The biggest annual award for fiction books is around the corner. The Man Booker Prize’s reading longlist and shortlist is already out, telling you the best books to read in 2018. But there’s more to book recommendations than one list, right?
You can find books worth reading based on what reviewers have said, or based on celebrity recommendations, or the length of a book; there are over 50 ways to find new books to read. It’s all about what you want to read at any given moment. And one of these five list-makers can help you find the right fit for you.
Authors, business leaders, and other celebrities often write blogs or social media posts about the best books they have read, recently or otherwise. WiseBooks collects these in one easy-to-browse interface.
It’s a quick and easy way to glance at people across different fields have recommended. For example, you might find lists from productivity guru Tim Ferris’s articles or his popular podcast that MakeUseOf loves. And on the same page, you’ll see tennis champion Maria Sharapova’s favorite reads.
Each book has a short description as well as an Amazon link. WiseBooks can be filtered by the type of person you want to know more about: actor, author, CEO, sports, filmmaker, journalist, doctor, and so on. If you like regular recommendations to read new things, sign up for the newsletter.
WikiMentions (Web): What Geek Celebrities Recommend
WikiMentions is much like WiseBooks, but it focuses more on famous people associated with sciences. The site also digs into videos, since not every famous person is putting their reading lists out on social media or in blog posts. For example, DIY guru Adam Savage has recommended several books while on screen or in podcasts, and WikiMentions has them all.
Each celebrity’s page is divided into books they’ve written, books they have mentioned, and the videos in which they have talked about reading. The list sometimes also includes their favorite authors (not just a book or two by the author), which is something you don’t often see in such compilations.
The videos are fascinating because they go beyond simple lists, as you get their thoughts on the joy of reading itself. I’d especially recommend watching the videos featuring naturalist Sir David Attenborough.
For a bit of serendipity, try clicking the “Random Page” button. It’s a cool way to come across some famous person you know but wouldn’t have thought of ever Googling their book interests.
ShortBooks (Web): When You Don’t Want a Lengthy Read
Sometimes, you don’t want a long book. Instead, you’re in the mood for a breezy, quick read. It’s usually hard to find such recommendations online, so it’s wonderful to see a site like ShortBooks fill that void.
Search for a genre, an author, or a keyword, and ShortBooks will return with a list of books and the time it takes to read them. The formula is total words divided by the average words-per-minute speed of humans, which is one of the simplest ways to estimate the average reading time of any book. Find something that meets your required length, and start reading.
You might also want to check out the “favorite short books” list, where you will get several books that you can finish in an hour or two. It’s a good way to read 50 books in a year, or maybe more.
FictFact (Web): Best Book Series Recommendations, Not a Single Book
There are books, and there are book series. You can’t read one Harry Potter book, you need to read them all. And if you like reading such serialized books, then head to FictFact for more recommendations.
The site is dedicated to book series of all types. You can find recommendations by series, genres, author, or even an overall list of the most popular book series. FictFact even includes a simple book release calendar so you know when the next installment will be released. But well, as any George R. R. Martin fan knows, these schedules aren’t always reliable.
Still, it’s nice to see the simple order in which you need to read a series, how long the series is, and when an unfinished series is expected to end.
Book Marks (Web): Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes for Books
Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes are among the best sites for movie lovers, collecting reviews from different critics to give you an average score. For books, the best equivalent is Book Marks.
The website is more useful for finding new books that are worth reading, it isn’t particularly useful for classics. The “Biggest New Books” will tell you exactly what’s popular and well-reviewed right now, with words like “rave”, “positive” and so on. I wouldn’t pay much attention to the “positive” books if I was you, and only focus on “rave” since almost everything seems to have an average “positive” rating.
As you might expect, you can browse different genres and categories in Book Marks, largely split across fiction and non-fiction. Scroll to the bottom of the homepage to find articles and more reading lists from its sister site, Lit Hub.
To Find Classics, Go for “Best Book” Lists
While Book Marks will give you great new recommendations, sometimes you want a classic. Book choices are subjective, so there isn’t one universal list of the “best books” you should read.
Within several such lists, you need to be more discerning about which lists you should trust and which ones you should ignore. That’s why we gathered up the essential “best books” lists you should check out. You’ll be surprised how many of these you haven’t read yet.
In statement to Bloomberg, Google spokesperson said “We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles. And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications,” adding that Google is still “working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many ways.”
The winner of the contract, which could last for up to 10 years, is expected to be announced by the end of the year. The project is meant to accelerate the Defense Department’s adoption of cloud computing and services. Only one provider will be chosen, a controversial decision that the Pentagon defended by telling Congress that the pace of handling task orders in a multiple-award contract “could prevent DOD from rapidly delivering new capabilities and improved effectiveness to the warfighter that enterprise-level cloud computing can enable.”
Google also addressed the controversy over a single provider, telling Bloomberg that “had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it. Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload.”
Google’s decision no to bid for JEDI comes four months after it reportedly decided not to renew its contract with the Pentagon for Project Maven, which involved working with the military to analyze drone footage, including images taken in conflict zones. Thousands of Google employees signed a petition against its work on Project Maven because they said it meant the company was directly involved in warfare. Afterward, Google came up with its “AI Principles,” a set of guidelines for how it will use its AI technology.
Facebook is trying its hand at hardware by launching two new devices called Portal and Portal+. These are essentially videophones as people in the 1960s imagined we would all be using by now. And thanks to Facebook, this prediction of the future may come true.
