Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer who started his career on PC World and has written for dozens of computer and technology magazines, as well as numerous national newspapers, business and in-flight magazines. He has also written two novels.
He thinks wires are evil and had a custom desk made to hide them, known as the OC Desk for obvious reasons.
He considers 1000 miles a good distance for a cycle ride, and Chernobyl a suitable tourist destination. What can we say, he’s that kind of chap.
He speaks fluent English but only broken American, so please forgive any Anglicised spelling in his posts.
Google Translates’s augmented reality feature, Word Lens, now works with Japanese. As with other supported languages, you simply point your smartphone camera at a Japanese sign, notice, menu or similar and it will instantly overlay the English text – even without a data connection.
LG has announced that it lost KRW 258.80 billion ($223.98M) in Q4 of last year, its first loss in six years. The company admitted that poor sales of its modular G5 smartphone and subsequent marketing costs were a significant factor. The company restructured its mobile division last year as the company struggled to sell the handset.
Due to losses from mobile communications and vehicle components, LG reported a fourth-quarter net loss of KRW 258.80 billion (USD 223.98 million) […] Profitability was hampered by weak sales of the G5 smartphone and higher marketing investments.
One item in LG’s report was notable by its absence …
Google has announced that of the 30+ teams who signed up for its Lunar XPrize competition to land a privately-funded robot on the moon, five teams have successfully met the requirement to have a verified launch contract in place by the end of last year.
Those five teams will now be competing for the main prize of $20M to be the first to land on the Moon and complete the two required tasks. There is also $5M on offer for the second team to succeed, and smaller prizes for such things as achieving distance targets and visiting historic sites …
Samsung has achieved its highest profitability in three years as it announced Q4 2016 profits of 9.22T won ($7.93B), almost exactly in line with its earlier guidance. The profits were achieved despite a $5B hit from recall costs and lost earnings from the Note 7.
The company’s accounts show that the bulk of its profits were made from chip and component manufacturing, with the company expecting the growth of Internet of Things products, AI devices and automotive tech to further boost demand for its components. However, it warned that the future looked uncertain …
The Vine video service officially closes today, so if you have any Vine videos online that aren’t safely stored in your camera roll, you only have a few hours to save them.
The Vine app allows you to download your stored videos (Profile page → Save Videos), which you can do either directly to your phone or get a download link which also preserves the Like and Re-vine data. Alternatively, Giphy has a free service that automatically converts each of your Vine videos into animated GIFs …
Lee Jae-yong, center, arriving for questioning at the office of the independent prosecutor in Seoul last week
With Samsung still reeling from the Note 7 disaster, the the acting head of the company now faces the prospect of arrest as part of a high-profile investigation into possible bribery and corruption.
The WSJ reports that special prosecutors are today seeking an arrest warrant for Lee Jae-yong, vice-chairman of the company and heir to the business. Lee Jae-yong has been acting head of the company during his father’s continuing illness, so his arrest would risk a leadership vacuum at Samsung…
Update: Updated with a response from WhatsApp, below.
A security researcher has found a backdoor in the end-to-end encryption system used by the WhatsApp messaging service. The vulnerability would allow Facebook to read messages sent through the supposedly secure system, as well as making it possible for the company to comply with court orders to make messages available to governments and law enforcement.
While end-to-end encryption would normally mean that not even the company operating the service can decrypt messages, only the intended recipient, the specific implementation used in WhatsApp includes a major security hole …
I may live a paperless life myself, but not everyone does. If you’re someone who prefers physical reminders of things you need to do, the Mangoslab Nemonic may be for you: it’s a small thermal printer that can print anything on your Android phone onto a sticky note.
Garmin has announced new versions of its Garmin Drive range of in-car satellite navigation devices, using Bluetooth connectivity to an Android phone or iPhone to provide additional functionality. Most are available in a choice of 5- and 6.95-inch models, somewhat confusingly indicated by 51 and 61 suffixes.
The entry-level Garmin Drive 51/61 adds free real-time services, such as live traffic, for select models when wirelessly paired with a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone. After pairing to a smartphone, drivers can also enjoy live parking information from Parkopedia, the world’s leading parking service provider. Parkopedia conveniently provides pricing and availability trends for on-street public parking as drivers approach a destination. Other real-time services such as LiveTrack allow drivers to share their location with friends – a useful feature to track family members or loved ones during a road trip.
Three additional models add further functionality and design features …
Almost a year after adding Live Video to its app, Facebook has announced that it is introducing a Live Audio feature that allows live broadcasts of audio-only content. Or, as CNET wryly described it, radio.
Initially, the company will be testing the feature with a small number of established broadcasters – including the BBC World Service and LBC – though publishers and authors will also be getting in on the action …
Twitter has used the Berlin Christmas market attack to test push notifications of breaking news alerts in its iOS app. It’s not yet known whether the test extends to the Android app …
Evernote has now reversed a controversial change to its privacy policy after an earlier attempt at reassurance failed. In a new blog post, Evernote said that allowing engineers to read notes as part of its machine-learning efforts will now be on an opt-in basis.
