Q: I’m currently using a Samsung Galaxy S4 from 2013, so needless to say, I’ve had it a while. It can still do everything I want it to, but it runs Android 5.0.1, and I’m not sure I’m getting the security updates I should.

I am reluctant to spend £600+ on a new high-end handset or tie myself into an expensive two-year contract, because I don’t think I need the horsepower, but I am concerned about the security of my aging S4.

Is it worth me trading in my outdated flagship phone for a new budget model like the Moto G4, or if I’m upgrading for security, is a budget phone a false economy?

Laundry folding robots are coming. One version, Laundroid, builds on the idea of a laundroid hive mind: the units get smarter, collectively, by sharing knowledge about folding:

Laundroid has an insert box and four smaller drawers. Dump in up to 30 items of clean clothing and it goes to work.

“The robot arm picks up the clothes one by one and then artificial intelligence recognizes if this is a T-shirt or pants or pajamas,” Shin Sakane, Laundroid’s inventor, said in a Skype interview from Japan.

The biggest technical challenge for both Laundroid and FoldiMate is for the machine to know what it is holding. Because clothes are shapeless in a pile, and the robot arm will grab each item sometimes by the edge, sometimes by a midpoint, “there will be no times that a garment will be picked up in the same shape,” Guy Hayazaki, a Laundroid spokesman, said.

The Laundroids will work as a team. The concept is that, using a Wi-Fi connection, the networked robot brain will connect to a server that is constantly learning best folding methods for each type of clothing by downloading data from all the other Laundroids. This hive mind promises to be able to differentiate between T-shirts, overalls and rompers, fold each according to its needs and sort them into separate piles for members of the household.

Slowly. In the first-generation Laundroid, image analysis of each garment takes up to 10 minutes; folding only a minute or two. But that adds up to nearly a full workday for a full load.

In my iOS 11 wish list for iPad and concept video, I focused on system-wide drag & drop – a feature that could reshape how iPad users move documents and data between apps. Readdle, makers of the popular Spark and PDF Expert, aren't waiting for Apple to add a native drag & drop framework to iOS, though. Today, in addition to the release of Documents 6, the company is updating most of their iPad apps with a custom drag & drop feature that simplifies the transfer of documents between two apps in Split View. I've been testing this functionality for the past week, and, even if it's not system-wide iOS drag & drop, it's been enough to pull me back into Spark and PDF Expert – at least for now.

Since the launch of iOS 9, I've seen a few third-party libraries attempt to bring drag & drop to iPad apps, but all of them failed to gain widespread adoption. As I outlined in last week's story, a native drag & drop feature would have to be an official framework created by Apple and opened up to third-party developers with an API.

With their iPad apps, Readdle is taking a limited, but perhaps more effective approach: drag & drop works for certain file types and specific drop targets in the UI, and it's only supported in Split View and with Spark, Documents, PDF Expert, and Scanner Pro. Don't expect to, say, drop an image from Safari into Spark, or a PDF from Slack into PDF Expert. Readdle has built their own proprietary flavor of drag & drop that only works with their apps in Split View.

Despite its custom nature, drag & drop works as advertised and it's a fantastic complement to Readdle's iPad apps that reinforces how needed an official Apple version is. Readdle's drag & drop feels natural: if you need to add multiple attachments to an email in Spark, you can grab them in Documents and drop them into the body of the message. Want to save a PDF from Spark into PDF Expert? Just hold it, drag it into the app in Split View, and the file is saved. No need to open and close the iOS document picker multiple times, no need to upload anything: with drag & drop, you can save several steps typically involved with managing documents in a way that makes sense on the iPad's large screen.

Readdle has been able to pull this off by adopting constraints in terms of the kind of content that can be grabbed and where in the interface it can be dropped. All of their apps offer drop areas clearly visualized in the UI: in Spark, the '+' button in the bottom right corner transforms into a larger blue circle when you're holding a document, indicating that you can drop the file there to create a new message with an attachment.

If you're already writing a message and you start dragging a file, you'll get a drop target at the bottom of the message composer instead, which allows you to attach multiple files to the same email (something that is either cumbersome or impossible in other email clients for iPad).

I recently had to send a handful of PDFs to my accountant and, for the first time in years, I didn't have to collect them in a single .zip archive beforehand; I just put PDF Expert and Spark in Split View and dropped multiple files in the email, which took less than 10 seconds. It was glorious in its obviousness.

Readdle's drag & drop is even more impressive when you want to save attachments from Spark into PDF Expert or Documents. Not only can you grab an email attachment and drop it in the main UI of the other app – you can release it on top of an existing folder to save it in that location, or you can drop it on another file to create a folder.

There's even support for spring-loading: while holding a file, you can hover over a location in PDF Expert's sidebar (such as iCloud or Synced Folders) and wait a second until the destination loads and lets you continue navigation before dropping the file. To navigate back to the root level, you can either spring-load another item in the sidebar or hold the file on top of the 'Back' button in the upper left corner.

As you can imagine, I'm a fan of what Readdle has built; it matches the kind of drag & drop system I envisioned for iOS 11, and it fully supports multitouch in that grabbing an item from one app preserves the ability to control the interface in the other. There are other behaviors I would have liked to see and which are not supported right now (dragging a message from Spark to print an email to PDF; dropping a text selection in another app), but, overall, Readdle has replicated (albeit at a smaller scale) the experience we should have in all iPad apps in the future.

Readdle has been quite clever from a technical standpoint, too. Under the hood, two apps in Split View create a local web server that makes them aware of each other. This two-way communication allows them to share documents by simulating drag & drop in the UI and relying on various URL scheme and clipboard-based workarounds. Readdle did an admirable job in making their drag & drop feel like part of iOS, but, if you look closer, the fact that a file can't float on top of the Split View divider (it just transitions from app to app at the edges of the UI) may break the illusion. For most people using Spark and PDF Expert in Split View, though, the apps' drag & drop feature will look like a native iOS enhancement.

Documents 6's new contextual menu.

In addition to bringing drag & drop to their iPad apps, Readdle is also releasing version 6.0 of their popular Documents file manager later today (a free update for existing users). I've been using Documents as a de-facto lightweight Finder on iOS for years now, and it's good to see that Readdle is continuing to develop the app as a central hub that can integrate with iCloud Drive and other services.

Documents 6 iterates upon the app's solid foundation without altering its core structure or functionality. The new version supports drag & drop with Readdle apps, which, like in PDF Expert, lets you drop files into other apps in Split View as well as receive files from apps and save them in specific locations.

Readdle has also adopted a contextual menu for individual files that can be opened by pressing a three-dot 'More' button. The combination of long-press for drag & drop and the contextual menu works well, and it simplifies access to options that were perhaps too hidden in the old version of the app.¹

Documents 6 brings a redesigned media player for audio files, too. The 'Now Playing' screen now lives in a sidebar on the iPad, with a list of audio files queued up on the right; the player can be minimized if you want to continue listening while doing something else in the app. I've been using Documents to preview AppStories episodes before release, so I appreciate the more flexible audio player (which also resizes properly in Split View now).

Documents' new audio player in full-screen and minimized modes.

There are other minor changes in Documents 6 but, as you might expect, drag & drop is the marquee addition. Being able to keep a Finder-like app in Split View when processing email or scanning PDFs and having a way to easily move documents back and forth across apps is the kind of workflow every iPad user deserves.

The convenience of drag & drop in Readdle's apps is predicated on the assumption that most of your work happens inside the Readdle ecosystem. And given the popularity of Readdle's iPad apps, there's a good chance that you're already using Spark and PDF Expert to communicate with others, edit PDFs, and exchange documents. But even if you're not a Readdle user, I believe this new drag & drop feature can lure you back into their suite of apps and convince you to stay until Apple offers a native, system-wide alternative on iOS.

Out of curiosity (and to properly assess the utility of drag & drop), I switched to Spark, Documents, and PDF Expert full-time for the past week. To my surprise, I noticed that I spend a lot of time dealing with attachments, converting documents to PDF, and saving those PDFs to Dropbox. Drag & drop between these apps has saved me several minutes I would have otherwise wasted dealing with extensions and document providers.

As I argued last week, it just makes more sense on the iPad to grab something and drop it elsewhere on screen. The folks at Readdle understand that inter-app communication on iPad can go beyond the share sheet, and they've shipped a polished, intuitive drag & drop functionality that now makes other iPad apps feel one-dimensional and static.

Readdle's take on drag & drop is the strongest case in favor of an official, Apple-made alternative yet. I just hope that this custom implementation will feel obsolete in two weeks.

