27 October 2020

xkcd Phone 12

Fragomen, a law firm used by Google, confirms data breach

Immigration law firm Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy has confirmed a data breach involving the personal information of current and former Google employees.

The New York-based law firm provides companies with employment verification screening services to determine if employees are eligible and authorized to work in the United States.

Every company operating in the United States is required to maintain a Form I-9 file on every employee to ensure that they are legally allowed to work and not subject to more restrictive immigration rules. But Form I-9 files can contain a ton of sensitive information, including government documents like passports, ID cards and driver’s licenses, and other personally identifiable data, making them a target for hackers and identity thieves.

But the law firm said it discovered last month that an unauthorized third-party accessed a file containing personal information on a “limited number” of current and former Google employees.

In a notice with the California attorney general’s office, Fragomen did not say what kind of data was accessed or how many Google employees were affected. Companies with more than 500 California residents affected by a breach are required to submit a notice with the state’s attorney general’s office.

Michael McNamara, a spokesperson for Fragomen, declined to say how many Google employees were affected by the breach.

A spokesperson for Google did not respond to a request for comment.

How to decode a data breach notice

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Twitter starts showing all US users election misinformation warnings

Starting today, Twitter users in the U.S. will see two large notices at the top of their feeds that aim to “preemptively debunk” misinformation related to voting. The striking messages are designed to push back against the deluge of false claims about the 2020 election.

One notice warns users that they “might encounter misleading information” about mail-in voting while the other attempts to head off online election-related chaos by cautioning that the results of the U.S. election may be delayed.

Delayed results are a very possible outcome in an election that will see more ballots than ever cast through the mail. States have differing rules about when mailed ballots can begin to be tallied, making it possible that official results may indeed take time to trickle in — a situation that it’s wise to normalize in advance.

Image Credits: Twitter

The prompts will point users to Twitter Moments that collect authoritative information on both topics. The notices will also pop up in searches of relevant terms and hashtags.

Social media companies have scrambled to ready their platforms for the unique challenges of a deeply contentious U.S. election in the midst of a worsening national health crisis. While those efforts have been mixed — some weak, some more robust — serving proactive, attention-grabbing notices to everyone is a solid step up from the easy-to-miss misinformation “labels” that get tacked onto false claims across Twitter and Facebook.

Changing how retweets work, Twitter seeks to slow down election misinformation

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Decrypted: How Twitter was hacked, GitHub DMCA backfires

One week to the U.S. presidential election and things are getting spicy.

It’s not just the rhetoric — hackers are actively working to disrupt the election, officials have said, and last week they came with a concrete example and an unusually quick pointing of blame.

On Wednesday night, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe blamed Iran for an email operation designed to intimidate voters in Florida into voting for President Trump “or else.” Ratcliffe, who didn’t take any questions from reporters and has been accused of politicizing the typically impartial office, said Iran had used voter registration data — which is largely public in the U.S. — to send emails that looked like they came from the far-right group the Proud Boys. Google security researchers also linked the campaign to Iran, which denied claims of its involvement. It’s estimated about 2,500 emails went through in the end, with the rest getting caught in spam filters.

The announcement was lackluster in detail. But experts like John Hultquist, who heads intelligence analysis at FireEye-owned security firm Mandiant, said the incident is “clearly aimed at undermining voter confidence,” just as the Russians attempted during the 2016 election.

THE BIG PICTURE

Twitter was hacked using a fake VPN portal, New York investigation finds

The hackers who broke into Twitter’s network used a fake VPN page to steal the credentials — and two-factor authentication code — of an employee, an investigation by New York’s Department of Financial Affairs found. The state tax division got involved after the hackers then hijacked user accounts using an internal “admin tool” to spread a cryptocurrency scam.

In a report published last week, the department said the hackers called several Twitter employees and used social engineering to trick one employee into entering their username and password on a site that looked like the company’s VPN portal, which most employees use to access the network from home during the pandemic.

Twitter Hack Update: We knew the attackers used the phone & pretended to be IT Support, but now we know the criminals specifically said they were calling about VPN issues, taking advantage of COVID-19 remote work strain. Sadly, these pretexts work often. https://t.co/kKe8XO3MCJ pic.twitter.com/fpE6Afcij1

— Rachel Tobac (@RachelTobac) October 20, 2020

“As the employee entered their credentials into the phishing website, the hackers would simultaneously enter the information into the real Twitter website. This false log-in generated a [two-factor authentication] notification requesting that the employees authenticate themselves, which some of the employees did,” wrote the report. Once onto the network using the employee’s VPN credentials, the hackers used that access to investigate how to access the company’s internal tools.

