Match wasn’t letting paid subscribers receive emails from these shady accounts.
The FTC also accused Match of failing to properly disclose the hoops dateless users need to jump through to qualify for a free six-month subscription. Match also didn’t provide a simple way to cancel, officials said, and those that disputed charges through their banks found themselves banned.
As you might guess, Match disagreed with the FTC’s claims. In a statement, it said the agency “misrepresented” company emails and used “cherry-picked data” to make its assertions. Instead, the emails were the results of bots, spam and other perpetrators.
Whether or not that argument flies is another matter. The FTC’s argument isn’t so much that Match sent the messages intentionally as that it had different standards for spam based on whether or not you were a paid user. If regulators can show that Match was knowingly letting spammers slide, the company might be in just as much trouble as if it had sent those emails on purpose.
That sounds kind of cool, but in practice it was a little weird. I had to hold my hand up to my mouth to speak to it, and then bring my hand up to my ear in order to listen to it; I almost felt like I was in a goofy spy movie. The ring vibrates a little to let you know Alexa is listening, and whenever you get notifications. Just like the Echo Frames and the Echo Buds, you can tap and hold on the button to activate your phone’s voice assistant like Siri or Google Assistant.
The Loop comes in small, medium, large and extra large, and Amazon says you can get a ring sizing kit to help you figure out which size is best for you. As for battery life, the company claims that it’ll last about a day, though one model we had for demo seem to run out of juice pretty quickly (admittedly it was under constant use).
Between the Frames and the Loop, I think the latter is a little harder proposition simply because of its chunky size and the fact that you look kinda crazy talking into it. The Frames seem much more appropriate, and might blend into your everyday life a lot better. That said, the Loop is also cheaper at $130 instead of $180.
As a “Day One” device, the Loop isn’t available widely just yet. It’s available only on a limited basis and you can only get one via a special invitation. If you do want one though, you can apply for it starting today.
The policy generally limits law enforcement to considering genealogy sites when a candidate sample belongs to a possible culprit, or when a likely homicide victim is unidentified. Prosecutors can greenlight the use of these sites for violent crimes beyond murder and sexual assault, but only when the circumstances create a “substantial and ongoing threat” to the public. Agencies can’t use the sites unless a sample has first been uploaded to the FBI’s DNA profile database and hasn’t produced a match. Also, the investigators in the relevant jurisdiction need to have followed “reasonable investigative leads,” and case info need to be entered into national databases for missing people and violent criminals.
There’s more even after meeting these rules. FBI lab officials have to evaluate the suitability of a sample and suggest “reasonable” alternatives to genealogy sites when possible. The investigators must then agree with prosecutors that genealogy is a suitable option. If they get the go-ahead, they have to explicitly identify themselves as law enforcement to these sites, use only sites that make clear the police have access, keep data as private as possible and obtain consent from third parties before collecting any reference samples. Any analysis on a covertly-obtained sample will require a search warrant, and samples have to be limited to the identification purposes necessary for the case.
If there’s a lead, the case holders have to turn back to conventional investigation methods.
Any genealogy profiles and account info will be treated as confidential, and there are tight controls on what happens if a suspect faces charges. If they’re charged after a genealogy profile has been entered into an open DNA database, the investigators will have to remove that profile. Samples, profiles and accounts have to be destroyed once there’s a verdict, while Department elements have to routinely document instances where genealogy sites were used, including the sites in question and the ultimate outcome.
The temporary policy takes effect November 1st, while a final policy is due in 2020. It’s safe to say there’s a clear goal at this stage — the DOJ wants law enforcement to avoid using genealogy sites as much as possible, and leave an extensive record of what happened. It might not completely alleviate privacy concerns, but it could prevent obvious abuses of sensitive genetic data.
The company lists Tiananmen square alongside other “incidents” such as the 1998 riots in Indonesia and the Cambodian genocide as topics that aren’t acceptable to broach. In other instances, the company attempted to censor its users by making Chinese topics acceptable. For example, one set of guidelines lists specific world leaders TikTok users can’t mention.