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Club MacStories will help you discover the best apps for your devices and get the most out of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Plus, it’s made in Italy.

On Union St. yesterday afternoon.

Click to enlarge

Building a new ecosystem of digital services, together

We’ve reached a worrying point in the evolution of the internet: more and more of our everyday digital activities — from talking to friends to ordering food to sharing photos — are controlled by fewer and fewer companies. The biggest companies use their scale to amass advertising dollars and give everything else away for free, making it nearly impossible for smaller competitors to find sustainable business models. Even if a potential competitor does break through, these companies turn to a copy-and-crush strategy, using their greater resources and user bases to stop anyone who poses a threat. At Kik, we’ve faced this problem first hand.

For now, this dynamic is arguably okay: there’s still just enough competition to keep the giants honest. But that won’t last forever. As the giants continue to consolidate power, consumers will have fewer choices and face higher costs to switch to other services. These forces could lead to a future of less choice, less innovation, and ultimately, less freedom. We need a better solution.

Obviously, such a solution is not going to come from the incumbents, who stand to gain nothing from ceding their dominant positions. So we at Kik have decided to propose a new ecosystem of digital services that will be truly open and decentralized, and which starts with a new cryptocurrency.

Today, we are announcing Kin, a cryptocurrency built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. (Read our Kin whitepaper here.) By integrating Kin into our chat app Kik, we hope to spark the creation of a new ecosystem of digital services that is open, sustainable, and compelling. It will be an ecosystem in which developers link arms to compete with the giants together, building a better future for society while also making money.

Once we have established the new cryptocurrency, we will create demand for it by encouraging people to earn and spend Kin within Kik, which is used by millions of people every day. Since 2014, we have experimented with a digital currency called Kik Points, which allowed people to earn points by watching ads. They could then spend those points on digital items, such as stickers or emoji. Despite its intentional limitations, Kik Points saw a transaction volume three times higher than Bitcoin’s. As the default currency inside Kik, Kin will go far beyond Kik Points by allowing people to participate in an economy based on buying and selling stickers, hosting and joining group chats, creating and using bots, and much more.

While Kik will initially be the only service using Kin, our ultimate vision is that our chat app will be just one of thousands of services in the Kin ecosystem. To maximize the chances of success, we’re dedicating the majority of Kin to a rewards system that will provide a financial incentive for developers. Each day, using an algorithm that reflects each service’s contribution, the Kin Rewards Engine will divvy up a set amount of Kin among all the services in the ecosystem. We think this mechanism will provide a powerful way to compensate developers and creators without relying on advertising. In time, it can create a network effect: as the daily reward increases in value, more developers will join, there will be more Kin transactions, Kin itself will become more valuable, and in turn the daily reward will be worth even more. This will lead to a virtuous cycle in which the ecosystem grows in both size and quality.

To oversee this entire ecosystem and make sure that it is fair and democratic, we are creating the Kin Foundation. The foundation, which will be independent and not for profit, will operate the Kin Rewards Engine and manage the key operational aspects of the community, including transaction services and a decentralized user identity. Its presence will provide assurance that people can participate in a Kin economy that is not — and can never be — monopolized by a giant company. It’s like Mozilla for the mobile era, but with payments built in.

We believe this path leads to a future that is compelling for consumers, and open and fair for developers. It’s a path that provides an alternative to an otherwise inevitable future in which a tiny number of companies control all of the digital services that are most important in our lives.

To all developers out there who are competing in a world increasingly controlled by giants, we invite you to check out Kin at kin.kik.com.

Let’s build a global community, together.

Announcing Kin, a Cryptocurrency for an Open Future was originally published in Kin Foundation on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s considered to be possibly the city’s worst park: the Yaletown at Nelson and Mainland – here.

Intellectually one can guess the rationale: a contrast to the traditional soft spaces that dominate our Garden City – an urban, more European design. But if the jury is the number of people (and dogs) who use the space, its emptiness is an indictment.

However, over time, nature cannot be denied.

The latest version of Bear was released today for iOS and macOS, bringing several notable enhancements to the Markdown note-taking app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Sketching

For the first time, Bear offers support for sketching on iOS. Using a finger or stylus you can create sketches with the app's pencil and marker tools. Each tool comes in three sizes and a variety of colors.

Bear handles sketches in a very similar way to Apple Notes: tapping the sketch button will load a separate canvas to draw on, and when you're done sketching, the canvas is added to the body of your note as an image. While it would have been nice to see a freeform implementation like that of Notability, where sketches act as annotations to text, that would have been understandably more difficult to implement.

There are a couple main drawbacks to the sketching in Bear. One is that the Apple Pencil is not truly taken advantage of here; it simply acts as a dumb stylus, with no pressure sensitivity, tilt, or other custom input methods. Second, it is not possible to create or edit sketches on the Mac. You can still view sketches created on iOS, but they can't be edited.

New Icons

Bear takes advantage of the new API in iOS 10.3 that allows custom icons for apps. Each of the eight different themes in Bear comes with its own Home screen icon so that the app's outer appearance can match its inner appearance. As a fan of the original Bear icon, I'm thankful that the team at Shiny Frog made custom icons optional, not mandatory; you can flip a switch that determines whether you keep the original icon or adopt the one tied to your chosen theme.

iMessage Stickers

Though competitors like Evernote have iMessage apps that extend functionality from the app into iMessage, Bear goes a different route by offering several adorable stickers for your enjoyment. They may not enhance your productivity, but they sure will enhance your communication.

VoiceOver

Although Bear on iOS already allowed you to have text read out loud, the app now offers full support for Apple's Accessibility feature, VoiceOver. This will allow anyone who is blind or visually impaired to have various interface elements read out loud, as well as enabling gesture support for navigation.

Bear launched late last year as a feature-rich, powerful alternative to apps like Apple Notes and Evernote. There was a lot to love in Bear's original release, but since that time Shiny Frog has continued working hard to improve the app in significant ways. Version 1.2 continues that tradition, making a great app even better.

Support MacStories Directly

Club MacStories offers exclusive access to extra MacStories content, delivered every week; it’s also a way to support us directly.

Club MacStories will help you discover the best apps for your devices and get the most out of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Plus, it’s made in Italy.

Benjamin Mayo reports on a couple of changes found on Apple's website:

Apple has today officially transitioned away from its aging press portal in favor of the modern Apple Newsroom, which combines company press releases, photo coverage and other news into one place. All links to apple.com/pr now redirect to apple.com/newsroom.

At the same time, the company has also updated its executive biography pages with a fresh design update to fit in with the company’s recent website design trends and adopts the San Francisco typeface, finally retiring the Lucida Grande font.

These are both minor, but welcome changes. It made no sense for Apple to continue publishing press releases on both the legacy press portal and Apple Newsroom. The design changes to executive bios were inevitable as well; this moves things one step closer toward retiring all old design on the company's website.

→ Source: 9to5mac.com

Europe is getting new privacy regulations that will limit surveillance marketing.

I see their point. Instead of making people navigate the fine print of privacy policies and click through broken opt-out systems. the EU is trying to save everyone some time and risk.

Meanwhile, California, like the rest of the USA, has basically zero privacy. But we do have great burritos here, so we've got that going for us anyway.

Some surveillance marketing proponents say that if Europe rolls out GDPR, then there goes all the creative stuff on the Internet. (which is roughly what the DRM proponents said about DRM, but Hugo-award-winning author Charles Stross already explained that one.)

Personally, I agree with Doc Searls that the role of privacy violation in ad-supported Internet services is way overrated. Most of the value is in ad context (what site the ad is on) and search (which does have some customization based on who you are, but mostly works based on what you search for.) Targeting just provokes blocking and makes ads less valuable. So GDPR won't break the Internet, or even ad-supported sites. I'm confident enough in this that I will back it up with an offer.

If the surveillance marketers are right, then Europeans would be deprived of some neato Internet services that we, here in California, are allowed to have. So, demonstrate for me an Internet service that is...

• mentioned in a news story as creative or innovative

• not offered in Europe, and the company behind it has stated that they won't offer it in Europe because GDPR.

...and I'll buy you a California burrito and link to the service from here and on Twitter. First five demos get a burrito and link.

If I'm right, then Europeans will get better advertising, a safer Internet, less fraud, stronger brands, and I'll get to eat the burritos myself.

The material below the line was sent to me by a pr firm working for a gallery in Florida. When I pointed out my location and the somewhat limited coverage of this blog they replied “Our experience over the years has guided us to cast a wider net due to the fact that South Beach and Miami attract so many millions of visitors from all over the world.”

