Technical Doctorz

LG’s next flagship hasn’t been announced yet, but as ever, the company likes to drip-feed nuggets of information about it in the lead-up to the full reveal. Today, we’ve learned that it will indeed be called the G8 ThinQ, and it’ll include a time-of-flight sensor as part of its front-facing camera array. (That likely explains the recent supposed render that showed two cameras in the phone’s display notch.) ToF sensors work by bouncing infrared light off subjects and can be used for 3D object recognition. This allows for secure face unlock and more accurate background blur in selfie portraits, as well as potentially having various AR applications. The sensor in the G8 ThinQ is Infineon’s REAL3 chip. LG isn’t saying much about how it’ll be used in the G8’s software, but promises to deliver “a new level of front camera capability in a smartphone.” LG isn’t the first company to ship a phone with a ToF sensor, and it’s likely we’ll see several more this year. The Honor View 20 has a r

A very strong holiday season for GoPro’s newest Hero 7 lineup of cameras has helped the camera maker turn its first quarterly profit since the third quarter of 2017, the company announced on Wednesday. GoPro pulled in $377 million in revenue in the fourth quarter of last year, and it walked away with a $32 million profit. This marks the second time GoPro has turned a profit since the third quarter of 2015, back before the company’s ill-fated attempt at entering the drone market. The Hero 7 Black was announced in September of last year. While it hews closely to the design of its two predecessors, the Hero 5 and Hero 6 Black, the company’s newest flagship offered a number of internal improvements and new features. GoPro had previously said that the Hero 7 Black was the company’s fastest-selling camera ever , and that momentum carried through the 2018 holiday season. Overall camera sales were up 20 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared to the year prior. For the whole year, G

Tinder is still unstoppable. Match Group, Tinder’s parent company, announced its fourth quarter earnings today, in which it disclosed that Tinder added 1.2 million subscribers last year alone. That surge led the brand to close the year out with $805 million in revenue. That’s nearly as much as what the rest of Match’s dating brands, which include Match.com and OkCupid, pull in combined at $872 million. Match says most of Tinder’s revenue growth is thanks to Tinder Gold , which gives members certain limited features like more Super Likes per day, the ability to swipe around the world, and insight into who’s already liked them. Tinder has also made it a goal to focus on a younger demographic of 18 to 22-year-olds through Tinder U , the university-oriented portion of the app. The company is expanding outside the US with a focus on Japan, India, and South Korea, as well. Still, Match doesn’t seem content to accept Tinder as its golden goose. The company introduced a new app this year, c

Spotify is about to try to become a podcasting giant with two new acquisitions — and we have some suggestions for that — but first, it’s crossing an important milestone with its music streaming business. Today, for the very first time, the company is reporting that it’s turned a profit. That’s right: some 13 years and 96 million paid subscribers later, Spotify is finally making money. Unless you count that one time a complicated tax situation technically threw it into the black. “[F]or the first time in company history, Operating Income, Net Income, and Free Cash Flow were all positive,” reads a portion of Spotify’s financial announcement this morning . Specifically, the company made an operating profit of €94 million, or about $107 million. It’s possibly a good sign for the entire industry, not just Spotify, because Spotify is arguably leading that industry today. Those 96 million paid subscribers add up to nearly double Apple Music’s 50 million subscribers, and Spotify announc

To drum up hype for Crackdown 3 ’s release on February 15th (and as a consolatory gift for making gamers wait so long), Microsoft is making the original Crackdown free for all Xbox One owners. The game, which originally launched in 2010 on the Xbox 360, is backwards compatible on the Xbox One S and Xbox One X. If Crackdown is your first foray into the series, it’s a good place to start. Though its mission design and NPC dialogue haven’t aged all that well, you’ll still get at least a few hours of entertainment running around its open world, collecting orbs, and quickly scaling buildings with superhuman leaps. Microsoft last offered Crackdown for free during its XO18 fan festival in November 2018 when it announced backwards compatibility support for the title, adding that Crackdown 3 would be coming to Xbox Game Pass at launch. Speaking of Game Pass, Microsoft’s buffet-style subscription service for games, the company recently announced that Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Batman