Twitter said in September that its employees would receive hardware security keys, which would make it far more difficult for a repeat phishing attack to be successful.

Open-source YouTube download tool hit by DMCA takedown, but backfires

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26 October 2020

YouTube revamps its mobile app with new gestures, video chapter lists, and more

YouTube today is rolling out a series of updates to its player page on mobile devices. The changes relocate some elements, add new features — like an expanded set of gesture-based navigation options — and update existing ones, like video chapters, among other things.

Video chapters were introduced in May, as an easier way to get to the “good part” of a video, without having to manually fast-forward. Instead, creators can apply timestamps to their videos that allow users to quickly jump to a specific section of a video or backtrack to rewatch a key part.

These chapters are automatically enabled as a line of timestamps and titles, based on chapter information the creator adds to their video’s description, beginning at segment 0:00.

Image Credits: YouTube

Today, YouTube is extending this feature to include a new list view that lets you see a complete list of all the chapters included in the video, each with their own preview thumbnail. You can access this list view by tapping or clicking on the chapter title in the player, then jump to the part of the video you want to see by tapping the video chapter in the list.

This make chapters easier to navigate, as the thumbnails offer a visual guide to the various parts of the video.

YouTube is also today updating its player page. To make captions more accessible, it’s moving the button to a more prominent position on mobile phones. The auto-play toggle has been moved as well, so it’s easier to turn it on or off while you’re watching a video — a change that will roll out to desktop users soon, too, YouTube says.

Image Credits: YouTube

There are other small improvements on the new player page, including a re-arranged buttons and controls that respond to your input faster than they did before.

Along with the user interface changes, navigation has been updated to include an expanded set of gesture controls. Already, you can double tap on the left or right side of a video to either fast forward or rewind 10 seconds. Now, you’ll be able to swipe up to enter full screen mode and swipe down to exit full screen, too.

Image Credits: YouTube

And if you want to see how much time is counting down versus how much time has elapsed in a video you’re watching, you can tap the timestamp to switch back and forth between these numbers.

In another change, YouTube will prompt viewers with “suggested actions” when there’s a way to have a better video experience. For example, you may be prompted to rotate your phone for a landscape video, or play a video in VR. Over time, it will roll out more suggestions, as needed.

Image Credits: YouTube

In its announcement today, YouTube mentioned a bedtime reminders feature which actually launched earlier this year. It’s not clear why it was lumped in with the other changes, as it’s already live. (YouTube says it was just a “recap”).

Many of the other changes may not be new to all users, either, however. YouTube confirmed to TechCrunch that some users will already have these features at the time of the announcement, while others will receive them this week.

The updates will roll out across both iOS and Android, starting today.

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What if a US presidential candidate refuses to concede after an election? | Van Jones

What if a US presidential candidate refuses to concede after an election? | Van Jones

If the 2020 US presidential election is close, the race could drag on in the courts and halls of Congress long after ballots are cast, says lawyer and political commentator Van Jones. Explaining why the customary concession speech is one of the most important safeguards for democracy, Jones exposes shocking legal loopholes that could enable a candidate to grab power even if they lose both the popular vote and the electoral college -- and shares what ordinary citizens can do if there's no peaceful transfer of power.

https://ift.tt/2TsXZia

Click this link to view the TED Talk

Can we create vaccines that mutate and spread? | Leor Weinberger

Can we create vaccines that mutate and spread? | Leor Weinberger

Viruses mutate and spread from person to person, a dynamic process that often leaves us playing catch-up when there's a new disease outbreak. What if vaccines worked the same way? Virologist Leor Weinberger shares a scientific breakthrough: "hijacker therapy," a type of medical treatment that could attack, modify and spread alongside a virus, potentially treating afflicted individuals and slowing the spread of infections like HIV.

https://ift.tt/2J7N7UV

Click this link to view the TED Talk

Google Drive Monitor - Get Email Alerts When Files are Deleted in your Drive

When you delete a file in Google Drive, it moves to the trash folder and stays there indefinitely until you manually empty the bin. That is how it has always been but, sometime this month, Google made one important change to how the trash bin works.

Under the new policy, files that have been in Google Drive’s trash bin for more than 30-days are automatically deleted. This automatic cleanup does help reclaim space but if you happen to accidentally delete some important files or folders from your Google Drive, there’s no way to restore them from the trash after the 30-day window.

Monitor Google Drive Files

If you are like me who is terrified at the prospect of forever losing important files that were deleted by mistake, Google Drive Watch can help.

Google Drive Watch is an open-source Google Script that automatically monitors your Google Drive and sends daily email notifications with a detailed list of files that were deleted the previous day.

