The 10 Best Linux Games You Can Play for Free

Are you just setting off on your Linux gaming adventure? Then you need to know about the best Linux games you can play for free. So many great Windows games are available on Linux, and there’s even a few unmissable titles that are only available on Linux.

So, if you’re looking for the best Linux games to play for free, here are 10 titles to get you started…

1. Wakfu

Mixing humor with combat, Wakfu is an amine-inspired MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) with a life of its own. Worlds away from the earnest grind of WoW, Guild Wars, and other giants of the genre, Wakfu is just fun.

Heard of Wakfu already? It’s been spun off into an animated TV series, which you may have seen.

Wakfu is a different take on the MMORPG, so veterans of such games might spot a few issues with class balancing and crafting. If you’re new to MMORPGs, however, Wakfu is the perfect introduction to a massive gaming genre.

Wakfu is free, but you’ll need to purchase additional game content from Steam.

Download: Wakfu

2. Freeciv

One of the greatest and longest running gaming franchises is available on Linux via Steam. But if you’re looking for a free and open source alternative to Civilization, the answer is Freeciv.

Pit your nascent civilization against others in a test of time that requires you to dominate financially, militarily, and scientifically, while controlling and protecting your territory. The endgame is either total domination, or a successful rocket launch to explore the stars.

A network mode is available, giving you a great multiplayer experience. Freeciv also has a web version, and you can configure the game map for hexagonal or rectangular tiles, depending on your preferred style of play.

Freeciv was released in 1996 and is based heavily on Civilization 2. You can run it on Solaris, Amiga OS, and Windows, as well as Linux.

Download: Freeciv

3. Dota 2

Join millions of players on Valve’s Dota 2, reportedly the “most-played game on Steam”.

Boasting that “no two games are the same,” Dota 2 boasts a wide selection of heroes, abilities, and weapons. Nothing delivers an unfair of unwelcome advantage, however; you win or lose based entirely on your skill with the game and its features.

With such a popular game, joining as a new player might seem intimidating. Fortunately, we’ve compiled some great Dota 2 tips to help you become a better player.

Perhaps the most intriguing gameplay option is support for the HTC Vive, delivering a immersive Dota 2 experience via VR.

Although the core Dota 2 game remains free, you can buy cosmetic enhancements for your characters.

Download: Dota 2

4. OpenTTD

An open source version of 1995 game Transport Tycoon Deluxe, OpenTTD is a business sim in which you make money in transport and haulage.

Duplicating most features from the original game, OpenTTD ends on the source material, offering bigger maps, customizations, an improved user interface, and local and internet multiplayer, for up to 255 players. Additionally, the game has been visually enhanced, so prepare for polished graphics, bigger maps, new features, and increased complexity.

Fan of the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe or new to the game completely? Find help in the OpenTTD online manual.

It can be tricky to start making money, so check out our guide to creating amazing transportation systems in OpenTTD.

Download: OpenTTD

5. Team Fortress 2

Another big Valve title, Team Fortress 2 (aka TF2) is a free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS). There’s a visible amount of gore in the game, which means the game is 16+, but if you’re old enough and that’s your thing, TF2 is incredibly good fun.

While multiplayer shooters can be intimidating, TF2 makes it easy to get started. Character creation can be tweaked to suit your gameplay style. Meanwhile, newcomers to TF2 can play training and offline practice modes to get themselves in shape for genuine MMO action.

Premium downloadable content is available for TF2, but you’ll find most customization items in-game.

Download: Team Fortress 2

6. OpenRA

An open source take on the Command & Conquer: Red Alert RTS (real-time strategy) series, OpenRA is a fan-created remake. It includes gameplay elements from other games by original developers Westwood, including Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000.

Among enhancements over the original OpenRA are support for game replays, capture of civilian structures, fog of war, and the ability to stream games online.

Copyright holders EA announced in late 2018 that they plan to revive the Command & Conquer franchise. However, this should not affect OpenRA.

As well as running as a futuristic RTS, OpenRA can perform as a game server for network play.

OpenRA is available for BSD, macOS, and Windows, as well as Linux.

Download: OpenRA

7. Robocraft

Another multiplayer action shooter, Robocraft lets you build your own customizable robots and engage in combat with other players online.

Building takes place in an easy to use block-based user interface, where dozens of different weapons options can be added. When you’re done, test the robot against the AI before going online and fighting other players.

While things might get repetitive (fix this by creating plenty of different robots), Robocraft is a fun Linux multiplayer game.

Download: Robocraft

8. Hedgewars

First released in 2006, Hedgewars is a side-scrolling turn-based strategy game with a good dose of comedy. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s a Worms clone, but Hedgewars has an army of pink hedgehogs to control for domination of the map.

With support for up to eight players, single, local and network multiplayer, and in infinite number of maps based on 31 environments, you’re not going to get bored with this free Linux game.

Teams can be modified, games tweaked, and a selection of 55 weapons are at your disposal. These include options like the Piano Strike and the Melon Bomb. You can even make your own maps and costume mods, and download mods from other players.

Overall, if you’re looking for some good, free multiplayer strategy action on Linux, Hedgewars is so much fun!

Download: Hedgewars

9. Star Conflict

In this Elite Dangerous-style space combat MMO, you play as an elite space combat pilot, fighting in a galactic interplanetary skirmish.

Essentially a shooter in a spaceship, Star Conflict features PVP and PVE battles and quests, single player and multiplayer campaigns, over 100 types of spacecraft, various tactical roles, and much more.

Premium downloadable content is available for Star Conflict, which can save you a lot of time developing in-game skills.

Download: Star Conflict

10. SuperTuxKart

Created as an open source, Linux-only alternative to Super Mario Kart, SuperTuxKart is one of the most popular Linux games.

Initially released in 2007 (forked from TuxKart, which launched in 2000), SuperTuxKart features characters from various open source game projects, like the racers in Mario Kart.

However, SuperTuxKart isn’t a complete copy of the Nintendo title. To start off, it offers many game modes, from the standard normal race and time trial to the Easter Egg hunt and soccer modes.

As well as Linux, you can run SuperTuxKart on Windows, Android, and macOS.

Notably, SuperTuxKart features a story mode that unlocks tracks and characters, with each won race contributing to advancing the plot.

Download: SuperTuxKart

Where to Find the Best Free Linux Games

Gaming on Linux is easier than you think. You have a choice of finding free games on Steam or browsing the web for the best free and open source titles.

You can also look further afield, beyond Steam, to sites like itch.io where an index of Linux games is maintained. Or you could head to GOG.com and try some retro games with Linux compatibility (thanks to built-in DOS emulation).

Also look within the repositories of your Linux distro. Here you’ll find games that will run with your particular Linux flavor, which will typically include classics like Doom, and a ScummVM engine for point and click adventures.

If you’re keen on Linux gaming, it’s important to ensure you’re using the best operating system and drivers. Check out the best Linux operating systems for gaming to ensure you’re getting the most out of your PC.