Video phones were once seen as the future. Why would you want to merely talk to people when you could see them as well? And thanks to smartphones, messaging apps, and video calling that has come to pass. But do we really need hardware dedicated to video calling?
The Facebook Portal and Portal+
Facebook thinks so, hence the arrival of Portal and Portal+. According to Facebook, both are “video communication devices” designed to make video calling easier and help you “enjoy quality time with family and friends—hands and distraction free”.
The Portal boasts a 10-inch 1280 x 800 static display, while the Portal+ boasts a 15-inch 1920 x 1080 pivoting display. Both feature Facebook’s Smart Camera and Smart Sound technologies, as well as hands-free voice controls powered by Alexa.
This is bad timing from Facebook, because, as you’re probably aware by now, the social network recently suffered a security breach affecting as many as 90 million users. And now Facebook is trying to sell us something designed to watch our every move.
Still, there are some security features: You can disable the camera and microphone, there’s a built-in camera cover, and you can set a passcode for access. Video calls are also encrypted, and Facebook promises not to “listen to, view, or keep the contents”.
How to Pre-Order Portal From Facebook
The Portal and Portal+ are both now available to pre-order in the United States. You can order one directly from Facebook at portal.facebook.com, or from Amazon or Best Buy. The Portal costs $199 and the Portal+ costs $349, with shipping starting in November.
Portal from Facebook is obviously competition for the Echo line, so be sure to read our Echo Show review before pre-ordering. And with Portal using Facebook Messenger for its video calls you should check out the Messenger features everyone should try.
Google+ is shutting down at last. Google announced today it’s sunsetting its consumer-facing social network due to lack of user and developer adoption, low usage and engagement. Oh, and a data leak. It even revealed how poorly the network is today performing, noting that 90% of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds long. Yikes.
But things weren’t always like this. Google+ was once heralded as a serious attempt to topple Facebook’s stranglehold on social networking, and was even met with excitement in its first days.
2011
June: The Unveiling
The company originally revealed its new idea for social networking in June 2011. It wasn’t Google’s first foray into social, however. Google had made numerous attempts to offer a social networking service of some sort, with Orkut, launched in 2004 and shuttered in fall 2014; Google Friend Connect in 2008 (retired in 2012), and Google Buzz in 2010 (it closed the next year).
But Google+ was the most significant attempt the company had made, proclaiming at the time: “we believe online sharing is broken.”
The once top-secret project was the subject of severalleaksahead of its launch, allowing consumer interest in the project to build.
Led by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, Google’s big idea to fix social was to get users to create groups of contacts – called “Circles” – in order to have more control over social sharing. That is, there are things that are appropriate for sharing with family or close friends, and other things that make more sense to share with coworkers, classmates, or those who share a similar interest – like biking or cooking, for example.
But getting users to create groups is difficult because the process can be tedious. Google, instead, cleverly designed a user interface that made organizing contacts feel simpler – even fun, some argued. It was also better than the system for contact organization that Facebook was offering at the time.
Next thing you know, everyone was setting up their Circles by dragging-and-dropping little profile icons into these groups, and posting updates and photos to their newly created micro-networks.
Another key feature, “Sparks,” helped users find news and content related to a user’s particular interests. This way, Google could understand what people liked and wanted to track, without having an established base of topical pages for users to “Like,” as on Facebook. But it also paved the way for a new type of search. Instead of just returning a list of blue links, a search on Google+ could return people’s profiles who were relevant to the topic at hand, matching pages, and other content.
Google+ also introduced Hangouts, a way to video chat with up to 10 people in one of your Circles at once.
At the time, the implementation was described as almost magical. This was due to a number of innovative features, like the way the software focused in on the person talking, for example, and the way everyone could share content within a chat.
Early growth looked promising
Within two weeks, it seemed Google had a hit on its hands, as the network had reached 10 million users. Just over a month after launch, it had grown to 25 million. By October 2011, it reached 40 million. And by year-end, 90 million. Even if Google was only tracking sign-up numbers, it still appeared like a massive threat to Facebook.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s first comment about Google+, however, smartly pointed out that any Facebook competitor will have to build up a social graph to be relevant. Facebook, which had 750 million users at the time, had already done this. Google+ was getting the sign-ups, but whether users would remain active over time was still in question.
July: Backlashes over brands and Real Names policy
In an effort to compete with Facebook, Google+ also enforced a “real names” policy. This angered many users who wanted to use pseudonyms or nicknames, especially when Google began deleting their accounts for non-compliance. This was a larger issue than merely losing social networking access, because losing a Google account meant losing Gmail, Documents, Calendar and access to other Google products, too.
It wouldn’t fix some of these problems for years, in fact. Eric Schmidt even reportedly once suggested finding another social network if you didn’t want to use your real name – a comment that came across as condescending.
If you can’t beat ’em, force ’em! Google began to require users to have a Google+ account in order to sign-up for Gmail. It was not a user-friendly change, and was the start of a number of forced integrations to come.
March: Criticism mounts
TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey argued that Google failed to play the long game in social, and was too ambitious in its attempt with Google+. All the network really should have started with was its “+1” button – the clicks would generate piles of data tied to users that could then be searchable, private by default, and shareable elsewhere.
June: Event spam goes viral
Spam remained an issue on Google+. This time, event spam had emerged, thanks to all the nifty integrations between Google+ and mission-critical products like Calendar.
