Rabu, 05 Februari 2020

'Saints Row IV: Re-Elected' comes to Nintendo Switch on March 27th - Engadget

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While we have yet to hear new details about Saints Row V, you'll be able to play the franchise's best entry on Nintendo Switch when a port of the 2013 classic called Saints Row IV: Re-Elected comes out on March 27th.

If you haven't had a chance to experience it, the story of Saints Row IV is insane. You play as the President of the United States of America as you attempt to fend off an alien invasion. All you really need to know is that one of the weapons you can use in Saints Row IV is a dubstep gun (remember dubstep?) that causes your enemies to dance when you shoot them with it.

The Nintendo Switch version of Saints Row IV will come with 25 pieces of DLC, including the game's two story expansions: Enter The Dominatrix and How The Saints Save Christmas. It will also feature co-op, as well as a new weapon customization system.

While you can pre-order Saints Row IV today for $40, it's probably best to wait for reviews of the port to come out first. Last year's Switch release of Saints Row: The Third was plagued with framerate and input lag issues. Here's hoping Saints Row IV does better.

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2020-02-05 06:05:10Z
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Selasa, 04 Februari 2020

Blizzard pledges to fix (or refund) 'Warcraft III: Reforged' - Engadget

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It's only been a few days since Blizzard launched Warcraft III: Reforged, but fans have made it clear that they are not happy. In response, Blizzard says it is "sorry to those of you who didn't have the experience you wanted." The company promises that at least a handful of fixes are on the way.

Blizzard says it has already addressed a few server-load issues that impacted players on launch day, and that it has identified the bug responsible for color and shading issues. It is testing a fix that will be incorporated into a larger patch, which it expects to release later this week. The patch will address other issues, including portrait animations, audio bugs and UI fixes.

There are a few changes that Blizzard will not make. It is standing by its decision to remove tournaments and the Reign of Chaos ruleset. Both were underutilized, and Blizzard says eliminating those frees the team up to work on areas impacting more players. Blizzard doesn't have plans to change the in-game cutscenes that some users complained about, either, saying it wants to "preserve the true spirit of Warcraft III."

It's hard to say whether Blizzard's apology or the proposed changes will satisfy users. In the meantime, the company is offering full refunds to users who aren't satisfied with the remake.

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2020-02-04 18:28:36Z
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Nvidia’s GeForce Now leaves beta, challenges Google Stadia at $5 a month - The Verge

For the past eight years, Nvidia has been building graphics cards that can stream games over the internet — effectively putting some of the power of a gaming PC inside your less potent Windows laptop, MacBook, or phone. Today, the company’s finally ready to let North America and Europe sign up to pay for its GeForce Now service, starting at $5 a month, while also offering unlimited one-hour free trials that don’t even require a credit card.

The idea might sound familiar if you’ve heard of Google’s Stadia service, Sony’s PlayStation Now, Microsoft’s upcoming xCloud, or even Nvidia’s GeForce Now. (It’s been in beta for years and years, and also had a false start.) Each service operates on the same basic principle: delivering games much the same way you can stream a YouTube or Netflix video right now.

Unlike Google, Sony, and Microsoft’s offerings, Nvidia has a very different pitch. It’s your existing library of PC games that you can now play anywhere, instead of having to buy new games and / or subscribe to a Netflix-like catalog. Nvidia supports Steam, the Epic Games Store, Battle.net, and Uplay, and it runs instances of each for you in the cloud. You can log into your accounts, download many of your existing purchases near-instantly to your cloud desktop, sync your old save games, and pick up where you left off in a couple of minutes at most — no patches necessary.

