Facebook’s Oculus has seen a lot of changes lately, with departures by key executives from the mobile VR team, Nate Mitchell and Max Cohen. But Facebook’s standalone VR headset released this spring, Oculus Quest, remains the best VR hardware achievement this year… and may indicate where Facebook could be heading next in AR. Facebook is …
Read More »
Microsoft’s contractors listened in on Xbox players using Cortana voice control features, Vice reported Wednesday. Voice data was also captured from the Kinect system’s voice commands prior to Cortana being added in 2016, according to the report. Microsoft last week revealed that humans could be listening to “short snippets” of voice conversations on its audio services, including Skype and virtual …
Read More »
We’d been hearing whispers that Huawei was creating its own operating system for phones, tablets and other smart devices, a precaution in case it lost access to Google’s Android software. And the Chinese company confirmed this Friday at its Huawei Developer Conference, where it officially unveiled the new operating system: HarmonyOS, a cross-device platform previously known as HongMeng. Speaking at HDC, …
Read More »
At 11:34 a.m. yesterday, the Galaxy Note 10 Plus‘ first battery drain test began. At 8:30 this morning, the phone finally shut down. That’s a 21-hour run in a test that loops a long video on airplane mode with the screen forced to stay on, and brightness and audio at the halfway point. This test doesn’t represent how we use phones …
Read More »
Microsoft released the first beta version of its overhauled Edge web browser Tuesday — and it wants you to help squash its bugs to smooth the way for the mainstream release in coming months. Microsoft’s new Edge is built on top of Chromium, Google’s open-source browser foundation for Chrome. The new Edge beta is available for Windows 7, Windows 10 …
Read More »
Step away from the keyboard, and pick up your phone. A Microsoft tool for Android phones and iPhones ($899 at Amazon) can convert words and numbers on a sheet of paper into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet in a couple of seconds. With Excel’s Insert Data from Picture tool, you can snap a photo of data in rows and columns on a …
Read More »
Microsoft has revealed that humans could be listening to “short snippets” of voice conversations on its audio services like Skype and virtual assistant Cortana, Motherboard reported Wednesday. Microsoft confirmed the report saying the disclosure came in an update to its privacy statement. The news comes a week after Motherboard reported that Microsoft contractors listen to recordings of some Skype conversations and …
Read More »
Website publishers and companies that show ads on them can track you from one site to another, creating a profile on your interests intended to show ads more targeted toward your likely interests. But that can significantly impair your privacy, and browsers are starting to crack down. Apple on Wednesday published a policy governing how its Safari browser will block …
Read More »
Hot on the heels of highlighting Facebook’s upcoming dark mode, Jane Manchun Wong discovered that LinkedIn is doing the same. The app researcher apparently found the unreleased dim color option while digging through the code for the Android app. LinkedIn is working on Dark Mode!I wrote a blog about this: https://t.co/JabQsUol60 pic.twitter.com/zY3fL3cSez — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) August 13, 2019 …
Read More »
A new round of tariffs on Chinese imports is set to go into effect on Sept. 1. However, the United States Trade Representative said Tuesday that the inclusion of some electronic devices made in China is getting a delay and that other items have been removed from the tariff lists altogether. The USTR will delay, until Dec. 15, tariffs planned …
Read More »