Users were not thrilled that other people were able to “invite” them to events, and these automatically showed up on your Calendar – even if you had not yet confirmed that you would be attending. It made using Google+ feel like a big mistake.
November: Hangouts evolves
The following year after Google+’s launch, there was already a lot of activity around Hangouts – which interestingly, has since become one of the big products that will outlive its original Google+ home.
Video was a tough space to get right – which is why businesses like Skype were still thriving. And while Hangouts were designed for friends and family to use in Google+, Google was already seeing companies adopt the technology for meetings, and brands like the NBA for connecting with fans.
December: Google+ adds Communities
The focus on user interests in Google+ also continued to evolve this year with the launch of Communities – a way for people to set up topic-based forums on the site. The move was made in hopes of attracting more consumer interest, as growth had slowed.
It was a notable indication of how little love people had for Google+. YouTubers were downright pissed. One girl even crafted a profane music video in response, with lyrics like “You ruined our site and called it integration / I’m writing this song just to vent our frustration / Fuck you, Google Plusssssss!”
Google also started talking about Google+ as an “identity layer” with 500 million users to make it sound big.
2014
April: Vic Gundotra, Father of Google+, leaves Google
Google+ lost its founder. In April 2014, it was announced that Vic Gundotra, the father of Google+, was leaving the company. Google CEO Larry Page said at the time that the social network would still see investment, but it was a signal that a shift was coming in terms of Google’s approach.
The forced integrations of the past would be walked back, like those in Gmail and YouTube, and teams would be reshuffled.
July: Hangouts breaks free
Perhaps one of the most notable changes was letting Hangouts go free. Hangouts was a compelling product – too important to require a tie to Google+. In July 2014, Hangouts began to work without a Google+ account, rolled out to businesses and got itself an SLA.
July: Google+ drops its real name rule and apologizes
While Google had started rolling back on the real name policy in January of 2012 by opening rules to include maiden names and select nicknames, it still displayed your real name alongside your chosen name. It was nowhere near what people wanted.
Now, Google straight up apologized for its decision around real names and hoped the change would bring users back. It did not. It was too late.
2015
May: Google Photos breaks free
Following Hangouts, Google realized that Google+’s photo-sharing features also deserved to become their own, standalone product.
At Google I/O 2015, the company announced its Google Photos revamp. The new product took advantage of A.I. and machine learning capabilities that originated on Google+. This included allowing users to search photos for persons, places and things, as well as an update on Google+’s “auto awesome” feature, which turned into the more robust Google Photos Assistant.
Bradley Horowitz, VP, Photos and Streams at Google and Product Director at Google, Luke Wroblewski, had teamed up to redesign Google+ around what Google’s data indicated was working: Communities and Collections. Essentially, the new Google+ was focused on users and their interests. It let people network around topics, but not necessarily their personal connections.
Horowitz explained at the time that Google had heard from users “that it doesn’t make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use,” and it was responding accordingly.
August: Hangouts on Air moved to YouTube Live
One of the social network’s last exclusive features, Hangouts on Air – a way to broadcast a Hangout – moved to YouTube Live in 2016, as well.
2017
Google+ went fairly quiet. The site was still there, but the communities were filling with spam. Community moderators said they couldn’t keep up. Google’s inattention to the problem was a signal in and of itself that the grand Google+ experiment may be coming to a close.
January: Classic design phased out
Google+ forced the change over to the new design first previewed in late 2015.
In January 2017, it no longer allowed users to switch back to the old look. It also took the time to highlight groups that were popular on Google+ to counteract the narrative that the site was “dead.” (Even though it was.)
August: Google+ removed share count from +1 button
The once ubiquitous “+1” button launched in spring 2012, was getting a revamp. It would no longer display the number of shares. Google said this was to make the button load more quickly. But it was really because the share counts were not worth touting anymore.
2018
October 2018: Google+ got its Cambridge Analytica moment
A security bug allowed third-party developers to access Google+ user profile data since 2015 until Google discovered it in March, but decided not to inform users. In total, 496,951 users’ full names, email addresses, birth dates, gender, profile photos, places lived, occupation and relationship status were potentially exposed. Google says it doesn’t have evidence the data was misused, but it decided to shut down the consumer-facing Google+ site anyway, given its lack of use.
Data misuse scandals like Cambridge Analytica have damaged Facebook and Twitter’s reputations, but Google+ wasn’t similarly impacted. After all, Google was no longer claiming Google+ be a social network. And, as its own data shows, the network that remained was largely abandoned.
But the company still had piles of user profile data on hand, which were put at risk. That may lead Google to face a similar fate as the more active social networks, in terms of being questioned by Congress or brought up in lawmakers’ discussions about regulations.
In hindsight, then, maybe it would have been better if Google had shut down Google+ years ago.
Google+ is shutting down at last. Google announced today it’s sunsetting its consumer-facing social network due to lack of user and developer adoption, low usage and engagement. Oh, and a data leak. It even revealed how poorly the network is today performing, noting that 90% of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds long. Yikes.
But things weren’t always like this. Google+ was once heralded as a serious attempt to topple Facebook’s stranglehold on social networking, and was even met with excitement in its first days.
2011
June: The Unveiling
The company originally revealed its new idea for social networking in June 2011. It wasn’t Google’s first foray into social, however. Google had made numerous attempts to offer a social networking service of some sort, with Orkut, launched in 2004 and shuttered in fall 2014; Google Friend Connect in 2008 (retired in 2012), and Google Buzz in 2010 (it closed the next year).
