Google's hyperlocal news service called Bulletin is shutting down in November. Android Police reports: The idea behind bulletin was that users could post news from their neighborhood, allowing others in the same area to hear stories that would otherwise be lost in the shuffle. The service also relied on AMP to load pages quickly. Google started with just a few cities, but Bulletin later expanded to all of the U.S. and Canada. Bulletin never gained traction, probably because Google failed to promote it in any way, and now it's shutting down.

Google says Bulletin will close for good on November 22nd, at which time it will delete all remaining Bulletin content. If you used Bulletin and would like to save your stories, Google has added an export option. Google suggests Bulletin users can start posting on the Blogger platform, but that naturally lacks all the location-aware features of Bulletin.

Facebook is getting ready to start hiding "Likes" on its own site. Engadget reports: The company has now officially started a test that will remove public visibility of Like, reaction and video view counts from people's posts and ads across Facebook. This is going to be happening only in Australia, though, and Facebook told Engadget it has not decided whether the test will expand to other places in the future. Facebook said it wants to get some initial results from Australia, before eventually deciding which steps to take next.

If you're a Facebook user in Australia, this means that while your friends and family will still be able to like and add emoji reactions to your posts, they won't be able to see how many others interacted with it. The same goes if you want to see how many people liked a post from someone you know; that information on counts will now only be visible to the author of a post, who can still see the number of Likes or reactions their posts are getting, it just won't be public. "We will gather feedback to understand whether this change will improve people's experiences," a Facebook spokesperson said. Facebook's move to hide Like counts follows a similar test it started running on Instagram earlier this year.

Developer Riley Testut is launching an alternative to Apple's App Store, called AltStore, that theoretically lets you "push the boundaries" of iOS without either jailbreaking or worrying that Apple will pull access. Engadget reports: AltStore works by fooling your device into believing that you're a developer sideloading test apps. It uses an app on your Mac or Windows PC to re-sign apps every seven days, using iTunes' WiFi syncing framework to reinstall them on your device before they expire. You only need a free Apple ID (a throwaway will do) to install apps that Apple would never allow, such as Testut's Delta emulator for Nintendo consoles.

In theory, there's not much Apple can do to easily shut things down. It could take down individual accounts, but you could just create another Apple ID if needed. Also, iOS only looks for an excessive number of app provisioning profiles, not the number of apps you have installed. So long as AltStore manages those profiles, Apple doesn't know if you're running one app or twenty. Testut told The Verge that measures to block AltStore would break key functionality for developers or iTunes syncing. AltStore is available in preview form now, with a formal launch due on September 28th. "People who back Testut's Patreon will also have the option to install almost any app, not just those in the store," the report adds.

The ad-free video platform Vimeo is collecting and storing thousands of people's facial biometrics without their permission or knowledge, according to a complaint filed on September 20 on behalf of potentially thousands of plaintiffs under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Naked Security reports: The suit takes aim at Vimeo's Magisto application: a short-form video creation platform purchased by Vimeo in April 2019 that uses facial recognition to automatically index the faces of people in videos so they can be face-tagged. BIPA bans collecting and storing biometric data without explicit consent, including "faceprints." The complaint against Vimeo claims that users of Magisto "upload millions of videos and/or photos per day, making videos and photographs a vital part of the Magisto experience."

The complaint against Vimeo claims that users of Magisto "upload millions of videos and/or photos per day, making videos and photographs a vital part of the Magisto experience." The court document points to a Magisto website, "How Does Magisto Video Editor Work?" that touts its "so-called 'artificial intelligence engines' that intuitively analyze and edit video content" using "facial detection and recognition technology." The complaint maintains that unbeknownst to the average consumer, Magisto scans "each and every video and photo uploaded to Magisto for faces" and analyzes "biometric identifiers," including facial geometry, to "create and store a template for each face." That template is later used to "organize and group together videos based upon the particular individuals appearing in the videos" by "comparing the face templates of individuals who appear in newly-edited videos or photos with the facial templates already saved in Magisto's face database." The complaint also asserts that Magisto analyzes and face-matches the biometrics of non-Magisto users who happen to appear in the photos and videos, which is a violation of BIPA.

