The weekend is ripe for battles of all sorts in the world of Pokemon GO. This Friday Niantic updated their system to include a whole bunch of Team Leader teams - Pokemon crews, moves, and abilities. Blanche rolls with three new teams, Candela has a new set of three team possibilities, and Spark has... lots of Electric Pokemon, as you may have guessed.
Google is hunting official permission to keep supplying Android to Huawei, the Chinese phone-maker claims, as uncertainty around the US government's blacklist on trade continues to overshadow its device roadmap. Despite rumors that Huawei has been developing its own operating system, known as Hongmeng OS, the company insists that right now it's counting on Android alone.
Today we're taking a look at the quick rise and confusing fall of FaceApp and the privacy concerns therein. Early privacy-centered reactions to the app were blown a TINY bit out of proportion - but concerns still remain, in a big way. Yes, the app was developed in Russia*, but the Russian angle has nothing to do with the amount of privacy you can expect from the app. The most important part of the situation is in the User Content agreement FaceApp demands you agree to before you use their app. In the agreement, users agree that their images can be used by the creators of the app for basically any reason, at any time, without further consent from anyone.
After Google gave Stadia a full reveal back in June, we were still left with a number of questions. Google Stadia director of product Andrey Doronichev hosted an AMA on Reddit this week in which he cleared up some of those lingering questions, and in the process, he gave us a better idea of what we'll get for signing up for Stadia Pro.
The anniversary of the historic lunar landing has many talking about Apollo 11 again. There is no shortage of stories and anecdotes of the things that went right and those that could have gone wrong. But for the software engineers at Google, there was another figure working in the background to make the landing even possible. That was NASA's Margaret Hamilton who is also considered one of the pioneers of the field of software engineering.
Almost all the major browsers these days have an incognito or private browsing mode. This offers users some peace of mind to go anywhere they like without fear of web sites tracking them to serve them ads. At least that's the theory but in practice, there might be other ways sites and even ISPs from knowing your activities. It turns out, there might even be ways for sites to know whether you're browsing Incognito or not and Google is putting an end to that in Chrome.
Game streaming sort of received its validation when Google, the most unlikely of proponents, jumped on the bandwagon and announced Stadia. Naturally, there are a lot of questions raised, especially with the formal start of the service coming soon. Attempting to get ahead of speculation and misinformation, Google Director of Product for Stadia Andrey Doronichev took to Reddit to squash those misconceptions and tease a few upcoming features as well.
Google's Pixel phones are always talked about on the Internet especially when it comes to the cameras and its always up-to-date software. Almost like LG and HTC flagships, however, the hype pretty much stops there and sales don't reflect the positive reception it gets. In fact, the Pixel 3 apparently sold less than its predecessors. Google seems to be taking steps to fix that but those steps might be too small to make a big difference.
In the war for music streaming dominance, functionality and feature sets are a big deal. YouTube Music's recent launch means it has some catching up to do to more established players like Spotify and Apple Music, and today, it's trying to give itself an edge by rolling out a feature it's unique situated to deliver. If you're a YouTube Music subscriber, you'll now be able to switch between audio-only tracks and music videos at will.
The Samsung Galaxy Fold is ready for release according to industry sources today. This information comes from industry professionals and professors at Seoul National University and KAIST, as well as a "source close to the matter" speaking anonymously. If the phone is indeed ready to roll, it'd be a key element in the lead up to the launch of the Galaxy Note 10, a device that's set for official reveal on August 7, 2019.
The ASUS ROG Phone 2 was revealed courtesy of TENAA today, baring not just its front and back side, but its specifications, too. This phone is the second in a line of "gaming phone" devices from ASUS, a company that uses the brand "ROG" (Republic of Gamers) for their gaming-specific hardware. This second version is less akin to a follow-up to the first, and more like a "pro" or "plus" version of the original - it's a significant improvement in most hardware-based ways.
Avast, a security company best known for its antivirus software, has announced that Google removed a number of stalking apps from the Google Play Store found by the security company. A total of seven stalking apps were found in the app store -- four on Tuesday and another three on Wednesday -- enabling anyone to stalk kids, partners, employees, and others who owned an Android phone without their knowledge or permission.