Over the past two weeks, Huawei has lost nearly every partner it has thanks to a US trade ban, including high-profile splits with Google, Corning, and ARM that have plunged the Chinese phone maker into an unprecedented crisis. But some of its major partners are staying quiet — most notably Microsoft, which still hasn’t put out an official statement on the ban. Microsoft did quietly pull Huawei laptops from its site, suggesting some kind of withdrawal of services, but we’re still in the dark about the company’s broader plans for dealing with the ban.
Microsoft is one of Huawei’s biggest software partners, licensing and maintaining Windows on a number of Huawei laptops that have to be directly licensed and updated by the company. It’s most likely that Microsoft is simply staying quiet because of the sensitivity of the issue, but the silence raises an interesting question: if Microsoft (or any other company) defies the Commerce order and keeps doing business with Huawei, what kind of penalties would it face?
The assumption from nearly everyone in the industry is that Microsoft will take the same tack as Google and the others, for the simple reason that they can’t afford not to. There’s a raft of penalties for companies that defy export bans, ranging from civil fines to denial orders that would place explicit limits on what the violating company can export, all administered by dedicated Export Enforcement investigators. If the violations are flagrant enough, there can even be criminal penalties, like a case in May that saw a New Jersey man convicted on conspiracy charges for exporting weapons to Ukraine. But given how much Microsoft relies on government and international contracts for its business, there would be plenty for the company to lose before the threat of jail time was even raised.
It’s not just US companies that need to be careful of this kind of penalty. As law firms are rushing to clarify, anyone who licenses technology from the US has to abide the same restrictions, which effectively means cutting off partnership with Huawei. “For example,” one firm explains, “nonpublic U.S.-origin technology necessary to produce a toothbrush may not be provided to Huawei by a company outside the United States without a BIS license,” even if the toothbrush itself is made outside the US. That risk goes a long way to explain why companies like ARM, which is based outside the US and provides chip architectures rather than manufacturing itself, are still steering clear of the ban.
What’s more likely is that Microsoft is simply playing for time. Trump himself has hinted that the restrictions could be removed as part of a trade deal, which would likely be struck before the new tariffs go into effect on June 25th. If that deal actually happens, staying quiet and riding out the storm might seem smart in retrospect — but given Trump’s track record as a federal deal-maker, it seems like a risky bet.
I used to love the fingerprint sensor on the back of my Google Pixel 3. It felt simple. I just placed a finger on it, waited a moment, and after my phone vibrated the tiniest amount to confirm everything’s okay, I was let into my device. Now, though, after spending a week with the side-mounted fingerprint sensor on the Honor 20 Pro, I’m not so sure it’s the simplest or most convenient place for a fingerprint sensor after all.
Back in the bulky bezel days, there was one obvious place for manufacturers to put their shiny new fingerprint sensors. Apple, Samsung, and pretty much everyone else plonked a big home button on the bezel at the bottom of their displays, and we got used to holding our phones so that either thumb was positioned to quickly get scanned. But as bezels got smaller, and home buttons started to disappear, everyone started to get more creative with their biometric security.
Many, including Samsung, Google, and LG, initially went for rear-mounted fingerprint sensors, and until now I’ve been firmly in favor of this decision. I like their simplicity, I like the fact that you only have to register one finger on each hand to use them, and I like that I can feel where they are without having to look at my phone, unlike Apple’s Face ID or in-display scanners that only cover a small portion of the screen. This sounds like a minor thing, but one of my main uses for Google Pay is tapping my way through the London Underground’s ticket barriers to pay my fare, and in a crowded ticket hall I want to be able to keep my eyes on where I’m going rather than making eye-contact with my phone’s face-scanning biometric security, or looking for the specific part of the screen that’s able to scan my thumbprint.
For the most part, Honor has been happy to follow this trend, but with the Honor 20 Pro it took a slightly different approach and mounted its sensor on the side. It’s not the only one, Samsung recently used a side-mounted sensor on the Galaxy S10E (and the ill-fated Galaxy Fold), and Sony has been using them for years on a range of its devices. But the Honor 20 Pro is the first of these phones that I’ve had the chance to use extensively, and it completely changed my attitude.
