000 protesters fanning out across the country in what is known as the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement. What started as a reaction against a hike in the country’s gasoline tax has metastasized into something uglier. More than 400 people have been injured across some 2,000 rallies, and one person was killed after being run over by a car. In CityLab, Feargus O’Sullivan attempts to describe a rather amorphous protest:
Unusually, the Yellow Vests is a grassroots mass protest movement with no explicit wider political agenda or links to existing groups. Having organized themselves via social media since May (when the movement was sparked by an online petition), the Yellow...
Google has revealed its top picks for the best Android apps of the year.
Among them are five apps Google considers "hidden gems" — apps that are new to the scene and building a fanbase.
The apps range from an augmented reality app to an app for learning Spanish.
Google just revealed its picks for the best apps of the year, and among them are five apps Google says are "hidden gems."
The apps range from an augmented reality app that lets you draw on things you see in the real world, to an app for recording your dreams.
Here's how Google describes them: "These apps are new to the scene and quietly building a fanbase – from newcomers on the brink of getting big to our favorite niche platforms."
These are the five Android apps Google considers hidden gems:
Slowly lets you match with people interested in becoming pen pals. While the app creates the connections, you'll send letters through the mail.
Here's how the company describes the app:
"The app is created for those who yearns for meaningful conversations with people in the era of instant messaging. We hope to connect people around the world at a slower but better pace – one letter at a time."
Just a Line, an app for drawing in augmented reality.
Just a Line lets you create drawings overlaid on things you see in real life.
Here's how the company describes the app:
"Just a Line is an AR Experiment that lets you make simple drawings in augmented reality, then share your creation with a short video. Draw on your own or with a friend, then hit record and share what you made with #justaline."
AT&T will no longer offer prorated credits to those who cancel certain services before the end of their billing period, as spotted by Ars Technica. The change will go into effect on January 14th, 2019, and will apply to DirecTV, U-verse TV, AT&T Phone, AT&T Internet, and Fixed Wireless Internet accounts.
Now, no matter when you cancel, you’ll be charged for the full month and the service will continue until the end of the billing period. AT&T already had this policy in place for its mobile service, but now the company is applying it across the board. “Currently, if you cancel any of these services, we give you prorated credits for the remaining days in your bill period,” AT&T said in a statement. “Starting January 14, 2019, if you...
In aggregate, the organizations around the world that directly or indirectly monetize their APIs form the basis of what the media often calls the “API Economy.” As a subset of the total global economy, the API economy is responsible for the exchange of trillions of dollars of value annually.
Workplace messaging app Slack was only founded nine years ago, but it has exploded in popularity to become a $7 billion company that Microsoft sees as a threat.
As Slack grows, Microsoft has been trying to up its own office messaging game with Microsoft Teams.
"The whole experience over the last few years has been like when you slowly boil a frog," Slack CTO and cofounder Cal Henderson.
Slack, a $7 billion workplace messaging company founded nine years ago, now has the trillion-dollar Microsoft as its biggest competitor. And it's not a one-way street -- Microsoft sees Slack as a threat.
This didn't happen overnight, Slack CTO and cofounder Cal Henderson said Monday at Business Insider's Ignition conference in New York.
"The whole experience over the last few years has been like when you slowly boil a frog," Henderson said onstage. "They don't realize the water is getting hotter and hotter."
Still, having Microsoft as a competitor can be a good thing for Slack.
"It's huge validation when a huge competitor like Microsoft enters the same space and builds a similar product," Henderson said. "They're saying, this is a product space that will continue and be important and enter into the next decade."
Since Slack started in 2009, the company has grown immensely. The first year and a half of the business was just building the product, and Henderson says his role has changed immensely from then to now.
Once you're sick of saying it, people start listening
"Once you build a product that fills the need that people need, then you can turn it into a business," Henderson said. "...My role as a leader largely becomes one of delivering priorities and vision. Once you're really sick of saying that, that's when people really start to hear it."
The key, Henderson says, is to believe that "you're definitely going to be successful."
"You have to believe this, even in the case of evidence like, all the odds are against you, but this time around, you're definitely going to be successful," Henderson said.
Now that companies like Slack, Microsoft and Google are vying for the top spot in office messaging, it shows how enterprises are increasingly working to increase communication. While these apps can increase teamwork, Henderson emphasizes, it won't completely replace in-person communication.
"Face-to-face communication is still so rich," Henderson said. "That's never going to replaced by technology and media. We still get together when we can."
Studies show that standing has many benefits over sitting, including burning more calories and reducing back and neck pain. A good standing desk can help you get out of your chair so you're not sitting all day.
"The rule of thumb is that too much sitting is going to shorten your life," Alan Hedge, a certified ergonomist and professor in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell University, told Insider Reviews. During the workday, you should be doing a mixture of standing, sitting, and moving.
For this guide, we tested and researched several standing desks and standing desk converters. We spoke with experts and peers who use standing desks to get more insight for those desks we didn't personally test.
The desks and converters in this guide meet our criteria for customization options, ease of assembly, price, durability, and more.
The Fully Jarvis Standing Desk provides the right amount of customizations for style, height, and accessories to create an ideal desk for many people.