I’ve been testing out GeForce Now (GFN) on and off for a number of years now, and it’s my favorite cloud gaming service because I can keep playing the games I’ve already been playing on my gaming PC on a weak Windows laptop, MacBook, Shield TV set-top, or Android phone instead. (There’s no iPhone or iPad support planned, but Nvidia says it’ll bring a WebRTC version to Chromebooks towards the end of Q1, which potentially opens the door to web browsers, too.) While the streaming quality isn’t quite as good at Stadia at its best and I wouldn’t recommend it for competitive gaming, I did beat Genichiro in the brutal Sekiro: Shadows Must Die over a GeForce Now connection.

The primary catch is that you need an excellent internet connection, a capable Wi-Fi router or Ethernet cable, and you must live somewhere that isn’t too far away from Nvidia’s servers to begin with. The company says its nine data centers in North America and six in Europe can reach 80 percent of broadband homes within 20 milliseconds — speedy enough for games to feel like they’re not lagging behind your button press — and it claims it’s achieving 10ms round-trip latency with its partners in Tokyo, (SoftBank), Seoul (LG U+), and Moscow (GFN.ru), some of which are still in testing. Nvidia’s talking to carriers in the US, too, but there’s nothing to announce yet.

Either way, you’ll need a 15 Mbps connection or better, 30 Mbps for 1080p60 streaming, and 50 Mbps is what Nvidia suggests for the best experience. (There’s no 4K or 1080p120 options yet.)

And though you can bring your own games, you can’t bring all of them. While Nvidia has a substantial list of hundreds of titles, including huge multiplayer hits like Fortnite, DOTA 2, Overwatch, PUBG, Destiny 2, and Rainbow Six Siege, it’s also conspicuously missing games from Capcom, EA, Konami, Remedy, Rockstar, and Square Enix, even though some of those publishers participated during the beta period. That means no Grand Theft Auto V, Monster Hunter World, or Red Dead Redemption 2, all of which regularly appear in the top ten most-played games on Steam.

While Nvidia is also taking this moment to upgrade its cloud gaming servers with ray-tracing-capable RTX Server graphics cards so you can now play a ray-traced game even on your Android phone, it’s a shame that flagship RTX games Control, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Final Fantasy XV are missing from the launch lineup. “We’re going to charge 0 percent of their sales, we’re making it easy for them to say yes... but some [publishers] are taking a wait-and-see attitude,” Nvidia GeForce Now boss Phil Eisler tells The Verge.

It’s also worth noting that there are over 1,000 games that Nvidia supports but doesn’t cache locally in its server farms, meaning you’ll need to “download” them to Nvidia’s servers each time you play.

Catch number three: you can’t play whenever you want for as long as you’d necessarily like. You can play an hour at a time for free, but you might have to sit on a waitlist; if you’re paying $5 a month for the “Founder’s” plan, you get priority access and can play for six hours at a stretch. That seems like more than plenty for me, and Nvidia will alert you well in advance so you can wrap up a session, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Lastly, you should know that Nvidia’s $5-a-month “Founder’s” plan is a limited availability deal to reward early adopters, and it’s not clear what the final price might be like. Nvidia says it’s doubled the capacity of GeForce Now as part of this launch, and it should be able to support over 600,000 players now, but it doesn’t want to overcrowd them, so it’ll be cutting off access to “$60 for a year + 3 free months” deal once it hits a certain capacity.

But the nice part is that you don’t have to take my word. Unlike the current state of Google Stadia, you won’t have to invest in $130 worth of hardware just to try out a glorified beta, then buy your games again, wondering when Google’s free tier might arrive. You can sign up to try Nvidia’s free tier right now, try it with games you already own for an hour at a time, and see if it works for you.

Nvidia’s updated website wasn’t live at the time we prepped this story, but you should be able to find the apps either here or here.

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2020-02-04 16:30:00Z
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Samsung Galaxy Z Flip vs Motorola Razr: What's different between these two clamshell foldables? - Android Police

Following a decade of seeing black, rectangular glass slabs grow in size while swapping their backs between metal and glass, foldables are taking over to become the face of phone fetish. With the nostalgia-invoking Motorola Razr set to go on sale about a week before the Galaxy Z Flip’s unveiling, it’s about time we put the two face-to-face and see which one deserves your dough.