Initially, it took me a little while to warm to the sensor placement on the Honor 20 Pro. With a rear-mounted sensor you only really need to scan your two index fingers to cover every eventuality, but with a side-mounted sensor there are so many more possibilities. To start with, I set up both the index finger and middle finger on my left hand and the thumb on my right hand, but eventually I’d added both thumbs, middle fingers, and index fingers when I realized you might use any of these fingers when unlocking a phone that laid flat on a desk. That’s six fingerprints you have to register in total, and at the time it felt like a hassle. But unless you’re changing your phone super regularly, I can’t see this being a problem you’ll have more than once a year.
Once it’s set up, combining the fingerprint sensor and power buttons makes so much sense. Unless you’re picking up your phone to specifically check your notifications, it’s likely that you’re going to want to unlock it, so there’s little sense in wasting space having two buttons when one will suffice. Yes, this means that you’ll hardly ever see your lock screen any more, but if you really need to look at it then you can nudge the power button with an unregistered part of your thumb to wake the phone without unlocking it. Alternatively, the Samsung Galaxy S10E also has a neat feature where you can double tap the screen to wake up the phone without unlocking it, although this feature isn’t available on Honor’s device.
It’s also great when you have a phone on the desk in front of you. Rather than committing to picking up a handset, like I have to do whenever I want to unlock my Pixel 3, I can just give the Honor 20 Pro a little squeeze to have a quick scroll through Twitter or check my emails. It’s another little thing, but it’s something I found myself doing a lot.
It’s not just me that’s discovered a soft spot for the side-mounted fingerprint sensor. When my colleague Natt reviewed the budget member of the Samsung Galaxy S10 lineup, the S10E, she also loved its placement. She said she found it sat naturally underneath her thumb while she was using the device, and was easy to instinctively feel out without having to look at the phone. Compared to previous Samsung Galaxy devices, it also had the added benefit of being nowhere near the phone’s rear camera, unlike the S8 and S9 which placed them so close together on the rear of the phone that it became easy to confuse them when feeling with your finger.
Side-mounted sensors aren’t without their drawbacks. They’re not symmetrical for one thing, meaning that they don’t cater equally to right-handed and left-handed people. That might not be a problem for some, but if you’ve got smaller hands and you’re using a larger device, reaching your fingers around the back of the device to a sensor on its side could be difficult. Side-mounted sensors are also under more space constraints than those on the backs of devices, so you have to be more specific about how you place your thumb or finger on it if you want it to scan correctly first time. Spending more time setting up your fingerprints correctly can help with this, but it’s more effort than you’d have to put into setting up a rear-mounted sensor.
Perhaps understandably, as the technology improves, the industry at large now seems to be shifting inexorably toward under-display fingerprint sensors. In just a few short years, they’ve gone from being a niche feature on Chinese handsets to featuring heavily in two of the biggest flagships of the year, the Samsung Galaxy S10 and the OnePlus 7 Pro. Now, early prototypes from the likes of Xiaomi suggest that the next step will be to turn most or even all of the screen into one large sensor.
What I like most about the side-mounted fingerprint sensor is the way it blurs the line between functionality and security. You don’t really think about scanning your finger on the Honor 20 Pro’s sensor, it just happens automatically when you go to wake your device. I hope this is the future we eventually reach with in-display fingerprint sensors, where your device is seamlessly checking your fingerprints as you use your phone. When security becomes invisible, the inconvenience of using it almost completely disappears, people are willing to put up with more of it, and everyone becomes safer as a result.
We’re not there yet. In-display fingerprint sensors still cover just a small part of the screen, and you still have to think just that little bit about using them in order to get them to work. But while we’re still waiting for them to cover the entirety of a screen, a side-mounted fingerprint sensor feels like the perfect solution, and I hope more manufacturers follow Honor and Samsung’s leads and start using them.
At its I/O developer’s conference in May, Google announced that it was bringing a neat feature to its search results: augmented reality models, which allows users to take a look as a 3D image of a search result. The company just rolled out the feature to users with an ARCore or ARKit-ready Android phone or iPhone, as spotted by Cnet.
The feature only has a couple of animals that you can check out right now, such as a tiger, a lion, a giant panda, a rottweiler, a wolf, and a bunch of others. (Cnet’s Scott Stein has a thread that lists off the ones that he found.)
It’s AR of the tiger!
If you’ve got an AR-enabled phone, you can now bring select animals right into your space for a safari (or safe snuggle) with Search. pic.twitter.com/kWpudETgeq
To use the feature, navigate to Google on a compatible device, and search for the animal in question in Google Search. If the animal you’ve searched for (say, a wolf) is available, it’ll show up in a small box with some statistics and an animated thumbnail, and an invitation to “meet a life-sized wolf up close.”