Height adjustment: 29 to 48.25 inches, plus the 0.75- or 1-inch desktop
Desktop dimensions: Several options, from 30 x 24 inches to 78 x 30 inches
Height range: Up to 6'7"
Weight limit: 350 pounds
Warranty: 10 years on the frame and mechanical parts, 5 years on the desktop
Pros: Customizable design, quick and easy to adjust, customizable height presets, useful add-ons, priced low to start, seven-year warranty
Cons: Slight wobble at upper heights, the additional crossbar can limit leg space
The Fully Jarvis Standing Desk is a great desk with a good height-adjustment range, a smooth and easy-to-use mechanism, and the ability to accommodate different setups. It also comes at a relatively reasonable price with a strong warranty.
The metal frame with the motorized adjustment mechanism comes in several colors and materials and is about as minimal as you'll find. The desktop is available in varying sizes and rectangular or curved options.
You can use your own monitor arms or other accessories, but Fully has its own as well. These options cost extra, and some will require you to drill holes. The only one we deem essential is the programmable memory panel, which lets you save four height presets. This is useful if you share the desk with someone else. The adjustment itself is quick, though there is a high-pitched noise as the motor goes to work. It's not terribly loud, but you won't want to adjust it when you're on a call.
Fully offers an extended range for an extra $20, which enables the desk to go from 24.5 to 50 inches, to accommodate shorter and taller heights. Even with a couple of custom options and extras, the Fully Jarvis comes in cheaper than most comparable alternatives.
The Jarvis has excellent stability. I have two 27-inch monitors on dual gas-powered monitor arms attached to my desk. It goes up and down with ease. I can also lean on the desk without fear, but when extended to higher levels, there is a perceptible wobble. My monitors sway slightly if I bump the desktop.
I've been using the Fully Jarvis for a couple of years now, and the mechanism works every bit as smoothly as it did the first day. I have the older control panel with physical buttons; the newer version is a touch-sensitive OLED, which may not be quite as responsive, according to some reviews. — Simon Hill, contributor
Height adjustment: 25.4 inches to 51 inches, plus a 1-inch top
Desktop dimensions: 53 x 29 inches or 70.5 x 30 inches
Height range: Up to 6'8"
Weight limit: 300 pounds
Warranty: 7 years
Pros: Fast height adjustment, wide height adjustment range, customizable height presets, customizable styles, meets ANSI/BIFMA and UL certification for office use
Cons: A bit unstable at higher heights, limited customization options
The Autonomous SmartDesk 2 Premium has the fastest height adjustment speed, at 2.3 inches per second, and the lowest noise at 45 decibels. In comparison, our top pick, the Fully Jarvis, moves at 1.3 inches per second, with a noise level of 50 decibels. These factors might be important if you plan on adjusting your desk often.
The frame is sturdy and the XL table length can accommodate two 32-inch monitors and two office chairs comfortably.
There aren't as many customization options as the Fully. You can choose from seven top-and-frame combinations. You can also customize your own from a selection of two top lengths, five top materials, and three frame colors.
Each Autonomous standing desk comes with one or two grommets (holes for passing cables through) for a standard or XL top. There's a programmable control panel to easily adjust preset heights for different users. You can also adjust the height by pressing the up and down arrows. The programmable control panel comes included with the base price, something other brands charge extra for. There are plenty of add-on accessories that cost more, such as monitor arms and trays.
Setup took about an hour and a half and required two people. The instructions are clear enough, but I thought watching a video was easier and more efficient.
In testing this over the course of six months and adjusting the height several times a day, I never worried my monitors would fall off the desk, though they would wobble at the highest height. That's on par with the other standing desks in our guide, though. — Jada Wong, contributor
The no-frills Flexispot Standing Desk moves quickly, smoothly, and quietly to reach your desired height. It's an affordable option for people who need a basic standing desk.
Height adjustment: 28 inches to 47.6 inches, plus a 1-inch top
Desktop dimensions: 48 inches by 24 inches
Height range: Up to 6'5"
Weight limit: 154 pounds
Warranty: 2 years
Pros: Straightforward controls, spacious, quiet
Cons: Difficult to assemble
Flexispot's budget-friendly offering is spacious and sturdy, and assembly shouldn't take any longer than an hour. While it lacks the customizations of the other two true standing desks in our guide, it's more than appropriate for anyone who just wants a straightforward standing desk.
It lifts to your desired height at a smooth and quiet rate of one inch per second with a simple two-button push system. The desktop has enough space for two monitors, plus other items like supplies. And the overall desk quality is great.
The biggest drawback of the desk is that the assembly instructions aren't clear and some parts don't fit together as well as they should. Our advice is to take it slow and enlist a friend to help. Once you get past the assembly process, you'll be able to enjoy the standing desk with little to no problem.
Pros: Great stability, good range of height adjustment, separate keyboard tray, easy to use, durable, five-year warranty
Cons: Too heavy to be portable, few customizations
With a versatile and roomy design and a smooth adjustment mechanism, the VertDesk Converter is our favorite standing desk converter. You can set it up on a traditional desk or table to accommodate a laptop, one or two monitors with stands, or a monitor arm for mounting. There's a separate keyboard tray, so your arms and elbows are more ergonomically placed. It's a smart design that's easy to use, and it includes some thoughtful extras.