The suit is looking for $5,000 per class member, along with court fees.

The rapidly growing internet sector accounted for $2.1 trillion of the U.S. economy in 2018, or about 10% of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP), an industry group said on Thursday. From a report: The Internet Association, a group representing Amazon.com, Facebook, Alphabet, Twitter, Uber and many other firms, released its estimate as the tech sector has come under increasing criticism, with some lawmakers calling for the breakup of major firms and renewed antitrust scrutiny. The study says the internet sector represents the fourth largest sector of the U.S. economy, behind real estate, government and manufacturing. Last year, manufacturing accounted for about $2.3 trillion in U.S. GDP. The study found that the internet sector has nearly 6 million direct jobs, which accounts for 4% of U.S. jobs, while U.S. internet firms spent $64 billion in capital expenditures. The study also found the internet sector indirectly supports another 13 million jobs.

After spending about 27 hours with Samsung's new rebooted Galaxy Fold, TechCrunch's Brian Heater noticed something unusual: "a brightly colored, amorphous blob [...] nestled between the lock screen's flapping butterfly wings." While it's nowhere near as severe as the blacked out screens many reviewers of the first wave of units experienced, "it's not a great look, considering that it wasn't dropped on concrete, dunked in water or stepped on," writes Heater. "And the placement smack dab in the center dampens the effect of a 7.3-inch screen." From the report: If I had to guess, I'd say it was pressing the display to close the device that did it. Samsung has since collected the device and will be taking it apart (likely in Korea) to find out what went wrong. We'll update accordingly. We can't say the company didn't warn us. As I noted the other day, Samsung issued a video prior to launch, advising users to "Just use a light touch," B/W the footnote, "Do not apply excessive pressure to it."

There was nothing inside the device while folded. I didn't get it wet or feed it after midnight, and there's no visible damage to the laminate layer, so I can't really say definitively what happened here. And while the screen is certainly still usable, I think I'd probably be irked if I had just paid $2,000 for a handset and had to deal with a large, rainbow colored blob in the exact center of the screen. Part of the white-glove service Samsung is rolling out here is a $149 screen replacement. We got a comment from Samsung on the matter, and it sounds like this particular issue might fall within normal use that wouldn't require an additional fee. Here's what the company has to say on the matter: "We have seen an enthusiastic response to the launch of the Galaxy Fold in several markets over the past few weeks, with thousands of consumers enjoying the unique experience it offers. The Galaxy Fold is a first-of-its-kind device, made with new materials and technologies that allow it to open and close just like a book. We encourage Galaxy Fold owners to read the care instructions included in the box and in the product manual available online. Products used within these guidelines are covered under warranty. If they have any questions, Galaxy Fold owners can consult with Samsung product specialists through the Galaxy Fold Premier Service any time, any day."

The special investigations team inside Uber, which fields complaints from riders and drivers, is not allowed to escalate those issues to law enforcement or file official police reports "even when they get confessions of felonies," according to The Washington Post. They are also not allowed to advise victims or potential victims of crimes to seek legal counsel, according to the report, which was based on interviews with "more than 20 current and former investigators" who worked at Uber's investigations unit in Arizona. The Verge reports: The investigators are also allegedly instructed to "first to protect Uber" and make sure it is "not held liable" for any crimes that are committed by people using the company's ride-hailing platform. In that vein, the investigators told the paper that even the language they use when communicating with alleged victims is carefully worded to avoid the appearance that Uber is taking a side. The investigators also said they're not supposed to specifically ask alleged perpetrators about claims against them. Uber told the Post that it's "the victim's choice to report an incident to police," a position the company tells The Verge it arrived at after consulting experts. That said, the company has started giving people the "option to allow [Uber] to contact law enforcement on their behalf" if the customer is reporting an incident that may be a crime, according to the Post.