In the majority of cases, the action TikTok recommends against users that create a video about a banned topic is to limit the visibility of the post. The company wouldn’t outright delete a post, but it also wouldn’t allow it to be picked up by its algorithm. Some posts, however, such as those about topics like Falun Gong, could lead to bans.
For its part, ByteDance, TikTok’s creator, claims it retired the guidelines in May. “In TikTok’s early days we took a blunt approach to minimizing conflict on the platform,” the company said in a statement to The Guardian. ByteDance went on to say that it now employs more “localized approaches” to content moderation, employing both region-specific moderators and policies.
It appears the company is still employing at least some forms of censorship. Earlier this month, an investigation by The Washington Post found that searching for videos related to Hong Kong brings back little to no mention of the ongoing pro-democracy protests in the city-state. It’s also the latest example of Chinese-style censorship making its way to the wider internet. In February, Taiwanese-made horror game Devotionwas pulled from Steam after players discovered an image within the game that referenced Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Facebook is a company that has faced numerous lawsuits and Congressional inquiries over its handling of sensitive user information. It stands accused of having undue, unchecked influence over politics, social issues and facts. It has routinely failed to stop bad actors from using its systems to lie, cheat and steal.
And yet, more than 2 billion people log into Facebook every month. The only reason developers can even attempt a feat as ambitious as LiveMaps is because Facebook generates enough data points to sustain the creation of a second, digital, planet. Even with the cold knowledge of the company’s security and privacy shortcomings, we’re still using Facebook.
By this math, we’re going to use LiveMaps, too. Though the concerns behind Facebook building a planet are more extreme than anything lodged at the company today, the benefits of a working AR system are also more obvious. Today, Facebook users are willing to give up at least some privacy in order to connect with people, follow sites they like and scroll endlessly through the ramblings of former friends and colleagues. If AR works the way Facebook envisions, we’ll use it to navigate our daily lives and turn to it at every step for information, connection, entertainment and employment. How much intrusion and subterfuge will we be willing to endure, to experience the comforts of Reality 2.0?
Facebook is one of a handful of companies with enough data and resources to make AR happen on a massive scale. Google could easily take another crack at it, or Microsoft, or maybe even Amazon. However, planet-scale AR is never going to happen without the cooperation or complete direction of a tech giant. With the emergence of mainstream AR, our reality will be distorted by a for-profit organization, guaranteed.
Things aren’t so different today. Major technology corporations already influence our everyday decisions through large-scale data collection, advertising deals and subtle online nudges, but AR will push these ideas to the extreme. It’s easy enough to delete the Facebook app from your phone; it’s much harder to opt out of reality. Especially when that world has more information, job opportunities, communication tools, entertainment options and silent data-collection nodes than the one you’re currently inhabiting.
That said, the thicker stems on the side are a dead giveaway that there’s something slightly different about them. The stems house the “brains” of the Frames, with the battery and controls on the right side. Amazon tells me that they’re prescription-ready, and were also made with comfort in mind. There are springy hinges and adjustable acetate tips at the end to better fit a wider range of heads and ears. They also feel very lightweight, at only 31 grams each.
To use them, all you have to say is “Alexa” followed by a command. So saying “Alexa, what’s the weather” will trigger the glasses to tell you the weather. The audio comes out of two little speakers on either side of the glasses. Amazon says it has an “Open Ear” direct speaker technology where only I can hear the audio but people around me couldn’t. I could hear the audio clearly, but the voice was a little muffled because of my noisy surroundings.
If you tap and hold the temple, that’ll trigger the voice assistant in your phone, such as Google Assistant. You can also swipe either forwards or backwards on the temple to scroll through your notifications. Speaking of which, you can also set up a VIP List so that only your more important notifications come through the glasses.
According to Amazon, the Frames have a 3-hour audio playback or a 14-day standby time. The Frames are considered a “Day One” Edition product so they’re available only on a limited basis. Each one is priced at $179.99 and are available only via a special invitation, so you have to apply to get it.
The Rift S had a rocky start. It launched alongside the Quest, but while that headset gave us a glimpse at the power of truly portable VR, the Rift S just felt like a minor step up from the original Rift. Sure, the resolution was higher and had built-in sensors, but it wasn’t the true sequel I was hoping for. Instead, it felt like yet another PC VR headset, one that was practically indistinguishable from the slew of Windows Mixed Reality devices.