When adjusting the VertDesk Converter during testing, the transition was smooth, silent, and effortless. There are no fixed positions, so you can adjust to the exact height you want. It does swing toward you a little when you raise it, but not by much.
The VertDesk Converter is not attractive, but there are a few customization options, at least. You can get the standard VertDesk Converter in black or white, with or without a single monitor arm. There's also a larger, heavy-duty version, with an optional single or dual monitor arm.
The standard VertDesk Converter provides enough room and stability for two 24-inch monitors. There is also a single grommet for routing monitor cables. The keyboard tray can be adjusted by turning a knob on the right, then tilting the tray to the position you want. The keyboard tray is a little small, which could be a problem if you use a large mechanical or ergonomic keyboard.
The keyboard level sits 0.75 inches above the desktop when folded down and goes up to 14.75 inches. Depending on the table you're using with the converter, the lowest position might have the monitor sitting too high for shorter people.
This is the most stable converter I've used. It barely moves, even when it's fully extended. Rubber feet prevent it from sliding around, and the metal frame feels very solid. The maximum weight limit is comparatively low, but a dual-monitor setup is no problem. It doesn't budge at all if you lean your weight on it, though that's not recommended. — Simon Hill, contributor
With a minimal design that's easy to adjust and a value-oriented price, theFully Cora Standing Desk Converter is perfect for laptop owners looking to stand while they work.
Height adjustments: 1.3 to 15.7 inches
Desktop dimensions: 31.3 x 22 inches
Weight: 22.5 pounds
Height range: Up to 6'2", with a 29-inch table
Weight limit: 22 pounds
Warranty: 5 years
Pros: Simple design, accessible price, easy to use, stable at different heights, durable
Cons: Too heavy and awkward to be truly portable, not suitable if you're over 6 feet 2 inches, no attachments or add-ons
If you're on a budget, the Fully Cora Standing Desk Converter could be the ideal way to try out the standing desk life without spending too much. It's designed to sit on top of a traditional desk or table and provides a workspace that's suitable for a laptop. It can also accommodate a monitor, separate keyboard, and mouse. The simple design enables it to fit in anywhere, and it can fold down when you don't need it.
The desktop is made of a durable laminate material. The frame is aluminum, with soft pads on the bottom that help it stay in place and prevent it from damaging the furniture it's sitting on.
There isn't much customization on offer here. You just have a choice of a black or white frame. It can fold flat, but I think that the weight and awkwardness of picking it up will deter many people from moving and stowing it. There's also no cable management, and you won't be able to attach a monitor arm to this standing desk converter, so it's best used with laptops.
To adjust the desk height, you simply push in the side levers and lift up or down. It's a smooth and silent mechanism, and there are no pre-set levels so you can adjust it to the exact height you want.
I tested the Fully Cora Standing Desk Converter with my laptop on my dining table, and it felt very stable even when fully extended. The rectangular aluminum frame base is solid, and the padded sections add grip so it doesn't slide easily if bumped. Once I had the height I wanted, I didn't have any qualms about putting drinks and other things on the desktop. The laminate has a durable, water-resistant finish that's easy to wipe clean.
The maximum weight limit is plenty for a laptop and accessories. It's best not to lean your weight on it unless you're trying to lower the desktop, but it held firm when I tried during testing. — Simon Hill, contributor
Uplift V2: While this is a great all-around choice, it was a much more expensive standing desk that offered few benefits to justify the price difference. To compare the specs to our top pick of the standard Fully Jarvis, the Uplift goes higher by a little over an inch and a half — enough to accommodate people as tall as 6 feet 8 inches, approximately. It holds five pounds more weight but is $100 more expensive.
Even if you pay extra for the extended height range of the Fully Jarvis, the Uplift is still $80 more expensive. Given how little that $80 gets you, the Jarvis is a better value for most people. If the Uplift V2 was less expensive, it would've been a strong contender for our best overall pick. But if you want the extra height, weight, and customizations (there are 19 finishes) and have the budget to spare, the Uplift V2 might be a good choice. Read our full review.
What we don't recommend and why
VariDesk Electric Standing Desk: This may be a good choice if you hate assembly as it's very easy to put together. It also offers a good range of height adjustment, customizable height presets, and relatively quiet operation. On the downside, customization options are scant, and it has a 200-pound weight limit, which doesn't come close to our top picks.
VertDesk V3: Offering solid construction, excellent stability, and lots of customization options, the VertDesk V3 came very close to making our list. It's a well-built, reliable standing desk that comes with a good warranty, but it can get expensive as you begin to add extras or jump up sizes. It also has a limited range of height adjustment, and it's tricky to assemble.
Ergo Desktop Kangaroo Pro Junior: This is a smart converter that you can add to a regular desk, and it offers separate keyboard and monitor platforms that are adjusted via the built-in pneumatic spring mechanism. Unfortunately, it's not designed for laptops, the stability leg is an eyesore, and it has a limited weight capacity.
