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Tuesday, 30 April 2019
Oculus Rift S review: a worthwhile $399 Rift successor with a sharper screen and a 6DOF tracking, but it's still tethered and connects via DisplayPort, not HDMI (Will Greenwald/PCMag)
Oculus Rift S review: a worthwhile $399 Rift successor with a sharper screen and a 6DOF tracking, but it's still tethered and connects via DisplayPort, not HDMI — Editors' Rating: — 4.00 — EXCELLENT — PCMag reviews products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page.
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2GS7W2U
Ford says it is bringing Amazon Key's in-car delivery service to select Ford and Lincoln vehicles (Natalie Gagliordi/ZDNet)
Ford says it is bringing Amazon Key's in-car delivery service to select Ford and Lincoln vehicles — The automaker said eligible Ford and Lincoln vehicles from 2017 onward will have the ability to link up to Amazon's Key delivery service. — Ford Motor Company said on Tuesday …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2vsy5yV
Instagram is launching a camera redesign to make it easier to make high quality posts without importing media, adds dedicated shopping tags for creators (Nick Statt/The Verge)
Instagram is launching a camera redesign to make it easier to make high quality posts without importing media, adds dedicated shopping tags for creators — Turning Instagram into a more robust commerce platform — Instagram is announcing a couple of new features today that are designed …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2PBSLOl
Researchers are monitoring a growing botnet hijacking Electrum cryptocurrency wallets and spreading malware that has infected 100K+ clients and stole $4.6M+ (Malwarebytes Labs)
Researchers are monitoring a growing botnet hijacking Electrum cryptocurrency wallets and spreading malware that has infected 100K+ clients and stole $4.6M+ — By Jérôme Segura, Adam Thomas, and S! Ri — We have been closely monitoring the situation involving the continued attacks …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2INv1Gc
Facebook says its Portal smart displays will soon support end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp video calls (Khari Johnson/VentureBeat)
Facebook says its Portal smart displays will soon support end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp video calls — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today announced that its Portal smart displays will soon support end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp video calls. The move brings together WhatsApp …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2IOX0FL
Facebook Dating launches in 14 more countries, will come to US in 2019, adds Secret Crush feature to let users select up to 9 friends for Tinder-like matching (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)
Facebook Dating launches in 14 more countries, will come to US in 2019, adds Secret Crush feature to let users select up to 9 friends for Tinder-like matching — Facebook built Dating to be privacy-safe, hoping to avoid the awkwardness of friends or family checking out your romance profile.
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2J7p1aS
Instagram will now let creators and influencers sell items directly
The monetization hose is on full blast at Instagram now, and today at F-8 Facebook unveiled one of the latest developments on that front. The company said that creators will now be able to tag items to sell them directly to people viewing their posts and Stories.
For now, this will work only on items that are tagged from businesses that are part of the new checkout beta program Instagram is running in the US.
It’s also part of a bigger transactional swing that we’re seeing at Instagram that extends beyond just catering to consumerism and influencers speaking to Instragram’s billion-plus users.
Today Instagram also confirmed that it would be adding donation stickers in Stories — something we reported it was working on several months ago.
The tags that creators and influencers can now add is a significant development on product tagging, which up to now had been reserved just for businesses and brands, not open to individuals.
But the purpose for now doesn’t seem to be to help creators make commissions on those sales. Facebook tells us that “at this time,” creators will not make a cut on any purchases made as a result of anyone clicking on links in their posts (meaning: it may come down the line).
Rather, the point is to cut down on some of the repeat questions that creators get about what they are wearing, and where to buy it. “People are already shopping from creators by asking product questions in comments and Direct,” a spokesperson said. “With the ability to tag products, creators can provide the information their followers are looking for and get back to expressing themselves and sharing what’s on their mind, which will make their followers happy too.”
But they are not getting diddly, either. The spokesperson notes that creators will also receive additional insights with shopping posts, such as engagements and shopping insights. For those who are making a living out of their influencer status, these could help them leverage better deals with those brands longer term.
Instagram will start testing first with a small group of creators over the next few weeks including on the accounts of Gigi Hadid, Kim Kardashian West, Kris Jenner, Kylie Jenner and Leesa Angelique (who runs @saythelees).
“It’s my job to share beauty secrets and tips,” she said about the new feature. “I’m usually writing long, detailed captions about the latest products I’ve been using. Having this tool just makes it that much easier to let everyone know what I’m wearing and from where – down to the shade.”
from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2GKRfoV
NSA says warrantless searches of Americans’ data rose in 2018
The intelligence community’s annual transparency report revealed a spike in the number of warrantless searches of Americans’ data in 2018.
The data, published Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), revealed a 28 percent rise in the number of targeted search terms used to query massive databases of collected Americans’ communications.
Some 9,637 warrantless search queries of the contents of Americans’ calls, text messages, emails and other communications were conducted by the NSA during 2018, up from 7,512 searches on the year prior, the report said.
The figures also don’t take into account queries made by the FBI or the Drug Enforcement Administration, which also has access to the database, nor do they say exactly how many Americans had their information collected.
The NSA conducts these searches under its so-called Section 702 powers, reauthorized in 2018 despite heated opposition by a bipartisan group of pro-privacy senators. These powers allow the NSA to collect intelligence on foreigners living overseas by tapping into the phone networks and undersea cables owned by U.S. phone companies. The powers also allow the government to obtain data in secret from U.S. tech companies. But the massive data collection effort also inadvertently vacuums up Americans’ data, who are typically protected from unwarranted searches under the Fourth Amendment.
The report also noted a 27 percent increase in the number of foreigners whose communications were targeted by the NSA during the year. In total, an estimated 164,770 foreign individuals or groups were targeted with search terms used by the NSA to monitor their communications, up from 129,080 on the year prior.
It’s the largest year-over-year leap in foreign surveillance to date.
The report also said the NSA collected at most 434.2 million phone records on Americans, down from 534.3 million records on the year earlier. The government said the figures likely had duplicates.
The phone records collection program was the first classified NSA program disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, which revealed a secret court order compelling Verizon — which owns TechCrunch — to turn over daily phone records on millions of Americans. The program was later curtailed following the introduction of the Freedom Act.
Earlier this month, the NSA reportedly asked the White House to end the program altogether, citing legal troubles.
Despite the apparent rollback of the program, NSA still reported 164,770 queries of Americans’ phone records, more than a five-fold increase on the year earlier.
Last week, the Trump administration revealed it had been denied 30 surveillance applications by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a specialist closed-door court that grants the government authority to spy inside the U.S., where surveillance is typically prohibited.
Since figures were made available in 2015 following the Edward Snowden disclosures, the number of denials has trended upwards.
from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2V65iPL
Valve Index pre-orders launch tomorrow for a blistering $999
Valve is throwing a little bit of a “screw you” to Oculus this morning, announcing the specs of their high-end VR headset the Valve Index, just before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced some minor updates to the Rift.
The Valve Index is a high-end headset with few compromises. It’s $999 for the whole system but you can buy each of the components individually as well. Ars Technica had a deep dive with the headset and got some details on the system specs.
The headset’s 1440×1600 per eye display is the same as the Vive Pro but it features some insane 144 hz refresh rates and a much wider 130-degree field-of-view. It comes with Valve’s newly-names Index “Knuckles” controllers that developers have been playing with for the past year or two. Everything can be tracked by the SteamVR tracking sensors that came with your Vive or Valve’s new-generation trackers.
Pre-orders are launching tomorrow and the system ships June 28.
from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2ZLmo4s