Read the full article: The 10 Best Linux Games You Can Play for Free

Read Full Article

Is the Apple Watch for Kids? The 3 Best Kids Smart Watches

7 Simple Online Productivity Habits That Can Change Your Year

Making a New Year’s resolution is as easy as keeping it for the entire year is difficult. You start with determination to become a better, stronger version of your past year self. You stick to your resolution for the first week, maybe even the first month. But you don’t make it through the year.

A good rule of thumb is to make a resolution that is not too dramatic or absurd. It is much easier to follow resolutions with small changes to your lifestyle rather than try huge leaps. So, here are seven online resolutions (habits) that you too can try one small step at a time.

1. Don’t Get Sucked Into Online Arguments

Remember that time that guy on Twitter/Facebook/Reddit said something snarky about your favorite book/movie/political stance, and you spent hours arguing with him over it? Do you remember actually winning that argument? Do you remember looking back and feeling good about spending all that time over that one argument?

The main thing to remember about social media is that it encourages emotional instead of logical conversations. When a person expresses a view in opposition to yours, that opinion is a matter of personal choice. They will most likely not be swayed by your well-reasoned counter-argument.

Also don’t forget about the online trolls, who will deliberately goad you into starting online shouting matches just for fun. Knowing how to respond to fallacious arguments won’t help if the other person is just trying to get a rise out of you.

There are many spaces online to engage in reasoned, thoughtful debate, like r/Debate, Debate.org, and Procon.org. Stick to these spaces, and, no matter how strongly you feel about it, avoid starting flame wars on Reddit about how Jared Leto’s Joker was a more faithful comic book adaptation than Heath Ledger’s.

2. Keep Track of Time Wasted on Social Media

We all probably spend more time on social media than is good for us. You click that one facebook profile of your favorite celebrity and then spend hours stalking their photos. Time seems to really fly at such times. Before you know it, you’ve wasted another couple of hours snooping.

Even Facebook was forced recently to warn users against becoming addicted to its site. There are apps, like Social Fever and OFFTIME that you can use to keep track of the time you spend on social media. You can use these apps to:

• Set a limit to how long you use a particular social media app
• Get weekly reports on your app usage with accompanying analytics
• Set custom auto-replies so you don’t have to spend unnecessary time online
• Block unwanted calls, texts, and notifications

Download: Social Fever for Android (Free)

Download: OFFTIME for Android (Free)

3. Spend Time on Self Improvement

Commit yourself to spend at least an hour or two every week online dedicated to self-improvement. Go to a site that teaches you a skill you always wanted to learn. Or watch an interview with a professional you admire talking about their work.

Read inspirational articles or watch some of the best YouTube channels for self-improvement. The point is to use the internet to improve yourself.

There is a wealth of information, even on social media, geared toward bettering your mind. There are groups and forums on Facebook, Reddit and every other platform where members meet to share their passion for a subject. Join these groups and learn from them.

4. Keep Your Online Bio Updated

Most people remember to create a profile on LinkedIn and other job sites. But few remember to keep their profiles updated. A year has passed, and in that year you have gained more experience at your job while reaching new professional milestones.

Take some time to add these achievements to your profile on job sites. If you have worked recently with a new client, ask them to write a few lines of recommendation on your profile page. With more and more professionals finding work online, you cannot afford to neglect your virtual presence in your field of work.

5. Set Up a Social Media Page to Explore Your Passions

Start a page. Any kind of page. A YouTube channel. A WhatsApp or Telegram group. A Facebook social learning group. The only rule is that the page should be about exploring an activity that you feel passionately about. You can even turn your page into a learning group and volunteer training.

Forget about trying to make money off the page. The aim isn’t to create a new source of income, but a new source of interest to enrich yourself spiritually and mentally.

6. Start Networking with Professionals

How many times do you respond to LinkedIn connection notifications? While the internet economy is a thriving ecosystem, most of us are content to simply check out job sites from time to time for new vacancies.

This is only a small part of what the internet can do for you professionally. It is important to interact online not only with your friends but also with your professional contacts.

Sites like LinkedIn and Reddit have thriving communities for professionals to interact and help each other. Some ways to grow your online professional network are:

• Interact with new contact requests. Actively seek out people on sites like LinkedIn that you would like to work with.
• Attend professional networking events. Even local ones are announced on social media like Twitter and hyperlocal Facebook groups.
• Do favors for your contacts when possible. This shows you are someone who likes to collaborate in your field of work.
• Create your own forum. Reddit and Facebook groups are good candidates when you want to work with other professionals on passion projects together.

7. Keep Track with Time Management Apps

The internet is not the only place for wasting time. You do it all the time in the real world as well. The most common reason for time wastage is the absence of a schedule.

You spend more time on one particular project than you should have. Then you take a break after all the extra work. Before you know it, you’re falling behind on your work.

Time management apps are a great way to make sure you spend fixed amounts of time on projects. Apps like Mind42, MyLifeOrganized, and Toggl help you schedule your day in advance, offering features like:

• Tracking how much time is spent on different projects
• Teaching you productivity techniques like mind mapping and focus gathering.
• Managing your to-do lists and organizing your goals.

Resolve to Become More Productive

Modern life is busier than ever, and it is a constant struggle to find time for everything you want to accomplish in a single day. These habits can help ensure that your time online becomes a meaningful part of your life instead of time black holes.

Maybe, you are still feeling a bit overwhelmed. So why not narrow your horizon and take on any challenge as a 30-day learning project this year!

Read the full article: 7 Simple Online Productivity Habits That Can Change Your Year

Read Full Article

Technical Analysis

Technical Analysis

The case against behavioral advertising is stacking up

No one likes being stalked around the Internet by adverts. It’s the uneasy joke you can’t enjoy laughing at. Yet vast people-profiling ad businesses have made pots of money off of an unregulated Internet by putting surveillance at their core.

But what if creepy ads don’t work as claimed? What if all the filthy lucre that’s currently being sunk into the coffers of ad tech giants — and far less visible but no less privacy-trampling data brokers — is literally being sunk, and could both be more honestly and far better spent?

Case in point: This week Digiday reported that the New York Times managed to grow its ad revenue after it cut off ad exchanges in Europe. The newspaper did this in order to comply with the region’s updated privacy framework, GDPR, which includes a regime of supersized maximum fines.

The newspaper business decided it simply didn’t want to take the risk, so first blocked all open-exchange ad buying on its European pages and then nixed behavioral targeting. The result? A significant uptick in ad revenue, according to Digiday’s report.

“NYT International focused on contextual and geographical targeting for programmatic guaranteed and private marketplace deals and has not seen ad revenues drop as a result, according to Jean-Christophe Demarta, SVP for global advertising at New York Times International,” it writes.

“Currently, all the ads running on European pages are direct-sold. Although the publisher doesn’t break out exact revenues for Europe, Demarta said that digital advertising revenue has increased significantly since last May and that has continued into early 2019.”

It also quotes Demarta summing up the learnings: “The desirability of a brand may be stronger than the targeting capabilities. We have not been impacted from a revenue standpoint, and, on the contrary, our digital advertising business continues to grow nicely.”