So I have cut and pasted this material from the press release. It seems to me to be worthwhile in its own right, and worth drawing attention to even if it does not generate much tourist traffic.

Evil: A Matter of Intent features the work of over thirty contemporary and modern artists addressing the many faces of inhumanity. This pertinent group show features artists hailing from around the world with diverse backgrounds, including Helene Aylon, Judith Glickman Lauder, Grace Graupe-Pillard, William Sharp, Tamar Hirschl, John Lawson, Paul Margolis, Mark Podwal, Trix Rosen, and Arthur Szyk.

Presented in Miami Beach by the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, the exhibition is on view through October 1. The museum is located at 301 Washington Avenue in the heart of South Beach’s Art Deco District, and is part of Florida International University.

As the title reminds us during these precarious times, acts of evil are premeditated and intentional, motivated by selfishness and the desire to gain at the expense of others. On loan from the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, this exhibition was curated by Laura Kruger and features more than seventy artworks that span from 1940 to the present, including mixed media paintings, works on paper, photography and sculptural works.

Sin Street, 2013 by Trix Rosen (photograph of performance artist Fred Keonig).

This photo has its roots in the shadows and violence depicted on pulp fiction book covers and film noir movie posters. At the core of these stories is an edgy morality tale, with temptation dripping from the lurid images and titles. “Bad Girl” characters live in a place and time where good is not always rewarded – nor is evil inevitably punished.

Watch the new video about Evil: A Matter of Intent

Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By, by Ben Shahn, 1965 (lithograph).

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once asserted that the entire ethical teachings of the Hebrew Bible could be condensed into one sentence: an excerpt from Leviticus 19:16, “Thou shalt not stand idly by while your neighbor’s blood is shed.” Shahn illustrated this admonition by depicting a white hand reaching out to raise a black hand.
“Evil is not a cosmic accident, it does not just happen,” said the New York-based curator of the original version of this traveling exhibition, Laura Kruger. “Evil is a deliberate action or inaction. Evil is the violation of our common humanity.” The work of these artists shows how evil manifests in many forms including genocide, torture, slavery and fear of “the other.” The on-site design of the Miami version of this exhibition was created by Jacqueline Goldstein, the curator at the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU.

The artists in Evil: A Matter of Intent demonstrate how evil is reinforced by indifference, bullying, cruelty and denial. Terrorist acts, murder, rape, destruction of culture and knowledge, pogroms, obliteration of cultural heritage, child abuse, poisoning of the earth and water, and murder are rampant and unceasing.

KKK Rally, Florida (circa 1950s)

Hiroshima, A Child’s Shirt, 2005, by Leonard Meiselman (oil on canvas).

A child’s shirt, intact but browned from the flames that engulfed Hiroshima when the atom bomb dropped, challenges us to reflect on the painful reminders resulting from war and its related necessary evils. Inspired by the Peace Museum in Japan’s display of such frayed, burned children’s shirts, this has become a life subject for Meiselman.

Child’s Drawing of Darfur, 2009.

Bakhid was eight years old when he saw his village in Darfur being attacked and burned by Janjaweed forces on horseback and Sudanese forces in vehicles and tanks. In 2007, the organization Waging Peace traveled to refugee camps in Eastern Chad, where survivors from the “ethnic cleansing” of non-Arab, black Africans now live. The genocide of Darfur, a region in the west of Sudan, was perpetrated by the Sudanese government and Arab militias since 2003. They committed horrific crimes such as burning and bombing entire villages and gunning down families. The organization asked the children in the camps to draw memories of the vicious attacks. The International Criminal Court accepted these drawings as evidence of the crimes committed by the Sudanese government. One young artist named Aisha said: “It is very kind to send us food, but this is Africa and we are used to being hungry. What I ask is that you please take the guns away from the people who are killing us.” Courtesy of the BBC and Ryot

These are artists who refuse to remain silent despite forces of intimidation or popular beliefs

Their voices and visions are direct and distinct, forever asking the viewer what he or she would do if placed in similar situations depicted in these works of art.

Grace Graupe-Pillard’s work was featured in the recent exhibition at New York’s Cheim & Reid Gallery (The Female Gaze: Women Look at Men), and has also shown at the Aldrich Museum, the National Academy Museum and the Bass Museum.

Boy with a Gun: Saturday Night Special, 1992, and Boy with a Gun: Homeless Man, 1987, by Grace Graupe-Pillard (pastel, cut-out canvas).

The artist’s powerful works call attention to the urgent need for gun control laws. In her series, Boy with a Gun (1987-1992), she suggests that a child’s game can become adult gun violence. What will it take to thwart the gun industry and stop the killing?

Their voices and visions are direct and distinct

Installation image – Boy with a Gun: Homeless Man, 1992, by Grace Graupe-Pillard.

Mark Podwal is well known for his drawings in the New York Time’s op-ed page. His work has been engraved on a Congressional Gold Medal, and is also featured in a series of decorative plates at the Metropolitan Museum.

There Arose a New King Who Knew Not Joseph, by David Wander, 2014 (mixed media).

Evoking the biblical passage from Exodus 1:8, Wander ponders the repetition of history. He contrasts the collapse of the 20th-century golden age of German-Jewish culture with the enslavement of the Israelites in antiquity. As governments and political powers shift, ranging from benign and supportive to deadly, they impact the entire status of the population.

Suffer the Little Children, by William Sharp, 1940 (etching).

As a soldier during World War I, Sharp witnessed war’s devastating impact on young children. This etching depicts young children, with the weary faces of old men, who were orphaned, forced to grovel, beg, and live by their wits on the open streets.

Helene Aylon’s career includes her Process Art in the 1970’s, anti-nuclear Art in the 80’s and her later G-D Project that spanned two decades. Her work can be found in collections around the world including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and Whitney Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In the mid-sixties, she painted her iconic 16-foot mural for the synagogue library at JFK airport. View the exhibition catalogue at this link.

First They Came for ….., by Linda Soberman, 2014 (lithoprint).

Soberman comments on the complicit indifference of those bystanders who witnessed evil during the Holocaust. The image of the “winking” woman whose face is covered by the quotation by Martin Niemoller, a prominent Protestant pastor and outspoken critic of Adolf Hitler, who spent seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.

Gallery image – installation of Exodus II, by Tamar Hirschl, 2005 (mixed media on vinyl).

This large work, with the map of France as the background, depicts the Nazis’ conquering of both land and people in their insidious march across Europe and North Africa. Hirschl builds on memories of her childhood during the Holocaust to highlight the misery and destruction that accompany imperialistic and genocidal ventures. Her work comments on the evil that continues to divide and destroy human connections.
“This exhibition is timely and powerful,” says Susan Gladstone, the Director of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU. “These artists tackle issues we are all confronting right now, at this juncture in history.They bring evil to light from a multitude of shadowy angles, capturing historical events and expressing outrage. They leave us, the viewers, to our own responses – and possibly to our own personal calls to action,” adds Susan Gladstone.

The artists in this exhibition are:
Andi Arnowitz · Helene Aylon · Debra Band · Riva Bell · · Rosalyn A. Engelman · Larry S. Frankel · Grace Graupe-Pillard · Barbara Green · Debbie Teicholz Guedalia · Carol Hamoy · Tamar Hirschl · Elizabeth Langer · Judith Glickman Lauder · John Lawson · Margalit Manor · Elizabeth Langer · Ruben Malayn · Paul Margolis · Richard McBee · Leonard Meiselman · David Newman ·Jacqueline Nicholls · Hedy Pagremanski · Mark Podwal · Faith Ringold · Trix Rosen · Marilyn R. Rosenberg · Ben Shahn · William Sharp · Linda Soberman · Arthur Szyk · David Wander · Grace Bakst Wapner · Paul Weissman.

Detail – Yesterday’s Children, by Paul Weissman, 2015 (inked woodcut, lockets, photos and resin).

A tour de force of printmaking techniques underlays a collage of baby pictures. These seemingly innocent children, on closer inspection, turn out to be photos of Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong-il, Saddam Hussein, and Joseph Stalin. The backdrop woodcut depicts the chaos of destruction they caused. Are genocidal maniacs born or bred, is it nature or nurture that is to blame?

Detail – Yesterday’s Children, by Paul Weissman.

Are genocidal maniacs born or bred, is it nature or nurture that is to blame?

Every spring, Samsung introduces a new Galaxy phone; every fall, Apple (AAPL) counterpunches with a new iPhone.