"At the end of the day, we're not the judge and jury to determine whether a crime has occurred," Tracey Breeden, Uber's global head of women's safety, told the Post. "We're here to gather information, make a business decision. We're not law enforcement." In a statement to The Verge, a spokesperson for Uber said the company has "made substantial investments in both the [special investigations] team and in our safety technology, policies and processes," and that investigators "receive more targeted training based on years of guidance from experts in the field." "We are very proud of this team's work and know they approach their jobs with tremendous compassion and understanding," the spokesperson said. "Characterizing this team as anything but providing support to people after a difficult experience is just wrong. We will continue to put safety at the heart of everything we do and implement new approaches, based on expert guidance, to the benefit of both our customers and employees."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: DoorDash has confirmed a data breach. The food delivery company said in a blog post Thursday that 4.9 million customers, delivery workers and merchants had their information stolen by hackers. The breach happened on May 4, the company said, but added that customers who joined after April 5, 2018 are not affected by the breach. It's not clear why it took almost five months for DoorDash to detect the breach.

DoorDash spokesperson Mattie Magdovitz blamed the breach on "a third-party service provider," but the third-party was not named. "We immediately launched an investigation and outside security experts were engaged to assess what occurred," she said. Users who joined the platform before April 5, 2018 had their name, email and delivery addresses, order history, phone numbers, and hashed and salted passwords stolen. The company also said consumers had the last-four digits of their payment cards was also taken, though full numbers and card verification values (CVV) were not taken. Both delivery workers and merchants had the last four-digits of their bank account numbers stolen. Around 100,000 delivery workers also had their driver's license information stolen in the breach.

The new OnePlus 7T was officially announced earlier today, bringing a speedier Snapdragon 855+ processor, 90Hz display, and more camera sensors for $599 -- nearly $100 less than the base model OnePlus 7 Pro. From a report: There are more upgrades found in the OnePlus 7T's display. The OP7T's 6.55-inch 2400x1080 AMOLED screen includes a 90Hz refresh rate, helping to make the screen feel smoother, and OnePlus has also upgraded the in-display fingerprint sensor on its new device. OnePlus claims that the OP7T has the "fastest, smoothest fingerprint unlock anywhere." Another major upgrade of the OnePlus 7T is on its backside. OnePlus has given the 7T a triple rear camera setup, up from the dual cameras found on the OnePlus 7. The triple rear cam system on the OnePlus 7T includes a 48MP main sensor with f/1.6 aperture and OIS, a 16MP ultra-wide camera with a 117-degree field of view, and a 12MP telephoto camera with a 2x optical zoom.

OnePlus has included ultra-wide Nightscape support for low-light shooting and Super Stable Video to better stabilize your video captures, and 4K video capture at 60fps. Slow-mo video recording is available at 1080p at 240fps or 720p at 480fps, and soon OnePlus will be slowing things down even more, adding 720p video recording at 960fps through a future software update. Around front there's a 16MP selfie camera in a waterdrop notch that OnePlus says is smaller than the notch found on last year's OnePlus 6T. OnePlus has packed the OP7T with 128GB of built-in UFS 3.0 storage, 8GB of RAM, USB-C, stereo speakers, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, and Android 10 running out of the box. The OnePlus 7T launches on October 18 at a price of $599. The device will be sold exclusively by T-Mobile, though Verizon and AT&T users can buy an unlocked version from OnePlus' website.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Facebook this week finally put into writing what users -- especially politically powerful users -- have known for years: its community "standards" do not, in fact, apply across the whole community. Speech from politicians is officially exempt from the platform's fact checking and decency standards, the company has clarified, with a few exceptions. Facebook communications VP Nick Clegg, himself a former member of the UK Parliament, outlined the policy in a speech and company blog post Tuesday. Facebook has had a "newsworthiness exemption" to its content guidelines since 2016. That policy was formalized in late October of that year amid a contentious and chaotic US political season and three weeks before the presidential election that would land Donald Trump the White House.