Ikea Idasen: With a distinctive look and great stability, this is a solid standing desk from Ikea, and it comes with a reassuring 10-year warranty. Unfortunately, the weight capacity is very low, the tabletop is particle and fiberboard, and it's slow to adjust with no preset height option on the keypad.
NewHeights Elegante XT: Extremely stable, with top-quality internal electronics and plenty of customization options, there's no denying this is one of the best standing desks around. It offers reliable adjustment with a wide, 24-to51-inch range and has no obvious weaknesses. The problem is simple: It's just too expensive for most people.
Xdesk Terra 2s: This is a very good-looking standing desk, with lots of customization options, including dual-level desktops and beautiful build quality that combines bamboo, oak, or glass desktops with an aluminum frame. Sadly, it's way beyond most people's budget and doesn't do quite enough to justify the premium.
Our testing methodology
There are a lot of things to consider when assessing a standing desk or a standing desk converter. Where possible, I will test out the standing desk in everyday use, changing from standing to sitting positions several times throughout the day. For standing desks I've been unable to test myself, I talked to a colleague or another trusted source with hands-on experience living with that desk to find out what the pros and cons are.
Here are the main criteria during our tests of the best standing desk:
Height adjustment: I'm interested in the full range of height adjustment for each standing desk, how well the mechanism works to raise and lower, how quickly and easily you can adjust it, and how noisy it is. A good standing desk will offer presets for different heights and an easy mechanism for adjustment.
Charts from BOTD and Autonomous helped us figure out recommended general heights for the desks' adjustment ranges, and we cross-referenced them with calculators from The Human Solution and OmniCalculator. The heights for people that we mention in this guide are approximate.
Customization: Any piece of furniture must fit in with its environment, so the materials and desktop finishes are important. It's also important to look at how big each standing desk is in terms of the overall footprint and the available desktop space. Does it offer a lot of customization options, add-ons, and accessories? And what kind of extras, like cable management, drawers, and monitor arms, can you choose from?
Stability and durability: A wobbly desk can be very distracting, and stability is often a problem when standing desks are adjusted to the limits of their height. I look at how the desk copes with bumps or being leaned upon and how being fully loaded impacts stability. The stated durability for long-term use and the warranty that's being offered is also taken into consideration. Other important factors include the weight limit and the returns policy.
Setup: Some assembly is usually required, but you don't want to spend all day building your standing desk. I look at how quickly you can have it set up out of the box, if you need help to build it, and whether there are any potential issues with setup.
Each person is different. If you aren't sure if a standing desk is right for you, check with a doctor first to see if you'd benefit from one.
Is standing at your desk healthier than sitting?
A standing desk alone isn't going to improve your occupational health — you can't just simply substitute standing for sitting. According to Alan Hedge at Cornell University, people tend to hunch over their desks after just 10 minutes at a standing desk, even if they started with a good posture.
"You're not really getting a lot of benefit from doing that," Hedge said.
For the biggest impact, you'll want to mix sitting, standing, and moving throughout the day. "Mixing things up reduces any negative effects [of sitting or standing] in terms of musculoskeletal discomfort, your level of alertness, or productivity," Hedge said.
How long should you stand at a standing desk?
Hedge suggests a 20-8-2 pattern based on his research and real-world testing — sit for 20 minutes, stand for 8, stretch or walk around for 2, and repeat. These numbers aren't absolute, but what's most important is not to stay in one position for too long, Hedge said.
Once you're settled with your standing desk, you may want to pair it with a standing desk mat to encourage more movement and provide cushioning.
Are standing desks worth it?
Since buying a standing desk a few years ago, I feel that changing positions and moving more throughout the day boosts my productivity, but I've also experienced far fewer back problems.
We think they're worth the investment if you're not sure when you'll be returning to the office. Due to frequent policy changes in the ongoing pandemic, it's worth investing in a comfortable and productive home office set-up now.
What Does Machine Learning Have to do with MOS Scores?
Human subjectivity in MOS calculations doesn’t hold water when it comes to heterogeneous environments. That’s where machine learning comes to play.
MOS score. That Mean Opinion Score. You get a voice call. You want to know its quality. So you use MOS. It gives you a number between 1 to 5. 1 being bad. 5 being great. If you get 3 or above – be happy and move on they say. If you get 4.something – you’re a god. If you don’t agree with my classification of the numbers then read on – there’s probably a good reason why we don’t agree.
Anyways, if you go down the rabbit hole of how MOS gets calculated, you’ll find out that there isn’t a single way of doing that. You can go now and define your own MOS scoring algorithm if you want, based on tests you’ll conduct. From that same Wikipedia link about MOS:
“a MOS value should only be reported if the context in which the values have been collected in is known and reported as well”
Phrased differently – MOS is highly subjective and you can’t really use MOS scores produced in one device to MOS scores produced in another device.
This is why I really truly hate delving into these globally-accepted-but-somewhat-useless quality metrics (and why we ended up with a slightly different scoring system in testRTC for our monitoring and testing services).
What Goes into MOS Scoring Calculations?
Easy. everything.