Microsoft launched Office 2019 late last year , but if the company’s new ad campaign is anything to go by, the company would really prefer if you didn’t buy it. Instead, Microsoft’s latest ads pit sets of identical twins against each other to complete office-themed challenges, with the end result showing that the company feels you’d be much better off with a monthly or yearly subscription to Office 365 instead, as spotted by TechCrunch . The commercials are, put simply, extremely bizarre , with Microsoft intentionally going out of its way to show just how bad and inefficient the one-time payment version of its productivity suite is compared to the constant stream of updates it pushes to the subscription-based version. It’s the style of ad that you’d assume Microsoft would use to show Office’s strengths compared to a competitor like Apple’s iWork suite or Google Drive, right down to the heavily skewed tasks that of course favor a specific side. But it’s dramatically more bafflin

Last year, Flickr announced a new pricing plan: users would have to pay $50 for a Pro membership, or be limited to 1,000 images. Those users who opted not to pay and who were over the limit would have those additional images deleted by February 5th. Those users will have a bit more time: USA Today reports that Flickr is now saying it has extended the deletion deadline until March 12th. Last year, rival site SmugMug acquired Flickr from Yahoo , saying it would leave it as a standalone community, and that it would get a bit more attention than Verizon / Oath gave it. The first big changes came back in November , when Flickr unveiled its new membership model: users would have until January 8th to upgrade to a $50 Pro account, and at that time, would not be permitted to upload any additional images if they had more than 1,000 images on the site. On February 5th, those over-the-limit users who hadn’t upgraded and who hadn’t downloaded their archives would have their photos deleted, st

Spotify announced today that the company plans to spend up to $500 million on podcast-related acquisitions. The first purchases in that journey are Gimlet Media, which makes Reply All and other popular shows, and Anchor, which allows anyone to easily create their own podcasts. This is huge news for the growing podcast industry, as it’s already expected to generate nearly $700 million in revenue by 2020. Spotify made its name as a music app, but now CEO Daniel Ek says the company is interested in not only being a listening platform for any podcast, but also creating its own exclusive releases. Suffice it to say, Spotify wants to be a big player in the podcast space and is heavily investing to fill that role. Before it’s a podcast behemoth, though, the company needs to work on its signature app. Here’s what Spotify needs to do before it can be the greatest place to listen to and possibly create podcasts. Clearer separation of podcasts and music First and most obviously, Spotify ne

A leaked promotional image may have just given us our first look at Samsung’s rumored upcoming true wireless earbuds. In the images posted by WinFuture , the “Galaxy Buds” (as a trademark application and Bluetooth certification suggest they’ll be called) can be seen sitting on the rear of what appears to be a Galaxy S10 handset . This positioning might not be a coincidence. According to an earlier rumor from SamMobile , the unannounced S10 will be able to wirelessly charge other devices using a technology called “PowerShare.” It’s a similar feature to what we saw with the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and its FreeBuds 2 Pro Wireless earphones. Much as the Galaxy Watch wasn’t Samsung’s first smartwatch, the Galaxy Buds won’t be its first true wireless earbuds (hello 2016’s Gear IconX ). Instead, they’re another step toward unifying much of the company’s lineup under the Galaxy brand, and away from the Gear branding of yesteryear. At least the Gear VR isn’t going anywhere … right, guys?

Google’s sister company Verily will open an opioid treatment facility in Ohio. The company plans to work with local hospitals to create a “tech-enabled campus” that collects information and analytics in hopes of improving outcomes for patients. The opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug overdose crisis in American history. Dayton, Ohio — where the new center will open — has been hit especially hard and called the opioid “ overdose capital of the nation .” The new nonprofit, called OneFifteen, will offer both in-patient and out-patient services and will use “a variety of means” to track patient behavior, Danielle Schlosser, senior clinical scientist of behavioral health at Verily, told CNBC . “You could imagine something as simple as people answering a survey or more sophisticated technology to gain insight of who that person is, what they’re encountering in their environment,” Schlosser said. The project is just one of Verily’s many health endeavors, which also include spoons for

Spotify is fully committing to building a podcast network today. The music streaming giant has acquired Gimlet Media and Anchor to boost its podcast credentials, as the company looks to grow its share of the podcast market. Gimlet Media is a start-up podcast network, and Anchor provides creators with tools to build, publish, and monetize podcasts. “In just shy of two years, we have become the second-biggest podcasting platform,” explains Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. “Our podcast users spend almost twice the time on the platform, and spend even more time listening to music.” Ek believes that Spotify’s bet on podcasts will lead to 20 percent of all Spotify listening being non-music content in the future. “This means the potential to grow much faster with more original programming — and to differentiate Spotify by playing to what makes us unique — all with the goal of becoming the world’s number one audio platform.” Spotify is now planning more acquisitions for podcasts in 2019, and the comp