Here’s a sample email notification sent by the Google Drive Watch program.

The email includes the file link, the date when the file was first created, and the name/email address of the Google Account that last modified and deleted the file. It monitors files in your regular Google Drive as well as Shared Drive folders.

Watch your own Google Drive

Here’s how you can set up Google Drive watch for your own Google account in few easy steps:

Click here to make a copy of the Google script in your own Google Drive.
Inside the script editor, go to line #9 and specify the email address where you want to receive the Drive notifications. You can also put multiple emails separated by commas.
The script, by default, will create a cron job that will run once per day at the selected hour. If you however wish to change the frequency so that the notifications arrive, say, every 5 days, you can specify 5 in line #10.
We are almost there. Go to the Run menu and choose “Enable Drive Watch” to enable the monitor for your Drive. Allow the script to access your file and you are all set.

Important: The first email notification will only arrive the next day at the selected hour.

How Google Drive Monitoring Works

The source code of the Google Drive monitor script is available on Github.

Internally, the script uses the Google Drive API with Google Apps Script to watch for changes in your Google Drive. It then sets up a daily cron job, using triggers in Google Scripts, that sends the email if new file changes are found.

When you first run the script, it gets a starting page token and all changes made to Google Drive after this token is fetched will be monitored by the script. We set supportsAllDrives to true since the script should monitor folders in Team Drives as well.

function getPageToken() {
  const store = PropertiesService.getScriptProperties();
  const token = store.getProperty('token');
  if (token) return token;
  const { startPageToken } = Drive.Changes.getStartPageToken({
    supportsAllDrives: true,
  });
  store.setProperty('token', startPageToken);
  return startPageToken;
}

The change.list endpoint of the Google Drive API fetches all changes made to the authorized user’s Drive since the start page token. We also set the fields property to limit file properties that are available in the response. The newStartPageToken returned in the response will become the new page token for future calls to the Drive API.

const fields = `newStartPageToken,
  items(file(id,title,labels(trashed),
  iconLink,mimeType,createdDate,ownedByMe,
  lastModifyingUser(emailAddress,displayName,picture(url)),
  alternateLink, fileSize))`;

const { newStartPageToken, items = [] } = Drive.Changes.list({
  fields,
  pageToken: getPageToken(),
  includeItemsFromAllDrives: true,
  pageSize: 100,
  supportsAllDrives: true,
});

if (newStartPageToken) {
  propertyStore.setProperty('token', newStartPageToken);
}

The items array holds a list of files that have been modified since the last run. This also includes new files that have added and old files that were edited by the users. Since we are only interested in the file that have been trashed, we’ll filter all files from the response except the ones that have been trashed.

const filteredItems = items
  .map(({ file }) => file)
  // Only interested in files where "I" am the owner
  .filter(({ ownedByMe }) => ownedByMe)
  // Only interested in files that have been "trashed"
  .filter(({ labels: { trashed } = {} }) => trashed === true)
  // Only return fields that are sent by email
  .map((file) => {
    const {
      iconLink,
      alternateLink,
      title,
      lastModifyingUser = {},
      createdDate,
      fileSize,
    } = file;
    return { iconLink, alternateLink, title, createdDate, fileSize };
  });

Now that we have an array of files that have been deleted by the user since the last run, we can use the Gmail service to notify the user.

Also see: Google Drive URL Tricks

Linktree raises $10.7M for its lightweight, link-centric user profiles

Simple, link-centric user profiles might seem might not seem like a particularly ambitious idea, but it’s been big enough for Linktree.

The Melbourne startup says that 8 million users — whether they’re celebrities like Selena Gomez and Dua Lipa or brands like HBO and Red Bull — have created profiles on the platform, with those profiles receiving more than 1 billion visitors in September.

Plus, there are more than 28,000 new users signing up every month.

“This category didn’t exist when we started,” CEO Alex Zaccaria told me. “We created this category.”

Zaccaria said that he and his co-founders Anthony Zaccaria and Nick Humphreys created Linktree to solve a problem they were facing at their digital marketing agency Bolster. Instagram doesn’t allow users to include links in posts — all you get is a single link in your profile, prompting the constant “link in bio” reminder when someone wants to promote something.

Meanwhile, most of Bolster’s clients come from music and entertainment, where a single link can’t support what Zaccaria said is a “quite fragmented” business model. After all, an artist might want to point fans to their latest streaming album, upcoming concert dates, an online store for merchandise and more. A website could do the job in theory, but they can be clunky or slow on mobile, with users probably giving up before they finally reach the desired page.

