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Ben Lovejoy

benlovejoy

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.

Connect with Ben Lovejoy

Google Glass still has a future as a consumer device, claim two members of development team [Poll]

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Two of the original team members behind Google Glass have insisted that the device still has a future for consumers, despite the company now pitching it exclusively at the enterprise market.

In an interview at the Computer History Museum, Thad Starner, a professor at Georgia Tech and a technical lead on Glass, and Greg Priest-Dorman, a systems administrator at Google X, said that the press had “misunderstood and overpromised” what Google was trying to achieve, reports Re/code … 
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Software engineering student ‘hacks’ OnePlus reservation system to jump the queue

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A software engineering student has used a few lines of code to jump the queue for a OnePlus 2 invite, moving himself up from over 70,000 to position 1,694.

While queue-jumping isn’t something we’d generally condone, Jake Cooper said that his motivation here was to hit back at the way OnePlus encourages spam, by moving people up the queue when they email the link to others.

When the OnePlus Two rolled around, I made sure to be on the ball and put my email in early and secured position ~9000. However, with the invites for the OnePlus Two, OnePlus opted to allow users to jump the queue by referring their friends to the invite waitlist. Last night I checked my invite status and I was position > 70,000.

In a Medium post, Cooper explains how he used a few lines of Python to effectively spam a series of fake email addresses, and a little more code to obtain the confirmation URLs from those emails. The result was that, in the time it took him to get a cup of tea, he had moved up over 68,000 places in the queue.

The waitlist for an invite recently exceeded a million people. The company recently revealed that it will be releasing another model later this year, but gave no details on features or spec.

Via AndroidCentral

Samsung sets aside $86M for compensation & prevention in wake of 70 cancer deaths, 200 illnesses

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Samsung says that it is setting aside 100B won ($85.8M) for compensation and prevention measures after some 200 of its employees contracted cancer through contact with dangerous substances. Samsung last year issued a “deep apology” for what was then believed to be 56 cases.

Reuters reports that illnesses such as lymphoma and leukemia resulted from prolonged exposure to either radiation or dangerous chemicals at Samsung’s chip and display factories … 
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VlogBrothers creator Hank Green accuses Facebook of cheating, lying and condoning theft

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Hank Green, creator of VlogBrothers and other YouTube channels, has written a Medium post in which he accuses Facebook of cheating, lying and condoning content theft in its efforts to persuade content creators to switch platform.

Facebook says it’s now streaming more video than YouTube. To be able to make that claim, all they had to do was cheat, lie, and steal.

The most damning claim Green makes is that Facebook effectively lies about the number of views videos receive on the platform by counting them while many people are simply scrolling past … 
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Parrot says you won’t be able to buy its new Android Auto system as aftermarket product after all

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When Parrot unveiled its new Android Auto-compatible infotainment system the RNB6 at CES, it promised pricing and availability later in the year. The company now appears to have had a change of heart, updating its blog post to say that it now has no plans to offer it as an aftermarket upgrade, and will be selling it direct to manufacturers instead.

RNB6 project was showcased at CES Las Vegas in January 2015 (watch video below). This infotainment system was selected by several automakers who envision to integrate it in their next-generation car models next year and beyond. As of today there is no plan to sell RNB6 in Aftermarket channels as RNB6 embedded technologies require deep integration with car series and manufacturers

The unit itself runs on Android, offering navigation, music and other functionality without a connected phone, but also supports both the Android Auto platform and Apple’s CarPlay.

While Android Auto has had a relatively slow start to date, it appears to be gathering momentum as manufacturers introduce support in their 2016 models, which are now starting to arrive in showrooms. Volkswagen said last week that almost all its 2016 models will get Android Auto support, while Honda said that the 2016 Accord would be its first Android Auto-equipped model.

Via iMore

Google appeals French ‘Right to be forgotten’ order, says would be ‘race to the bottom’

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Google has appealed against France’s order that it must implement ‘Right to be forgotten‘ requests globally, rather than just within Europe, reports the WSJ. The company argued in a blog post that to comply would mean the Internet would only be as free as the least free country in the world … 
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Almost every 2016 Volkswagen model in almost every trim level will get Android Auto support, starting this week

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Der neue Volkswagen e-Golf2015 Volkswagon eGolf electric car

Volkswagen has announced that almost every 2016 VW model “in virtually every trim” will get support for Android Auto, with the first models arriving in showrooms this week.