Hey, do you read The Interface regularly? We’re doing a short survey and would love to get your thoughts on how we could make the newsletter even better. It would mean a lot to me if you took a few minutes to share your thoughts . Thanks! Today, two stories about Facebook cracking down on bad guys. It has been nearly six months since Alex Jones lost his infowar , getting banned by every major platform after a long career of bullying behavior. In the time since, his ability to attract new followers has been radically diminished — but not for lack of trying on his part. Facebook has prevented him and his associates from creating new pages similar to the four that they banned last year over violations involving bullying, hate speech, and graphic violence. But the policy had a loophole that allowed administrators of existing pages to repurpose old pages — until today. Here’s me in The Verge : Previously, Facebook would prevent administrators of banned pages from creating similar pag

Tesla launched an online store for its merchandise on Amazon on Tuesday, as was first spotted by Electrek . The new Amazon store is already stocked with a number of different Tesla products, like branded iPhone X cases ($35-$45), hoodies ($70-$75), and 1:18 scale die-cast models of the company’s cars ($250). Tesla has dabbled with selling merchandise on its own website for a few years now alongside accessories for its cars. There’s a Tesla-branded wireless smartphone charger , a portable battery , and a desktop version of the company’s Supercharger with USB passthrough. Tesla even sells a Radio Flyer-made kids version of the Model S . More esoteric offerings have sometimes quickly come and gone, too, like a Tesla-branded surfboard , or jackets made of leftover leather (before the company stopped using the material in all but its steering wheels). Meanwhile, Amazon has waded pretty deeply into the automotive sector over the last few years. The company sells tons of automotive acce

A smartwatch designed for children, the Enox Safe Kid One, was recalled by the EU over data privacy concerns, as reported by ZDNet . It was discovered that the watch, which is equipped with a GPS, microphone, and speaker to make calls and send SMS texts, could be easily hacked by third parties. It doesn’t appear that the watch was ever sold in North America, and although it’s not the first time that children’s toys have been found to have security holes, this marks the first time that the European commission has stepped in with a product recall. The smartwatch’s security issues were brought to light in a RAPEX (Rapid Alert System for Non-Food Products) report, which warned that the watch’s companion Android app had “unencrypted communications with its backend server,” which enabled “unauthenticated access to data.” This opened up data like location history, phone numbers, and the serial number to malicious actors, who could easily find and change the data. Once hacked, a stranger co

Apple’s retail leader, Angela Ahrendts, will leave the company in April, Apple announced this afternoon . Ahrendts joined Apple in spring 2014 , coming over from her position as CEO of Burberry to serve as Apple’s head of retail. Apple’s current human resources leader, Deirdre O’Brien, will take over as head of Apple’s retail and online store operations. O’Brien will continue to lead Apple’s HR team as well. She’s been at the company for three decades. Ahrendts was a surprise choice when she joined Apple five years ago, having stepped down as the leader of a top fashion company to take the position. At the time, Apple was moving toward the release of the Apple Watch, which it had initially wanted to pitch as something akin to a luxury watch. That approach quickly failed, and the company resumed its broad consumer-focused approach. During her time at Apple, Ahrendts has also overseen a revamp of the Apple store , bringing trees into the stores and attempting to turn them into commu

After two quarters of losing users, Snap’s losses seem to have stabilized. The company says today that it has the same number of daily active users globally as it did last quarter at 186 million. That’s still fewer than the 191 million it had at this same time last year, but suggests the platform’s user base may have stabilized. Beyond the stable user base, Snap set a new record for quarterly revenue at $390 million, which brings its yearly total to more than $1.1 billion. The company still isn’t profitable, but CEO Evan Spiegel says spending has leveled out. Today’s earnings report represents a great cap to a miserable year for Snap. Spiegel lost multiple top executives in 2018, including his head of finance, chief strategy officer, head of sales, and president of hardware, but he says they’re hiring and are excited about the new talent. (The company’s CFO also left earlier this year.) In prepared remarks , Spiegel referenced the departures, but did not address them outright. “Th

