Google's Daydream, Android's built-in virtual reality platform, is as good as dead. From a report: Following the company's annual hardware event today, Google confirmed to VentureBeat that the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL do not support the VR platform. Furthermore, Google stopped selling the Daydream View headset today. There are also no plans to support Daydream in future Android devices, Pixel or otherwise. "We are no longer certifying new devices," a Google spokesperson confirmed. The Daydream app and store will continue to function for now. Further reading: It's Becoming Increasingly Unlikely that We'll See a Major Shift To Virtual Reality Any Time Soon.

At an event in New York today, Google unveiled Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, its latest flagship smartphones. The Pixel smartphones have over the years set a new benchmark for photography prowess. So you can imagine that a lot is riding on what Google, which has in curtailed several of its hardware ambitions in recent quarters, does with the new Pixel smartphones. From a report: Google makes it a point that the majority of the primary features are the same between the Pixel smartphones, with the primary exception being the display and screen technology. That is the case this year as well, with the Pixel 4 featuring a 5.7-inch Full HD+ P-OLED display, while the Pixel 4 XL boasts a 6.3-inch Quad HD OLED screen. Both panels support a 90Hz refresh rate, though. Inside both handsets is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, and both smartphones boast 6GB of RAM. The handsets come in either 64GB or 128GB of built-in storage options, but there is no microSD card slot for expandable storage. There is a USB-C port for charging, and both handsets feature stereo speakers as well. The battery in the Pixel 4 measures in at 2800mAh, while the Pixel 4 XL has a 3700mAh battery tucked inside.

Meanwhile, around back, the real star of the show: the cameras. That's right, Google is bumping up the rear camera count to two. It starts with the standard 12-megapixel "Dual Pixel" camera, which is accompanied by a 16-megapixel telephoto lens. The rounded square camera housing also hosts a microphone and a flash. [...] And finally, the front-facing camera is equipped with a radar sensor that gives the handsets much more utility than previous models. It starts with true depth detection while using the front-facing camera to unlock the phone with a face unlock biometric feature. Google is also including a new "Motion Sense" technology, letting the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL support gestures for controlling media playback and more. The pricing for Pixel 4 starts at $799, while its bigger sibling begins at $899. Unlike previous Pixel smartphone models, the Pixel 4 and 4 XL won't offer their users the ability to upload unlimited photos in their original resolution and qualirty to Google Photos at no charge. Both the handsets, though, come bundled with a new voice recorder app that transcribes voice recording in real time for free, Google said.

Google's Stadia game streaming service will launch on November 19th, the company's Rick Osterloh announced today at the company's fall hardware event. From a report: In a separate blog post published during the keynote, Google added that servers will open to the public at 12PM EST/9AM PST. Besides the US, Stadia will launch in Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. At launch, you'll be able to purchase Stadia's Founder's Edition for $129.99. The pack, which has been able to pre-order since June, includes a Chromecast Ultra, limited-edition Night Blue controller and two three-month Stadia Pro subscriptions. The Founder's Edition grants you access to Stadia's library of games at up to 4K resolution, 60 frames per second and with both HDR and 5.1 surround sound. Next year, Google plans to offer a Stadia Base subscription that allows you to buy games individually and play them at 1080p and 60 frames per second.

TechCrunch's Josh Constine argues Facebook, along with the other social networks, should flat out refuse to run campaign advertisements. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: Permitting falsehood in political advertising would work if we had a model democracy, but we don't. Not only are candidates dishonest, but voters aren't educated, and the media isn't objective. And now, hyperlinks turn lies into donations and donations into louder lies. The checks don't balance. What we face is a self-reinforcing disinformation dystopia. That's why if Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube don't want to be the arbiters of truth in campaign ads, they should stop selling them. If they can't be distributed safely, they shouldn't be distributed at all. No one wants historically untrustworthy social networks becoming the honesty police, deciding what's factual enough to fly. But the alternative of allowing deception to run rampant is unacceptable. Until voter-elected officials can implement reasonable policies to preserve truth in campaign ads, the tech giants should go a step further and refuse to run them. Facebook recently formalized its policy of allowing politicians to lie in ads and not be forced to verify their claims with third-party fact-checkers. In response to the policy, Elizabeth Warren decided to run ads claiming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg endorses Trump because it's allowing his campaign lies.