At the moment, we find ourselves in mid-cycle: Samsung has just released its Galaxy S8, and the iPhone 8 is still a summer away.

The S8 is a gorgeous phone. It’s a hardware masterpiece, it’s getting rave reviews, and—hey!—so far, nobody’s battery has exploded.

It’s also so crammed with features, it’s amazing the thing doesn’t weigh 20 pounds. That’s the Samsung way: Pile on features to see what sticks. Unfortunately, some of it’s garbage.

So here, as a public service, is a peculiar kind of review: A master list of features that the new Samsung has and the iPhone doesn’t—along with an assessment of which ones are actually useful.

1. The wraparound screen

Samsung’s S8 design goal was, “the most screen in the smallest space.” And sure enough: the side margins of the screen are gone completely—the screen image actually begins to curve around the side edges—and the top and bottom margins have been halved.

The result: Samsung’s screen shows 40% more than the iPhone 7’s—but the phones are the same width. (The screen is 5.8 inches diagonal on the S8, vs. 4.7 on the iPhone.)

That’s a little misleading, of course—the Samsung gets some of that extra screen area by being taller than the iPhone (.4 inches taller). In other words, it’s a weird shape—tall and skinny—that leaves you with black bars beside your videos.

Here’s what else is misleading: Samsung advertises a resolution of 2960 by 1440 pixels—much higher than the iPhone’s 1334 by 750. But in hopes of saving battery life, Samsung hides much of that high-res goodness. Out of the box, the phone comes set to 1080p resolution—only one-quarter of its potential sharpness. You have to fiddle with Settings if you want all the clarity you paid for.

But no question: it’s great to have so much screen. And such a great screen! Bright, colorful, gorgeous OLED.

• Usefulness grade: A

2. Edge display

On the right edge, you can set up something called the Edge display. It’s a vertical bar, hugging the curved edge, that you can swipe inward to reveal a skinny pane of icons. You choose which icons appear here—favorite apps, speed-dial icons for your friends, news, and so on. Because this bar is available from within any app, it’s like an ever-present dock. Once you try it, you’ll use it constantly. It spares you all the trips to the Home screens. It’s really great.

• Usefulness: A+

3. Video enhancer

The S8’s Video Enhancer mode gooses the contrast and brightness in video apps like Netflix (NFLX) and YouTube (GOOG, GOOGL). Honestly? Without seeing two S8’s side-by-side, it’s hard to see a difference. (It comes turned off, because it’s a battery drainer.)

• Usefulness: B+

4. Gigabit LTE

The S8 and S8+ are the first phones that can tap into Gigabit LTE—a cellular network that’s supposed to give you much faster internet speeds.

It probably won’t affect you. Only T-Mobile (TMUS) has started upgrading its network to Gigabit LTE, and only in 300 towns. Sprint (S), Verizon (VZ), and AT&T (T) say they’re working on it.

(Gigabit LTE isn’t the same thing—nor as fast—as 5G, which will take a few more years to arrive.)

• Usefulness: B

5. Iris recognition

You can now unlock your S8 by gazing into its camera lens; it recognizes the irises of your eyes, even if you have glasses on.

Most people don’t wind up using this feature, though, because it requires that you bring the phone up to eye level and hold it about 10 inches from your face; it’s just goofy and awkward. It also doesn’t work in bright sunlight.

Unfortunately, the alternative secure unlocking method—your fingerprint—is a total disaster. Samsung put the fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone, directly beside the camera, so you get finger grease on the lens every time you unlock it. (The phone even warns you as much: “Be careful not to smudge the camera lens,” it says when you set up your fingerprints.)

That’s if you can unlock it—the scanner is a tall rectangle (not a circle, as on the iPhone), and you have to cover the entire thing to make it work. A design disaster all the way around.

• Usefulness: C

6. Face recognition

The Galaxy can also unlock itself by recognizing your face. It’s fast, and doesn’t involve holding the phone like you’re trying to mind-meld with it.

Unfortunately, face recognition is neither reliable (it often doesn’t work) nor secure; for example, Samsung doesn’t consider it secure enough to use for Samsung Pay. People report being able to fool it with a photo.

You can’t use both iris and face recognition; you must choose one or the other.

Usefulness: B

7. Longer battery lifetime

Samsung says that the new S8 battery will last longer—not in hours per charge, but in overall lifetime of usefulness. After a year, the battery will maintain 95% of its charging capacity—up from 80%, on the Galaxy S7.

There’s no way to test Samsung’s claim without waiting a year or two, so we’ll have to take their word for it.

• Usefulness: B+

8. Portrait mode

The S8’s main camera hasn’t been improved since the S7 came along—it’s a wicked great camera—but its software has.

For example, when you’re photographing a face, you can turn on a Portrait mode, which simulates the blurry-background effect you usually see only in pro photos.

This is not an optical effect; it’s basically a filter, and the phone sometimes gets it wrong. The blurring sometimes spills into your person. (On the iPhone 7 Plus, the similar Portrait feature relies on the phone’s two camera lenses, and is therefore more reliable.)

What’s cool, though, is that you can adjust the blur after shooting the picture. You can even blur the foreground, leaving the background sharp.

• Usefulness: B+

9. Snapchat-style overlays

The Camera app can now add goofy, Snapchat-style animated costumes to your head. They’re pretty awful. Stick to Snapchat (SNAP) or MSQRD.

Usefulness: D

10. “Virtual” photos

Within the Camera app, there’s a new option: You can walk around an object, “filming” it. Later, you can “play it back” by swiveling the phone around in space, changing your angle on the subject. Convenient if you’re shopping for sculptures, I guess.

Usefulness: C

11. HDR certified

The S8 is the first smartphone with an HDR-compatible screen. That’s high dynamic range, and it means that, if you can find an HDR movie to watch, you’ll see it with more vivid colors and a greater range of brights to darks.

So far, there’s not much to watch. Netlix’s HDR movies don’t yet play on the S8 (and would require a more expensive streaming plan if they did). Amazon Prime’s HDR movies do, but there are only a handful of them.

Usefulness: D

12. Enhanced front-facing camera

The camera above the screen now captures 8-megapixel photos with an f/1.7 lens, and can autofocus now. Good stuff, though not an earth-shattering improvement over the iPhone 7’s front camera (7 megapixels, f/2.2 aperture).

Usefulness: B

13. Bluetooth 5

Bluetooth 5 has four times the range and twice the data rates of Bluetooth 4—but you get those benefits only if you’ve upgraded your Bluetooth stuff (speakers, Fitbits, headphones, etc.) to Bluetooth 5 gear.

Even now, though, the S8 lets you pair with two existing Bluetooth headphones, so you and a friend can listen simultaneously.

Usefulness: B+

14. Split screen

The S8 introduces “multi window,” a feature that lets you split the screen between two apps, side-by-side (or top-and-bottom). At that point, you can adjust their relative sizes, or copy between them.

It’s slick, but getting there takes some learning—and, unfortunately, it’s available only in some apps.

Usefulness: B–

15. Bixby voice control

Bixby is Samsung’s version of Siri or Google Assistant. It’s so important, it gets its own dedicated button on the left edge of the phone—which you can’t reassign to another function.

Which is too bad, because at the moment, Bixby doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t take spoken questions, like Siri or Assistant does. Samsung says that’s coming soon. (Meanwhile, you can always use Google Assistant, which is still there.)

Samsung says that once Bixby is activated, it’ll be much smarter than Siri or Assistant—that you’ll be able to give it far more complex commands. For example, if you’re looking at a map, you can say, “Capture this and send it to mom.”

Samsung also says, though, that apps must be rewritten to respond to Bixby commands—and only 10 apps will be controllable in this way when Bixby goes live.

Usefulness: Unknown

16. Bixby Home

A second feature, confusingly also called Bixby, is a nearly perfect copycat of Google Now: A scrolling list of “cards” that present information you might find useful right now, based on the time and your location: weather, appointments, headlines. Why is it necessary for a phone to have two copies of the same thing?

That’s always been a downside of Samsung’s phones, which already come with two photo apps, two web browsers, and so on. Why bother duplicating Google’s good work?

Usefulness: D

17. Bixby Vision

Yes, there’s a third feature called Bixby. This one is built into the Camera app. You can point the phone at a landmark and see details about it, supplied by Foursquare; at a product to get shopping information, supplied by Amazon (AMZN); at any image to be shown similar ones, from Pinterest; at a wine-bottle label for ratings and details, from Vivino; or at foreign-language writing for a translation, supplied by Google Translate.