So while (of course) not every publisher is the NYT, publishers that have or can build brand cachet, and pull in a community of engaged readers, must and should pause for thought — and ask who is the real winner from the notion that digitally served ads must creep on consumers to work?

The NYT’s experience puts fresh taint on long-running efforts by tech giants like Facebook to press publishers to give up more control and ownership of their audiences by serving and even producing content directly for the third party platforms. (Pivot to video anyone?)

Such efforts benefit platforms because they get to make media businesses dance to their tune. But the self-serving nature of pulling publishers away from their own distribution channels (and content convictions) looks to have an even more bass string to its bow — as a cynical means of weakening the link between publishers and their audiences, thereby risking making them falsely reliant on adtech intermediaries squatting in the middle of the value chain.

There are other signs behavioural advertising might be a gigantically self-serving con too.

Look at non-tracking search engine DuckDuckGo, for instance, which has been making a profit by serving keyword-based ads and not profiling users since 2014, all the while continuing to grow usage — and doing so in a market that’s dominated by search giant Google.

DDG recently took in $10M in VC funding from a pension fund that believes there’s an inflection point in the online privacy story. These investors are also displaying strong conviction in the soundness of the underlying (non-creepy) ad business, again despite the overbearing presence of Google.

Meanwhile, Internet users continue to express widespread fear and loathing of the ad tech industry’s bandwidth- and data-sucking practices by running into the arms of ad blockers. Figures for usage of ad blocking tools step up each year, with between a quarter and a third of U.S. connected device users’ estimated to be blocking ads as of 2018 (rates are higher among younger users).

Ad blocking firm Eyeo, maker of the popular AdBlock Plus product, has achieved such a position of leverage that it gets Google et al to pay it to have their ads whitelisted by default — under its self-styled ‘acceptable ads’ program. (Though no one will say how much they’re paying to circumvent default ad blocks.)

So the creepy ad tech industry is not above paying other third parties for continued — and, at this point, doubly grubby (given the ad blocking context) — access to eyeballs. Does that sound even slightly like a functional market?

In recent years expressions of disgust and displeasure have also been coming from the ad spending side too — triggered by brand-denting scandals attached to the hateful stuff algorithms have been serving shiny marketing messages alongside. You don’t even have to be worried about what this stuff might be doing to democracy to be a concerned advertiser.

Fast moving consumer goods giants Unilever and Procter & Gamble are two big spenders which have expressed concerns. The former threatened to pull ad spend if social network giants didn’t clean up their act and prevent their platforms algorithmically accelerating hateful and divisive content.

While the latter has been actively reevaluating its marketing spending — taking a closer look at what digital actually does for it. And last March Adweek reported it had slashed $200M from its digital ad budget yet had seen a boost in its reach of 10 per cent, reinvesting the money into areas with “‘media reach’ including television, audio and ecommerce”.

The company’s CMO, Marc Pritchard, declined to name which companies it had pulled ads from but in a speech at an industry conference he said it had reduced spending “with several big players” by 20 per cent to 50 per cent, and still its ad business grew.

So chalk up another tale of reduced reliance on targeted ads yielding unexpected business uplift.

At the same time, academics are digging into the opaquely shrouded question of who really benefits from behavioral advertising. And perhaps getting closer to an answer.

Last fall, at an FTC hearing on the economics of big data and personal information, Carnegie Mellon University professor of IT and public policy, Alessandro Acquisti, teased a piece of yet to be published research — working with a large U.S. publisher that provided the researchers with millions of transactions to study.

Acquisti said the research showed that behaviourally targeted advertising had increased the publisher’s revenue but only marginally. At the same time they found that marketers were having to pay orders of magnitude more to buy these targeted ads, despite the minuscule additional revenue they generated for the publisher.

“What we found was that, yes, advertising with cookies — so targeted advertising — did increase revenues — but by a tiny amount. Four per cent. In absolute terms the increase in revenues was $0.000008 per advertisment,” Acquisti told the hearing. “Simultaneously we were running a study, as merchants, buying ads with a different degree of targeting. And we found that for the merchants sometimes buying targeted ads over untargeted ads can be 500% times as expensive.”

“How is it possible that for merchants the cost of targeting ads is so much higher whereas for publishers the return on increased revenues for targeted ads is just 4%,” he wondered, posing a question that publishers should really be asking themselves — given, in this example, they’re the ones doing the dirty work of snooping on (and selling out) their readers.

Acquisti also made the point that a lack of data protection creates economic winners and losers, arguing this is unavoidable — and thus qualifying the oft-parroted tech industry lobby line that privacy regulation is a bad idea because it would benefit an already dominant group of players. The rebuttal is that a lack of privacy rules also does that. And that’s exactly where we are now.

“There is a sort of magical thinking happening when it comes to targeted advertising [that claims] everyone benefits from this,” Acquisti continued. “Now at first glance this seems plausible. The problem is that upon further inspection you find there is very little empirical validation of these claims… What I’m saying is that we actually don’t know very well to which these claims are true and false. And this is a pretty big problem because so many of these claims are accepted uncritically.”

There’s clearly far more research that needs to be done to robustly interrogate the effectiveness of targeted ads against platform claims and vs more vanilla types of advertising (i.e. which don’t demand reams of personal data to function). But the fact that robust research hasn’t been done is itself interesting.

Acquisti noted the difficulty of researching “opaque blackbox” ad exchanges that aren’t at all incentivized to be transparent about what’s going on. Also pointing out that Facebook has sometimes admitted to having made mistakes that significantly inflated its ad engagement metrics.

His wider point is that much current research into the effectiveness of digital ads is problematically narrow and so is exactly missing a broader picture of how consumers might engage with alternative types of less privacy-hostile marketing.

In a nutshell, then, the problem is the lack of transparency from ad platforms; and that lack serving the self same opaque giants.

But there’s more. Critics of the current system point out it relies on mass scale exploitation of personal data to function, and many believe this simply won’t fly under Europe’s tough new GDPR framework.

They are applying legal pressure via a set of GDPR complaints, filed last fall, that challenge the legality of a fundamental piece of the (current) adtech industry’s architecture: Real-time bidding (RTB); arguing the system is fundamentally incompatible with Europe’s privacy rules.

We covered these complaints last November but the basic argument is that bid requests essentially constitute systematic data breaches because personal data is broadcast widely to solicit potential ad buys and thereby poses an unacceptable security risk — rather than, as GDPR demands, people’s data being handled in a way that “ensures appropriate security”.

To spell it out, the contention is the entire behavioral advertising business is illegal because it’s leaking personal data at such vast and systematic scale it cannot possibly comply with EU data protection law.

Regulators are considering the argument, and courts may follow. But it’s clear adtech systems that have operated in opaque darkness for years, without no worry of major compliance fines, no longer have the luxury of being able to take their architecture as a given.