Linktree founders Anthony Zaccaria, Alex Zaccaria and Nick Humphreys

So instead of constantly swapping out links in Instagram and other social media profiles, a Linktree user includes one evergreen link to their Linktree profile, which they can update as necessary. Selena Gomez, for example, links to her latest songs and videos, but also her Rare Beauty cosmetics brand, her official store and articles about her nonprofit work.

Zaccaria said that after launching the product in 2016, the team quickly discovered that “a lot more people had the same problem,” leading them to fully separate Linktree and Bolster two years ago. Since then, the company hasn’t raised any outside funding — until now, with a $10.7 million Series A led by Insight Partners and AirTree Ventures.

“We had the option to just continue to grow sustainably, but we wanted to pour some fuel on the fire,” Zaccaria said.

In fact, Linktree has already grown from 10 to 50 employees this year. And while the company started out by solving a problem for Instagram users, Zaccaria described it as evolving into a much broader platform that can “unify your entire digital ecosystem” and “democratize digital presence.” He said that while some customers continue to maintain “a giant, brand-immersive website,” for others, Linktree is completely replacing the idea of a standalone website.

Zaccaria added that Instagram only represents a small amount of Linktree’s current traffic, while nearly 25% of that traffic now comes from direct visitors.

Image Credits: Linktree

Black Lives Matter has also been a big part of Linktree’s recent growth, with activists and other users who want to support the movement using their profiles to point visitors to websites where they can donate, learn more and get involved. In fact, Linktree even introduced a Black Lives Matter banner over the summer that anyone could add to their profile.

Linktree is free to use, but you have to pay $6 a month for Pro features like video links, link thumbnails and social media icons.

Zaccaria said that the new funding will allow the startup to add more “functionality and analytics.” He’s particularly eager to grow the data science and analytics team, though he emphasized that Linktree does not collect personally identifiable information or monetize visitor data in any way — he just wants to provide more data to Linktree users.

In a statement, Insight Managing Director Jeff Lieberman said:

As the internet becomes increasingly fragmented, brands, publishers, and influencers need a solution to streamline their content sharing and connect their social media followers to their entire online ecosystem, ultimately increasing brand awareness and revenue. Linktree has successfully created this new “microsite” category enabling companies to monetize the next generation of the internet economy via a single interactive hub. The impressive traction and growing number of customers Linktree has gained over the last few months demonstrates its proven market fit, and we could not be more excited to work with the Linktree team as they transition to the ScaleUp phase of growth.

Tap Bio’s mini-sites solve Instagram’s profile link problem

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Facebook steps into cloud gaming — and another feud with Apple

Facebook will soon be the latest tech giant to enter the world of cloud gaming. Their approach is different than what Microsoft or Google has built but Facebook highlights a shared central challenge: dealing with Apple.

Facebook is not building a console gaming competitor to compete with Stadia or xCloud, instead the focus is wholly on mobile games. Why cloud stream mobile games that your device is already capable of running locally? Facebook is aiming to get users into games more quickly and put less friction between a user seeing an advertisement for a game and actually playing it themselves. Users can quickly tap into the title without downloading anything and if they eventually opt to download the title from a mobile app store, they’ll be able to pick up where they left off.

Facebook’s service will launch on the desktop web and Android, but not iOS due to what Facebook frames as usability restrictions outlined in Apple’s App Store terms and conditions.

With the new platform, users will be able to start playing mobile games directly from Facebook ads. Image via Facebook.

While Apple has suffered an onslaught of criticism in 2020 from developers of major apps like Spotify, Tinder and Fortnite for how much money they take as a cut from revenues of apps downloaded from the App Store, the plights of companies aiming to build cloud gaming platforms have been more nuanced and are tied to how those platforms are fundamentally allowed to operate on Apple devices.

Apple was initially slow to provide a path forward for cloud gaming apps from Google and Microsoft, which had previously been outlawed on the App Store. The iPhone maker recently updated its policies to allow these apps to exist, but in a more convoluted capacity than the platform makers had hoped, forcing them to first send users to the App Store before being able to cloud stream a gaming title on their platform.

Apple lays out its messy vision for how xCloud and Stadia will work with its App Store rules

For a user downloading a lengthy single-player console epic, the short pitstop is an inconvenience, but long-time Facebook gaming exec Jason Rubin says that the stipulations are a non-starter for what Facebook’s platform envisions, a way to start playing mobile games immediately without downloading anything.

“It’s a sequence of hurdles that altogether make a bad consumer experience,” Rubin tells TechCrunch.