Last week, Google announced that the same feature is coming to Android. So once again, you’ll have two identical versions of the same feature.

• Usefuness: B

18. Samsung Health

This new, surprisingly complete app automatically tracks your steps, workouts, and (if you have a Samsung smartwatch that you wear at night) sleep; it also offers places to manually record your weight, food, blood glucose, water, caffeine, and so on.

In a novel twist, the app also lets you have an instant video conference with an actual, board-certified doctor for $60 (courtesy of American Well), which your insurance may or may not cover—great for getting immediate help or refilling a prescription.

• Usefulness: A–, if you’re into that sort of thing

19. Dex Station

For $150, you can buy a special dock that lets you connect your phone to a big monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Your phone becomes the CPU of a PC!

Unfortunately, many apps don’t work right on the big screen, and there’s the whole question of, “Why?”

• Usefulness: C

Older Features

Many of Galaxy’s features aren’t new in the S8, but are still unmatched by the iPhone. A few examples:

20. Cool gestures

The Galaxy phone is the shortcut lover’s idea of heaven. You can turn on all kinds of super cool gesture-based shortcuts, like these:

• Swipe the fingerprint reader to open Notifications
• Smart Stay (the screen stays on as long as you’re looking at it)
• Press the Power button twice to fire up the camera
• Wipe the edge of your hand across the screen to take a screenshot (which you can then annotate or crop)
• Direct Call (hold the phone to ear to auto-dial the person whose card is on screen)
• Smart Alert (when you pick up the phone, it vibrates if notifications are waiting)
• Easy Mute (silence the ringer by placing the phone face down—in a meeting, say)
• Send an SOS to designated contacts (press the Power button three times)
• Answer a call by pressing the Volume Up key
• During video playback, drag up/down for volume adjustments, left/right for brightness. Double-tap to pause.

These gestures erase a lot of the fussiness of trying to get things done on a tiny, no-mouse device.

• Usefulness: A+

21. Quicker charging

The S8’s quick-charging technology (unchanged since last year’s model) gives you a full charge in about 1.5 hours, as long as the screen isn’t on. That’s about half the time of an iPhone 7 Plus.

• Usefulness: A+

22. “Wireless” pad charger

You can charge your S8 by setting it onto a Qi charging pad (under $15). It takes twice as long to charge that way, but saves you the plugging and unplugging of a cable. Grab and go.

• Usefulness: A

23. Samsung Pay

Loop Pay was a phone dongle that could trick a credit-card reader into thinking that you’d actually swiped a card through it. In 2015, Samsung bought Loop and built its technology into its Galaxy phones.

(Here’s my review.)

It’s hard to believe. You wave the phone near the card-reader slot, up to a couple of inches away, and — beep! — you’ve just paid.

This is nothing like Apple Pay and Android Pay, which work only at checkout terminals that have been upgraded to work with them. In the big picture, there just aren’t very many places to use Apple Pay and Android Pay.

But Samsung Pay works almost everywhere that fine credit cards are swiped—90% of all checkout counters.

• Usefulness: A

24. Always-on screen

The phone’s screen never goes fully dark. When it’s “asleep,” you still see the current time, battery charge, and notification summaries.

“Won’t that eat the battery up?” Yes, a few percent; you can turn the feature off if you like. But it’s kind of handy, especially if you use your phone as a watch.

• Usefulness: A

25. Smart Unlock

This is an Android feature, not a Samsung feature, but it’s cool: You can set things up so that as long as the phone is in a certain place (like your home), within range of a certain Bluetooth device (like your Fitbit [FIT]), or on your person (based on your body motion), it won’t keep locking. You won’t need a password, fingerprint, or whatever to unlock it.

Obviously, you won’t turn this on if you work at, you know, the NSA. But when you’re alone at home, why shouldn’t you enjoy a little convenience?

• Usefulness: A

26. Headphone jack

Yep. Samsung managed to create a waterproof phone without sacrificing the headphone jack. So much for Apple’s “courage.”

• Usefulness: A

27. Expansion slot

You can outfit your S8 with a tiny micro SD card for additional storage—lucky, since there’s only one S8 model (with 64 gigs of memory). The memory-card thing isn’t quite as good as built-in storage, because the phone treats it as an external drive, and it’s up to you to manage which data and apps get stored in which place, and some apps can’t be on the card. But for photo and video storage—awesome.

• Usefulness: A–

The counterpunch

Of course, the iPhone has a long list of its own exclusives, like stereo speakers, a pressure-sensitive screen (press harder for more options), an optical zoom on the camera (on the Plus), built-in storage options up to 256 gigabytes, and twice the storage (128 gb) for the same price.

Above all, there’s the software—iOS 10—and the Apple ecosystem. Apple’s gotten more feature-happy of late, but it’s still the world leader in simplicity and coherence. You would never catch Apple bloating up your screens with duplicate apps and junkware. Apple’s apps are far more consistent in design and operation. You’ve got the Apple Stores to visit for on-the-spot fixes and help. You’ve got the glorious flexibility of sending iMessages instead of short, limited texts.

And then there’s the tight integration between Macs and iPhones. You know: Copy some text on your phone, paste it one second later on your laptop. Read a web article on the subway on your phone, sit down at your Mac at home to see the same site. That kind of thing.

In a way, then, all of these comparison articles (including this one) are missing a key point. They’re interesting for monitoring the state of the art, but they shouldn’t be called, “Which one should you buy?” Moving from the Apple ecosystem to the Google/Samsung ecosystem, or vice versa is a big, expensive hassle that not many people undertake. You have to re-buy all your apps. You have to buy all new chargers. You have to do a lot of relearning.

But clearly, the Galaxy S8’s hardware is a beast. A huge leap beyond the iPhone 7. So the ultimate experience would be the hardware features of the Galaxy S8, running the software and ecosystem of the iPhone.

Well, who knows? If the rumors are right, we’ll be getting something like that in the iPhone 8.

More from David Pogue:

Inside the World’s Greatest Scavenger Hunt: Part 1    •  Part 2   •   Part 3  •  Part 4  •  Part 5

The most important announcements from Google’s big developer’s conference

Google Home’s mastermind has no intention of losing to Amazon

Now I get it: Ransomware

Google exec explains how Google Assistant just got smarter

Amazon’s Alexa calling is like a Jetsons version of the home phone

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email. 

Starting today, the new Hover Control Panel is the default way to manage domains and services for all customers.

Over the last few months since we made our new Control Panel available as a preview, we’ve done a ton of user testing, fixed a big pile of bugs and worked on completing the remaining sections like Account Settings. Thanks a bunch to everyone who tried it out, completed surveys, did interviews with our UX team and provided feedback through customer support.

Ready to Roll

Based on that testing, and our own extensive usage of the Control Panel to manage our domains, we’re pretty confident that it’s more than ready to be the preferred way for customers interact with Hover from now on.

It’s a big change, to be sure. For those of you who prefer to ease into change like this, the old dashboard is still there and you can use it for the next month or two if that’s your preference. Just click the link in the banners at the top of any page in the new Control Panel and we’ll take you back to old, familiar Hover.

Our plan right now is to turn off access to that old dashboard around June 30, so please do take some time to get yourself familiar with the new one before then. We’re continuing to do a ton of testing with users to make sure that any remaining bugs or issues are stamped out before then.

Some highlights of the new experience:

• A better domain list with more information about your domains including the admin email address and whether there are mailboxes associated with each domain.
• A new “domain dashboard” for each domain that lets you see what you are doing with the domain along with seeing and managing contacts, and settings.
• An improved Hover Connect experience with more information about the various services that you can connect your domain to.
• Superior DNS management with more help and validation as you add or edit DNS records.
• A brand new Account Settings section with an Account overview (similar to the domain dashboard) that provides all key information about your Hover account on a single page.

…and much more!

In addition to the refresh of the domain and email management experience, we’ve added some new features:

• You can now edit your contact details on .ca and .uk domains without calling support and toggle WHOIS Privacy on and off for those extensions.
• There are better views for domains in states other than “active”. Transferring in, pending registration, and other states now let you see the information we have access to and give you better insights into what’s going on with that domain name.

As we said in our last post when we started the preview phase for Control Panel, this was a huge bit of work – one of the biggest projects we’ve taken on since Hover was launched back in 2009. There’s always some trepidation when you embark on a large project like this that will have impacts across all users. We started work on design and user experience well over a year ago, and our development team began turning it into reality in the middle of 2016.

We’re not “done” improving

We know that our work on Hover is never really “done”. There’s always areas that can be improved and features that can be added.