Greater legal risk might be catalyst enough to encourage a market shift towards less intrusive targeting; ads that aren’t targeted based on profiles of people synthesized from heaps of personal data but, much like DuckDuckGo’s contextual ads, are only linked to a real-time interest and a generic location. No creepy personal dossiers necessary.

If Acquisti’s research is to be believed — and here’s the kicker for Facebook et al — there’s little reason to think such ads would be substantially less effective than the vampiric microtargeted variant that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg likes to describe as “relevant”.

The ‘relevant ads’ badge is of course a self-serving concept which Facebook uses to justify creeping on users while also pushing the notion that its people-tracking business inherently generates major extra value for advertisers. But does it really do that? Or are advertisers buying into another puffed up fake?

Facebook isn’t providing access to internal data that could be used to quantify whether its targeted ads are really worth all the extra conjoined cost and risk. While the company’s habit of buying masses of additional data on users, via brokers and other third party sources, makes for a rather strange qualification. Suggesting things aren’t quite what you might imagine behind Zuckerberg’s drawn curtain.

Behavioral ad giants are facing growing legal risk on another front. The adtech market has long been referred to as a duopoly, on account of the proportion of digital ad spending that gets sucked up by just two people-profiling giants: Google and Facebook (the pair accounted for 58% of the market in 2018, according to eMarketer data) — and in Europe a number of competition regulators have been probing the duopoly.

Earlier this month the German Federal Cartel Office was reported to be on the brink of partially banning Facebook from harvesting personal data from third party providers (including but not limited to some other social services it owns). Though an official decision has yet to be handed down.

While, in March 2018, the French Competition Authority published a meaty opinion raising multiple concerns about the online advertising sector — and calling for an overhaul and a rebalancing of transparency obligations to address publisher concerns that dominant platforms aren’t providing access to data about their own content.

The EC’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, is also taking a closer look at whether data hoarding constitutes a monopoly. And has expressed a view that, rather than breaking companies up in order to control platform monopolies, the better way to go about it in the modern ICT era might be by limiting access to data — suggesting another potentially looming legal headwind for personal data-sucking platforms.

At the same time, the political risks of social surveillance architectures have become all too clear.

Whether microtargeted political propaganda works as intended or not is still a question mark. But few would support letting attempts to fiddle elections just go ahead and happen anyway.

Yet Facebook has rushed to normalize what are abnormally hostile uses of its tools; aka the weaponizing of disinformation to further divisive political ends — presenting ‘election security’ as just another day-to-day cost of being in the people farming business. When the ‘cost’ for democracies and societies is anything but normal. 

Whether or not voters can be manipulated en masse via the medium of targeted ads, the act of targeting itself certainly has an impact — by fragmenting the shared public sphere which civilized societies rely on to drive consensus and compromise. Ergo, unregulated social media is inevitably an agent of antisocial change.

The solution to technology threatening democracy is far more transparency; so regulating platforms to understand how, why and where data is flowing, and thus get a proper handle on impacts in order to shape desired outcomes.

Greater transparency also offers a route to begin to address commercial concerns about how the modern adtech market functions.

And if and when ad giants are forced to come clean — about how they profile people; where data and value flows; and what their ads actually deliver — you have to wonder what if anything will be left unblemished.

People who know they’re being watched alter their behavior. Similarly, platforms may find behavioral change enforced upon them, from above and below, when it becomes impossible for everyone else to ignore what they’re doing.

Read Full Article

Facebook launches petition feature, its next battlefield

Gather a mob and Facebook will now let you make political demands. Tomorrow Facebook will encounter a slew of fresh complexities with the launch of Community Actions, its News Feed petition feature. Community Actions could unite neighbors to request change from their local and national elected officials and government agencies. But it could also provide vocal interest groups a bully pulpit from which to pressure politicians and bureaucrats with their fringe agendas.

Community Actions embodies the central challenge facing Facebook. Every tool it designs for positive expression and connectivity can be subverted for polarization and misinformation. Facebook’s membership has swelled into such a ripe target for exploitation that it draws out the worst of humanity. You can imagine misuses like “Crack down on [minority group]” that are offensive or even dangerous but some see as legitimate. The question is whether Facebook puts in the forethought and aftercare to safeguard its new tools with proper policy and moderation. Otherwise each new feature is another liability.

Community Actions roll out to the entire US tomorrow after several weeks of testing in a couple of markets. Users can add a title, description, and image to their Community Action, and tag relevant government agencies and officials who’ll be notified. The goal is to make the Community Action go viral and get people to hit the “Support” button. Community Actions have their own discussion feed where people can leave comments, create fundraisers, and organize Facebook Events or Call Your Rep campaigns. Facebook displays the numbers of supporters behind a Community Action, but you’ll only be able to see the names of those you’re friends with or that are Pages or public figures.

Facebook is purposefully trying to focus Community Actions to be more narrowly concentrated on spurring government action than just any random cause. That means it won’t immediately replace Change.org petitions that can range from the civilian to the absurd. But one-click Support straight from the News Feed could massively reduce the friction to signing up, and thereby attract organizations and individuals seeking to maximize the size of their mob.

You can check out some examples here of Community Actions here like a non-profit Colorado Rising calling for the governor to put a moratorium on oil and gas drilling, citizens asking the a Florida’s mayor and state officials to build a performing arts center, and a Philadelphia neighborhood association requesting that the city put in crosswalks by the library.

The launch follows other civic-minded Facebook features like its Town Hall and Candidate Info for assessing politicians, Community Help for finding assistance after a disaster, and local news digest Today In. A Facebook spokesperson who gave us the first look at Community Actions provided this statement:

“Building informed and civically engaged communities is at the core of Facebook’s mission. Every day, people come together on Facebook to advocate for causes they care about, including by contacting their elected officials, launching a fundraiser, or starting a group. Through these and other tools, we have seen people marshal support for and get results on issues that matter to them. Community Action is another way for people to advocate for changes in their communities and partner with elected officials and government agencies on solutions.”

The question will be where Facebook’s moderators draw the line on what’s appropriate as a Community Action, and the ensuing calls of bias that line will trigger. Facebook is employing a combination of user flagging, proactive algorithmic detection, and human enforcers to manage the feature. But what the left might call harassment, the right might call free expression. If Facebook allows controversial Community Actions to persist, it could be viewed as complicit with their campaigns, but could be criticized for censorship if it takes one down. Like fake news and trending topics, the feature could become the social network’s latest can of worms.

Facebook is trying to prioritize local Actions where community members have a real stake. It lets user display “constituent” badges so their elected officials know they aren’t just a distant rabble-rouser. It’s why Facebook will not allow President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence to be tagged in Community Actions. But you’re free to tag all your state representatives demanding nude parks, apparently.