Or at least everything you have access to:
RTCP sender and receiver reports
Received RTP packets
Knowing the voice codec used
Actually decoding the audio stream and “listening” to it
Understanding what the end user is really going to hear
Here are a few examples:
Physical desk phone
A physical IP phone has access to EVERYTHING. All the software and all the hardware.
It even knows how the headset works and what quality it offers.
Theoretically then, it can provide an accurate MOS that factors in everything there is.
Android native app
Android apps have access to all the software. Almost. Mostly.
The low level device drivers are as known as the hardware that app is running on. The only problem is the number of potential devices. A few years back, these types of visualizations of the Android fragmentation were in fashion:
This one’s from OpenSignal. Different devices have different location for their mics and speakers. They use different device drivers. Have different “flavors” of the Android OS. They act differently and offer slightly different voice quality as well.
What does measuring what an objective person think about the quality of a played audio stream mean in such a case? Do we need to test this objectivity per device?
Media server who routes voice around
Then we have the media server. It sends and receives voice. It might not even decode the audio (it could, and sometimes it does).
How does it measure MOS? What would it decide is good audio versus bad audio? It has access to all packets… so it can still be rather accurate. Maybe.
WebRTC inside a browser
And we have WebRTC. Can’t write an article without mentioning WebRTC.
Here though, it is quite the challenge.
How would a browser measure MOS of its audio? It can probably do a good a job as an Android device. But for some reason, MOS scoring isn’t part of the WebRTC bundle. At least not today.
So how would a JavaScript web application calculate MOS of the incoming audio? By using getStats? That has access to an abstraction on top of the RTCP sender and receiver reports. It correlates to these to some extent. But that’s about as much as it has at its disposal for such calculations, which doesn’t amount for much.
Back to MOS calculations
But what does MOS really calculate?
The quality of the voice I hear in a session?
Maybe the quality of voice the network is capable of supporting?
Or is it the quality of the software stack I use?
What about the issue with voice quality when the person I am speaking with is just standing in a crowded room? Would that affect MOS? Does the actual original content need to be factored into MOS scores to begin with?
I’ll leave these questions opened, but say that in my opinion, whatever quality measurement you look at, it should offer some information to the things that are in your power to change – at least as a developer or product owner. Otherwise, what can you do with that information?
What Affects Audio Quality in Communications?
Everything.
The quality of the microphone used to record the original audio (though this usually gets neglected in discussions around MOS)
The location of the person speaking – a crowded room, airport, next to a working vacuum cleaner – or in a silent recording studio
The voice codec used, its configuration and the level and aggressiveness of the compression it is using for this session
The network conditions – in the last mile from both the sender and the receiver, of every hop along the way and the routers and servers it has to pass through
The media servers – and every possible aspect about them
The receiver’s software. Especially the jitter buffer and packet loss concealment algorithms
The sender’s acoustic echo cancellation implementation quality
The receiver’s voice decoder implementation
The receiver’s speakers
I am sure I missed a bullet or two. Feel free to add them in the comments.
The thing is, there’s a lot of things that end up affecting audio quality when you make the decision of sending it through a network.
Is Machine Learning Killing MOS Scoring or Saving It?
So what did we have so far?
A scoring system – MOS, which is subjective and inaccurate. It is also widely used and accepted as THE quality measure of voice calls. Most of the time, it looks at network traffic to decide on the quality level.
At Kranky Geek 2018, one of the interesting sessions for me was the one given by Curtis Peterson of RingCentral:
He discussed that problem of having different MOS scores for the SAME call in each device the call passes through in the network. The solution was to use machine learning to normalize MOS scoring across the network.
This got me thinking further.
Let’s say one of these devices provides machine learning based noise suppression. It is SO good, that it is even employed on the incoming stream, as opposed to placing it traditionally on the outgoing stream. This means that after passing through the network, and getting scored for MOS by some entity along the way, the device magically “improves” the audio simply by reducing the noise.
Does that help or hurt MOS scoring? Or at least the ability to provide something that can be easily normalized or referenced.
Machine Learning and Media Optimization
We’ve had at Kranky Geek multiple vendors touching the domain of media optimizations. This year, their focus was mainly in video – both Agora.io and Houseparty gave eye opening presentations on using machine learning to improve the quality of a received video stream. Each taking a different approach to tackling the problem.
While researching for the AI in RTC report, we’ve seen other types of optimizations being employed. The idea is always to “silently” improve the quality of the call, offering a better experience to the users.
The next couple of years, we will see this area growing fast, with proprietary algorithms and techniques based on machine learning are added to the arms race of the various communication vendors.
Interested in more of these sessions around real time communications and how companies solve problems with it today?
Verizon and Samsung have announced plans to release a 5G smartphone in the first half of 2019, representing what will be one of the most high-profile US debuts for the new mobile networking standard. There aren’t any details yet on the device itself, but Bloomberg previously reported that the two companies were in talks to bring a 5G version of the upcoming Galaxy S10 to the US.
Samsung and Verizon will be attending Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Technology Summit in Hawaii this week, and will have a proof-of-concept phone using Qualcomm’s X50 5G modem on hand. Separately, Samsung is developing its own 5G modem, the Exynos 5100, which will presumably be used for international 5G variants of the Galaxy S10 based around Exynos processors. Samsung...