But Google+ was the most significant attempt the company had made, proclaiming at the time: “we believe online sharing is broken.”
The once top-secret project was the subject of severalleaksahead of its launch, allowing consumer interest in the project to build.
Led by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, Google’s big idea to fix social was to get users to create groups of contacts – called “Circles” – in order to have more control over social sharing. That is, there are things that are appropriate for sharing with family or close friends, and other things that make more sense to share with coworkers, classmates, or those who share a similar interest – like biking or cooking, for example.
But getting users to create groups is difficult because the process can be tedious. Google, instead, cleverly designed a user interface that made organizing contacts feel simpler – even fun, some argued. It was also better than the system for contact organization that Facebook was offering at the time.
Next thing you know, everyone was setting up their Circles by dragging-and-dropping little profile icons into these groups, and posting updates and photos to their newly created micro-networks.
Another key feature, “Sparks,” helped users find news and content related to a user’s particular interests. This way, Google could understand what people liked and wanted to track, without having an established base of topical pages for users to “Like,” as on Facebook. But it also paved the way for a new type of search. Instead of just returning a list of blue links, a search on Google+ could return people’s profiles who were relevant to the topic at hand, matching pages, and other content.
Google+ also introduced Hangouts, a way to video chat with up to 10 people in one of your Circles at once.
At the time, the implementation was described as almost magical. This was due to a number of innovative features, like the way the software focused in on the person talking, for example, and the way everyone could share content within a chat.
Early growth looked promising
Within two weeks, it seemed Google had a hit on its hands, as the network had reached 10 million users. Just over a month after launch, it had grown to 25 million. By October 2011, it reached 40 million. And by year-end, 90 million. Even if Google was only tracking sign-up numbers, it still appeared like a massive threat to Facebook.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s first comment about Google+, however, smartly pointed out that any Facebook competitor will have to build up a social graph to be relevant. Facebook, which had 750 million users at the time, had already done this. Google+ was getting the sign-ups, but whether users would remain active over time was still in question.
July: Backlashes over brands and Real Names policy
In an effort to compete with Facebook, Google+ also enforced a “real names” policy. This angered many users who wanted to use pseudonyms or nicknames, especially when Google began deleting their accounts for non-compliance. This was a larger issue than merely losing social networking access, because losing a Google account meant losing Gmail, Documents, Calendar and access to other Google products, too.
It wouldn’t fix some of these problems for years, in fact. Eric Schmidt even reportedly once suggested finding another social network if you didn’t want to use your real name – a comment that came across as condescending.
If you can’t beat ’em, force ’em! Google began to require users to have a Google+ account in order to sign-up for Gmail. It was not a user-friendly change, and was the start of a number of forced integrations to come.
March: Criticism mounts
TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey argued that Google failed to play the long game in social, and was too ambitious in its attempt with Google+. All the network really should have started with was its “+1” button – the clicks would generate piles of data tied to users that could then be searchable, private by default, and shareable elsewhere.
June: Event spam goes viral
Spam remained an issue on Google+. This time, event spam had emerged, thanks to all the nifty integrations between Google+ and mission-critical products like Calendar.
Users were not thrilled that other people were able to “invite” them to events, and these automatically showed up on your Calendar – even if you had not yet confirmed that you would be attending. It made using Google+ feel like a big mistake.
November: Hangouts evolves
The following year after Google+’s launch, there was already a lot of activity around Hangouts – which interestingly, has since become one of the big products that will outlive its original Google+ home.
Video was a tough space to get right – which is why businesses like Skype were still thriving. And while Hangouts were designed for friends and family to use in Google+, Google was already seeing companies adopt the technology for meetings, and brands like the NBA for connecting with fans.
December: Google+ adds Communities
The focus on user interests in Google+ also continued to evolve this year with the launch of Communities – a way for people to set up topic-based forums on the site. The move was made in hopes of attracting more consumer interest, as growth had slowed.
It was a notable indication of how little love people had for Google+. YouTubers were downright pissed. One girl even crafted a profane music video in response, with lyrics like “You ruined our site and called it integration / I’m writing this song just to vent our frustration / Fuck you, Google Plusssssss!”
Google also started talking about Google+ as an “identity layer” with 500 million users to make it sound big.
2014
April: Vic Gundotra, Father of Google+, leaves Google
Google+ lost its founder. In April 2014, it was announced that Vic Gundotra, the father of Google+, was leaving the company. Google CEO Larry Page said at the time that the social network would still see investment, but it was a signal that a shift was coming in terms of Google’s approach.
The forced integrations of the past would be walked back, like those in Gmail and YouTube, and teams would be reshuffled.
July: Hangouts breaks free
Perhaps one of the most notable changes was letting Hangouts go free. Hangouts was a compelling product – too important to require a tie to Google+. In July 2014, Hangouts began to work without a Google+ account, rolled out to businesses and got itself an SLA.
July: Google+ drops its real name rule and apologizes
While Google had started rolling back on the real name policy in January of 2012 by opening rules to include maiden names and select nicknames, it still displayed your real name alongside your chosen name. It was nowhere near what people wanted.
Now, Google straight up apologized for its decision around real names and hoped the change would bring users back. It did not. It was too late.
2015
May: Google Photos breaks free
Following Hangouts, Google realized that Google+’s photo-sharing features also deserved to become their own, standalone product.