Another issue is how people can stand up against a Community Action. Only those who Support one may join in its discussion feed. That might lead trolls to falsely pledge their backing just to stir up trouble in the comments. Otherwise, Facebook tells me users will have to share a Community Action to their own feed with a message of disapproval, or launch their own in protest. My concern is that an agitated but niche group could drive a sense of false equivocacy by using Facebook Groups or message threads to make it look like there’s as much or more support for a vulgar cause or against of a just one. A politician could be backed into a corner and forced to acknowledge radicals or bad-faith actors lest they look negligent

While Facebook’s spokesperson says initial tests didn’t surface many troubles, the company is trying to balance safety with efficiency and it will consider how to evolve the feature in response to emergent behaviors. The trouble is that open access draws out the trolls and grifters seeking to fragment society. Facebook will have to assume the thorny responsibility of shepherding the product towards righteousness and defining what that even means. If it succeeds, there’s an amazing opportunity here for citizens to band together to exert consensus upon government. A chorus of voices carries much further than a single cry.

Read Full Article

Microsoft Ends Support for Windows 10 Mobile

Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 Mobile. Which means Windows 10 Mobile is deader than dead. It also means Microsoft’s foray into the mobile market is over. So much so that Microsoft is actively advising people to switch to Android or iOS.

Windows 10 Mobile has been a bust since it debuted in 2016. We dubbed its arrival a “tech launch failure,” and things didn’t get any better from there. Now, three years on, Windows 10 Mobile is being put out of its misery, with Microsoft ending all support.

The End of Windows 10 Mobile

As indicated in this Microsoft support note, Microsoft’s support for Windows 10 Mobile will end on December 10, 2019. After this date there will be no “new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free assisted support options or online technical content updates”.

The “automatic or manual creation of new device backups for settings and some applications will continue for 3 months, ending March 10, 2020”. And “some services including photo uploads […] may continue to work for up to another 12 months”.

Pour one out for all three people who still use Windows Phone. ? https://t.co/nBSGsmdvGT

— ??? Jony Ive (@JonyIveParody) January 18, 2019

Microsoft makes it clear that your Windows 10 Mobile device will not simply stop working on December 10, 2019. However, because “there will be no updates after that date,” Microsoft is recommending “customers move to a supported Android or iOS device”.

Unlike Windows 7, which has been replaced by Windows 10, the end of Windows 10 Mobile signals the end of the line completely. Microsoft has ceded the market to Android and iOS, and is focusing on developing apps and services for the competition instead.

Choosing Between Android and iOS

This is a crying shame for Microsoft, but also for consumers who wanted more than a binary choice when it came to mobile operating systems. Unfortunately, Microsoft was too slow to realize that mobile was the future, and both Apple and Google filled that void.

Microsoft was never a major player in the mobile market. Windows Phone had its fans, but we said goodbye to Windows Phone in 2014. And everything that has happened since suggests we were right to do so, despite what commenters said at the time.

Read the full article: Microsoft Ends Support for Windows 10 Mobile

Read Full Article

5 Fastest Ways to Find a Good Movie or Film Worth Watching

There are so many films out there, and so little time to watch them. When you’re ready to kick back and enjoy a movie, you don’t want to waste time figuring out what to watch. So here are five of the fastest ways to find a good film.

These sites recommend films that are currently showing in theaters as well as old films worth watching. If it’s the latter, you might want to check which movies you can stream on services like Netflix or Amazon Prime.

StayIn (Web): Quick Questionnaire for Mood-Based Recommendations

StayIn uses a Tinder-like interface and a quick series of questions to figure out what sort of mood you are in, and recommends a movie based on that. It’s a browser-based app that also works well on mobile screens.

The questions are written like a human would ask (and sometimes include profanity too). So instead of “Choose a genre”, it would ask something like, “Are you in the mood for some action?” You have to click Yes, No, or Don’t Care on each question card. Don’t think too much about it, go with your gut.

When you’ve sorted these filters enough, StayIn will give you recommendations for movies to watch, complete with their basic details. It’s one of the quickest ways to get a film worth watching.

End Rating (Web): For a Satisfying Climax

There are some great movies that mess up their conclusion. Then there are films that seem to build up to the end, and the climax is what makes the whole film worth watching. If you’re looking for the latter, End Rating is a quick way to find such movies.

The site gives movies two types of ratings. One is a general film rating, which is indicated in green. This seems to be based on movie ranking sites like IMDb or Metacritic. Then there is the rating in orange, which is where users rate the film’s ending.

Among the top-rated films in this are the likes of Limitless and The Usual Suspects. You haven’t seen The Next Three Days? Well apparently, the ending makes the movie worth watching since it got a 100/100. What’re you reading this for, go see it.

Suggest Me Movie (Web): The StumbleUpon for Movies

There is no searching or clicking around at Suggest Me Movies. Open the site and you’ll get a new film recommendation, complete with its IMDb rating, a trailer, genres, and quick details about the plot and cast. It’s like the classic StumbleUpon website, but only for films.

If you want, you can customize these recommendations with a few filters. Set start and end years, genres, minimum IMDb score, votes, and up to three keywords to search in actor names or the synopsis.

You won’t always get a winner with Suggest Me Movie, and there are quite a few foreign film recommendations. But if you don’t like what you see, just click the Suggest Me Movie button again to get a new pick. This simplicity is hard to beat.

LazyDay (Web): Search for Anything, or Get Random Picks

LazyDay is one of the best-tagged film catalogs to get movie recommendations. You can search for almost anything and get a film in the results. For example, you might search “Character says I love you” or “Stabbed with a needle” and you’ll get a result for it at LazyDay.

The results have everything you’ll need about a movie to make a decision, including a trailer, a quick synopsis, and the IMDb rating. You don’t even need to go away from the results to find these things, it’s all available without leaving the page, which makes your search much faster.

If you can’t make up your mind and are feeling too lazy to search, LazyDay also offers “Random Picks” so you don’t have to decide. That’s quite nice, isn’t it? Sometimes, all you want is to not think, and be catered to like TV used to do.

CringeMDB (Web): Find Films Safe to Watch With Parents

We all know IMDb is a great database of everything you’d want to know about a film. That includes its Parents’ Guide to find and avoid inappropriate movie scenes for kids. But what if you’re the kid and you want to watch something with your folks, or anyone else, without feeling awkward? Turn to CringeMDB.

The website lets you search films between 1995 and 2017 to find which ones are safe to watch with folks and which ones will make you cringe at a scene or two. But rather than the search function, you should use CringeMDB for theater releases.

The “In Theaters” and “Upcoming” tabs have movie posters showcasing what is playing in cinema halls right now, and films that are set to release soon. You can plan your outing accordingly, and save yourself a few blushes.

More Recommendations In Different Ways

Naturally, this list is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to film recommendation websites, apps, and engines. We’ve talked about many of them before, but if you’re looking for quick ways to find movies, then you should check out Movie of the Night.

Like Suggest Me Movie, it gives you only one recommendation at a time, but in this case, you set some criteria for it first. The website is a part of our list of five recommendation sites to find new movies, which also includes a cute app to find a movie that is common ground between you and your date. Try it out.