As the people’s car brand, we knew that it was important to democratize these technologies across the Volkswagen line-up, with features like App-Connect ensuring that more consumers can integrate their smart devices in a wide range of trims on virtually every model the company sells […] 

App-Connect provides seamless smartphone integration through three interfaces: Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and MirrorLink.

“Democratization” only goes so far – the company will offer four different head units of varying sophistication, depending on price level … 
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Strategy Analytics: Huawei overtook Microsoft/Nokia to become world’s 3rd largest mobile phone vendor

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Strategy Analytics has issued its latest estimates of global mobile phone shipments, and reports that Huawei overtook Microsoft (which incorporates the Nokia-designed Lumia) last quarter to become the third-largest mobile phone vendor in the world. The company saw its shipments grow almost 50% to 30.6M units, contrasting strongly with an overall industry growth rate of just 2%.

Ken Hyers, Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “Huawei shipped 30.6 million mobile phones and captured a record 7 percent marketshare worldwide in Q2 2015. Huawei is rising fast in all regions of the world, particularly China where its 4G models, such as the Mate7, are proving wildly popular. Huawei has finally overtaken Microsoft to become the world’s third largest mobile phone vendor for the first time ever.”

The company shared some earnings results earlier this month, showing a 30% increase in revenue and claiming to be on track to hit 100M sales this year.

Samsung retained the number one slot, but saw its market share slip from 22.3% to 20.5% on disappointing Galaxy S6 sales. Samsung earlier revealed an 8% drop in profits, the fifth year running it has reported a decline in profitability …


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Motorola’s SVP of Software talks about the new Moto X and future development

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In an interview in Engadget, Motorola’s SVP of Software Seang Chau spoke briefly about the focus the company had chosen for the development of its latest Moto X smartphone, and where he saw the next generation of smartphones heading.

Chau said that Google “levels the playing field every time” by adding to Android features that were once device-specific. It’s for this reason that Motorola has chosen to focus on the ‘always on’ capability of the Moto X Style (or Moto X Pure Edition, as it is known in the U.S.).

We’ve got Moto Voice, where you just talk or make motions and gestures or you just approach it and [it] wakes up — those kinds of things, you can’t copy in software and if you try, you’ll just kill your battery. We put a lot of effort into always-on, and I think that’s where we’re going to continue focusing a lot of our software efforts.

The future would, he said, be in making intelligent assistants like Google Now, Siri and Cortana significantly more capable. So far, he considers them to be at the “getting there” stage … 
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AT&T doesn’t want to be throttled for throttling customers

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It seems AT&T thinks throttling the data speeds of customers without telling them about it isn’t such a big deal. The Federal Trade Commission sued AT&T back in 2014 for “deceptive and unfair data throttling” after the company imposed caps on unlimited data contracts, beyond which it reduced their data speeds by almost 90%. The Federal Communications Commission joined the party last month, fining AT&T $100 million – and The Hill reports that the carrier now wants that fine reduced to just $16,000.

The Commission’s findings that consumers and competition were harmed are devoid of factual support and wholly implausible,” the company wrote in its filing. “Its ‘moderate’ forfeiture penalty of $100 million is plucked out of thin air, and the injunctive sanctions it proposes are beyond the Commission’s authority.”

The FTC had stated that it could legally have imposed fines of $16,000 per affected consumer, but that would have resulted in an “astronomic” fine, so chose to limit the total penalty to one large enough to deter future violations. AT&T had originally claimed that it was doing nothing wrong, but Ars Technica notes that the company amended its policy in May so that throttling was applied only when the network was congested.

AT&T has not offered unlimited data plans to new customers for some years, but has a small-ish group of customers who remain on grandfathered plans which remain valid for as long as the customer retains the plan.

Photo: Re/code

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Samsung reduces camera sensor thickness by 20% in quest for slimmer smartphones

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Samsung has begun mass-production of a new 16MP camera sensor a full 20% thinner than existing modules, allowing slimmer devices without “bumps” and without compromising on quality, says the company.

Built with 1.0μm pixels, Samsung’s new 16Mp image sensor reduces the module’s overall height by 20 percent, compared to current 1.12μm-pixel based 16Mp sensor modules. Enabling a module z-height that is less than 5mm, the S5K3P3 offers designers the ability to develop a mobile device with minimal camera protrusion without compromising on resolution.