At Google I/O 2015, the company announced its Google Photos revamp. The new product took advantage of A.I. and machine learning capabilities that originated on Google+. This included allowing users to search photos for persons, places and things, as well as an update on Google+’s “auto awesome” feature, which turned into the more robust Google Photos Assistant.
Bradley Horowitz, VP, Photos and Streams at Google and Product Director at Google, Luke Wroblewski, had teamed up to redesign Google+ around what Google’s data indicated was working: Communities and Collections. Essentially, the new Google+ was focused on users and their interests. It let people network around topics, but not necessarily their personal connections.
Horowitz explained at the time that Google had heard from users “that it doesn’t make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use,” and it was responding accordingly.
August: Hangouts on Air moved to YouTube Live
One of the social network’s last exclusive features, Hangouts on Air – a way to broadcast a Hangout – moved to YouTube Live in 2016, as well.
2017
Google+ went fairly quiet. The site was still there, but the communities were filling with spam. Community moderators said they couldn’t keep up. Google’s inattention to the problem was a signal in and of itself that the grand Google+ experiment may be coming to a close.
January: Classic design phased out
Google+ forced the change over to the new design first previewed in late 2015.
In January 2017, it no longer allowed users to switch back to the old look. It also took the time to highlight groups that were popular on Google+ to counteract the narrative that the site was “dead.” (Even though it was.)
August: Google+ removed share count from +1 button
The once ubiquitous “+1” button launched in spring 2012, was getting a revamp. It would no longer display the number of shares. Google said this was to make the button load more quickly. But it was really because the share counts were not worth touting anymore.
2018
October 2018: Google+ got its Cambridge Analytica moment
A security bug allowed third-party developers to access Google+ user profile data since 2015 until Google discovered it in March, but decided not to inform users. In total, 496,951 users’ full names, email addresses, birth dates, gender, profile photos, places lived, occupation and relationship status were potentially exposed. Google says it doesn’t have evidence the data was misused, but it decided to shut down the consumer-facing Google+ site anyway, given its lack of use.
Data misuse scandals like Cambridge Analytica have damaged Facebook and Twitter’s reputations, but Google+ wasn’t similarly impacted. After all, Google was no longer claiming Google+ be a social network. And, as its own data shows, the network that remained was largely abandoned.
But the company still had piles of user profile data on hand, which were put at risk. That may lead Google to face a similar fate as the more active social networks, in terms of being questioned by Congress or brought up in lawmakers’ discussions about regulations.
In hindsight, then, maybe it would have been better if Google had shut down Google+ years ago.
Facebook is making a video camera. The company wants you to take it home, gaze into its single roving-yet-unblinking eye and speak private thoughts to your loved ones into its many-eared panel.
The thing is called Portal and it wants to live on your kitchen counter or in your living room or wherever else you’d like friends and family to remotely hang out with you. Portal adjusts to keep its subject in frame as they move around to enable casual at-home video chat. The device minimizes background noise to boost voice clarity. These tricks are neat but not revelatory.
Sounds useful, though. Everyone you know is on Facebook. Or they were anyway… things are a bit different now.
Facebook, champion of bad timing
As many users are looking for ways to compartmentalize or scale back their reliance on Facebook, the company has invited itself into the home. Portal is voice activated, listening for a cue-phrase (in this case “Hey Portal), and leverages Amazon’s Alexa voice commands as well. The problem is that plenty of users are already creeped out enough by Alexa’s always-listening functionality and habit of picking up snippets of conversation from the next room over. It may have the best social graph in the world, but in 2018 people are looking to use Facebook for less — not more.
Facebook reportedly planned to unveil Portal at F8 this year but held the product back due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, among other scandals. The fact that the company released the devices on the tail end of a major data breach disclosure suggests that the company couldn’t really hold back the product longer without killing it altogether and didn’t see a break in the clouds coming any time soon. Facebook’s Portal is another way for Facebook to blaze a path that its users walk daily to connect to one another. Months after its original intended ship date, the timing still couldn’t be worse.
Over the last eight years Facebook insisted time and time again that it is not and never would be a hardware company. I remember sitting in the second row at a mysterious Menlo Park press event five years ago as reporters muttered that we might at last meet the mythological Facebook phone. Instead, Mark Zuckerberg introduced Graph Search.
It’s hard to overstate just how much better the market timing would have been back in 2013. For privacy advocates, the platform was already on notice, but most users still bobbed in and out of Facebook regularly without much thought. Friends who’d quit Facebook cold turkey were still anomalous. Soul-searching over social media’s inexorable impact on social behavior wasn’t quite casual conversation except among disillusioned tech reporters.
Trusting Facebook (or not)
Onion headline-worthy news timing aside, Facebook showed a glimmer of self awareness, promising that Portal was “built with privacy and security in mind.” It makes a few more promises:
“Facebook doesn’t listen to, view, or keep the contents of your Portal video calls. Your Portal conversations stay between you and the people you’re calling. In addition, video calls on Portal are encrypted, so your calls are always secure.”
“For added security, Smart Camera and Smart Sound use AI technology that runs locally on Portal, not on Facebook servers. Portal’s camera doesn’t use facial recognition and doesn’t identify who you are.”
“Like other voice-enabled devices, Portal only sends voice commands to Facebook servers after you say, “Hey Portal.” You can delete your Portal’s voice history in your Facebook Activity Log at any time.”