In a statement responding to Warren's ad, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said the company believes political speech should be protected. "If Senator Warren wants to say things she knows to be untrue, we believe Facebook should not be in the position of censoring that speech," the Stone said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: In Silicon Valley, where penniless programmers fervently believe their ideas are worth billions, getting rich can take priority over getting married. California law assumes that any wealth created during a marriage is community property, which should be split equally in a divorce. That's alarming not just for young entrepreneurs but also their investors. Fortunately, a well-written prenup is a safeguard against post-divorce havoc, which is why more and more young couples are insisting on the agreements, according to more than half-a-dozen lawyers in the Bay Area and elsewhere. Long popular with older wealthy couples who re-marry, prenups are also being demanded by entrepreneurs who want to keep future windfalls to themselves. In a 2016 survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 3 in 5 divorce attorneys said more clients were seeking prenups in the past three years. "People's concepts and notions of fairness when it comes to privately held businesses are changing," said Sideman Bancroft partner Monica Mazzei, adding she's seen "a tremendous increase" in prenups in the past eight years. "They feel that even if they're married, this is their passion. The agreement should be reflective of that."

Still, the report cautions, "a prenup hardly guarantees a smooth divorce. Judges can and do throw out the agreements, especially if they're drafted poorly." "If you don't put in the right language, a lot of prenups don't do the job," said Lowell Sucherman, a divorce attorney at Sucherman Insalaco in San Francisco.

The latest update from Internet Archive brings thousands of MS-DOS games from the '90s like 3D Bomber, Zool and Alien Rampage. CNET reports: On Sunday, Internet Archive released 2,500 MS-DOS games that includes action, strategy and adventure titles. Some of the games are Vor Terra, Spooky Kooky Monster Maker, Princess Maker 2 and I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. "This will be our biggest update yet, ranging from tiny recent independent productions to long-forgotten big-name releases from decades ago," Internet Archive software curator Jason Scott wrote on the site's blog.

One game that might trigger a few memories is the 1992 action-adventure horror game Alone in the Dark, published by Infogrames. In the game, you can play private investigator Edward Carnby or family member Emily Hartwood, who's investigating the suspicious death of Jeremy Hartwood in his Louisiana mansion called Derceto, which is now supposedly haunted. Fighting against rats, zombies and giant worms, you have to solve a number of puzzles to escape. Another retro game included by Internet Archive is a 1994 title played on PCs and Amiga computers called Mr. Blobby (a remake of the SNES game Super Troll Islands). Players can choose from three different characters -- Mr. Blobby, Mrs. Blobby and Baby Blobby. The goal of the game is to color in the computer screen by walking over it. Levels include climbing ladders, avoiding spikes and bouncing on springs.

Security researchers believe the Chinese Communist Party's official "Study the Great Nation" app has a backdoor that could help monitor use and copy data from those who have it installed on their devices. The BBC reports: Released in February, Study the Great Nation has become the most downloaded free program in China, thanks to persuasive demands by Chinese authorities that citizens download and install it. The app pushes out official news and images and encourages people to earn points by reading articles, commenting on them and playing quizzes about China and its leader, Xi Jinping. Use of the app is mandatory among party officials and civil servants and it is tied to wages in some workplaces.

Starting this month, native journalists must pass a test on the life of President Xi, delivered via the app, in order to obtain a press card which enables them to do their jobs. On behalf of the Open Technology Fund, which campaigns on human rights issues, Germany cyber-security firm Cure 53 took apart the Android version of the app and said it found many undocumented and hidden features. In its lengthy report, Cure 53 said Study the Great Nation had "extensive logging" abilities and seemed to try to build up a list of the popular apps an individual had installed on their phone. It was "evident and undeniable that the examined application is capable of collecting and managing vast amounts of very specific data," said the report. The app also weakened encryption used to scramble data and messages, making it easy for a government to crack security. Adam Lynn, research director at the Open Technology Fund, told the Washington Post, which broke the story: "It's very, very uncommon for an application to require that level of access to the device, and there's no reason to have these privileges unless you're doing something you're not supposed to be."