Smaller pixels usually means more ‘noise’ in photos, especially in low-light conditions, but the company says that the inclusion of physical barriers between pixels – something Samsung calls ISOCELL technology – dramatically reduces noise. It claims that ISOCELL allows it to deliver image quality on a par with 1.12μm-pixel sensors.

Samsung says that the new S5K3P3 sensor is available to mobile device manufacturers from today; bets on it appearing in the forthcoming Galaxy S6 edge+ and possible the Galaxy Note 5 – it gets its current flagship phone cameras from Sony.

LG cites “extremely challenging environment” and iPhone competition as mobile division barely breaks even

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LG cited “an extremely challenging environment” for premium smartphones as the reason for posting a net operating profit of just 200M won ($172k) for its mobile division – a number put into stark perspective by Engadget as a profit of just 1.2 cents per phone. LG specifically singled out competition from the iPhone as a factor.

While year-on-year smartphone shipments were down 3%, it did achieve a tiny 1% increase in revenue, but said that profitability was hit by weaker demand in the premium sector in its home market of Korea. There was better news in the U.S. and Canada, however … 
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Motorola announces Bluetooth headphones: on-ear, and sports-oriented in-ear

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As part of a launch event for its new Android smartphones, Motorola has announced two new Bluetooth headphones compatible with most Android devices.

The $59.99 Moto pulse are stylish-looking on-ear headphones with beefy 40mm drivers, fold-flat ear cups for portability and a claimed 18-hour battery life. The $69.99 Moto surround earbuds are aimed at sports and fitness use, being both waterproof and sweatproof and equipped with a collar band designed to be light yet remain in place during exercise.

A companion Android app provides easy pairing, battery notifications and a location function to reunite you with either pair of headphones if you lose them.

“Worst Android vulnerability in the mobile OS history” affects almost every Android phone, say researchers

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Mobile security researchers at Zimperium say that they have discovered the “worst Android vulnerability in the mobile OS history” – and it can infect your smartphone simply by receiving an MMS message. Unlike most malware, it is not necessary to open the message in order for your phone to be compromised, reports NPR.

“This happens even before the sound that you’ve received a message has even occurred,” says Joshua Drake, security researcher with Zimperium and co-author of Android Hacker’s Handbook. “That’s what makes it so dangerous. [It] could be absolutely silent. You may not even see anything.”

Once the MMS has been received, it activates code which gives the attacker complete control of your Android device – everything from copying data to taking over the microphone and camera … 
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Samsung builds Qi-compatible wireless charging into latest monitor

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In one of those moves so obvious in retrospect you wonder why the company didn’t do it earlier, Samsung has announced a monitor with a built-in Qi-compatible wireless charging pad. Just place your Samsung S5 or S6 (or other smartphone compatible with the Qi standard for wireless charging) onto the pad beneath the SE370 monitor and the LED will turn green as the phone charges … 
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Tony Fadell implies in BBC interview that the Google Glass Explorer Edition may have been a mistake

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Nest founder and former Apple iPod lead designer Tony Fadell has intimated in a BBC interview that the decision to make an early version of Google Glass available for public sale may have been a mistake.

He said that while Google has always launched beta versions of its products and gathered feedback from users, there was a very big difference between software and hardware.

If you are only doing services based on electrons, you can iterate quickly, test it, and modify it and get it right. But when you are dealing with actual atoms – hardware – and you have to get manufacturing lines and it takes a year or more to develop that product, you better understand what it is and what it’s trying to do and specifically what it’s not going to do.

Customers have to spend money to buy those atoms. They want something that delivers value or you end up with a real disappointment and you can spoil the market.

He was, however, “very bullish” about the product, and believes it has a big future … 
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Huawei smartphone shipments up 39% year-on-year, to 48.2M in first half of 2015

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Huawei shared some of its financial results on Monday, showing a strong first half of 2015, and it has now shared one additional key piece of data: smartphone sales. Huawei told Reuters that it had shipped 48.2M smartphones globally in the first half of the year, up 39% year-on-year.