This stuff sounds okay, but it’s standard. And, like any Facebook product testing the waters before turning the ad hose on full-blast, it’s all subject to change. For example, Portal’s camera doesn’t identify who you are, but Facebook commands a powerful facial recognition engine and is known for blurring the boundaries between its major products, a habit that’s likely to worsen with some of the gatekeepers out of the way.
Facebook does not command a standard level of trust. To recover from recent lows, Facebook needs to establish an extraordinary level of trust with users. A fantastic level of trust. Instead, it’s charting new inroads into their lives.
Hardware is hard. Facebook isn’t a hardware maker and its handling of Oculus is the company’s only real trial with the challenges of making, marketing — and securing — something that isn’t a social app. In 2012, Zuckerberg declared that hardware has “always been the wrong strategy” for Facebook. Two years later, Facebook bought Oculus, but that was a bid to own the platform of the future after missing the boat on the early mobile boom — not a signal that Facebook wanted to be a hardware company.
Reminder: Facebook’s entire raison d’être is to extract personal data from its users. For intimate products — video chat, messaging, kitchen-friendly panopticons — it’s best to rely on companies with a business model that is not diametrically opposed to user privacy. Facebook isn’t the only one of those companies (um, hey Google) but Facebook’s products aren’t singular enough to be worth fooling yourself into a surfeit of trust.
Gut check
Right now, as consumers, we only have so much leverage. A small handful of giant tech companies — Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft — make products that are ostensibly useful and we decide how useful they are and how much privacy we’re willing to trade to get them. That’s the deal and the deal sucks.
As a consumer it’s worth really sitting with that. Which companies do you trust the least? Why?
It stands to reason that if Facebook cannot reliably secure its flagship product — Facebook itself — then the company should not be trusted with experimental forays into wildly different products, i.e. physical ones. Securing a software platform that serves 2.23 billion users is an extremely challenging task, and adding hardware to that equation just complicates existing concerns.
You don’t have to know the technical ins and outs of security to make secure choices. Trust is leverage — demand that it be earned. If a product doesn’t pass the smell test, trust that feeling. Throw it out. Better yet, don’t invite it onto your kitchen counter to begin with.
If we can’t trust Facebook to safely help us login to websites or share news stories, why should we trust Facebook to move an always-on counter-mounted speaker capable of collecting incredibly sensitive data into our homes? Tl; dr: We shouldn’t! Of course we shouldn’t. But you knew that.
The Casio Rangeman GPR-B1000 is comically large. That’s the first thing you notice about it. Based on the G-Shock design, this massive watch is 20.2mm thick and about 60mm in diameter, a true dinner plate of a watch. Inside the heavy case is a dense collection of features that will make your next outdoor adventure great.
GPR-B1000, which I took for an extended trip through Utah and Nevada, is an outdoor marvel. It has all of the standard hiking watch features including compass, barometer, altimeter, and solar charging, but the watch also has built-in GPS mapping, logging, and backtracking. This means you can set a destination and the watch will lead you and you can later use your GPS data to recreate your trek or even backtrack out of a sticky situation.
This is not a sports watch. It won’t track your runs or remind you to go to your yoga class. Instead it’s aimed at the backwoods hiker or off piste skier who wants to get from Point A to Point B without getting lost. The watch connects to a specialized app that lets you set the destinations, map your routes, and even change timezones when the phone wakes up after a flight. These odd features make this a traveler’s dream.
The watch design is also unique for Casio. Instead of a replaceable battery the device charges via sunlight or with an included wireless charger. It has a ceramic caseback – a first for Casio – and the charger fits on like a plastic parasite. It charges via micro USB.
It has a crown on the side that controls scrolling through various on-screen menus and the rest of the functions are accessed easily from dedicated buttons around the bezel. The watch is mud- and water-proof to 200 meters and it can survive in minus 20 degrees Celsius temperatures. It is also shock resistant.
The $800 GPR-B1000 is a beefy watch. It’s not for the faint of wrist and definitely requires a bit of dedication to wear. I loved it while hiking up and down canyons and mountains and it was an excellent travel companion. One of the coolest features is quite simply being able to trust that the timezone is correct as soon as you land in Europe from New York.
That said you should remember that this watch is for “Adventure Survival” as Casio puts it. It’s not a running watch and it’s not a fashion piece. At $800 it’s one of Casio’s most expensive G-Shocks and it’s also the most complex. If you’re an avid hiker, however, the endless battery, GPS, and trekking features make it a truly valuable asset.
Eager to change the conversation from their years-long exposure of user data via Google+ to the bright, shining future the company is providing, Google has announced some changes to the way permissions are approved for Android apps. The new process will be slower, more deliberate, and hopefully secure.
The changes are part of “Project Strobe,” a “root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to Google account and Android device data and our philosophy around apps’ data access.” Essentially they decided it was time to update the complex and likely not entirely cohesive set of rules and practices around those third-party developers and API access.
One of those roots (or perhaps branches) was the bug discovered inside Google+, which theoretically (the company can’t tell if it was abused or not) exposed non-public profile data to apps that should have received only a user’s public profile. This, combined with the fact that Google+ never really justified its own existence in the first place, led to the service essentially being shut down. “The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement,” Google admitted. “90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.”
But the team doing the review has plenty of other suggestions to improve the process of informed consent to sharing data with third parties.
The first change is the most user-facing. When an application wants to access your Google account data — say your Gmail, Calendar, and Drive contents for a third-party productivity app — you’ll have to approve each one of those separately. You’ll also have the opportunity to deny access to one or more of those requests, so if you never plan on using the Drive functionality, you can just nix it and the app will never get that permission.