The security company didn't find evidence that this high-level access was being used, but said it's not clear why an educational app would need such access to a phone.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Harley-Davidson has temporarily stopped making and shipping its first electric motorcycle, LiveWire, due to a problem with the bike's charging equipment, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The company told the Journal that LiveWire bikes are still safe to ride, but it's asking the first few customers to only charge the $30,000 electric motorcycle at dealerships, indicating that there may be a problem with plugging them into lower-voltage outlets, such as the ones found in their homes. LiveWire motorcycles only just started shipping in September. The LiveWire was first introduced as a concept motorcycle back in 2014. The project then disappeared from the spotlight for a few years before Harley-Davidson reintroduced the LiveWire in production-ready form in November 2018. Reached for comment, the publicly traded motorcycle manufacturer only issued an opaque statement about the charging issue: "As we lead in the electrification of motorcycles, we have delivered our first LiveWire motorcycles to authorized LiveWire dealers. We recently discovered a non-standard condition during a final quality check; stopped production and deliveries; and began additional testing and analysis, which is progressing well. We are in close contact with our LiveWire dealers and customers and have assured them they can continue to ride LiveWire motorcycles. As usual, we're keeping high quality as our top priority."

McGruber shares a report from Deseret News, a newspaper published in Salt Lake City: The body of Erin Valenti, a tech entrepreneur who had been missing since Monday, was found Saturday in the trunk of her rental car. The 33-year-old Valenti was the CEO of Utah-based Tinker Ventures, a company that develops web and smartphone applications.

In a Wednesday Facebook post, Valenti's husband, Harrison Weinstein, wrote that she had been missing since Monday night and was last seen in Palo Alto Monday afternoon and was wearing "torn jeans and a white T-shirt." Valenti was scheduled to receive an award at an event Wednesday hosted by Utah-based Women Tech Council but never appeared at the event in Salt Lake City, according to organizers. Police said the Santa Clara County Coroner's Office will determine the manner and cause of death and have not released any further details on the incident.

exomondo shares a report from The Hacker News: A vulnerability has been discovered in Sudo -- one of the most important, powerful, and commonly used utilities that comes as a core command installed on almost every UNIX and Linux-based operating system. The vulnerability in question is a sudo security policy bypass issue that could allow a malicious user or a program to execute arbitrary commands as root on a targeted Linux system even when the "sudoers configuration" explicitly disallows the root access. Sudo, stands for "superuser do," is a system command that allows a user to run applications or commands with the privileges of a different user without switching environments -- most often, for running commands as the root user.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-14287 and discovered by Joe Vennix of Apple Information Security, is more concerning because the sudo utility has been designed to let users use their own login password to execute commands as a different user without requiring their password. What's more interesting is that this flaw can be exploited by an attacker to run commands as root just by specifying the user ID "-1" or "4294967295." That's because the function which converts user id into its username incorrectly treats -1, or its unsigned equivalent 4294967295, as 0, which is always the user ID of root user. The vulnerability affects all Sudo versions prior to the latest released version 1.8.28, which has been released today.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today, Microsoft announced that it's rolling out filters that will let Xbox Live players automatically limit the text-based messages they receive to four maturity tiers: "Friendly, Medium, Mature, and Unfiltered." That's a long-overdue feature for a major communication platform that's well over a decade old now, but not really anything new in terms of online content moderation writ large.

What's more interesting is a "looking ahead" promise Microsoft made at the end of the announcement (emphasis added): "Ultimately our vision is to supplement our existing efforts and leverage our company efforts in AI and machine learning technology to provide filtration across all types of content on Xbox Live, delivering control to each and every individual player. Your feedback is more important than ever as we continue to evolve this experience and make Xbox a safe, welcome and inclusive place to game." Microsoft told The Verge that the ultimate goal is a system "similar to what you'd expect on broadcast TV where people are having a conversation, and in real-time, we're able to detect a bad phrase and beep it out for users who don't want to see that." However, instead of live engineers that are doing the censoring, Microsoft is employing machine learning.

Faraday Future's founder and former CEO Jia Yueting has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware court in a bid to satisfy his myriad debts in China. From a report: The Chinese tycoon claims he still owes around $3.6 billion to more than 100 creditors, thanks, in large part, to the collapse of LeEco, the tech conglomerate he founded there. The bankruptcy filing marks a major turn in the story of Jia's prolific history of taking on debt, which led to him being named to a national debtor blacklist in China and sparked his move to the United States in 2017. Before proceeding in court with Chapter 11, though, Jia is offering to satisfy those debts through a trust backed by the value of his ownership stake in Faraday Future. This trust will only pay out to creditors if and when the startup goes public. (This resembles but is separate from the plan Faraday Future laid out earlier this year for suppliers who are owed money, which was put together by Birch Lake Associates, a Chicago-based restructuring firm.)