Our usual caution should be noted: shipments does not necessarily indicate sales. There’s no telling what percentage of those devices are sitting on warehouse shelves or in retail stores. But assuming there is some reasonable correlation between the two, it does lend weight to the earlier suggestion that the company is on-track for its target of 100M sales by the end of the year, as sales should increase significantly during the holiday season.

Huawei has had a rather troubled history in the U.S. thanks to unproven allegations of involvement in state-sponsored spying, exiting the country in 2013 (bar white-label products for other brands) before returning in 2014 with the Ascend Mate2.

YouTube updates Android app to address Vertical Video Syndrome

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Update: Google has now officially announced the update, bringing three new tabs on top of vertical video support.

We all have friends who’ve done it: fail to recognize that shooting video is different from taking a photo, and end up shooting vertical video. YouTube has for some time tried to lessen their embarrassment with a pseudo horizontal view, but the latest update to the Android app takes things a stage further by acting like they didn’t do anything dumb in the first place … 
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Google may face yet another European antitrust prove, this time over ad products

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Just as one European antitrust case against Google reached its conclusion, with a second one underway, it may be facing a third, reports the Financial Times.

The first antitrust case found that Google abused its dominant position in search to promote its own products over that of competitors. with the company told to expect large fines. A second one is underway, to determine whether Google forced smartphone manufacturers to favor its own apps over competitor ones in return for permission to use Android.

The FT now reports that a number of companies selling online advertising have asked the European Commission to consider a third case, to investigate Google’s dominance of the web advertising business … 
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Associated Press & British Movietone add entire news archives to YouTube, dating back to 1895 [Video]

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The Associated Press and British Movietone have both uploaded their entire historical news archives to YouTube, totalling more than a million minutes of footage, and covering events dating back to 1895. They join British Pathé, which uploaded its entire 100-year library last year.

The archival footage includes major world events such as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, exclusive footage of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 2001 terrorist attacks on the US.

AP says that it may later look to monetize the content with ads, but for now will rely on revenue from licensing deals with documentary makers and others to fund the work … 
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Don’t expect your fancy new top-level domain to give you an SEO boost, says Google

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With companies now able to apply to use their own brand as a top-level domain (TLD), there have been suggestions that doing this might be an easy way to get a boost in search-engine rankings. For example, that Samsung using something like www.phones.samsung might get more hits than the usual samsung.com domain. Not so, says Google … 
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New sensor technology could allow fingerprint unlock through your smartphone screen

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Unlocking smartphones by fingerprint has been possible since the Motorola Atrix 2 back in 2011, with both Samsung and HTC embedding fingerprint sensors into some of their more recent models, but the process could get a whole lot slicker thanks to some new tech.

While current sensors need some space beneath the display, future smartphones could read your fingerprint through the screen. TNW reports that Sonovation has developed ultrasonic fingerprint sensors capable of 3D scanning from beneath the Gorilla Glass used on many high-end smartphones.

Though details on how it will work are sparse, Sonovation says its sensors are “capable of capturing fingerprint data into the ridges and valleys.” It also says 3D scanning can take place if a finger is wet, dirty or oily — all without compromising accuracy.

Google built fingerprint recognition into Android M, making it likely that we’ll see more Android devices launching with fingerprint sensors in future.

Image: PC Mag

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Google Capital leads $100M investment to fund growth by Crowdstrike cybersecurity company

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Google Capital has led a $100M investment in Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity company with strong government ties, reports the WSJ. Supporting investors include Rackspace, Accel and Warburg Pincus.

Its head of investigations, Shawn Henry, is the former top computer-crimes official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crowdstrike’s D.C.-based chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, has a long history of calling out foreign hacker groups.

Crowdstrike offers a remote monitoring service for its clients’ networks, aiming to detect hacking attempts at an early stage. Where hackers have already penetrated, the company works to identify the group responsible.

Google Capital was formed last year to provide funding for successful companies looking for growth. It sits alongside Google Ventures, which provides early-stage funding for startups. Google Capital partner Gene Frantz said that they were “blown away” by the company tripling its billings year-on-year.

“We were blown away by CrowdStrike’s incredible growth and impressive customer adoption,” said Gene Frantz, partner at Google Capital. “They have a truly unique SaaS-based endpoint security model, a highly scalable subscription revenue model, and a visionary technical approach that has huge potential to transform the industry, which is why we’re thrilled to make this investment.”