These permissions can also be delayed and gated behind the actions that require them. For instance, if this theoretical app wanted to give you the opportunity to take a picture to add to an email, it wouldn’t have to ask up front when you download it. Instead, when you tap the option to attach a picture, it would ask permission to access the camera then and there. Google went into a little more detail on this in a post on its developer blog.
Notably there is only the option to “deny” or “allow,” but no “deny this time” or “allow this time,” which I find to be useful when you’re not totally on board with the permission in question. You can always revert the setting manually but it’s nice to have the option to say “okay, just this once, strange app.”
The changes will start rolling out this month, so don’t be surprised if things look a little different next time you download a game or update an app.
The second and third changes have to do with limiting what data from your Gmail and messaging can be accessed by apps, and what apps can be granted access in the first place.
Specifically, Google is restricting access to these sensitive data troves to apps “directly enhancing email functionality” for Gmail and your default calling and messaging apps for call logs and SMS data.
There are some edge cases where this might be annoying to power users; some have more than one messaging app that falls back to SMS or integrates SMS replies, and this might require those apps to take a new approach. And apps that want access to these things may have trouble convincing Google’s review authorities that they qualify.
Developers will also need to review and agree to a new set of rules governing what Gmail data can be used, how they can use it, and the measures they must have in place to protect it. For example, apps are not allowed to “transfer or sell the data for other purposes such as targeting ads, market research, email campaign tracking, and other unrelated purposes.” That probably puts a few business models out of the running.
Apps looking to handle Gmail data will also have to submit a report detailing “application penetration testing, external network penetration testing, account deletion verification, reviews of incident response plans, vulnerability disclosure programs, and information security policies.” No fly-by-night operations permitted, clearly.
There will also be additional scrutiny on what permissions developers ask for to make sure it matches up with what their app requires. If you ask for Contacts access but don’t actually use it for anything, you’ll be asked to remove that, since it only increases risk.
These various new requirements will go into effect next year, with application review (a multi-week process) starting on January 9; tardy developers will see their apps stop working at the end of March if they don’t comply.
The relatively short timeline here suggests that some apps may in fact shut down temporarily or permanently due to the rigors of the review process. Don’t be surprised if early next year you get an update saying service may be interrupted due to Google review policies or the like.
These changes are just the first handful issuing from the recommendations of Project Strobe; we can expect more to appear over the next few months, though perhaps not such striking ones. To say Gmail and Android apps are widely used is something of an understatement, so it’s understandable that they would be focused on first, but there are many other policies and services the company will no doubt find reason to improve.
Eager to change the conversation from their years-long exposure of user data via Google+ to the bright, shining future the company is providing, Google has announced some changes to the way permissions are approved for Android apps. The new process will be slower, more deliberate, and hopefully secure.
The changes are part of “Project Strobe,” a “root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to Google account and Android device data and our philosophy around apps’ data access.” Essentially they decided it was time to update the complex and likely not entirely cohesive set of rules and practices around those third-party developers and API access.
One of those roots (or perhaps branches) was the bug discovered inside Google+, which theoretically (the company can’t tell if it was abused or not) exposed non-public profile data to apps that should have received only a user’s public profile. This, combined with the fact that Google+ never really justified its own existence in the first place, led to the service essentially being shut down. “The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement,” Google admitted. “90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.”
But the team doing the review has plenty of other suggestions to improve the process of informed consent to sharing data with third parties.
The first change is the most user-facing. When an application wants to access your Google account data — say your Gmail, Calendar, and Drive contents for a third-party productivity app — you’ll have to approve each one of those separately. You’ll also have the opportunity to deny access to one or more of those requests, so if you never plan on using the Drive functionality, you can just nix it and the app will never get that permission.
These permissions can also be delayed and gated behind the actions that require them. For instance, if this theoretical app wanted to give you the opportunity to take a picture to add to an email, it wouldn’t have to ask up front when you download it. Instead, when you tap the option to attach a picture, it would ask permission to access the camera then and there. Google went into a little more detail on this in a post on its developer blog.
Notably there is only the option to “deny” or “allow,” but no “deny this time” or “allow this time,” which I find to be useful when you’re not totally on board with the permission in question. You can always revert the setting manually but it’s nice to have the option to say “okay, just this once, strange app.”
The changes will start rolling out this month, so don’t be surprised if things look a little different next time you download a game or update an app.
The second and third changes have to do with limiting what data from your Gmail and messaging can be accessed by apps, and what apps can be granted access in the first place.
Specifically, Google is restricting access to these sensitive data troves to apps “directly enhancing email functionality” for Gmail and your default calling and messaging apps for call logs and SMS data.
There are some edge cases where this might be annoying to power users; some have more than one messaging app that falls back to SMS or integrates SMS replies, and this might require those apps to take a new approach. And apps that want access to these things may have trouble convincing Google’s review authorities that they qualify.
Developers will also need to review and agree to a new set of rules governing what Gmail data can be used, how they can use it, and the measures they must have in place to protect it. For example, apps are not allowed to “transfer or sell the data for other purposes such as targeting ads, market research, email campaign tracking, and other unrelated purposes.” That probably puts a few business models out of the running.
Apps looking to handle Gmail data will also have to submit a report detailing “application penetration testing, external network penetration testing, account deletion verification, reviews of incident response plans, vulnerability disclosure programs, and information security policies.” No fly-by-night operations permitted, clearly.