From there, tap “View in 3D”, and the site will populate an animated, 3D model in your screen. When you click on the AR tab on the top of the screen, it’ll switch you to an AR view on your phone. This step took a couple of minutes: it had me move my phone around before populating a handful of animals, but eventually, it displayed a tiger, a golden eagle, and a wolf hanging out in my backyard. It’ll let you take a clean screenshot, minus all of the tabs and buttons.
The feature is pretty cool: it’s a good way to see just how large some of these animals really are up close (I kept thinking that they were too large, until I looked at their stats), and I could see this being useful in a classroom or educational setting.
At I/O, Google noted that the feature would be used for some more practical things, like shopping, where you could see what a product looked like without actually having it in hand, or if you wanted to check out how muscles looked on a person — it would overlay your search result in AR. That’s not the extent of Google’s AR ambitions: it’s been testing an AR navigation feature for Google Maps, and has been releasing AR Playmoji stickers for users to play with.
The feature isn’t the first time that Google has inserted some sort of interactive, animal-related feature into its search results. Back in 2016, it launched a feature that allows people to listen to animal sounds in search results, although you have to specifically search for “Animal Sounds” to access that — searching for “Wolf Sounds” just brings you to regular links, like clips from YouTube or other related pages.
Enlarge/ Maybe this is the "Mark Taylor" I seek...
Getty Images | vladru
After a layoff dumped me into the job market for the first time in more than a decade, I had an all-too-close encounter with a new breed of digital fraudsters who prey on the unemployed. These high-tech predators use a new twist on an old scam to "hire" the victim in order to gain access to their bank account. The scheme was cleverly engineered, but a couple of small irregularities tipped me off to my would-be assailants' plans before they could steal anything more than two days' worth of my time. Once alerted, I was even able to use some of their own tactics to inflict a bit of pain on the folks who sought to scam me.
Embarrassing as it might be, I'm sharing my experiences in the hope that they might help you avoid falling victim to these cyber-vultures and perhaps even turn the tables on them.
The setup
Like most successful cons, this one involved gaining the willing consent of its victim through some combination of greed, fear, or desperation. Having been laid off several months earlier, I fell into the latter category and was ripe for the picking. When I lost the unfulfilling but steady editorial job I'd held down for the past few years, I was confident that my strong credentials and deep collection of contacts I'd made over the years would help me land a better gig within a month or two.
To my surprise, the job hunting skills I'd honed over my 20+ year career were outdated and almost useless at penetrating the layers of digital screening agents that stood between me and a potential employer. I found myself in unfamiliar territory, struggling to learn the complex Kabuki dance that today's job seekers must master in order to slip past Corporate HR's silicon sentinels and gain an audience with a carbon-based life form.
Even engaging a resume coach to help me finetune my credentials failed to break the deafening silence until an email arrived from ZipRecruiter, one of several job hunting sites I was registered with. The recruiter was responding to the application I had submitted a day earlier for a remote-work tech writer position at a biotech firm. Since the scammers used the name of a real company for their scheme, I've redacted it from the email below:
Company: XXXXXX, INC. - Position Type: Full-Time/Part Time.
Positions Available: Copywriter/Technical Writer/Proofreader and Editor. Pay: 45-50/HR
Station: Freelance/Remote - Full Time & Part time available. Candidate Interview Reference Code: ZPRTR11680 - Job Code: 3022
JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:
Manage team of experienced copywriters and proofreaders, bringing team members together in pursuit of highly relevant, error-free content across both digital and traditional print media
Evolve company’s voice and tone, championing the evolution of, and adherence to, our brand style guide
Lead proofing and copy functions as a “hands on” manager, personally taking on related tasks to hit critical deadlines
Work closely with Creative Director and team in the development of new and existing concepts, and in crafting output that sells
Manage overarching editorial process and workflow for all copy-writing and proofing milestones, prioritizing work, while improving process to maximize efficiency and productivity
Supervise and coach copywriters on developing engaging content that seamlessly integrates with visual design.
Your resume has been reviewed by our HR Department for the position and we believe you are capable of handling this position based on the contents of your resume you sent for our ad on ZIPRECRUITER. Your details has been forwarded to Mrs MARK TAYLOR the Assistant Chief Human Resources Officer. He will be conducting interview with you to discuss the Job Details, Pay Scale and every other thing you need to know about the position.