Flippity-floppity form factor

The fad of the early ’00s, flip phones are making a comeback, bringing along the gratifying sound of snapping them shut, although in a more contemporary avatar. While both the Motorola Razr and Galaxy Z Flip have a similar clamshell form factor, you can immediately recognize them apart, thanks to their distinct design approach.

Top: Motorola Razr, Bottom: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip

Samsung’s offering will seemingly carry the DNA of a modern smartphone and wouldn’t look vastly different when in the unfolded state. You’ll get the usual nearly edge-to-edge display with a hole-punch camera and chunky bezels. The Motorola Razr, on the other hand, clearly strikes the nostalgic chord with a layout borrowed almost as is, complete with a chin, from the original Razr that had an alphanumeric keypad.

In a hands-on video that surfaced recently, the Z Flip appears to have a rather unwieldy design, particularly when it’s unfolded. That display is tall to a fault and might even work against the device. The phone seemingly gets more manageable when closed into a square with a tiny screen on the outside. Motorola’s flip phone, instead, has a smaller footprint, which helps it fit your hand better in either state.

What’s with the chin? And that hinge?

Left: Razr’s chin, Right: Galaxy Z Flip’s two halves

The original Razr's raised chin was an iconic design element that the re-engineered foldable version retained to draw parallels as well as include additional functionalities. For one, it houses a user-facing capacitive fingerprint reader along with speakers grills and a USB-C port at the bottom. At 14mm, the chin is the thickest point, while the rest of the slab is merely 6.9mm when unfolded.

The Z Flip looks to have a more uniform thickness (barring the camera bump) of 6.9mm when wide open. When folded, it could be a couple of millimeters thicker around the hinge, forming a wedge shape. Though, it’ll still fold into two halves, unlike Motorola’s asymmetrical implementation. Its fingerprint scanner will likely be embedded in the side-mounted power key as the 2019 Galaxy Fold had.

Top: Motorola Razr’s hinge in action. Bottom: Galaxy Z Flip’s hinge when folded.

The hinges used by Motorola and Samsung are like chalk and cheese, which also affects how visible the display crease would be. Razr’s hinge uses a pair of support plates (shown above) to brace the display from underneath, which helps make the crease imperceptible. It, along with a sliding screen, folds the phone completely shut, unlike the first-gen Samsung Galaxy Fold's ridge, which leaves a wedge-shaped gap.

We aren’t sure if the Z Flip will inherit that cavity, since none of the leaked images, including the recent renders from Roland Quandt, have shown the phone’s folded side, though the varying thickness mentioned above clues in on its presence, and so does the video above. Samsung is expected to use a redesigned juncture that will hold the phone’s flexible screen at any angle you like, while the Razr only supports two furthest positions: open and shut. However, it won’t help in hiding the crease, which might remain as noticeable as its predecessor.

Big foldable display and small sidekick

Flip phones are anything but new; in fact, they’ve been around for decades. It’s the flexible displays that rebounded their relevance in 2020. Both the Razr and Z Flip sport a bendable OLED screen that folds inwards along the X-axis, like a traditional clamshell phone. That’s precisely where the similarities end and the two phones part ways.

The Motorola phone features a 21:9 6.2-inch P-OLED with a resolution of 2,142 x 876 pixels. At the same time, the Z Flip is rumored to include a bigger 6.7-inch AMOLED (2,636 x 1,080, 22:9) covered with an ultra-thin glass—possibly the first-ever foldable glass display—instead of plastic. Plus, Samsung will opt for a hole-punch front camera against Razr’s notch.

Left: Razr’s secondary screen, Right: Galaxy Z Flip’s

A secondary display accompanies the main one on both phones, but their sizes and functions differ wildly. The one on the Razr is significantly larger at 2.7 inches (600 x 800, 4:3), while Samsung is said to include a 1-inch display (300 x 116) with minimal functionality. The bigger screen not only shows you more information without having to flip the phone open but can also work as a viewfinder for selfies, besides having other features.