There will also be additional scrutiny on what permissions developers ask for to make sure it matches up with what their app requires. If you ask for Contacts access but don’t actually use it for anything, you’ll be asked to remove that, since it only increases risk.
These various new requirements will go into effect next year, with application review (a multi-week process) starting on January 9; tardy developers will see their apps stop working at the end of March if they don’t comply.
The relatively short timeline here suggests that some apps may in fact shut down temporarily or permanently due to the rigors of the review process. Don’t be surprised if early next year you get an update saying service may be interrupted due to Google review policies or the like.
These changes are just the first handful issuing from the recommendations of Project Strobe; we can expect more to appear over the next few months, though perhaps not such striking ones. To say Gmail and Android apps are widely used is something of an understatement, so it’s understandable that they would be focused on first, but there are many other policies and services the company will no doubt find reason to improve.
A stranger could have access to your private messages, contact your friends, abuse your Facebook page, and delete your personal information. They could also lock you out of your Facebook account forever. While you can’t get stolen information back, you can prevent them from stealing your account.
The most important thing now is to not panic. If you did some things right, you can regain access to your Facebook account. We’ll show you how.
Note: If you’re using Facebook to log into other applications, like Spotify or Instagram, those may be affected by the 2018 data breach. So even if you don’t care about your Facebook account, we strongly recommend changing the respective logins or tightening your Facebook security to secure these third-party accounts.
Log into your Facebook account and click the arrowhead in the top right to expand a menu. From the menu, pick Settings and go to Security and Login or just use this direct link.
At the very top, you’ll see a list of devices from which you’ve most recently logged into your Facebook account and when they were active.
Click See More to expand that list and review older sessions. If you spot any suspicious activity in your logins, here’s what you need to do, in the following order…
1a. Change Your Facebook Password
In case your Facebook hacker hasn’t changed your password, you got lucky! This is the time to update your password before you log out suspicious sessions (you don’t want to alert the hacker). If it’s too late, head to step 1b.
Under Settings > Security and Login, scroll down to Login and click Change password. Enter your current password, set a strong new password (possibly using a password manager like LastPass), and click Save Changes.
After changing your password, scroll back up to Where You’re Logged In. Either Log Out of individual sessions by clicking the three vertical dots or click the Log Out Of All Sessions option in the bottom right after expanding the list. Do this only if you’re sure you can log back in.
We recommend logging out completely, provided your contact details and security settings are up to date. You don’t want to jeopardize your means of logging back in. If you’re unsure, manually log out all recent sessions that seem suspicious.
From here, proceed to Step 3 if you think that your account was abused.
1b. Reset Your Facebook Password
If the hacker did change your password and you can no longer log into your Facebook account, act quickly. Try to regain access. There is a Forgot your password? link underneath the Facebook login:
This will let you retrieve your password in several different ways. First, you’ll have to Find Your Account. You can either enter the email address you used to register with Facebook or any other secondary email address you added, as well as your phone number.
If Facebook can find your account, you can choose how to Reset Your Password.
In my case, Facebook offers to send a recovery code to any of the email addresses I added to my account. I highly recommend that you specify multiple backup email addresses. Remember that you must keep those accounts equally secure, at least by using a strong password and ideally by enabling two-factor authentication.
Use the No longer have access to these? link if that’s the case. Facebook will ask how they can reach you to verify your identity. This can take a while.
If you believe that the Facebook hacker who has access to your account has been abusing it, proceed to step 2.
2. Report the Facebook Hack
If your account wasn’t simply hacked, but is sending out ads and spam to your friends, you must report it as compromised.
You can also use this in case you lost access to your account by means of a hacking attack. Facebook will help you recover access to your account.
3. Remove Suspicious Applications
Oftentimes, it’s not an evil person that randomly hacked your account. You may just have granted access to a malicious Facebook application which subsequently hijacked your account.
To remove suspicious applications, go to Settings > Apps and Websites and go through the list. Click Show All on all Active Apps and Websites, set a checkmark on apps or websites you’d like to remove, click the Remove button in the top right, and confirm whether you’d also like to “delete all posts, photos and videos on Facebook” from these sources.
Alternatively, click the View and Edit link and change the app’s permissions, which includes options like app visibility, access to your personal information, and actions it can take.
4. Engage Damage Control
After doing everything you can to regain control over your hacked Facebook account and preventing further damage, inform your friends about what is going on.
This is a precautionary step in case the hacker has been abusing your account. If you presently can’t access your account, contact your Facebook friends through other social networks, by email, or have a mutual friend inform them via Facebook.
Improving Facebook’s Privacy and Security Settings
Once you’re back in control, we highly recommend that you review your Facebook settings.
Under Settings > General, update your contact details, add additional email addresses or mobile phone numbers you have access to. Likewise, remove those you no longer have access to.
Head to Settings > Security and Login to set up extra security measures, including alerts about unrecognized logins, two-factor authentication, and choose three to five trusted friends who can help you to recover your account should you get locked out.
Under Settings > Privacy, choose the privacy settings you’re comfortable with. We recommend letting only friends see your future posts and retroactively limiting visibility of past posts.
Once you get hacked, you’re forced to learn about all the mistakes you made. And hopefully, you’ll never make them again. This is the time to learn about social engineering attacks and how to protect yourself against them. Hackers never stop evolving.
It had 