You are required to Log on to Google Talk Messenger/Hangout and send an Invite/Message to the Asst. Chief Human Resources OfficerMARK TAYLOR on his ID at (hrmdesktaylor@gmail.com). An interview tag identification number has been assigned to you ***ZPRTR11680***. Introduce yourself to him and indicate your interview reference code.
Thus began a two-day odyssey that nearly ended with my new "employers" draining the contents of my bank account.
Enlarge/ Have you ever heard of a job interview conducted via Google Hangouts? Can't imagine this happened frequently back in 2015 when these screenshots of Hangouts on iOS were current...
The hook
Per the email's instructions, I hopped onto Google Hangouts and reached out to "Mark Taylor," the person who would be interviewing me. His voice channel did not seem to be active so we messaged back and forth and set up a time to chat the following day.
During our exchange, I noticed that his replies contained some subtle grammatical irregularities that were very similar to the ones I'd seen in the first email. Wanting desperately to believe that this interview would be my ticket to a steady paycheck, I told myself that the recruiter's odd turns of phrase were probably due to the fact that he was working at some sort of offshore service center.
Any lingering concerns I had were put to rest after a bit of research revealed that the biotech firm the recruiter claimed to represent was a real company. Thus assured, I spent some time gathering information from the company's website to prep for the upcoming interview.
The following day, I logged onto Google Hangouts, properly dressed and groomed for the video chat I'd been preparing for. To my surprise, I learned that the interview would be conducted using Hangouts' text messaging service. Here is an excerpt of the conversation:
Me: Hi Mark—it's Lee. I'm on Hangouts and trying to confirm that the application will default to my external microphone instead of the one in my laptop. I'll call in a couple of minutes and if we have difficulty I'll run the call through my phone.
"Mark Taylor": Hello Lee, we can conduct the interview via text.
Sure—that would be fine too. If it's OK with you, I'll try the voice link and default to text if that doesn't work.
(After unsuccessfully trying to establish a voice link for a few minutes, Mark broke in again)
Are you ready to proceed with the interview now?
Yes. Let's rock!
The interview consist of three phases i.e " Introduction to the Company, Questionnaire Phase, Job Briefings, Description and Pay scale" So I'll begin by introducing you properly to the Company, provide you with the necessary information/details you need to know about us after which we would proceed with the questionnaire and job briefings OK.
Sounds great! Thanks—I'm ready
After a long briefing about the company, its research, and the oncology treatments it was developing, Mark began the formal part of the interview by introducing himself as the assistant chief human resources officer of the company and describing the duties I'd be expected to fulfill.
After reviewing my qualifications, he asked me several of the questions I've frequently encountered at conventional interviews over the years, including the ever-popular "whatcan you describe as the most difficult challenge you have faced in your career thus far and what methods did you apply to get it solved?"
I think I remember noticing that some of the questions I was answering had the same verbal tics I'd seen in the earlier emails, but, even if I did, I was too busy typing my replies to allow it to be a concern.
This was followed by a series of shorter questions that seemed at first to be mostly a professional skills assessment that included:
Explain in details the 3(three) major qualities of a good proofreader?
As a technical proofreader what would be your approach to problem solving when editing a write up?
Give three expectations of a creative copywriter?
But there were two questions that seemed out of place. They wanted to know which bank I used and whether it supported electronic deposits, a process in which you deposit checks by taking pictures of them with your Smartphone. It seemed like an odd thing to ask, but I told them that my bank did accept electronic deposits and moved on to the next question.
Within a few minutes of submitting my answers, Mark informed me that I'd passed the interview and would receive a formal offer to work from my home as a copywriter/proofreader. My pay would be $45/hour during my one-week training and evaluation period, stepping up to $50/hour when I became an employee.
After months of living on unemployment checks, those were the words I'd longed to see.
I was elated as we settled into what I was told would be the first part of the company's onboarding process. Mark explained that, following my training period, I'd meet with a company representative who would help me complete the last of the HR paperwork and verify that my home office was properly equipped with a top-line Mac Book, a pricey color laser printer, and a few other pieces of expensive tech the company deemed necessary.
Elation turned to panic because it wasn't clear whether the company would supply the equipment or if I'd have to pony up for it myself. To my relief, he told me that the company would send me a check that I'd use to buy the equipment from one of the company's preferred vendors.
I'd been online for most of the day, and it was getting late. We agreed to reconnect the following morning to complete the on-boarding and begin the training I'd have to take before beginning my actual work.