For example, while the new Control Panel is designed to be great on smaller screens like tablets and mobile phones, we still have work to do to really make it perfect on those devices. It’s far better than the old dashboard was, but we’ll continue to make it better over time.

This new Control Panel also provides us with a great new foundation on which to build more features and services that will help you go from idea to reality more quickly whether you are registering and setting up your first domain, or if you are an Internet expert managing dozens or hundreds of domains.

Audrey Watters, May 28, 2017

A few things in this post from Audrey Watters are worth noting. First, from Ursula Franklin, a wide concept of technology. “Technology involves organizations, procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and, most of all, a mindset.” Second, the analysis (once again) of the "new normal" in education technology. "What might be subverted? What might be lost? (That is, who will lose?)" And finally, what this new normal looks like: "Silicon Valley’s ways also include individualism, neoliberalism, libertarianism, imperialism, the exclusion of people of color and white women from its workforce," she writes, "Silicon Valley’s ways and Silicon Valley’s technologies are readily subverting the values of democracy and justice." Maybe - but then what? What do we do about it. We can't simply 'resist technology' - we need to be smarter than that. What's the alternative vision? What should new educational technology look like? I've tried to articulate a vision - and I wish Watters would do the same. [Link] [Comment]

Scott Mcleod, Dangerously Irrelevant, May 28, 2017

Scott Mcleod comments on Audrey Watter's post (see below) remark that "These new technologies, oriented towards consumers and consumption, privilege an ideology of individualism," replying that "how we balance collective societal good versus individual learning and life success needs is incredibly challenging." It's obvious that it's challenging, of course, but also, the distinction between 'individual' and 'collective' is too simple to be useful. In the past I have offered the idea of the network as a half-way point - supporting autonomy, but creating means and mechanisms to function as a community. What other models are there? Where are the ideas? Educators and technologists have a responsibility here that goes beyond saying it's "incredibly challenging". [Link] [Comment]

mkalus shared this story from Consumerist.

Given all the doom and gloom headlines about Sears Holding Corporation, you might be surprised to hear that the company turned a profit last quarter. Until you realize that the only reason Sears didn’t lose money is because it sold its once-beloved Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker.

That transaction will bring in around $900 million, and the buyer made an initial cash payment to Sears Holdings of $525 million. Without the Craftsman sale, the company would have posted a loss of $222 million in the first quarter of 2017, the company announced today during a pre-recorded earnings call [PDF transcript].

The last time that this happened, Sears Holdings had a profitable quarter because it sold a substantial amount of real estate to the Seritage real estate investment trust, a venture that’s able to rent out former Sears and Kmart buildings for more than four times the rent that Sears Holdings was paying.

Chief Financial Officer Rob Riecker also noted that the company reduced the value of its inventory from $5 billion to $3.7 billion by closing stores and, as he put it, “efforts to tightly manage our inventory.”

He did not mention that part of the reason that inventory is tighter is that some suppliers are holding back on selling to Sears Holdings, worried that the retailer is at increased risk of bankruptcy in the near future. Chairman and CEO Eddie Lampert blames suppliers’ fears on media reports of the actual state of the company, claiming that vendors are taking advantage of “dire predictions” about the company to get better terms and break contracts.

That tighter management of inventory confused some Kmart employees, who didn’t believe what their own bosses were telling them and dished to Business Insider that they suspected their stores were about to close after “warehouse purges” began.

Keeping less merchandise on hand seems to be working in some stores, but works less well when the retailer keeps a store open while landlord Seritage is “recapturing” store space to lease to another business that will pay more.

The company is pinning its hopes on extracting more value from its proprietary brands, which could mean licensing them, selling them in more places, or expansions like Kenmore televisions and DieHard tires and branded auto repair centers.

At the same time, competitors see that Sears is vulnerable, and JCPenney is trying to steal some of the home services market and sell major appliances as Sears shrinks. Home Depot is doing the same.

Manifesto-writing CEO Lampert, for his part, keeps pinning his hopes on the Shop Your Way Rewards program. This quarter, he’s bragging to investors about the growth of the company’s new VIP program. Members can reach VIP status after spending $800 in a calendar year, which includes spending on cards linked to the Shop Your Way account, the Shop Your Way Citi card that used to be a Sears store credit card, rides booked through Uber, and any shopping at former Sears Holdings businesses like Lands’ End.

“We remain focused on driving the growth of our Shop Your Way ecosystem and are pleased with the traction we gained with our VIP membership base, which more than doubled in the last year,” Lampert said in a statement distributed with the quarterly results.

mkalus shared this story from Consumerist.

Add General Motors to the growing list of carmakers accused of using so-called “defeat devices” to skirt federal emissions standards. Owners of GM trucks with Duramax diesel engines say the car company has been using secretly installed software to cheat on these tests — and boost sales — for more than five years.

The lawsuit [PDF], filed in district court in Michigan, claims that General Motors installed multiple defeat devices in more than 705,000 model year 2011 to 2016 Silverado and GMC Sierra Duramax diesel trucks in order to increase sales.

According to the 190-page complaint, GM used three distinct defeat devices — similar to those found in VW vehicles — to “de-rate” or turn down the emissions controls of the subject vehicles when they were not undergoing testing.

“GM claimed its engineers had accomplished a ‘remarkable reduction of diesel emissions,’” the lawsuit states, noting the carmaker’s promises that the Duramax engines could turn “heavy diesel fuel into a fine mist” and that the trucks delivered “low emissions, that were a ‘whooping reduction’ from the prior model.”

In reality, the lawsuit claims that instead of creating a system that would properly filter out emissions and pass inspection, GM installed defeat devices that involved reversing the traditional order of the exhaust treatment components to market the trucks as high power and efficient, while still passing federal emissions tests.

“This made GM’s trucks more appealing and competitive in the marketplace, driving up sales and profits,” the suit states.

However, by using the devices, the suit claims, GM’s trucks increased the amount of nitrogen oxide entering the atmosphere by up to five times the legal limit and decreased fuel and power during regular driving. In fact, the owners claim that the emissions spewed by the trucks polluted at levels well beyond legal limits and many times higher than their gasoline counterparts.

“GM turned a blind eye to the drastic increase in deadly NOx emissions its scheme caused–all to drive up its sales and profits,” Steve Berman, managing partner for Hagens Berman, the company representing GM owners, said in a statement.

The lawsuit, which make several references to Volkswagen’s defeat devices, also names tech provider Bosch as a co-defendant, claiming that GM did not act alone in the alleged deception.

“Bosch was an active and knowing participant in the scheme to evade U.S. emissions requirements,” the lawsuit claims, noting that Bosch developed, manufactured, and tested the diesel control that allowed GM to implement the defeat devices.

In a statement about the lawsuit, GM calls the allegations “baseless” and says it plans to defend itself in court.

“The Duramax Diesel Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra comply with all U.S. EPA and CARB emissions regulations,” reads the statement.

The lawsuit against GM is just the latest since VW was first revealed to have used defeat devices in more than 11 million vehicles across the world in Sept. 2015. The carmaker has since entered into a number of agreements to pay billions of dollars in fines and refunds to customers, while also fixing the affected cars.

Just this week, the Justice Department and EPA filed a lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler, accusing the carmaker of using similar software to skirt emission standards in 104,000 vehicles.

mkalus shared this story from EU referendum and Brexit | The Guardian.

There is something deeply ironic about the wave of nostalgia sweeping political discourse in modern Britain. On one hand, it harks – increasingly since the Brexit vote – back to the age of empire. “A small island perched on the edge of the European continent became a leader of world trade,” is how international trade secretary Liam Fox fondly described that epoch to a group of Commonwealth trade ministers. On the other, the supposed humanitarianism that accompanied that age has been swiftly forgotten.

While the empire was founded on racist beliefs about the supposed inferiority of the people it subjugated, humanitarianism was its proudly flaunted justification. This was manifested perfectly in Winston Churchill, who was able to boast of killing “savages” in Sudan, while also playing a leading role in creating the international humanitarian norms that many consider one of the great accomplishments of the 20th century. It’s only a matter of time before Britain’s membership of the Council of Europe – along with the rest of the European institutions developed by patriotic Brits who are keen to avoid a repeat of war – faces the same fate as our membership of the EU.

What’s the collective noun for this: Over 50 students from Charles Tupper school, assembling at Second Beach for a bike tour around Stanley Park.  I don’t know if it’s an end-of-the-school-year tradition, but this is the second of three groups that have made the trek so far in the last week.