A toxic combination of slow wage growth and skyrocketing rents has put housing out of reach for a greater number of people. Daniel Olguin, 28, works on his computer in the front of his van, while his wife, Mary, 26, checks on their almost-2-year-old child in the back. The couple, who have a band called […]
AWS, once a nice little side hustle for Amazon’s e-commerce business, has grown over the years into a behemoth that’s on a $27 billion run rate, one that’s still growing at around 45 percent a year. That’s a highly successful business by any measure, but as I listened to AWS executives last week at their AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, I didn’t hear a group that was content to sit still and let the growth speak for itself. Instead, I heard one that wants to dominate every area of enterprise computing.
Last year, AWS announced an astonishing 1,400 new features, and word was that they are on pace to exceed that this year. They get a lot of credit for not resting on their laurels and continuing to innovate like a much smaller company, even as they own gobs of market share.
The feature inflation probably can’t go on forever, but for now at least they show no signs of slowing down, as the announcements came at a furious pace once again. While they will tell you that every decision they make is about meeting customer needs, it’s clear that some of these announcements were also about answering competitive pressure.
Going after competitors harder
In the past, AWS kept criticism of competitors to a minimum, maybe giving a little jab to Oracle, but this year they seemed to ratchet it up. In their keynotes, AWS CEO Andy Jassy and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels continually flogged Oracle, a competitor in the database market, but hardly a major threat as a cloud company right now.
They went right for Oracle’s market, though with a new on-prem system called AWS Outposts, which allows AWS customers to operate on prem and in the cloud using a single AWS control panel or one from VMware if customers prefer. That is the kind of cloud vision that Larry Ellison might have put forth, but Jassy didn’t necessarily see it as going after Oracle or anyone else. “I don’t see Outposts as a shot across the bow of anyone. If you look at what we are doing, it’s very much informed by customers,” he told reporters at a press conference last week.
AWS CEO Andy Jassy at a press conference at AWS re:Invent last week
Yet AWS didn’t reserve its criticism just for Oracle. It also took aim at Microsoft, taking jabs at Microsoft SQL Server, and also announcing Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, a tool specifically designed to move Microsoft files to the AWS cloud.
Google wasn’t spared either when launching Inferentia and Elastic Inference, which put Google on notice that AWS wasn’t going to yield the AI market to Google’s TPU infrastructure. All of these tools, and much more, were about more than answering customer demand, they were about putting the competition on notice in every aspect of enterprise computing.
Upward growth trajectory
The cloud market is continuing to grow at a dramatic pace, and as market leader, AWS has been able to take advantage of its market dominance to this point. Jassy, echoing Google’s Diane Greene and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, says the industry as a whole is still really early in terms of cloud adoption, which means there is still plenty of market share left to capture.
“I think we’re just in the early stages of enterprise and public sector adoption in the U.S. Outside the U.S. I would say we are 12-36 months behind. So there are a lot of mainstream enterprises that are just now starting to plan their approach to the cloud,” Jassy said.
Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, says that AWS has been using its market position to keep expanding into different areas. “AWS has the scale right now to do many things others cannot, particularly lesser players like Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud. They are trying to make a point with the thousands of new products and features they bring out. This serves as a disincentive longer-term for other players, and I believe will result in a shakeout,” he told TechCrunch.
As for the frenetic pace of innovation, Moorhead believes it can’t go on forever. “To me, the question is, when do we reach a point where 95 percent of the needs are met, and the innovation rate isn’t required. Every market, literally every market, reaches a point where this happens, so it’s not a matter of if but when,” he said.
Certainly areas like the AWS Ground Station announcement showed that AWS was willing to expand beyond the conventional confines of enterprise computing and into outer space to help companies process satellite data. This ability to think beyond traditional uses of cloud computing resources shows a level of creativity that suggests there could be other untapped markets for AWS that we haven’t yet imagined.
As AWS moves into more areas of the enterprise computing stack, whether on premises or in the cloud, they are showing their desire to dominate every aspect of the enterprise computing world. Last week they demonstrated that there is no area that they are willing to surrender to anyone.
AWS, once a nice little side hustle for Amazon’s e-commerce business, has grown over the years into a behemoth that’s on a $27 billion run rate, one that’s still growing at around 45 percent a year. That’s a highly successful business by any measure, but as I listened to AWS executives last week at their AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, I didn’t hear a group that was content to sit still and let the growth speak for itself. Instead, I heard one that wants to dominate every area of enterprise computing.
Last year, AWS announced an astonishing 1,400 new features, and word was that they are on pace to exceed that this year. They get a lot of credit for not resting on their laurels and continuing to innovate like a much smaller company, even as they own gobs of market share.
The feature inflation probably can’t go on forever, but for now at least they show no signs of slowing down, as the announcements came at a furious pace once again. While they will tell you that every decision they make is about meeting customer needs, it’s clear that some of these announcements were also about answering competitive pressure.
Going after competitors harder
In the past, AWS kept criticism of competitors to a minimum, maybe giving a little jab to Oracle, but this year they seemed to ratchet it up. In their keynotes, AWS CEO Andy Jassy and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels continually flogged Oracle, a competitor in the database market, but hardly a major threat as a cloud company right now.