Facebook today removed 22 pages associated with far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as part of a previously announced update in which the company is tightening rules for administrators whose pages have been previously banned. The pages, which were among 89 removed by the social network, were created before Jones was banned in August for violations related to hate speech, bullying, and graphic violence. Previously, Facebook would prevent administrators of banned pages from creating similar pages in the future. But the company found that some administrators have attempted to evade enforcement by repurposing pages that they had created before their bans in an effort to rebuild their online communities. Today’s move marks the first time Facebook has removed pages in line with the updated policy. The company did not disclose all of the ways in which the freshly banned Jones pages resembled old pages, but said that they used similar titles. Jones is the creator of Infowars, which

Back at CES, Google demonstrated a new interpreter function of the Google Assistant that lets you speak one language to the device and have it translate what you said into another. Now the company has revealed via a support page that the interpreter function is rolling out to Google Home and smart display devices, as reported by Android Police (and confirmed via testing by The Verge ). The interpreter mode supports 26 different languages and can be invoked by asking the Google Assistant to help you speak a particular language or to “turn on interpreter mode.” On smart displays, the feature will display the translation, as well as speak it aloud. But like we saw at CES, it’s a kludgy process that involves speaking, waiting, and then listening to the device respond. It can help in certain scenarios, but it’s not something I’d want to rely on for any lengthy or complicated conversations. If you have a Google Home speaker, another speaker with Google Assistant, or a smart display, yo

Nintendo has an infamously bad voice chat system for the Switch, requiring players for most games to use a separate smartphone app to actually talk to friends online, leading to terrible, hacked-together solutions like Hori’s headphone splitter just to work. But that’s changing today, thanks to Vivox , which is bringing its voice and text chat system to all Nintendo Switch developers with a new SDK. You may not have heard of Vivox directly, but you’ve probably used it before — it already powers the existing voice chat in Fortnite , which coincidentally is also one of the only games on the Switch that has normal voice chat. (You just plug in a pair of headphones with a microphone into the headphone jack on the Switch and you’re good to go, no app required.) Vivox also powers chat in PUBG , League of Legends , World of Tanks , and more. Vivox’s system is also cross-platform right out of the box, which is good news for developers working on games that let users play with friends on d

Just after a record-breaking government shutdown, President Trump is set to address the nation tonight in the annual State of the Union speech. The speech will be in front of a joint session of Congress, and starts at 9PM ET / 6PM PT. Expect some talk on the border wall funding dispute, and likely some discussion of trade policy. If you’re planning on tuning in, you won’t be short of options. Here are the easiest ways to watch. Web The White House will be hosting its own live feed of the speech, and it will be available to stream on YouTube , or in the embed on this page. If you’d prefer to go through TV networks, you’ll have several options on YouTube as well. PBS , CBS , and NBC will all be hosting the address on the service. It’ll also be easy to find the speech on Facebook and Twitter. Major broadcasting networks, including NBC News, will be hosting streams of the speech on their pages . Apps A number of apps are also making the speech available to stream. If you have a Roku

The AmazonBasics microwave that can operate with Alexa voice commands from a nearby Echo speaker is now just $41.99 , which is its lowest price ever. Normally $59.99, this 700-watt microwave is pretty tiny, and it fits best in a small living space. If you want to take advantage of its hands-free features, Amazon says that this model currently supports 24 voice commands ( you can check them out here ) to activate the microwave, and it will continue to add more over time. Verge reporter Shannon Liao reviewed the AmazonBasics microwave , and she thought that the setup process was fairly streamlined. The voice commands work well, too, and Alexa knows well enough how long it takes this microwave to cook popcorn without burning it. Speaking more on the hands-free feature, Shannon says, “Having voice commands on a microwave is pretty cool. Alexa doesn’t slip up in following your microwave commands, as long as you follow the preset commands word for word. You can say things like “Alexa, st

Right on schedule , Sonos and Sonance are today announcing a new series of in-wall, in-ceiling, and weatherproof outdoor speakers. The collection of passive speakers — called Sonos Architectural by Sonance — is specifically designed to work with the Sonos Amp for built-in whole-home streaming audio. The outdoor speaker, the first expressly built for Sonos, features a weatherproof design for year-round sound outside the home. It’s designed to withstand humidity, heat, water, salt spray, UV rays, and freezing temperatures. The in-wall and in-ceiling series features grilles of different shapes that can be painted to disappear into your home. The speakers can be automatically tuned to the room and its furnishings using Sonos Trueplay after first being wired back to a Sonos Amp. Once installed, the Architectural by Sonance speakers function as a regular listening zone on your Sonos network alongside Sonos’ first-party range of amplified wireless speakers. That means support for AirPlay 2