Apple tells TechCrunch that they have continued to engage with Facebook on bringing its gaming efforts under its guidelines and that platforms can reach iOS by either submitting each individual game to the App Store for review or operating their service on Safari.

In terms of building the new platform onto the mobile web, Rubin says that without being able to point users of their iOS app to browser-based experiences, as current rules forbid, Facebook doesn’t see pushing its billions of users to accessing the service primarily from a browser as a reasonable alternative. In a Zoom call, Rubin demoes how this could operate on iOS, with users tapping an advertisement inside the app and being redirected to a game experience in mobile Safari.

“But if I click on that, I can’t go to the web. Apple says, ‘No, no, no, no, no, you can’t do that,’ Rubin tells us. “Apple may say that it’s a free and open web, but what you can actually build on that web is dictated by what they decide to put in their core functionality.”

Facebook VP of Play Jason Rubin. Image via Facebook.

Rubin, who co-founded the game development studio Naughty Dog in 1994 before it was acquired by Sony in 2001, has been at Facebook since he joined Oculus months after its 2014 acquisition was announced. Rubin had previously been tasked with managing the games ecosystem for its virtual reality headsets, this year he was put in charge of the company’s gaming initiatives across their core family of apps as the company’s VP of Play.

Rubin, well familiar with game developer/platform skirmishes, was quick to distinguish the bone Facebook had to pick with Apple and complaints from those like Epic Games which sued Apple this summer.

“I do want to put a pin in the fact that we’re giving Google 30% [on Android]. The Apple issue is not about money,” Rubin tells TechCrunch. “We can talk about whether or not it’s fair that Google takes that 30%. But we would be willing to give Apple the 30% right now, if they would just let consumers have the opportunity to do what we’re offering here.”

Epic Games launches a campaign (and lawsuit) against Apple

Facebook is notably also taking a 30% cut of transaction within these games, even as Facebook’s executive team has taken its own shots at Apple’s steep revenue fee in the past, most recently criticizing how Apple’s App Store model was hurting small businesses during the pandemic. This saga eventually led to Apple announcing that it would withhold its cut through the end of the year for ticket sales of small businesses hosting online events.

Apple’s reticence to allow major gaming platforms a path towards independently serving up games to consumers underscores the significant portion of App Store revenues that could be eliminated by a consumer shift towards these cloud platforms. Apple earned around $50 billion from the App Store last year, CNBC estimates, and gaming has long been their most profitable vertical.

Though Facebook is framing this as an uphill battle against a major platform for the good of the gamer, this is hardly a battle between two underdogs. Facebook pulled in nearly $70 billion in ad revenues last year and improving their offerings for mobile game studios could be a meaningful step towards increasing that number, something Apple’s App Store rules threaten.

For the time being, Facebook is keeping this launch pretty conservative. There are just 5-10 titles that are going to be available at launch, Rubin says. Facebook is rolling out access to the new service, which is free, this week across a handful of states in America, including California, Texas, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia and West Virginia. The hodge-podge nature of the geographic rollout is owed to the technical limitations of cloud-gaming– people have to be close to data centers where the service has rolled out in order to have a usable experience. Facebook is aiming to scale to the rest of the U.S. in the coming months, they say.

Apple goes to war with the gaming industry

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Best iPhone Cases of 2020

iPhone owners should utilize phone cases if they want to protect their phones from damage. They should also utilize them if they want to make a fashion statement. There are various iPhone cases on the market, and many of them possess qualities beyond providing physical protection. Some iPhone cases are budget-friendly, while others are luxurious […]

The post Best iPhone Cases of 2020 appeared first on ALL TECH BUZZ.

Games.lol – A Guide To Playing Android Games On PC

As gaming companies start to shift their focus more on mobile games, there is now an increase in great and entertaining games to play on your smartphone. Even popular games like Call of Duty or PUBG came out with mobile versions of the games. PUBG, in particular, also has PUBG Lite for low to mid-range […]

The post Games.lol – A Guide To Playing Android Games On PC appeared first on ALL TECH BUZZ.