They went right for Oracle’s market, though with a new on-prem system called AWS Outposts, which allows AWS customers to operate on prem and in the cloud using a single AWS control panel or one from VMware if customers prefer. That is the kind of cloud vision that Larry Ellison might have put forth, but Jassy didn’t necessarily see it as going after Oracle or anyone else. “I don’t see Outposts as a shot across the bow of anyone. If you look at what we are doing, it’s very much informed by customers,” he told reporters at a press conference last week.
AWS CEO Andy Jassy at a press conference at AWS re:Invent last week
Yet AWS didn’t reserve its criticism just for Oracle. It also took aim at Microsoft, taking jabs at Microsoft SQL Server, and also announcing Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, a tool specifically designed to move Microsoft files to the AWS cloud.
Google wasn’t spared either when launching Inferentia and Elastic Inference, which put Google on notice that AWS wasn’t going to yield the AI market to Google’s TPU infrastructure. All of these tools, and much more, were about more than answering customer demand, they were about putting the competition on notice in every aspect of enterprise computing.
Upward growth trajectory
The cloud market is continuing to grow at a dramatic pace, and as market leader, AWS has been able to take advantage of its market dominance to this point. Jassy, echoing Google’s Diane Greene and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, says the industry as a whole is still really early in terms of cloud adoption, which means there is still plenty of market share left to capture.
“I think we’re just in the early stages of enterprise and public sector adoption in the U.S. Outside the U.S. I would say we are 12-36 months behind. So there are a lot of mainstream enterprises that are just now starting to plan their approach to the cloud,” Jassy said.
Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, says that AWS has been using its market position to keep expanding into different areas. “AWS has the scale right now to do many things others cannot, particularly lesser players like Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud. They are trying to make a point with the thousands of new products and features they bring out. This serves as a disincentive longer-term for other players, and I believe will result in a shakeout,” he told TechCrunch.
As for the frenetic pace of innovation, Moorhead believes it can’t go on forever. “To me, the question is, when do we reach a point where 95 percent of the needs are met, and the innovation rate isn’t required. Every market, literally every market, reaches a point where this happens, so it’s not a matter of if but when,” he said.
Certainly areas like the AWS Ground Station announcement showed that AWS was willing to expand beyond the conventional confines of enterprise computing and into outer space to help companies process satellite data. This ability to think beyond traditional uses of cloud computing resources shows a level of creativity that suggests there could be other untapped markets for AWS that we haven’t yet imagined.
As AWS moves into more areas of the enterprise computing stack, whether on premises or in the cloud, they are showing their desire to dominate every aspect of the enterprise computing world. Last week they demonstrated that there is no area that they are willing to surrender to anyone.
Buzzfeed News obtained a copy of the report that Facebook commissioned from consulting firm Definers Public Affairs, which attempts to link efforts by the “Freedom from Facebook” campaign to liberal philanthropist George Soros.
The May 2018 report is one of at least two files that the consulting firm produced for Facebook. It attempts to make the case that Soros funded the coalition through three very broad points. First, it highlights a “coalition of progressive groups” that make up the “Freedom from Facebook” campaign, and that it has a six-figure ad budget to advance its message. Secondly, it notes that some of that coalition’s members were backed by Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and finally, points to Soros’ statements criticizing...
Facebook’s video-on-demand service Facebook Watch is getting a trio of familiar classics: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. The social network is teaming up with 20th Century Fox to bring every episode of the shows to Facebook starting today.
The shows aren’t exclusive to Facebook — you can purchase episodes from a variety of places, and the episodes can be streamed on Hulu — but earlier this week, Facebook rolled out its Watch Party feature to everyone, so groups of people can watch something at the same time.
Facebook wants to replicate those times you watch TV with your friends
Facebook’s head of video Fidji Simo says in a blog post that she thinks a fan-favorite show like Buffy or Firefly will be a good way for “avid...
It's no secret that Google Chrome is often the culprit behind a slow computer, even if your computer is relatively new.
Open enough tabs in Chrome and you can easily eat up all your RAM, which doesn't leave much for other things you might be doing on your computer. Extensions can use up your computer's processor, too.
One way to check whether Chrome is to blame for slowing down a perfectly good computer is to check your computer's processes. On Macs, that means checking Activity Monitor. For Windows PCs, check the Task Manager.
If you're seeing that Chrome is hogging a bunch of your resources like RAM and CPU, you could go one step further and check exactly which tabs, websites, and extensions are causing the biggest slowdowns on your computer.
In Chrome, click the button with the three dots toward the top right of the Chrome window > More tools > Task Manager.
The Chrome Task Manager shows you exactly what is using up your computer's RAM and CPU, the two biggest parts that make your computer work smoothly.
If your computer gets hot and its fans are spinning audibly fast, it could mean something is using up your CPU resources.
Click on the "CPU" tab at the top to organize the list in order of CPU use. Here, a 4K YouTube video is clearly using up a ton of CPU power. Normal 1080p HD videos don't use up nearly as much CPU power.