Read the full article: 5 Fastest Ways to Find a Good Movie or Film Worth Watching

Read Full Article

Motorola’s Razr Is Coming Back as a High-End, $1500 Smartphone

One of the most iconic cell phones in history could be poised to make a comeback, as it looks like the Motorola Razr is set to return in the form of a foldable $1500 smartphone. The announcement of the upcoming phone hasn’t been confirmed just yet, so, for the time being, we need to treat it as a rumor.

Currently, Motorola is owned by Lenovo, and it looks like the company is aiming to cash in on the nostalgia many phone owners have towards the Razr. For many, it was the first “cool” cell phone they ever owned, so it would make a great deal of sense for the company to try to target owners of the original phone.

And if $1500 is out of your budget, the Moto G5 Plus is a much more budget-friendly option from the same company.

What We Know About the New Razr so Far

According to Wall Street Journal, the phone is scheduled to launch as soon as February and it will be exclusive to Verizon in the US.

The report says that it will be a foldable phone, which means that Lenovo and Motorola could actually beat Samsung to the market for devices with a folding screen.

Remember the Razr? Motorola's once-popular flip phone is being revived—this time as a $1,500 smartphone with a foldable screen. https://t.co/rLYHstwAEg

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 16, 2019

Unfortunately, we don’t know too much else about the phone. According to Digital Spy, the device will have a Snapdragon 855 processor and will apparently have an OLED foldable touchscreen that won’t crease or snap, but that’s about all we know for now.

The less exciting part of the rumor is the price, as it appears that the phone will retail for a whopping $1500. To put that price into perspective, the 128GB Google Pixel 3 retails for $999. Obviously, we don’t have another folding phone to compare it to, but we can definitely say that this won’t be a budget-friendly smartphone by any means.

It’s a New Razr, Yes It Is

As mentioned, the phone is rumored to hit the market as soon as February, so we shouldn’t have to wait too long to hear more concrete details about its specs and features.

The WSJ report indicated that Lenovo is planning to manufacture 200,000 of the luxury phones, so while it won’t necessarily be limited, it does look like there will be a finite amount of devices available.

Want to know more about folding phones? Check out our breakdown of what to expect from the foldable phone future.

Read the full article: Motorola’s Razr Is Coming Back as a High-End, $1500 Smartphone

Read Full Article

How to Remove Unwanted Apps on an Android Device

9 Mac Dashboard Widgets You’ll Actually Use

Your Mac’s Dashboard app lets you keep all kinds of useful dynamic information handy with free configurable widgets. If you have written this off as worthless, it might be time to reconsider and give it another shot.

To help you warm up to Dashboard again, let’s explore nine useful widgets that you won’t find in the default set that ships with the app.

1. PCalc: For Advanced Calculations

The calculator widget that comes with Dashboard is quite basic. If you prefer a more feature-rich option that can replace a scientific calculator, try the PCalc widget.

PCalc is primarily available as a macOS and iOS app with Notification Center support. This costs $10, but you can get the Dashboard version for free.

Download: PCalc (Free, premium version available)

2. DashNote: For Simplenote Notes

DashNote lets you create, edit, delete, pin, and search your Simplenote notes from Dashboard. Once you install the widget and log in with your Simplenote credentials, your existing notes show up instantly. You’re now ready to take new notes as usual.

For functions like tagging and enabling Markdown, you’ll have to use a full-fledged Simplenote app or the web version of the service.

If you don’t have a Simplenote account, try the Notefile widget for note-taking from the Dashboard. Since Notefile doesn’t have a search mechanism, it’s best to use the widget if you don’t have too many notes or if you want a temporary scratchpad.

Download: DashNote (Free)

3. Delivery Status: For Tracking Packages

If you’re expecting a package delivery, Delivery Status can let you know when it will arrive and even track its transit route. All the widget needs from you is the order number or tracking number for the package.

Delivery Status supports quite a few popular delivery services, and you can add more manually. Like PCalc, this app offers a free widget alongside a paid app that includes Notification Center support. Why not try the Dashboard version for free first to see if you like it?

The widget is really handy to have if you’re based in the US. If you live elsewhere, give the freemium app Parcel a shot. It doesn’t come with Dashboard support, but it has a Notification Center widget.

Download: Delivery Status (Free, premium version available)

4. Symbol Caddy: For Inserting Special Characters

Heard of the Keyboard Viewer menu bar utility on macOS? Symbol Caddy is similar to this, but does a much better job overall. It helps you find and insert special characters, like accent marks and currency symbols.

The widget is quite user friendly and stays out of your way. It has a couple of modes: Keyboard and HTML. The first mode copies the character you select to your Mac’s clipboard, while the second copies the character’s HTML code.

Download: Symbol Caddy (Free)

5. Currency Converter: For Currency Conversion

The widget displays up-to-date values for four common currencies by default. You can switch to different currencies by tweaking the corresponding dropdown menus.

To add more currencies, visit the settings by clicking on the tiny info icon at the bottom-right of the widget. Here, you’ll find a few extra options such as namewise sorting and widget skins.

Download: Currency Converter (Free)

6. TimeScroller: For Tracking Time Zones

Scheduling meetings across time zones can be a pain. That’s why a time zone tracking utility is essential for anyone who coordinates with people overseas. (Ask anyone who works at MakeUseOf—our staff is scattered across the world.)

Timescroller is one such utility with Dashboard access. It ensures that keeping tabs on the time in various cities is effortless.

You’ll see the current time in the widget for the default list of cities. Drag the slider at the bottom to check different times. You can add as many cities to the list as you like from the widget’s settings.

Download: TimeScroller (Free)

7. News Reader: For Checking RSS Feeds

News Reader is a simple widget to help you stay up-to-date on the feeds of your favorite websites.

You’ll have to open the widget settings to delete the default feeds and add new ones. Here, you can also select a new update frequency for feeds from one of the available presets.

Download: News Reader (Free)

8. Eject Volume: For Ejecting Media Drives

If you want a quick way to eject external volumes without accessing Finder or the desktop, the Eject Volume Dashboard widget is ideal. There’s also a menu bar app called Ejector for this task, but why crowd the menu bar even more?

Download: Eject Volume (Free)

9. Custom Widgets: For Monitoring Bits of the Web

You can get any part of a web page to show up on Dashboard as a custom widget called a web clip. This macOS feature is great if you want to track, say, Twitter trends, Amazon deals, or our latest articles without opening your browser. You’ll still need an active internet connection, of course.

To create a web clip in Safari, visit the website that’s you want as the source for your widget. Next, click on File > Open in Dashboard to grab the relevant part of the web page and turn it into a widget.

Want to learn more about web clips and get inspiration to create custom ones? Read our mini guide to web clips.

A Few More Dashboard Tips

Dashboard can be a great way to keep bits and pieces of information handy but hidden, especially when you use it as an overlay instead of a Space. To configure this setting, visit System Preferences > Mission Control. There, all you have to do is select As Overlay from the Dashboard dropdown menu.

You’ll also want to memorize the keyboard shortcut for Dashboard—it’s F12. Feel free to set up a new custom shortcut from System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Mission Control. Look for the Show Dashboard checkbox.