On the inside

What powers the Motorola Razr is a mid-tier Snapdragon 710 processor paired with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage. Samsung’s choice of processor, on the flip side, will possibly be the higher-end Snapdragon 855+. It’ll also throw in 256GB of storage as well as 8GB of RAM. The Z Flip should run Android 10 with Samsung’s One UI 2.1 skin on top, while the Razr offers a near-stock OS experience with Android Pie along with a retro mode to give you an ancestral throwback.

Razr’s retro mode (via The Verge)

With that kind of configuration, the Razr doesn’t stand a chance against the upcoming (or even existing) breed of mainstream smartphones boasting the Snapdragon 865, not that it’s even trying to, but the Z Flip still looks better equipped. That razor-thin form factor largely dictated Motorola’s choice of rather mediocre, not to mention old, chip, just so it could keep heat dissipation and battery drain in check.

Cameras

Similar space constraints kept the Lenovo-owned brand from adding anymore camera than the current two—one each on the inside and outside. The Razr has a 16MP primary camera that can shoot 4K videos and be used for taking selfies when the phone is folded. The one in the notch has a 5MP sensor capable of taking 1080p videos. Leaks suggest that the Galaxy phone will have a pair of 12MP cameras on the back along with a 10MP front-facing one—all three of these could be borrowed from the 2019 Samsung flagships. Its secondary display isn’t likely to double up as a viewfinder, given its tinier footprint.

Left: Razr’s primary camera, Right: Galaxy Z Flip’s two rear cameras

Battery juice

In the battery department, the Z Flip might take the lead with a rumored capacity of 3,300mAh, while the Razr settles for a much smaller 2,510mAh. However, both can charge using a 15W brick. Despite a smaller cell, Motorola is aiming for a day’s worth of juice, but it remains to be seen how the Razr sails through a typical workday, and also possibly when put up against the Samsung foldable. The Samsung phone may have the upper hand in this department with support for wireless and reverse wireless charging.

Pricing and availability

Those in the US will need to shell out $1,500 for the Motorola Razr or $63 a month for a 24-month contract with Verizon. The demand for the novel handset was apparently sky-high, leading the company to push the release date back by a month. After having preordered the handset starting January 26, you can pick it up on February 6.

On the other hand, Samsung is expected to make the Z Flip official alongside the S20 line at the Unpacked event on February 11. As for its pricing, two opposed figures have so far been thrown around. One report said it could cost close to $860, while the other quoted $1,550—almost double the former. You should expect an asking price somewhere between the two figures, inclining towards the latter.

Everything else

A nanocoating on the Motorola Razr should make the device splash-proof, but dunking it in water is still a big no-no. Nonetheless, it’s a considerable feat for a foldable phone that has moveable parts in and around the hinge, which cannot be sealed. That’s possibly the reason Samsung will likely skip any form of water resistance. Besides, the Razr can only take an eSIM as there is no SIM card tray, which the Z Flip might have, in line with the Galaxy Fold.

The Samsung phone is also expected to pack stereo speakers, likely pairing the single down-firing unit with the earpiece. It’s worth noting that neither phone has a headphone jack, nor do they support 5G or have 5G-capable variants, and thankfully so. We can only imagine the number of times you’ll be required to plug them in with their unconvincing battery situations if they tried latching onto a 5G network.

At this point, we’ll not be giving a final statement on which phone outweighs the other, or our recommendation for that matter, given that the Galaxy Z Flip isn’t out yet, and all its included details are courtesy of leaks and rumors. We’ll update the coverage when we get an official word from Samsung along with the pricing details.