Tomorrow — February 5th, 2019 — is the day that Flickr will stop offering 1TB of free storage. Instead, the company will only let users store 1,000 photos for free. And if you’ve got more than 1,000 photos, the company will start deleting them . That means that today, now, maybe even this very moment, is your last chance to cough up $49.99 per year for a Flickr Pro account to avoid imminent deletion. Or perhaps just download your photos from Flickr to a hard drive ( here’s how ) and upload them somewhere else. (I use Google Photos , but to each their own.) If you’re an avid photographer, chances are you’ve already backed up your originals. ( Flickr’s been warning about this change for months now.) And Flickr previously said more than 97 percent of its users were under the 1,000 item limit, anyhow. But if you’re one of the 3 percent, and you don’t have backups, here’s hoping this PSA will reach you in time. from The Verge - Teches http://bit.ly/2DUyHCv

According to a new report from The Intercept , Google hired gig economy workers to help build out a controversial artificial intelligence program that the company had paired with the Pentagon to build. The workers were hired through a crowdsourcing gig company outfit called Figure Eight, which pays as little at $1 an hour for people to perform short, seemingly mindless tasks. Whether the individuals were identifying objects in CAPTCHA-like images, or other simple tasks, the workers were helping to train Google’s AI that was created as part of a Defense Department initiative known as Project Maven. Project Maven is a Pentagon project intended to use machine learning and artificial intelligence in order to differentiate people and objects in thousands of hours of drone footage. By employing these crowdsourced microworkers, Google was able to use them to teach the algorithms it was running how to distinguish between human targets and surrounding objects. According to The Intercept , t

Samsung is due to refresh their wearable lineup, along with their Galaxy S flagship smartphones, at their upcoming Unpacked 2019 event . Leaked image renders posted by 91Mobiles show a new wearable, purportedly named the Galaxy Sport. Like the Galaxy Watch before it , the Galaxy Sport will be aimed at outdoors enthusiasts, with some unspecified degree of water resistance. Yet perhaps the most interesting element of this new wearable is its complete lack of rotating bezel. In standard Samsung wearables, the bezel around the screen is used as a scroll wheel between apps and within them. According to the leaked renders, however, the Galaxy Sport instead uses two circular buttons with a round dial to control the watch’s functions. Hopefully, Samsung also updated its Tizen OS to be more wearable-friendly, and incorporated new methods for using the watch so that the removal of the rotating bezel doesn’t affect using it. In terms of which sporting activities the Galaxy Sport will be able

Honda marked its 50th anniversary in Australia today, and to celebrate, the company wrapped some of its most iconic products in gold vinyl, including cars, motorcycles, dirt bikes, a lawn mower, and a power generator. More specifically, it gilded a Civic Type R hot hatchback, the Acura NSX hybrid supercar, a HRU19 Buffalo lawn mower, EU22i generator, CBR1000RR Fireblade motorcycle, CRF450L dual-sport dirt bike, and a CRF50F kids motorbike, for the little ones who enjoy luxury. Unfortunately, these are one-off items made specially for the anniversary, so they won’t be on sale. “We thought about how we could celebrate our birthday and our unique diversity in a bold and fun way,” Honda Australia CEO Hiroyuki Shimizu explained in a statement. “I mean, who has ever seen a golden mower or generator before?” He is right about this, and I am glad Honda has brought these imaginings to life, although the vinyl wrappings remind me of when restaurants put gold foil on food that was perfectly fi

Slack was late to the world of workplace messaging apps. When it arrived in in 2013, it didn’t appear to offer much that was new — chat rooms and direct messaging were already available in a host of apps. But its co-founder Stewart Butterfield cannily presented it as a powerful alternative to email and, over time, as a command hub for the workplace that would integrate all the other software a company uses into a single interface. Slack spread like wildfire, and today is worth at least $7 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. Now the company plans to make its stock available for purchase: the company filed its initial public offering today. It is expected to become one of the most valuable tech companies to go public since Snapchat. It didn’t get this far without some carnage. Slack beat out tons of messaging apps on its way to the New York Stock Exchange, skillfully incorporating features that are fun (unlimited custom emoji reactions to messages) alongside those that are si