A report published today shines a light on one of China's most ambitious hacking operations known to date, one that involved Ministry of State Security officers, the country's underground hacking scene, legitimate security researchers, and insiders at companies all over the world. From a report: The aim of this hacking operation was to acquire intellectual property to narrow China's technological gap in the aviation industry, and especially to help Comac, a Chinese state-owned aerospace manufacturer, build its own airliner, the C919 airplane, to compete with industry rivals like Airbus and Boeing. A Crowdstrike report published today shows how this coordinated multi-year hacking campaign systematically went after the foreign companies that supplied components for the C919 airplane.

The end goal, Crowdstrike claims, was to acquire the needed intellectual property to manufacture all of the C919's components inside China. Crowdstrike claims that the Ministry of State Security (MSS) tasked the Jiangsu Bureau (MSS JSSD) to carry out these attacks. The Jiangsu Bureau, in turn, tasked two lead officers to coordinate these efforts. One was in charge of the actual hacking team, while the second was tasked with recruiting insiders working at aviation and aerospace companies.

The Federal Reserve wants to know what the internet is worth to you. The answer could help the central bank solve one of the most puzzling paradoxes of the modern economy: The current expansion is the longest in history, yet productivity gains are weak and GDP growth, while steady, is far from stellar. From a report: In a speech last week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell raised the possibility that the problem is with the data itself. GDP measures the value of products and services that are bought and sold. But many of the greatest technological innovations of the internet age are free. Search engines, e-mail, GPS, even Facebook -- the official economic statistics are not designed to capture the benefits they generate for businesses and consumers. "Good decisions require good data, but the data in hand are seldom as good as we would like," Powell said. Instead, Powell cited recent work by MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson, one of the leading academics on the intersection of technology and the economy. In a paper with Avinash Collis of the National Bureau of Economic Research and Felix Eggers of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, the authors conducted massive surveys to estimate the monetary value that users place on the tools of modern life.

The results? The median user would need about $48 to give up Facebook for one month. The median price of giving up video streaming services like YouTube for a year is $1,173. To stop using search engines, consumers would need a median $17,530, making it the most valuable digital service. The authors also conducted more limited surveys with students in Europe on other popular platforms. One month of Snapchat was valued at about 2.17 euros. LinkedIn was just 1.52 euros. But giving up WhatsApp? That would require a whopping 536 euros. Twitter, however, was valued at zero euros.

Before Google moves to bring its human-sounding robot calling service Duplex to help users automate their interactions with businesses to international markets, an Indian giant is deploying its own solution to get a jumpstart on the local market. From a report: Reliance Jio today unveiled AI-powered Video Call Assistant service that will allow businesses to automate their customer support and other communications. The service, built in collaboration with Radisys, a U.S.-based subsidiary of Reliance Industries, can be accessed via a 4G phone call and does not require installation of any additional app, Jio said. Executives of Reliance Jio demonstrated the technology on Monday at the third installment of Indian Mobile Congress, similar to but not affiliated with the trade show Mobile World Congress. They said they have already courted a number of customers for this service, including HDFC Bank. In the demo, a user dials a regular phone number and sees a video chat option. Once tapped, the user is greeted by a pre-recorded video message from a human. To demonstrate the AI's capabilities, an executive of Reliance Jio asked the bot what was the interest rate on personal loans. The human-looking bot was able to answer the question without any delay. The company, which became the largest telecom operator in India in three years, is also offering audio and text bot options to brands, executives said. "It may be a large business or small, our bot service is built for all," one of the two executives said.

Uber has just laid off around 350 employees across a variety of teams within the organization, marking what the company says is its third and final phase of layoffs of the process it began earlier this year, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said to employees today in an email. From a report: Those affected include employees from Eats, performance marketing, Advanced Technologies Group, recruiting, as well as various teams within the global rides and platform departments. Some employees have also been asked to relocate. "Days like today are tough for us all, and the ELT and I will do everything we can to make certain that we won't need or have another day like this ahead of us," Khosrowshahi wrote in the email. "We all have to play a part by establishing a new normal in how we work: identifying and eliminating duplicate work, upholding high standards for performance, giving direct feedback and taking action when expectations aren't being met, and eliminating the bureaucracy that tends to creep as companies grow." In total, the layoffs represent about 1% of the company, an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch. Further reading: Uber Posts $5.2 Billion Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate (August 2019).