Paul, their leader, says they bring their own bikes or rent them on Denman, and then circumnavigate the park, stopping at key points to learn about the park.

And then hopefully continue on for the rest of their lives.

mkalus shared this story from EU referendum and Brexit | The Guardian.

Two former members of the Bank of England’s interest rate-setting committee on the outlook as real wages are squeezed

Professor of economics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee from June 2006 to May 2009

The latest installment of the dandyhorse newsletter is out ...and about everything we've reported on pretty much over the last month or so.

You can check it out here.

You can sign up for future dandyhorse newsletters here.

SPECIAL for Bike Month this year: We have a fantastic original photo series called bikeFACE that features women cyclists from around Toronto launching next week.

Instagram has announced that it’s adding support for landscape and portrait orientations and links

With the new update, when you send a photo or video to your friends in Direct from your camera roll, you won’t have to crop it.

Website links can also be sent in Direct now and can be previewed within the message chat. Links can also be sent for phone numbers and addresses.

These changes are part of the new Instagram Direct experience which was introduced in April.

Landscape and portrait uploads in Direct are available today on iOS, with Instagram saying an Android release is “coming soon.” Links in Direct messages are available today on both Android and iOS versions of Instagram as part of the version 10.22 update.

Other changes that have recently come to social media platform are the option to archive photos and the ability to search for Instagram Stories by location or hashtag.

The post Instagram adds support for photo orientations and links in Direct messages appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Andy Rubin will unveil his next Android foray on May 30th.

Essential, the company Rubin co-founded after leaving Google, announced the news on its Twitter account. “We’re here to let you know something big is coming May 30th,” said the company in its first official tweet.

Hi, welcome to our Twitter page. We're here to let you know something big is coming May 30th! Stay tuned…

— Essential (@essential) May 25, 2017

It’s expected Rubin will unveil the device during the upcoming Code Conference, which starts on May 30th. Rubin is scheduled to attend the conference.

Rubin first teased the Essential smartphone back in March when he shared an image of a bezel-less phone. Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt later confirmed that the upcoming smartphone will run Android.

Update 05/25/17: Essential’s Twitter account has revealed a vague teaser image relating to the upcoming announcement.

We heard you @renan_batista – here’s something to hold you over until next week: pic.twitter.com/QSIeXyjKNq

— Essential (@essential) May 25, 2017

The post Andy Rubin’s Essential to unveil its new smartphone on May 30 appeared first on MobileSyrup.

The LG G6 is a refresh of sorts for a company that always seems to sit in the shadow of its Korean rival, yet the camera inside is among the best available on any device to date.

The race for smartphone camera supremacy has never been tighter. It shows, too, because the quality of images even novice users are producing is a strong indicator that things have moved in the right direction.

Back in 2015, I had chosen the LG G4 as the best smartphone camera of that year, primarily because of the manual mode’s excellent performance and results. Maintaining that for the G5, while adding an extra wide-angle lens, was nice, even if the auto mode took a slight step backward. LG has stuck to the same f/1.8 aperture for the lens going back to the G4, except it shifts to f/2.4 for the wider lens.

The G6 doesn’t meddle a great deal with the foundation, which is both good and bad, sticking to a formula that pays dividends after learning how to use it.

Learning the ropes

I’ve always found it a little amusing that phone manufacturers pack so much software into their cameras, only for many users to simply point and shoot in auto, and then slap a filter or two over for good measure.

Filters are nice for effect, but they can’t mask poor composition. Auto modes, even for flagship handsets, do tend to overexpose images, either by raising the ISO or lowering the shutter speed too much. This still happens despite the huge strides phone cameras have taken in only the last few years.

Part of the reason for that is also because the most popular handsets usually ignored such features. Apple still hasn’t included manual controls in the iPhone. Samsung only started to take it seriously with the Galaxy S6. Google never included any in the Nexus or Pixel models. LG made a huge leap with the G4, yet the company never truly marketed its camera prowess.

It has finally pushed it as an elite feature with the G6, except LG could do more to show that shooting in manual is easy, especially when it actually is.

Naturally, DSLRs have plenty of manual options, but you’re also dealing with better optics in those cases. With the limited range of the image sensor and lens in a phone, capturing more detail and colour often requires tweaking the controls.

LG’s manual mode layout hasn’t changed since the G4. White balance, focus, exposure, ISO, shutter speed and auto-exposure lock line up at the bottom — all adjustable with sliders. Change any of the settings and the live view shifts in real-time to show what the image would look like.

Shooting better photos

It’s this one seminal element that makes it easy to learn. Trial and error goes a long way, but basic knowledge is always a great fallback in case confusion sets in. In my experience with manual modes on phones, ISO and shutter speed are the two most common settings to change because they affect how much light passes through the lens to the sensor.

It explains why some photos in Auto, especially in more challenging situations, come out bright enough to see, yet overexposed or filled with noise. The G6 is no different, in that respect. Shooting in Auto in low-light is just asking for a mediocre image. In Manual, however, the results can literally be night and day.

Admittedly, there’s a secondary issue there too. Really slow shutter speeds mean the shutter stays open longer to let more light pass through to the sensor. That makes it highly sensitive to any jitter or shake in your hands, no matter how statuesque you may be. Setting a timer and propping it up on a flat surface to shoot hands-free is a great way to capture skylines or architecture at night at slower shutter speeds and ISO. Personally, I try to never go above 800-1200 ISO on any night shot, otherwise the noise becomes a snowstorm.

Night photos with traffic looking like red and white lasers zipping through streets are shot that way. Tripods, slow shutters, reasonable ISO levels — it doesn’t take that much, only the perfect location.

Dusk and golden hours are always great times to shoot in manual because of the dramatic results. Shoot a sunset in Auto and then on Manual (with adjustments) and the difference will be like two completely different cameras. Again, the G6 is a lot like that, much like its two predecessors were.

Even in daytime, the same principles apply, only in reverse. Bright sunlight offers better contrast when you lower the ISO and raise the shutter speed. The G6 is at its best in these scenarios. There is a crispness and depth to properly exposed daytime images that really shows.

Shooting in RAW is off by default, but if that’s something you want to get into, it’s well worth doing. There’s more post-production required, and the G6 will save two versions of an image, a RAW and JPEG. Since RAW files are always larger, the phone’s storage space can fill up quickly if left unchecked.

LG also defaults to the wider 18:9 aspect ratio, yet markets a 13-megapixel image sensor. You only get the full 13-megapixel when shooting in 4:3. Otherwise, 18:9 maxes out at 8.7-megapixel. Shooting in the more common 16:9 is slightly better at 9.7-megapixel. So, to get the best possible quality on this device, you shoot in manual, RAW and at 4:3.

The extras

The wide-angle lens can take advantage of all the manual controls, making it great for capturing wide vistas and big groups. Plus, any adjustments already made apply to either lens. Simply switch between them at will.

LG added a Square mode to its camera clearly influenced by social media. Instagrammers will like the 1:1 aspect ratio built-in to the mode, including the different layouts to separate images. There is no way to shoot in manual with this mode, so it is effectively Auto with a different aspect ratio. The workaround is to change the ratio in the settings to 1:1 and then shoot in Manual mode, in case you want that control.

The various modes attached to the Auto mode include past staples like Popout, Panorama and Time-lapse, and include others like Snap (LG’s live photo feature), 360 Panorama and Food.

The last one obviously caters to the food porn crowd, adding a saturation slider to bring more colours out of a dish.

The 360 Panorama mode is also one of those things that’s neat to have, but can’t compare to a 360-degree camera that can do the same thing in a fraction of the time.

Gimmicky camera features have long been a thing with Android phones, as each manufacturer tries to outdo the other. LG hasn’t gone overboard with the G6, but highlighting Manual mode over the others would exemplify what the camera can truly do.

Action shots an manual video

LG wisely added manual video recording with the V20 as part of its new and improved audio recording feature. They work in tandem on the G6, but I have found there is more tinkering involved compared to still photos. While some video clips can turn out with balanced composition, others seem to skew too far one way or another.

Why? Because adjusting ISO and shutter speed isn’t enough. The wild card is always the exposure, which is locked whenever auto-exposure is on (which it is by default). Turning it off and adjusting exposure then automatically changes the shutter and ISO. Changing either of those then puts exposure back to auto.

Shooting video of a small concert was challenging because of this. Pulsating lights and strobes, a moving subject and on and off darkness put the G6 in a tough spot. Adjusting the ISO and shutter helped maintain some consistency because the exposure wouldn’t shift that much, whereas adjusting exposure had the shutter and ISO adjusting constantly. This is really what the Auto mode does, only there is supposed to be greater control with manual sliders.