To top it all, you can also access Dashboard with a hot corner and even have multiple instances of the same widget. To discover more widgets, visit the official Apple page for Dashboard.

Dashboard hasn’t received a proper makeover in a while and has a bit of a retro look to it. But that doesn’t stop it from being valuable. Speaking of Dashboard, it’s just one of the useful features you aren’t using on your Mac.

Read the full article: 9 Mac Dashboard Widgets You’ll Actually Use

Read Full Article

Facebook fears no FTC fine

Reports emerged today that the FTC is considering a fine against Facebook that would be the largest ever from the agency. Even if it were ten times the size of the largest, a $22.5 million bill sent to Google in 2012, the company would basically laugh it off. Facebook is made of money. But the FTC may make it provide something it has precious little of these days: accountability.

A Washington Post report cites sources inside the agency (currently on hiatus due to the shutdown) saying that regulators have “met to discuss imposing a record-setting fine.” We may as well say here that this must be taken with a grain of salt at the outset; that Facebook is non-compliant with terms set previously by the FTC is an established fact, so how much they should be made to pay is the natural next topic of discussion.

But how much would it be? The scale of the violation is hugely negotiable. Our summary of the FTC’s settlement requirements for Facebook indicate that it was:

• barred from making misrepresentations about the privacy or security of consumers’ personal information;
• required to obtain consumers’ affirmative express consent before enacting changes that override their privacy preferences;
• required to prevent anyone from accessing a user’s material more than 30 days after the user has deleted his or her account;
• required to establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy program designed to address privacy risks associated with the development and management of new and existing products and services, and to protect the privacy and confidentiality of consumers’ information; and
• required, within 180 days, and every two years after that for the next 20 years, to obtain independent, third-party audits certifying that it has a privacy program in place that meets or exceeds the requirements of the FTC order, and to ensure that the privacy of consumers’ information is protected.

How many of those did it break, and how many times? Is it per user? Per account? Per post? Per offense? What is “accessing” under such and such a circumstance? The FTC is no doubt deliberating these things.

Yet it is hard to imagine them coming up with a number that really scares Facebook. A hundred million dollars is a lot of money, for instance. But Facebook took in more than $13 billion in revenue last quarter. Double that fine, triple it, and Facebook bounces back.

If even a fine ten times the size of the largest it ever threw can’t faze the target, what can the FTC do to scare Facebook into playing by the book? Make it do what it’s already supposed to be doing, but publicly.

How many ad campaigns is a user’s data being used for? How many internal and external research projects? How many copies are there? What data specifically and exactly is it collecting on any given user, how is that data stored, who has access to it, to whom is it sold or for whom is it aggregated or summarized? What is the exact nature of the privacy program it has in place, who works for it, who do they report to, and what are their monthly findings?

These and dozens of other questions come immediately to mind as things Facebook should be disclosing publicly in some way or another, either directly to users in the case of how one’s data is being used, or in a more general report, such as what concrete measures are being taken to prevent exfiltration of profile data by bad actors, or how user behavior and psychology is being estimated and tracked.

Not easy or convenient questions to answer at all, let alone publicly and regularly. But if the FTC wants the company to behave, it has to impose this level of responsibility and disclosure. Because, as Facebook has already shown, it cannot be trusted to disclose it otherwise. Light touch regulation is all well and good… until it isn’t.

This may in fact be such a major threat to Facebook’s business — imagine having to publicly state metrics that are clearly at odds with what you tell advertisers and users — that it might attempt to negotiate a larger initial fine in order to avoid punitive measures such as those outlined here. Volkswagen spent billions not on fines, but in sort of punitive community service to mitigate the effects of its emissions cheating. Facebook too could be made to shell out in this indirect way.

What the FTC is capable of requiring from Facebook is an open question, since the scale and nature of these violations are unprecedented. But whatever they come up with, the part with a dollar sign in front of it — however many places it goes to — will be the least of Facebook’s worries.

Read Full Article

Alphabet’s Verily scores FDA clearance for its ECG monitor

Big week for Google wearable news — which, honestly, I not a phrase I expected to write in 2019. But a day after the company announced an agreement to purchase Fossil’s wearable technology for $40 million, Alphabet-owned research group Verily just scored FDA clearance for its electrocardiogram (ECG) technology.

The clearance pertains specifically to the company’s Study Watch. The device, which was announced back in 2017, shouldn’t be confused with the company’s more consumer-facing Wear OS efforts. Instead, the product is designed expressly for the purpose of gathering vitals for serious medical studies of conditions like MS and Parkinson’s.

“The ability to take an on-demand, single-lead ECG, can support both population-based research and an individual’s clinical care,” Verily writes on its blog. “Receiving this clearance showcases our commitment to the high standards of the FDA for safety and effectiveness and will help us advance the application of Study Watch in various disease areas and future indications.”

The Study Watch is a prescription-only device, but the clearance leaves one wondering how this might open the door for an upcoming Pixel Watch. After all, Fossil’s most recent Wear OS devices had a decided health focus, in keeping with most recent smartwatches. After Apple’s recent addition of ECG on the Series 4 Watch, it tracks that Google would want to go to market with a similar health-focused feature set.

Meantime, this news should open the door for the E Ink device’s ability to help collect some meaningful information for medical researchers.

Read Full Article

Veteran Googler heads to Lyft to lead 1,000-plus person engineering team

Eisar Lipkovitz, a veteran Google executive who most recently led the video and display advertising team there, is leaving the company to head up engineering efforts at Lyft.

As executive vice president of engineering, Lipkovitz will be leading Lyft’s engineering team, which now eclipses 1,000 people.

Eisar’s hiring comes on the heels of massive growth at Lyft, specifically its engineering team. The ride-hailing company’s engineering team, doubled in size in the last year. It also follows the hiring of another Google engineering veteran Manish Gupta, who joined Lyft in August as vice president of engineering to build out the ride-hailing company’s business platforms, including enterprise, partnerships and healthcare.

Gupta will report to Eisar.

“It’s clear that Lyft is tackling one of the most interesting and world-changing engineering challenges of our lifetime, and the team has done an exceptional job innovating through dispatch, matching, pricing, and mapping to create the overall experience.” Eisar said. “The work Lyft is doing intersects with my passion of operating extremely complex systems efficiently while developing strong leaders in tech, and I couldn’t be more excited to join the team.”

Eisar will report directly to Logan Green, Lyft’s co-founder and CEO. Luc Vincent, who is vice president of Lyft’s autonomous vehicle technology program, operates separately.

During Eisar’s 15 years at Google, he led the team that built Google display, video and apps advertising products. He previously worked on the infrastructure behind Google Search. He also worked at Akamai.

Lyft has aggressively ramped up its staff and coverage in the U.S. over the past two years. And it’s paid off. The company’s ride-hailing app has more than 96 percent coverage in the U.S. and 35 percent market share.

It has also expanded Lyft Business, the company’s enterprise unit, through partnerships with organizations and companies like Starbucks, LAX,  Allstate, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, JetBlue, Delta and Blue Cross Blue Shield, as well as rolled out various other products such as a monthly subscription plan called Lyft’s All-Access.