24 October 2020

This Week in Apps: Quibi dies, Snapchat soars, Halide upgrades for iPhone 12

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

Weekly News Round-Up

Platforms

Apple releases iOS and iPadOS 14.1. The first major update to iOS 14 delivers multiple bug fixes, including those impacting widgets, streaming video and Family Setup on Apple Watch, among others. It also added support for 10-bit HDR video playback and editing in Photos on iPhone 8 and later.
iOS 14 bug continues to reset default email and browser apps. After updating your preferred email or browser app, iOS 14 forgets what third-party app you’ve set as the default. Yes, it was doing this before. Are we still so sure it’s a bug?
DOJ antitrust lawsuit goes after the multibillion-dollar deal that positioned Google as the default search engine on browsers, phones and other Apple devices.
AirTags patent applications describe use cases like locating the nearest defibrillator, monitoring users’ posture and playing avatar-based games, giving a little more insight into how Apple envisions the future of its smartphone-findable tags.
Google embraces iOS 14 widgets. Google already offered one of the more useful widgets for iOS 14 with its Search widget, which has been downloaded by “millions.” This week, it introduced more, including a Google Photos widget that let you revisit your memories, and a YouTube Music widget.
RCS support in Android Messages expands. Following the U.S. debut, RCS has rolled out to a number of new countries, and can now be found in Italy, Portugal, Singapore, Argentina, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, Denmark, Netherlands, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Kosovo, Lithuania, New Zealand, Serbia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Australia, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Lebanon, Uganda and Ukraine. The last nine were just this month.

Trends

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Buy Now, Pay Later app usage in the U.S. up 186% year-over-year as of Sept. According to Sensor Tower, apps that let consumers make purchases on payment plans have been climbing steadily this year since the COVID-19 pandemic. The report looked at Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay and QuadPay, which together have generated 18 million lifetime installs across the App Store and Google Play. Installs were up 115% YoY in September, while monthly actives were up 186%.
U.S. contact-tracing apps are a disjointed wreck. The WSJ examined the state of COVID-19 contact-tracing apps in the U.S. and found that states focusing on their own efforts, due to the lack of a national plan, has left a disjointed patchwork of tools. Only 10 states, plus D.C., have used the framework built by Google and Apple; 11 are piloting or building apps. The EU, meanwhile, switched on cross-border interoperability for its first batch of tracing apps.

EU switches on cross-border interoperability for first batch of COVID-19 contacts tracing apps

Gen Z spends 10% more time using top non-game apps than older users, at 4.1+ hours per month. The figure excludes pre-installed apps and was calculated on Android devices in select markets, including the U.S. Gen Z users also engaged with non-game apps more often than older users, at 120 sessions per month per app.
U.S. consumers spend $20.78/mo on average on their app subscriptions, according to new data from Adjust. The 25 to 34-year-old age group spends the most on subscription apps at $25.85/mo, while those 55 and over spend the least, at $13.97/mo. In addition, more than a quarter of millennials and Gen Z consumers said they have stopped paying for other services in order to buy subscriptions on mobile app services (e.g. option for fitness apps over going to the gym).
Dating apps are on the rise in the U.S., says Apptopia. New users for Hily, Match, BLK, Bumble and Grindr are on pace to grow month-over-month at 32%, 28%, 20%, 18% and 11%, respectively.

Gen Z spends 10% more time in non-game apps than older users

Services

Amazon’s Luna game streaming service opens in early access to its first customers. The service offers a library of 50 games and works on Mac, PC, Amazon Fire TV, and iOS devices, courtesy of a web app to work around the App Store rules. Initial reviews describe the service as sometimes struggling with performance over Wi-Fi, but offering a good web app experience. Luna features some big titles but xCloud still has the better lineup. Its real killer feature, however, may be the promised Twitch integration, arriving in the future.
SoundCloud launches a $19.99/month DJ plan, SoundCloud DJ, that offers unlimited offline access to its catalog. Users can also stream high-quality audio and mix tracks using select DJ apps, including Virtual DJ, Cross DJ and Denon DJ.
Put your five-star reviews on your home screen. IMore spotted a must-have motivational tool for developers: a way to put your app’s five-star reviews as a widget on your home screen; $1.99 for this happiness boost.

Security/Privacy

Windows GravityRAT malware makes the leap to Android. The malware, which has been deployed in targeted attacks against Indian military organizations in the past, was detected in an Android spyware app that steals documents, emails and contacts.
Google removes 3 Android apps for children over data collection violations. The apps had over 20 million collective downloads.

Google removes 3 Android apps for children, with 20M+ downloads between them, over data collection violations

Deadpool

Apple quietly discontinues its Apple TV Remote app. The app was removed from the App Store on Wednesday. Users are now expected to use the Remote feature built into the Control Center since iOS 12 instead.
Google will end support for its location-sharing Trusted Contacts app in December, and removes it from the Play Store. Users are directed to use similar features in Google Maps instead for finding friends and family.

Policies and Politics

Coalition for App Fairness more than doubles a month after its debut. The Coalition for App Fairness (CAF), a newly formed advocacy group pushing for increased regulation over app stores, has more than doubled in size with this week’s announcement of 20 new partners. The organization, led by top app publishers and critics, including Epic Games, Deezer, Basecamp, Tile, Spotify and others, debuted in late September to fight back against Apple and Google’s control over app stores, and particularly the stores’ rules around in-app purchases and commissions.