Tracking focus is also turned off by default in the settings, so shooting action or an active child, for example, is made much easier when toggled on. Simply tap to focus and it sticks to the subject.

Assessing the trade-offs

There is some interpolation going on with this camera that becomes more noticeable in certain settings. Shooting video in 24fps brings it out, as does shooting at a lower ISO (like 50-100) in high contrast situations. It’s not as obvious when viewing the images on a phone screen, but certainly is on a computer or TV.

LG would also benefit from setting up Manual mode presets to make shooting faster. Capturing something candid takes longer when fiddling with the sliders, but I would have liked to have a preset for either a daytime or low-light scenario that I could use or adjust on the fly.

Unlike the iPhone, whose massive aftermarket includes various lens manufacturers that help improve the device’s optics, the G6 has virtually no support that way. These lenses are about as good as it’s going to get, which is why tinkering with Manual mode becomes more prominent.

It’s not a perfect camera, by any means, but the G6 is among the best and most multi-faceted available on any handset to date. It just takes some time to learn how to bring out the best it offers.

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Canada’s Federal Court of Appeals (FCA) has ruled that Rogers cannot charge fees related to the identification of suspects of copyright infringements, according to a May 9th, 2017 FCA ruling.

The May 9th FCA ruling is the latest development in an ongoing dispute between American production company Voltage Pictures and Rogers Communication.

According to the case literature, Voltage Pictures reached out to Rogers in order to identify a Rogers customer suspected of considerable copyright infringement.

While Rogers agreed to help Voltage Pictures identify the “John Doe” suspected of infringing copyrights, the telecommunications company insisted on charging the film company a $100 CAD-per-work-hour fee.

Rogers’s central argument was that, should the company not charge a fee, it would be inundated by copyright holders attempting to sue Rogers customers for suspected infringements.

Voltage sued Rogers, but the Federal Court of Canada (FCC) ruled in favour of Rogers, arguing that Rogers was entitled to charge a fee, as per stipulations within the Copyright Act, as amended by the Copyright Modernization Act.

Voltage subsequently appealed the FCC’s decision, leading to the FCA’s ruling that Rogers cannot charge a fee to fulfill their legal obligations under a different stipulation outlined by the amended Copyright Act.

The stipulations in question are sections 41.25 and 41.26 of the Copyright Act.:

The above sections enumerate the exact steps required for a copyright holder to request information about suspected copyright infringers, as well as the steps that service providers like Rogers are legally required to take in response to a copyright holder’s requests.

Section 41.25 and 41.26 also specify that the ministry of industry may specify a fee that service providers can charge to fulfill the obligations outlined in the aforementioned sections.

However, service providers are not legally entitled to a fee, if no fee is outlined by the minister.

“At present, no regulation has been passed,” said Appointed Judge David Stratas, in the May 9th FCA ruling.

“Thus, Internet service providers such as Rogers cannot charge a fee for the discharge of their subsection 41.26(1) obligations, as significant as they are.”

Asked whether the company has plans to appeal the FCA ruling, a Rogers spokesperson said that the company is reviewing the decision.

As this is a ruling by the Federal Court of Appeals, all lower courts, including the Federal Court of Canada and all provincial courts are bound by the FCA’s ruling on the matter.

Voltage Pictures is an American production studio behind films like The Hurt Locker and Dallas Buyers Club. Voltage’s copyright enforcement efforts are well-known in both the U.S. and Canada.

In 2014, the Federal Court of Canada sided with Voltage Pictures in a case compelling TekSavvy to release the name of individuals suspected of copyright infringement. However, the FCC enforced incredibly strict restrictions on Voltage, in an attempt to protect the rights of those suspected copyright infringers.

Source: Federal Court of Appeals

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Sony has manufactured many successful high-end smartphones over the years, though according to XperiaMobile, the company will soon halt the production ‘premium standard’ devices.

“Premium standard’ isn’t a term that’s typically used when referring to smartphones. According to Sony, these devices feature certain flagship-like specs but are not considered a traditional flagship smartphone. For example, Sony’s Xperia X Compact is a device the company classifies as a premium standard smartphone.

The Compact features 3GB of memory, a 2700 mAh battery, and a 23-megapixel camera, and also features a Snapdragon 650 processor and a 4.7-inch display. The device is definitely not a flagship device but it does include specific high-end specs.

Though the Japanese company will continue to manufacture its midrange devices like the Sony Xperia XA1. Sony will also continue to make it’s flagship devices like the Sony XZ Premium which was announced at Mobile World Congress.

Sony made the announcement at its 2017 Investor Day, where the company unveiled that its ‘premium standard’ class of devices is not doing well in the global market. Sony says it will differentiate its products with only things that the company can deliver, though didn’t specify exactly what that meant.

Sony is still manufacturing smartphones, however, in an effort to remain relevant in telecommunications sector, though its main focus is now virtual reality, according to a statement made by Sony president Kazuo Hirai.

Source: XperiaMobile

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Apple plans to livestream its WWDC 2017 keynote presentation this year on June 5th at 10am PDT/1pm EST.

As always, this year’s WWDC will feature new versions of iOS, tvOS, macOS and watchOS. Rumours surrounding WWDC also indicate that this year’s developer conference feature some form of new hardware.

The new hardware will come in different forms and sizes, such as a new standalone voice-activated assistant like Google Home.

Furthermore, other rumours suggest we’ll see new Macbooks, Macbook Pros, and even a new MacBook Air device, with all the aforementioned devices featuring improved internal hardware.

Lastly, reports indicate we’ll see a new 10.5-inch iPad Pro, the middle-sized sibling to the 9.7 and 12.9-inch iPad Pro tablets.

MobileSyrup will be on the ground at WWDC bringing you all the information directly from the conference’s keynote presentation.

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Alto’s Adventure, one of MobileSyrup’s favourite mobile games, is currently 80 percent off on the iTunes App Store.

If you haven't visited Alto's village, now's the perfect time. For a short while, the game is on sale for 80% off! https://t.co/Is9IGtgt6y pic.twitter.com/SOs4I9niiA

— Alto's Adventure (@altosadventure) May 25, 2017

Canadian iPhone and iPad users can grab the game for just $1.39 CAD for a limited amount of time. There’s no indication of when the sale will end, Snowman, the game’s Toronto-based developer, only said that the sale is on for a limited time.

The studio is currently working on two new titles, When Cards Fall and the followup to Alto’s Adventure, Alto’s Odyssey.

Source: Twitter, iTunes

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Snapchat is making its users replace their Snapcode pictures with their Bitmoji avatars. Previously, an actual picture was able to be used inside the ghost-shaped frame.

The change comes along with the the latest update to Snapchat, version 10.9.1.0. The mood of the Bitmoji can be changed as well by tapping “Edit Bitmoji.”

The Verge notes that users who haven’t yet created Bitmoji seem to have been unaffected by this change and are instead able to continue using their old profile pictures. However, those who do not have a profile picture are prompted to create a Bitmoji.

It’s worth noting that the push for greater Bitmoji integration makes sense from a business perspective. Snapchat actually owns Bitstrips, the Toronto-based company that makes Bitmoji, following a $100 million acquisition that was finalized last year.

In other Snapchat news, the social media platform recently added more customization options for Stories.

Via: The Verge 

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One of the Vive’s most significant advantages over the Oculus Rift and its Touch controllers is that HTC’s headset features full 360-degree room-scale tracking right out of the box.

The Rift, on the other hand, requires the purchase of an additional Touch controller with camera sensor bundle for $139 CAD. Even then, Oculus Touch only features 180-degree front-facing tracking. 360-degree tracking, which was originally only available in beta with the Rift, has not been an officially supported feature — at least not until now.

This new update adds a variety of improvements to multi-sensor tracking, according to Oculus. Other additions include a warning when the user has plugged the Rift into the incorrect GPU in their PC, as well as a new UI for helping set up the headset and a short safety video.

Furthermore, three-sensor tracking is now supported in sitting and standing modes, allowing for full range VR experiences that rival what the Vive has been capable of since launch, according to early reports. 360-degree tracking with only two cameras has also been improved with this update, says Oculus.

While the Rift’s three-sensor setup was competent at launch, I found it less reliable and accurate than my experience with the Vive. Hopefully, this update solves the Rift’s compatibility issues and moves its room-scale tracking features to parity with the Vive.

Source: Oculus

Via: TechCrunch

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