Before I signed off, Mark said that he'd send me a check so I could start purchasing my new office equipment as soon as possible. Life was good.
I know, I know, who cares about a phone name, right? It's right down there with color at the bottom of the list of things you should care about. And yet, like color, phone names actually matter -- to Apple, and on a deeper level, probably to you, too. Names are tools that brands use to entice buyers and convey certain values and characteristics about the thing they're selling. iPhone XS, fine. iPhone XYZ or iPhone XX, bad. And if you need more convincing, just peek at our gallery of 30 worst phone names below. There are some pretty impressive missteps.
For Apple specifically, the future of the iPhone X line is important because it represents a new iPhone era. The iPhone X is the device that shook off the yoke of the physical home button and went all-screen. It's the iPhone that charged ahead with secure face unlock, a feature that Android rivals still can't compete with almost three years later. Never forget that the iPhone X is also the phone that made it almost normal to pay $1,000 for a smartphone. The "X" isn't just a name, it's a thing that defines Apple's iPhone future.
Would Apple really call its next phone the iPhone 11 (as we do for ease and a general sense of chronology)? Or would it make more sense to stick with the X theme, and if so, then how -- iPhone X2 and X2S? Or is that the iPhone XI? Would that make 2020's phone the iPhone XIS? Of course not.
Part of the problem is that the iPhone "X" name is already confusing. It looks one way, but sounds another. Apple calls it the iPhone "ten," but you call it the iPhone "excess," "ex are" and "excess max."
The trouble began in 2017 when Apple skipped over the iPhone 9 to release the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and a "10," its tenth-anniversary phone. But in so naming the iPhone X -- and following it up with three more "X" phones in 2018 -- Apple has created a ripple effect that makes me wonder what the plan is next. (I've made similar arguments here and here.)
Now playing:Watch this:
iPhone XR vs. Galaxy S10E camera shootout
9:03
Here's another thought. Apple could simply call its new phone the "iPhone X (2020)." Apple has done this before with iPads and MacBooks and although we don't like it, we've learned to accept it, even if it does create mass confusion. ("Which iPhone do you have?" "Uh, the iPhone?")
Apple could also just carry on with its carefree new naming convention or throw us for a loop and finally bring the iPhone family in line with Apple's love of California geological name-places and call its next flagship phone the iPhone Tahoe, to mirror MacOS High Sierra. With Apple, anything is possible.
I miss the warm certainty of a logical naming structure, where S's follow integers and all is well in the universe. As far as future iPhone names go now, it's still a brave -- and confusing -- new world.
Originally published Sept. 16, 2018, and updated most recently June 2, 2019, at 4 a.m. PT.
We've been expecting Apple to close iTunes for a while now, in order to divide it into different apps, and it looks like the tech company is putting the ball in motion, suggesting we'll see the new face of Apple's media plan at WWDC 2019.
As noticed by Reddit user u/MalteseAppleFan, the iTunes Instagram account has had all its content deleted – in addition the iTunes Twitter account hasn't been updated in nearly a week as of writing, and all posts on iTunes' Facebook page have also been removed.
Shuttering iTunes' social media accounts would make sure consumers only followed the accounts of iTunes' newer apps, so Apple's steps to do so suggest we could hear news of iTunes' closure in the next few days. The iTunes Twitter and Instagram accounts already point towards the Apple TV accounts, so this move could already be in motion.
Apple's week-long developer conference WWDC 2019 begins on June 3, and we're expecting Apple to announce its new software and hardware upgrades like iOS 13 , MacOS 10.15, WatchOS 6 and more. TechRadar will be on the ground reporting for the whole week, so stay tuned to find out the future of Apple.
Soft robots promise a kinder, gentler approach to automation, but they're frequently hamstrung by complexity, costs and the need for wires. Thankfully, Harvard researchers have found a way to simplify matters. They've developed a softrobot driven by pressurized air that doesn't need the multiple control systems that frequently guide these machines. A lone input pumps air to the robot's legs through tubes of different sizes, which determines how those legs behave. If you want the robot to crawl forward, you just have to send air through the right set of tubes.
The test bot is just a simple cross-shaped quadruped, and it currently needs an external source of air. You're not about to see one in the wild any time soon. However, the simplicity and reduced parts could make it practical for all kinds of tasks where soft robots were either impractical or had to be tethered, such as space exploration or search and rescue. They could scramble across rough terrain without as much caution as more fragile conventional robots, and could be more affordable -- important if anything does go wrong.
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