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hosting informal talks and small, off-the-record dinners with conservative journalists, commentators and at least one Republican lawmaker in recent months to discuss issues like free speech and discuss partnerships, Politico reported on Monday. From the report: The dinners, which began in July, are part of Zuckerberg's broader effort to cultivate friends on the right amid outrage by President Donald Trump and his allies over alleged "bias" against conservatives at Facebook and other major social media companies. "I'm under no illusions that he's a conservative but I think he does care about some of our concerns," said one person familiar with the gatherings, which multiple sources have confirmed. News of the outreach is likely to further fuel suspicions on the left that Zuckerberg is trying to appease the White House and stay out of Trump's crosshairs. The president threatened to sue Facebook and Google in June and has in the past pressured the Justice Department to take action against his perceived foes. "The discussion in Silicon Valley is that Zuckerberg is very concerned about the Justice Department, under Bill Barr, bringing an enforcement action to break up the company," said one cybersecurity researcher and former government official based in Silicon Valley. "So the fear is that Zuckerberg is trying to appease the Trump administration by not cracking down on right-wing propaganda."

Booking Holdings, an online travel company that operates Kayak.com and Priceline.com among other websites, said it's withdrawing from participation in the Libra Association, an ambitious and controversial Facebook-led project to create a new cryptocurrency. From a report: The Norwalk, Connecticut-based company joins PayPal, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, MercadoLibre and EBay in leaving the project in the past two weeks. The plan has came under intense scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators who feared that Libra could be used for criminal purposes and undercut countries' monetary policy, among myriad other concerns.

"Stablecoin" cryptocurrencies like Libra pose a risk to the global financial system, warns a new report by the G7 group of nations.

An anonymous reader quotes the BBC: The G7 taskforce that produced the report includes senior officials from central banks, the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Board, which coordinates rules for the G20 economies. It says backers of digital currencies like Libra must be legally sound, protect consumers and ensure coins are not used to launder money or fund terrorism.... The draft report says: "The G7 believe that no stablecoin project should begin operation until the legal, regulatory and oversight challenges and risks are adequately addressed...."

The draft report outlines nine major risks posed by such digital currencies. It warns that even if Libra's backers address concerns, the project may not get approval from regulators... "Addressing such risks is not necessarily a guarantee of regulatory approval for a stablecoin arrangement," the report says.

A new article this week on Motherboard argues that Flash "is responsible for the internet's most creative era," citing a new 640-page book by Rob Ford on the evolution of web design.

[O]ne could argue that the web has actually gotten less creative over time, not more. This interpretation of events is a key underpinning of Web Design: The Evolution of the Digital World 1990-Today (Taschen, $50), a new visual-heavy book from author Rob Ford and editor Julius Wiedemann that does something that hasn't been done on the broader internet in quite a long time: It praises the use of Flash as a creative tool, rather than a bloated malware vessel, and laments the ways that visual convention, technical shifts, and walled gardens have started to rein in much of this unvarnished creativity.

This is a realm where small agencies supporting big brands, creative experimenters with nothing to lose, and teenage hobbyists could stand out simply by being willing to try something risky. It was a canvas with a built-in distribution model. What wasn't to like, besides a whole host of malware?
The book's author tells Motherboard that "Without the rebels we'd still be looking at static websites with gray text and blue hyperlinks." But instead we got wild experiments like Burger King's "Subservient Chicken" site or the interactive "Wilderness Downtown" site coded by Google.

There were also entire cartoon series like Radiskull and Devil Doll or Zombie College -- not to mention games like "A Murder of Scarecrows" or the laughably unpredictible animutations of 14-year-old Neil Cicierega. But Ford tells Motherboard that today, many of the wild ideas have moved from the web to augmented reality and other "physical mediums... The rise in interactive installations, AR, and experiential in general is where the excitement of the early days is finally happening again."

Motherboard calls the book "a fitting coda for a kind of digital creativity that -- like Geocities and MySpace pages, multimedia CD-ROMs, and Prodigy graphical interfaces before it -- has faded in prominence."