With Oculus Link and all of those updates coming to the Quest, the Rift S now seems practically irrelevant. My main issue with the Quest originally was that it was limited to simpler mobile VR experiences, but Oculus Link completely fixes that problem. If it works as advertised, you just have to plug it into a gaming PC to play higher quality Rift titles, like the upcoming Asgard’s Wrath. That’s not only incredibly convenient, it’s something we haven’t yet seen from a major VR company. Finally, there’s a headset that you can use wirelessly on the go, and together with a PC when you need more power.
The Quest also has higher resolution OLED displays (1,440 by 1,600 pixels per eye) than the Rift S (1,280 by 1,440 pixels per eye), which relies on fast-switching LCDs. The Rift S does have the advantage of a slightly faster 80Hz refresh rate, but the Quest isn’t much slower at 72Hz. I’d argue the benefits of OLED outweigh that deficiency: You’ll see deeper black levels and better overall contrast on the Quest.
And if you’re not sold on the benefits of the Quest yet, there’s also hand tracking coming next year. We only saw a brief demo at Oculus Connect, but it looks like it does a decent job of sensing your individual finger movements using the Quest’s built-in cameras and computer vision algorithms. There’s no additional accessory required. It’s unclear if the Rift S will ever get this feature — though it technically could. While hand tracking might not replace the Quest’s motion controllers altogether, it adds another immersive interaction option for developers. It also gives Oculus one way to compete with the Valve Index, which has excellent finger tracking controllers.
As if to rub salt in the wound, Oculus is also bringing Passthrough+, one of the Rift S’s unique capabilities, over to the Quest. It gives you a stereoscopic view of the real world using the headset’s cameras, and it’s vastly superior to the flat 2D version of Passthrough currently on the Quest. This isn’t necessarily an essential feature, but being able to sense the actual distance between you and your coffee table will likely help avoid potential VR accidents.
With both the Oculus Quest and Rift S selling for $399, the choice for most consumers is obvious: Go for the more flexible and capable headset, instead of the one that’s stuck in the past. I wouldn’t be surprised if Oculus ends up making the Rift S cheaper for the holidays, but it would have to be a truly steep discount to make it worthwhile.
You now have a particularly easy way to watch newer movies and TV shows on Oculus' self-contained VR headsets. Fandango has made its FandangoNOW video store available on the Oculus Go and Oculus Quest, providing quick access to about 90,000 titles o…
You can ask Alexa to find classes, videos and recipes, but you can also use it to navigate and save recipes. That could be more than a little helpful when you’d rather not touch a screen with your flour-covered hands. Of course, you can handle ancillary tasks like setting timers or asking about measurements.
Discovery also plans to one-up rivals with two features coming in 2020. You’ll eventually have around-the-clock “Kitchen-on-Call” support in case you’re stymied by a recipe. There will also be a way to buy the pans, spoons and appliances you see chefs use. We can’t imagine that last option being cheap, but it may be an easy way to ensure you have the equipment necessary to produce what you see on screen.
Food Network Kitchen goes live in October 2019. It’ll be free if you’re willing to to peruse a “limited” batch of recipes and videos, but Discovery is no doubt hoping that you’ll pay $60 per year (or $7 per month) for full access. Early adopters will get both a three-month trial period and the option of a discounted $48 yearly membership. It’s not certain if people will leap on this, especially if they aren’t invested in Amazon’s ecosystem. The sheer variety of learning options stands out, though, and the live help will offer a rare lifeline to amateur cooks.
Amazon is under pressure to make its Alexa products safer for kids. With that in mind, the company is introducing Alexa Communications for Kids, which will allow parents to white list contacts that their kids are allowed to talk to on Echo devices. Theoretically, the parental controls will allow kids to talk to people via their Echo but with reduced risk. That could appeal to parents and grandparents alike.
You now have a particularly easy way to watch newer movies and TV shows on Oculus' self-contained VR headsets. Fandango has made its FandangoNOW video store available on the Oculus Go and Oculus Quest, providing quick access to about 90,000 titles o…