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2020-02-04 14:55:00Z
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The Morning After: BlackBerry / TCL split, and Iowa's primary app problem - Engadget

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Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

It might actually be time for BlackBerry phones to ride off into the sunset. It's miraculous that the keyboard-toting phones have stuck around as far as 2020. Today, TCL announced it'll put an end to its BlackBerry partnership. I hope this means there will be no more BlackBerry phones for Chris Velazco to graciously -- far more than I would -- write about.

As the iPhone came to dominate smartphones, BlackBerry went through several makeovers. In 2013, there was BlackBerry 10 OS, which was much faster, more functional and prettier than what came before it. It was also still behind what you could get from Google's Android or Apple's iOS. Then there were BlackBerry devices running Android. Then in 2016, BlackBerry announced it would stop designing its own phones, licensing everything to TCL under the name BlackBerry Mobile. The writing was, repeatedly, on the wall. Even if you liked physical keyboards, the world had moved on.

From now on, BlackBerry, once the dominant smartphone company, will focus exclusively on software and security. I've heard more news about BlackBerry and cars than I have BlackBerry and phones. Fortunately, I have little interest in cars.

-- Mat


This could take a while to clear up.Iowa Caucus results delayed, link to mobile app problems is unclear

By the time you read this, maybe you'll have some idea about which Democratic Party presidential candidate came out on top of the Iowa Caucus yesterday. The results were supposed to have come in last night, but precinct chairs cited problems with the app they were using, and state party leaders said they were dealing with a "reporting issue." Launch day software fails again? Maybe.


An attempt to go viral with Baby Nut backfired in spectacular fashion.Twitter's anti-spam rules foiled Planters' Super Bowl stunt

Planters is learning there is such a thing as being too thirsty for social media stardom. Twitter has suspended three accounts tied to Baby Nut, the resurrected Mr. Peanut mascot that made his debut during the Super Bowl, for violating policies against spam and platform manipulation. Its main @MrPeanut account retweeted as different (Planters-owned) profiles and shared memes shortly after Baby Nut made his appearance. The problem, as you might guess, was that it's the sort of coordinated behavior Twitter has banned in the past.

Kraft Heinz told Insider that it had created the accounts "after consulting with Twitter" to stay on the social network's good side. However, it said it would "respect that decision" to suspend the accounts. Viral efforts: foiled.


Generational transition.Sony's PS4 sales fall off ahead of the PS5 launch later this year

The latest quarterly financial report from Sony indicates that sales in its games department were "significantly" down (by 20 percent) year-on-year due to a decrease in PS4 hardware and third-party software sales.


That front pocket has a drain plug and can hold as much as a 36-gallon cooler.Ford thinks the Mustang Mach-E's frunk is a good tailgate cooler

Is this on your list of reasons to consider an EV?


It challenged the warrant and didn't provide authorities any information in response.Ancestry fought a police DNA database request and won

Authorities tried to gain access to Ancestry's massive DNA database with a search warrant last year, the genealogy company has revealed in its transparency report. Ancestry divulged the information requests it received from law enforcement in 2019 in the report, noting that it complied with six of the nine valid requests. It challenged the warrant on jurisdictional grounds, though, and refused to give authorities access to its database.

Ancestry told BuzzFeed News that the warrant "was improperly served" and that it didn't "provide any access or customer data in response." The company also noted in its report that it refused numerous other inquiries because the requestors didn't go through the appropriate legal process. It recently updated its privacy statement to add that "Ancestry does not voluntarily cooperate with law enforcement." Further, it assured customers that the company does not "allow law enforcement to use Ancestry's services to investigate crimes or to identify human remains."


The Fortnite Celebration Cup kicks off February 15th.You'll need a PS4 to join the next 'Fortnite' tournament

It's not the first time Epic has run a console-specific Fortnite competition, but now it's the PS4's turn. Running from February 15th through to February 16th, there will be a $1 million prize pool that will pay out to over 4,000 of the best players. Best get training with that DualShock.

But wait, there's more...