You can stop and close an unused Chrome tab that is working your CPU too hard by hitting "End Process" at the bottom right of the Chrome Task Manager.
Chrome extensions can also hog your CPU. You can stop an extension the same way you can stop a Chrome tab. But it's also a good idea to go through your Chrome extensions and disable or remove those you don't use by heading to the Chrome settings > More Tools > Extensions.
The worst-case scenario is if some kind of malware was installed in Chrome on your computer and is using up a bunch of your CPU power. If that's the case, you'll need to use anti-malware software. Check out anti-malware software with the highest ratings from PCMag.
On November 1, Amazon switched off its largest Oracle database and moved over to its own data warehouse, Redshift.
Amazon CTO Werner Vogels said this was his happiest day at Amazon this year.
Amazon plans to move completely off of Oracle's databases, but Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison pointed out that much of Amazon still relies on Oracle's software.
For Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, his best day of this year was November 1.
"This was the moment when we switched off one of the world's largest, if not the largest, Oracle data warehouse and moved it over to Redshift," Vogels said on stage Thursday at Amazon Web Services' annual conference.
Redshift is Amazon's own data warehouse. CNBC previously reported that Amazon plans to completely move off of Oracle's databases by 2020.
Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison scoffed at the idea, as Amazon has spent millions on Oracle databases this year. "It's kind of embarrassing when Amazon uses Oracle but they want you to use Aurora and Redshift," Ellison said. "They've had 10 years to get off Oracle, and they're still on Oracle."
In early November, AWS CEO Andy Jassy tweeted that Amazon's Consumer business turned off its Oracle data warehouse, and the plan is to have 88 percent of Oracle databases moved to Amazon's own.
In latest episode of "uh huh, keep talkin' Larry," Amazon’s Consumer business turned off its Oracle data warehouse Nov 1 and moved to Redshift. By end of 2018, they'll have 88% of their Oracle DBs (and 97% of critical system DBs) moved to Aurora and DynamoDB. #DBFreedom
Sennheiser's HeadSetup headphone software for PC and Macs contains a vulnerability that could allow hackers to show users up fake websites that look perfectly legitimate.
Sennheiser has issued an update which every HeadSetup user, past or present, should download and install now.
Sennheiser also offers alternative steps to remove the vulnerability for PC and Mac, linked below.
Sennheiser headphones are high-end, costing in the hundreds — and even thousands — of dollars.
If you currently use —or have ever used — Sennheiser's HeadSetup software, which is designed to complement some of the company's headphones on a PC or Mac, you may be vulnerable to hackers, according to a report from the Secorvo Security Consulting firm. The report was first spotted by Ars Technica.
Essentially, the vulnerability in the HeadSetup software allows hackers to show a "spoofed" website, such that a fake site can look real, including the "https:" at the beginning of the website's URL address, as well as the lock icon. Normally, the lack of those things is a good marker that a site is a fraud; the flaw could help fool even savvy users.
Any information you typed into a spoofed website could be obtained by the hackers who put it up, including login information, passwords, credit card information, personal information, and anything else you'd type into a legitimate website for whatever reason.
Even those who have uninstalled the software for whatever reason should download the update and install it, as the vulnerability lingers even after uninstalling the version of the software that contained the vulnerability.
If installing an update isn't an option for whatever reason, Sennheiser has also provided steps for both PC and Mac.
Microsoft Office is getting a new set of icons, the company announced on its Medium blog.
All your favorite tools — Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Skype — are getting fresh icon designs for the first time since 2013. You can check them out below.
The redesign reflects Office's move toward a cloud-based suite of tools that are accessible from a multitude of devices and platforms.
For students and desk workers all over the world, the Microsoft Office app icons are, ahem, iconic.
But now, every single one of those icons is getting a refresh across all platforms "in the coming months," Microsoft said in a blog post — their first new look in five years.
All of those well-known logos will be getting upgrades, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and even Skype. The color palettes for each one of the icons will, fortunately, remain the same, with some slightly updated hues that are brighter and more modern-looking.
Without further ado, here's the new lineup, as compared with the 2013-era icons:
The idea, Microsoft said, is to reflect the change that Office is now less of a software suite, and more of a set of cloud-based services you use from a variety of devices.
"Our design solution was to decouple the letter and the symbol in the icons, essentially creating two panels (one for the letter and one for the symbol) that we can pair or separate," Jon Friedman, Microsoft Office's design head, said in the blog post.
Microsoft Office has come a long way since its first software bundle was released in 1990, featuring just three apps: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This is the longest Microsoft has gone without updating its Office icons since 2003.
Three years after it first launched, Google is making its cell service a little more official today. Project Fi is graduating into something a little more ambitious and getting a new name in the process: Google Fi. But the bigger news is that it’s also going to support more phones — a lot of phones — including the iPhone and “the majority of Android devices.”
This isn’t the first time that Fi has worked with Apple devices; you could get a data-only SIM for iPads as secondary devices before. And technically, a Fi SIM has always worked in an iPhone, provided you adjusted the data settings on the phone. But now Google is supporting iPhones directly for new customers, though it says that the support is in beta and requires “a few extra steps...