Coalition for App Fairness, a group fighting for app store reforms, adds 20 new partners

TikTok rolls out a new notification system for content removals. The system, which had been in testing for a few months ahead of its global release, informs a TikTok user when their video has been removed and which policy it violated. It will also offer the user the ability to appeal the decision. The move follows TikTok’s promises of further crackdowns on hate speech and hateful ideologies.
Pakistan un-bans TikTok. The ban was lifted after 11 days, as TikTok promised to moderate content in accordance with Pakistan’s “societal norms.” Authorities said some of the videos on TikTok were immoral, obscene and vulgar, and it had particular concerns over the sexualization of underage girls. Critics say the move was also intended to limit criticism of the government, however.

Pakistan lifts ban on TikTok

App News

Facebook to increase investments in WhatsApp for business. The company said it will expand Shopping on WhatsApp and will charge businesses for some of the services it offers on the chat app, in order to grow revenues. This includes offering to manage businesses’ WhatsApp messages via Facebook’s own hosting services. Facebook offered this info as more of a look into its roadmap, but without specifics on new services or pricing.
Facebook is cloning Nextdoor. The feature is in testing in Canada and sees Facebook automatically generating neighborhood groups to connect local users with people, activities and items for sale.

Facebook is working on Neighborhoods, a Nextdoor clone based on local groups

Court approves Kik’s settlement with SEC. The ruling ends a multi-year court battle by allowing Kik to pay a one-time $5 million fine for its violation of securities law for failing to register its 2017 distribution of its Kin tokens in its ICO.
Roblox passes $2B in mobile player spending ahead of its planned IPO. The company’s revenues, accelerated by the pandemic, crossed the $1.5 billion mark in May 2020, then picked up another $500 million in five months, says Sensor Tower.
Cameo enters B2B sales. The custom celebrity video app repositions its business of personalized greetings for B2B sales through an integration and rev share agreement with corporate gifting platform Sendoso.
Adobe adds a chain of custody tool in the beta release of Photoshop and Behance that will fight misinformation and keep content attributed properly.

Adobe brings its misinformation-fighting content attribution tool to the Photoshop beta

Stitcher’s podcasts come to Pandora as acquisition completes. The Stitcher app also got a revamp following the deal’s finalization. The move brought several bigger podcast titles in house, thanks to Earwolf, including “Freakonomics Radio,” “My Favorite Murder,” “SuperSoul Conversations from the Oprah Winfrey Network,” “Office Ladies,” “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” “Literally! with Rob Lowe,” “LeVar Burton Reads” and “WTF with Marc Maron.”
NYT has an iOS 14 widget now. The new widget will put NYT headlines on your home screen. Note that while the widget can be installed by anyone, if you want to click through to read, you’ll still need to be a subscriber.
PicsArt brings its app-based design tools to the web. The creative platform is chasing business users with the launch of its AI tools on picsart.com. The debut suite includes a template editor, background and object remover, video slideshow maker, text editor, and others.

Stitcher’s podcasts arrive on Pandora with acquisition’s completion

Funding and M&A

Chinese tutoring app Yuanfudao has raised $2.2 billion from investors, surpassing Byju’s as the most valuable edtech company in the world, as it’s now worth $15.5 billion.
Retool raises $50M in funding, led by Sequoia, for its low-code tools for building internal apps that work on either desktop or mobile. The new round values the business at nearly $1 billion. Other backers include GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison, Brex Inc. founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi and Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham.
Syte raises $40M to bring visual shoppers to e-commerce retailers. Visual search is already popular in apps like Google, Pinterest and eBay, but Syte wants under retailers to have the option. The round was led by return investor Viola Ventures.
98point6 raises $118M for its AI-powered telemedicine platform that works on web and mobile (iOS and Android).

Chinese live tutoring app Yuanfudao is now worth $15.5 billion

Recommended Downloads

Halide Mark II

Image Credits: Lux

The developers of popular pro iPhone camera apps Halide and Spectre this week launched their latest creation, the Halide Mark II camera app. The new interface has been designed for one-handed operation and includes a range of new features.

These include a new gesture-based automatic and manual switcher; tactile touch for enabling and disabling features like exposure warnings, focus peaking, and loupe as you adjust exposure or focus; an overhauled manual mode; new dynamic labeling of controls and actions to explain features to new users; support for the edge-to-edge interface of the iPhone 12 models; a redesigned reviewer with a full metadata read-out; in-app memberships for photo lessons; and over 40 more changes.