An updated privacy policy caused concern when the company stated that machine-learning efforts would be checked by allowing engineers to read notes. The company said that customers would be able to opt-out of this if they wished, but it would otherwise assume permission …
If you’ve ever had trouble trying to identify your Uber car at a busy location at night, the company has a plan to make it easier for driver and rider to spot each other. You select a color in the Android app and hold your phone up as the vehicle approaches, looking out for the same color in the car’s windshield …
The Florida Court of Appeals has ruled that a suspect must tell police the passcode for his iPhone 5, overturning the original ruling that Fifth Amendment protections applied. This contradicts a Virginia court ruling in a separate case that a suspect can be forced to unlock a phone with their fingerprint, but cannot be forced to reveal their passcode as this would contravene the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Snapchat has added a new group chat feature, enabling you to chat with up to 16 friends at once. Simply called Groups, you can access it when starting a new chat or sending a Snap. The company says you can quickly & easily switch between group and individual chats.
When your friends are present in a Group Chat, we show their name at the bottom of the Chat. Simply tap their name to start a 1:1 Chat, and then easily return to the Group in one swipe! We call this Quick Chat, and it’s the fastest way to keep the conversation going with one friend without spamming the entire Group.
The core functionality of Snapchat remains the same in group chats …
An electric self-driving Chrysler Pacifica is Google’s first confirmed partnership
Google has long said that it has no plans to manufacture self-driving cars itself, instead partnering with auto makers, but it had been thought that it might press ahead with cars without steering wheels or pedals. However, a new report from The Information suggests that parent company Alphabet has now ‘backed off’ these plans in favor of something more conventional.
The report also echoes a much earlier one on the company’s intentions for the self-driving car project …
Thousands of Uber employees are said to be still able to use ‘God view’ to track customers of the ride service in real time almost two years after the company claimed to have restricted access to the data. Employees of the company are said to be tracking both public figures and exes.
One of many Samsung Galaxy S8 concept images
Bloomberg has echoed a SamMobile report that Samsung’s Galaxy S8 smartphone will have a Home button embedded in the display. While this would clearly be intended to maximize the display space within the casing, the latest report goes a little further in stating that the S8 will have an ‘all-screen design.’
Samsung Electronics Co. will create an all-screen front for the Galaxy S8 smartphones coming out next year and scrap the physical home button, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Bloomberg also said that Samsung will standardise on the Edge design in the new model …
Google has announced that its entire operations will be powered entirely by renewable energy in 2017.
[We’re] thrilled to announce that in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations — including both our data centers and offices. We were one of the first corporations to create large-scale, long-term contracts to buy renewable energy directly; we signed our first agreement to purchase all the electricity from a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa, in 2010. Today, we are the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy. That’s bigger than many large utilities and more than twice as much as the 1.21 gigawatts it took to send Marty McFly back to the future.
The achievement will by a significant one, The Verge noting that the company’s worldwide operations consumed almost as much power last year as the entire city of San Francisco. And Google believes the move will benefit consumers as well as the environment …
Google is teasing a next-generation ReCaptcha algorithm for websites to tell real visitors from bots which it promises will require no user interaction at all. The new system will be called Invisible ReCaptcha.
The earliest Captcha systems – an ancroynm for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart – were one of the biggest annoyances on the web, requiring users to figure out numbers from messy graphics. Switching instead to simple additions was an improvement but still a nuisance, before Google raised the bar with a system where all we had to do was tick a box …
Google’s new Pixel smartphone is apparently failing to properly display screengrabs sent from the iPhone 7 Plus. Screengrabs sent from within an app on the iPhone arrive with both dimensions and colors distorted.
A couple of Google announcements today highlight the astonishing progress being made in artificial intelligence. A Google Research blog post explains how the company’s switch to neural learning for Google Translate means that the machine can translate between language pairs it has never explicitly learned, while a DeepMind project showed that AI can lip-read better than people.
The company said that Google Translate no longer has individual systems for each language pair, but instead uses a single system with tokens indicating input and output languages. The AI learns from millions of examples, and it was this that made the team wonder whether it could translate between two languages without specifically being taught how to do so …
Code spotted by Android Police in Google Play services v10.0 suggests that Android Wear will soon support contactless payment for Android Pay. So far your only options for paying by watch are Samsung Pay on the Gear S3 and Apple Pay on the Apple Watch.
Strings like ‘Try holding your watch to the terminal again’ leave little doubt about Google’s plans …
The September 2 recall and subsequent cancellation of the Note 7 saw Samsung’s Q3 market share fall year-on-year from 23.6% to 19.2% – the biggest drop in its history, said Gartner.
Samsung’s smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2016 as a whole declined 14.2 percent year over year — their worst performance ever. Samsung’s previous worst performance for smartphone sales was a 12.3 percent drop in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Research director Anshul Gupta said that the launch of the Galaxy S8 would be a crucial test for the company’s fate …