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2020-02-04 13:02:15Z
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Google has paid Android developers about half of what Apple has - The Verge

As I write this the evening before you’re reading it, the colossal caucus clusterf*** in Iowa is still ongoing and no official results are anywhere in sight. It seems clear that some portion of the problem stems from a poorly architected app. It’s an incredibly bad start to the 2020 election — not because we should expect the results to be in doubt, but because you’d like to think regardless of politics we’d at least improve our competence at running elections.

Not so much. There’s obviously more to come, so for now let’s look at the second biggest tech news yesterday. Google released its quarterly earnings and did something it never has before: actually provided financial details for YouTube and even provided some color on its hardware business. The consensus is it did so because overall the company didn’t meet expectations for revenue, so it wanted to give everybody something else to pay attention to. We won’t be fooled by Google’s blatant misdirection, which is...

Just kidding. Of course we’re going to pay attention to the shiny new numbers. Though to be fair, you should know my attitude towards most financial results is to tell you that unless you’re a significant investor, you should only care insofar as the results say something about the products and services the company is selling.

We’ll have analysis of YouTube’s numbers up on the site today, so instead I’ll just pay a little more attention to the Android bit: a total of $80 billion paid out to Android developers, which is significantly less than what Apple has paid out via the iOS App Store.

Even if you account for Google allowing developers to use their own payment methods and made a bunch of other caveats, I suspect you can’t avoid the truth. The vast majority of phones on Earth run Android, and yet it is almost surely the case that there’s more money for developers in iPhone apps. That’s always been the conventional wisdom, but Google’s own numbers all but confirm it.

Google also detailed how much money it made on “other bets:” $17 billion. Some portion of that includes Google’s hardware business, which Pichai characterized as a “multi-billion-dollar” business. I strongly suspect that hardware’s piece of that pie is in the low single digits, otherwise Google might be more eager to crow about it. I also suspect Pichai and Google’s hardware boss Rick Osterloh are sick of people asking them if hardware is just a hobby.

Well, until Google comes clean and gives more information about its hardware business, I think it’s fair to keep asking how serious the company really is about it. And to bring it back to my frame for financial results: the answer to that question is also the answer to why Pixel phones aren’t doing as well as they could.

Google earnings

YouTube is a $15 billion-a-year business, Google reveals for the first time

Nick Statt:

On an annual basis, Google says YouTube generated $15 billion last year and contributed roughly 10 percent to all Google revenue. Those figures make YouTube’s ad business nearly one fifth the size of Facebook’s, and more than six times larger than all of Amazon-owned Twitch. ... Google massively beat Wall Street expectations on profit, but missed on revenue. That could be one reason why Google may be disclosing YouTube and Google Cloud revenues for the first time.

Google now has a ‘multi-billion-dollar’ hardware business

Google’s Sundar Pichai also revealed today how big a check the company has written to Android app developers over the years — $80 billion to date, presumably dating back to the launch of the Android Market (now Google Play) in 2008. Roughly a year ago, Apple mentioned that it had shared $120 billion with App Store developers, by comparison.

Caucus news

What the Iowa Caucus means for getting Iowa online

Makena Kelly went to Iowa, but instead of reporting on the horse race, she reported on the many failures that have led to the sad state of rural broadband in America:

The traditional telecoms haven’t gotten the rural residents of Winterset online — and what’s left is a patchwork of grants and public programs that can be hard to predict and harder to sustain. And while the Iowa Caucus has brought massive political attention to the small state, little of that attention has gone to the state’s networks.

FCC confirms carriers ‘apparently’ broke the law by selling real-time customer locations

Now, after what Pai says was an “extensive investigation,” the question turns to just how severely the FCC will penalize the mobile providers involved. Will it be something substantial or merely a wrist slap that leaves no lasting reminder for the companies that gave away some of the most sensitive data your phone can produce?

Gadget news

Acer Swift 5 (late 2019) review: light on your back, lighter on your wallet

Great review from Monica Chin. The tradeoffs you have to make in order to have a super light 14-inch laptop wouldn’t be worth it to me, but maybe they would be for you.