A new “Coverage” feature can take a photo with Smart HDR 2/3 and Deep Fusion for maximum quality and computational processing as well as a RAW file — with only a slight delay between captures.

Image Credits: Lux

Halide Mark II also uses machine learning to process an iPhone RAW file in the app (ProRAW) with 17 steps, including detail enhancement, contrast and color adjustment and more. This feature, called Instant RAW, intelligently develops the file to get the best possible results.

And the app includes top pro tools, like a new waveform and color exposure warnings (zebras) that use XDR (Extended Dynamic Range) 14-bit RAW sampling, for accurate exposure previews and readings.

The app is $36 (currently $30 during a promo period) if you want to only pay once. Otherwise it’s $11.99 per year on subscription (currently $9.99 per year if you lock in the price now during the promo period). Subscribers to the membership plan also get perks, like custom icons. Existing Halide 1 users, unbelievably, are upgraded for free but are asked to support the app with a membership.

ClipDrop — AR Copy Paste

Aaand here it is..!!!

After months of hard work with @jblanchefr, @ClipDropApp beta (AR Copy Paste) is now publicly available on #Android, #iOS, #macOS, and #Windows

https://t.co/52eLMEfXNR

Here's a thread of what you can already do with it ↓ 1/n#ML #AR #AI pic.twitter.com/0fQJQ8KRBv

— Cyril Diagne (@cyrildiagne) October 22, 2020

A new app called ClipDrop launches on iOS, Android, macOS and Windows as a new sort of “copy and paste” experience. The app uses state-of-the-art vision AI to copy images from your desktop with a screenshot to any other app (e.g. Docs, Photoshop, Canva, etc.) and it allows you to extract anything — objects, people, drawings or text.

The mobile app lets you snap photos of real-world items and then digitally transfer them to other apps or websites. In the below demo, the company shows how you could “clip” an image of an article of clothing using the camera, then import the photo into a document.

The company also just released a plugin for Photoshop that lets you drop the image into its app as a new layer with an editable mask.

The app is $39.99 per year (until November 2020, when it ups to $79.99 per year.)

Adobe Illustrator on iPad + Adobe Fresco on iPhone

Image Credits: Adobe

As part of Adobe’s virtual MAX 2020 conference this week, the company launched the first public version of its Illustrator vector graphics app on the iPad and brought its Fresco drawing and painting app to the iPhone. In time, the company plans to bring more effects, brushes and AI features to Illustrator. Fresco 2.0, meanwhile, includes new smudge brushes and support for personalized brushes, among other things.

Party Squasher

Designed for landlords, Airbnb owners or other vacation rental property owners, Party Squasher offers a hardware device and paired mobile app that counts the number of people at your house by counting the mobile phones in or around a house. The phones can be counted even if they’re not connected to the home’s Wi-Fi.

Because the device doesn’t include cameras or microphones, it’s ideal for ensuring that renters aren’t hosting large (and these days, potentially illegal) parties without violating privacy.

In the event that a large gathering is present, you’re sent a text or email so you can take action.

The device is $249 and the app charges a $199 per year subscription.

Tweets

pic.twitter.com/IC5Ey4ONjK

— Jonathan Morrison (@tldtoday) October 22, 2020

Remember App Clips?

— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) October 22, 2020

Quibi made their “episodes” 11 minutes to avoid paying union writers. Everyone should MC Hammer dance on their grave.

— Jawn Wick (@LukeXCunningham) October 21, 2020

Omg I forgot to turn her app time limits back on pic.twitter.com/wrzSTGizWA

— Sarah Perez (@sarahintampa) October 22, 2020

The No. 1 game in the App Store is now Among Us!.

Can you guess why?

The best moments from @AOC's Among Us stream on @Twitch last night. pic.twitter.com/13dGGgeWTF

— The Recount (@therecount) October 21, 2020

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27 October 2020

THE BIG PICTURE

Twitter was hacked using a fake VPN portal, New York investigation finds

Open-source YouTube download tool hit by DMCA takedown, but backfires

26 October 2020

Monitor Google Drive Files

Watch your own Google Drive

How Google Drive Monitoring Works

24 October 2020

Top Stories

Quibi dies…and no one was surprised

Snap hits record $50B valuation

Weekly News Round-Up

Platforms

Trends

Services

Security/Privacy

Deadpool

Policies and Politics

App News

Funding and M&A

Recommended Downloads

Halide Mark II

ClipDrop — AR Copy Paste

Adobe Illustrator on iPad + Adobe Fresco on iPhone

Party Squasher

Tweets