Read Full Article

Corruption at DJI may cost the company $150 million

DJI, the world’s leading maker of consumer drones, said today that extensive corruption discovered within the company could lead to losses as great as $150 million in the 2018 financial year. The exact nature of the corruption is not stated, but it seems to involve dozens of people at the least.

The China Securities Journal, a state-operated finance-focused newspaper, got hold of an internal company report on a corruption investigation that said some 40 people had been investigated so far.

Reuters confirmed with the company that “set up a high-level anti-corruption task force to investigate further and strengthen anti-corruption measures,” and that “a number of corruption cases have been handed over to the authorities, and some employees have been dismissed.”

I’ve contacted DJI for more details.

“Corruption” is a versatile term, especially in China, and depending on who’s accusing whom it can carry political connotations as well. Given the large amount being blamed on the phenomenon here, one imagines it’s on the financial side — misrepresenting costs and earnings to advance careers, that sort of thing. However that is only speculation and we will almost certainly know more as DJI informs its shareholders further on the topic.

Read Full Article

Facebook is secretly building LOL, a cringey teen meme hub

How do you do, fellow kids? After Facebook Watch, Lasso, and IGTV failed to become hits with teens, the company has been quietly developing another youthful video product. Multiple sources confirm that Facebook has spent months building LOL, a special feed of funny videos and GIF-like clips. It’s divided into categories like “For You”, “Animals”, “Fails”, “Pranks” and more with content pulled from News Feed posts by top meme Pages on Facebook. LOL is currently in private beta with around 100 high school students who signed non-disclosure agreements with parental consent.

In response to TechCrunch’s questioning, Facebook confirmed it is privately testing LOL as a home for funny meme content with a very small number of US users. While those testers experience LOL as a replacement for their Watch tab, Facebook says there’s no plans to roll out LOL in Watch and the team is still finalizing whether it will become a separate feature in one of Facebook’s main app or a standalone app. Facebook declined to give a formal statement but told us the details we had were accurate.

With teens increasingly turning to ephemeral Stories for sharing and content consumption, Facebook is desperate to lure them back to its easily-monetizable feeds. Collecting the funniest News Feed posts and concentrating them in a dedicated place could appeal to kids seeking rapid-fire lightweight entertainment. LOL could also soak up some of the “low-quality” videos Facebook scrubbed out of the News Feed a year ago in hopes of decreasing zombie-like passive viewing that can hurt people’s well-being.

But our sources familiar with LOL’s design said it still feels “cringey”, like Facebook is futilely pretending to be young and hip. The content found in LOL is sometimes weeks old, so meme-obsessed teens may have seen it before. After years of parents overrunning Facebook, teens have grown skeptical of the app and many have fled for Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. Parachuting into the memespehere may come off as inauthentic posing and Facebook could find it difficult to build a young fanbase for LOL.

In one of the recent designs for LOL, users are greeted with a carousel of themed collections called “Dailies” like “Look Mom No Hands” in a design reminiscent of Snapchat’s Discover section. Below that there’s a feed of algorithmically curated “For You” clips. Users can filter the LOL feed to show categories like “Wait For It”, “Savage”, “Classics”, “Gaming”, “Celebs”, “School”, and “Stand-Up”, or tap buttons atop the screen to see dedicated sub-feeds for these topics.

Once users open a Dailies collection or start scrolling the feed, it turns into a black-bordered theater mode that auto-advances after you finish a video clip for lean-back consumption. Facebook cuts each video clip up into sections several seconds long that users can fast-forward through with a tap like they’re watching a long Instagram Story. Below each piece of content is a set of special LOL reaction buttons for “Funny”, “Alright”, and “Not Funny”. There’s also a share button on each piece of content, plus users can upload videos or paste in a URL to submit videos to LOL.

Facebook has repeatedly failed to capture the hearts of teens with Snapchat clones like Poke and Slingshot, standalone apps like Lifestage, and acquisitions like TBH. Fears that it’s losing the demographic or that the shift driven by the youth from feeds to Stories that Facebook has less experience monetizing have caused massive drops in the company’s share price over the years. If Facebook can’t fill in this age gap, the next generation of younger users might sidestep the social network too, which could lead to huge downstream problems for growth and revenue.

That’s why Facebook won’t give up on teens, even despite embarrassing stumbles. Its new Tik Tok clone Lasso saw only 10,000 downloads in the first 12 days. Despite seeming like a ghost town, Facebook still updated it with a retweet-like Relasso and camera uploads today. Unlike the Tik Tok-dominated musical video space, though, the meme sharing universe is much more fragmented and there’s a better chance for Facebook to barge in.

Teens discover memes on Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and exchange them in DMs. Beyond Imgur that encompasses lots of visual storytelling styles, there’s no super-popular dedicated meme discovery app. Facebook might seem out of touch, but the fact that it’s even trying to build a meme browser shows it recognizes the opportunity here. Sometimes our brains need a break and we want quick hits of entertainment that don’t require too much thought, commitment, or attention span. As Facebook tries to become more meaningful, LOL could save room for meaningless fun.

Read Full Article

Google starts pulling unvetted Android apps that access call logs and SMS messages

Google is removing apps from Google Play that request permission to access call logs and SMS text message data but haven’t been manually vetted by Google staff.

The search and mobile giant said it is part of a move to cut down on apps that have access to sensitive calling and texting data.

Google said in October that Android apps will no longer be allowed to use the legacy permissions as part of a wider push for developers to use newer, more secure and privacy minded APIs. Many apps request access to call logs and texting data to verify two-factor authentication codes, for social sharing, or to replace the phone dialer. But Google acknowledged that this level of access can and has been abused by developers who misuse the permissions to gather sensitive data — or mishandle it altogether.

“Our new policy is designed to ensure that apps asking for these permissions need full and ongoing access to the sensitive data in order to accomplish the app’s primary use case, and that users will understand why this data would be required for the app to function,” wrote Paul Bankhead, Google’s director of product management for Google Play.

Any developer wanting to retain the ability to ask a user’s permission for calling and texting data has to fill out a permissions declaration.

Google will review the app and why it needs to retain access, and will weigh in several considerations, including why the developer is requesting access, the user benefit of the feature that’s requesting access, and the risks associated with having access to call and texting data.

Bankhead conceded that under the new policy, some use cases will “no longer be allowed,” rendering some apps obsolete.

So far, tens of thousands of developers have already submitted new versions of their apps either removing the need to access call and texting permissions, Google said, or have submitted a permissions declaration.

Developers with a submitted declaration have until March 9 to receive approval or remove the permissions. In the meantime, Google has a full list of permitted use cases for the call log and text message permissions, as well as alternatives.

The last two years alone has seen several high profile cases of Android apps or other services leaking or exposing call and text data. In late 2017, popular Android keyboard ai.type exposed a massive database of 31 million users, including 374 million phone numbers.

Another huge database exposed millions of call logs and SMS text messages

Read Full Article