There’s not a ton to complain about here, but the Swift 5 isn’t top of its class in these categories. Where it stands out is portability — and compared to previous Swift models, it asks remarkably few sacrifices in exchange.

Alleged leaked video shows off Samsung’s folding Galaxy Z Flip

A bunch of videos came out today showing the Motorola Razr creaking as it opens and closed — not to mention sub-par camera quality. As always, I’ll wait to make a final opinion in the review. I hope that Samsung sets a very high bar for quality for itself with this phone — if everybody is going to act like these are normal phones for people to buy, they should be as reliable as normal phones.

Microsoft cancels Surface Hub 2X launch, promises ‘major’ software update instead

Remember how I have said that it would be awful nice if expensive gadgetry that’s meant to last more than five or ten years could have the computer part be modular? And how even though that seems like an obvious idea, it never seems to pan out? Add another example to the pile:

The software giant was planning to allow Surface Hub 2S owners to upgrade to this cartridge, improving the processor and GPU inside. It was also part of how Microsoft would enable tiling and rotation support on the Surface Hub 2, a big feature the company originally unveiled last year.

BlackBerry phones could disappear as TCL partnership ends

An incomplete, pre-iPhone-smartphone-brand scorecard of the smartphone brands that have been picked up by or sold off to other companies:

  • Nokia: zombiebrand run by HMD that actually makes pretty good, well-liked phones! 8/10
  • Palm: zombiebrand acquired by TCL and handed off to a little Verizon-funded startup to make a time-well-spent phone that is pretty bad. 4/10
  • BlackBerry: zombiebrand licensed by TCL to make the last physical keyboard phones that started okay then got way worse. Also an actual enterprise services company that does alright. 5/10

More from The Verge

Microsoft Teams goes down after Microsoft forgot to renew a certificate

This happens All The Damn Time and every time it happens to a major company we all chuckle and wonder how they could forget until the next big company forgets. Anyway, next time you walk out the front door without your phone or whatever, give yourself a break, because everybody forgets important things sometimes.

A Russian satellite seems to be tailing a US spy satellite in Earth orbit

Cards Against Humanity rescues ClickHole from its private equity owners

Sometimes this company does fun stunts that I am not interested in. Sometimes it does fun stunts that are great. And sometimes, apparently, it does just flat out good things like this.

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2020-02-04 12:00:00Z
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Some Google Photos videos in ‘Takeout’ backups were sent to strangers last November - 9to5Google

With Google Takeout, you can download your data from Google apps as a backup or for use with another service. Unfortunately, a brief issue with the tool last November saw your videos in Google Photos possibly get exported to strangers’ archives.

Google this evening began alerting Takeout users about the “technical issue.” From November 21-25, 2019, those that requested backups could have had videos in Google Photos “incorrectly exported to unrelated users’ archives.”

In requesting a backup, some of your videos — but not pictures — might be visible to random users that were also downloading their data through Google Takeout. The company did not specify what media was affected beyond “one or more videos in your Google Photos account was affected by this issue.”

Another implication is that the Google Photos archive you downloaded during that five-day period is incomplete and missing some of your videos, while strangers’ media might be present. Google asks users to delete that previous export, and request another one. According to the company, less than 0.01% of Photos users attempting Takeouts were affected, and no other product was affected.

We recommend you perform another export of your content and delete your prior export at this time.

The underlying issue has been “identified and resolved,” and Google ended the email to affected customers with an apology. Google also provided 9to5Google with the following comment this evening:

“We are notifying people about a bug that may have affected users who used Google Takeout to export their Google Photos content between November 21 and November 25. These users may have received either an incomplete archive, or videos—not photos—that were not theirs. We fixed the underlying issue and have conducted an in-depth analysis to help prevent this from ever happening again. We are very sorry this happened.”

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Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news:

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2020-02-04 06:45:00Z
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