Facebook at the time was uncertain how to handle posts from the Trump campaign, The Wall Street Journal reported. Sources told the paper that Facebook employees were sharply divided over the candidate's rhetoric about Muslim immigrants and his stated desire for a Muslim travel ban, which several felt were in violation of the service's hate speech standards. Eventually, the sources said, CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed in directly and said it would be inappropriate to intervene. Months later, Facebook finally issued its policy. "We're going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest -- even if they might otherwise violate our standards," Facebook wrote at the time. Facebook by default "will treat speech from politicians as newsworthy content that should, as a general rule, be seen and heard." It won't be subject to fact-checking because the company does not believe that it is appropriate for it to "referee political debates" or prevent a politician's speech from both reaching its intended audience and "being subject to public debate and scrutiny."

Newsworthiness, Clegg added, will be determined by weighing the "public interest value of the piece of speech" against the risk of harm. The exception to all of this is advertising. "Standards are different for content for which the company receives payment, so if someone -- even a politician or political candidate -- posts ads to Facebook, those ads in theory must still meet both the community standards and Facebook's advertising policies," reports Ars.

UPDATE (9/29/2019): The original report of a ban has now been retracted, with HTNovo now reporting that "CCleaner is not in any Microsoft Blacklist and there are no Blacklists regarding other domains in the official Microsoft forums," according to MS Power User.

Below is the (now-retracted) text of their earlier report: Microsoft has never been a fan of registry cleaners, and today we have learned that the company has taken steps to ensure that such software is no longer being recommended to users who are having issues with their PCs. HTNovo reports that Microsoft has added CCleaner.com to their blacklist of domains on the official Microsoft Support forums. The Blacklist Filter notes that: "Microsoft has various filters in place to keep community members safe. When a website that is blacklisted is posted, the system will remove it if it has been posted by an unaffiliated user. The filter will remove part of the site so it is unreadable with 4 stars (****). Affiliated users will be able to post websites which are blacklisted."

This means the domain will automatically be censored when posted on the site. The domain is included in a quite short list of sites, which is only 11 domain names long, suggesting the activity is rather targetted. The blacklist was introduced recently and only official moderators on the forum have been informed. In exceptional cases, some moderators will be able to post links to the software, but it seems likely this will generally be frowned upon.

Apple's new iOS 13 update adds a new privacy measure that requires apps to get your consent in order to use your device's Bluetooth. From a report: After installing the latest version of iOS, trust me when I say you'll be surprised by the number of apps asking for Bluetooth permission the next time you open them. Some might seem very strange (like Dunkin' Donuts in my case), but others probably won't make you think twice about giving the thumbs-up. The reason Apple implemented this is because Bluetooth has enabled companies to sneakily track your location over Bluetooth by using beacons in stores, shopping malls, and even on popular city streets if they're placed within range of a place you'd walk by.

This is entirely separate from your iPhone's location privacy settings, which makes it seem all the more underhanded. A beacon is very easily able to detect your device's Bluetooth chip and log that with a retailer or some other app on your phone. So getting more strict about Bluetooth is a good move by Apple to prevent unwanted tracking of its customers. Similarly, the company is also getting even more transparent about location, showing you on a map how often and where apps have recorded your position. This prompt is much easier to understand, and will probably startle people into slimming down the list of apps that can monitor where they are. As it should!

HTTP/3, the next major iteration of the HTTP protocol, is getting a big boost today with support added in Cloudflare, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. From a report: Starting today, Cloudflare announced that customers will be able to enable an option in their dashboards and turn on HTTP/3 support for their domains. That means that whenever users visit a Cloudflare-hosted website from an HTTP/3-capable client, the connection will automatically upgrade to the new protocol, rather than being handled via older versions. On the browser side, Chrome Canary added support for HTTP/3 earlier this month. Users can enable it by using the Chrome command-line flags of "--enable-quic --quic-version=h3-23". In addition, Mozilla too announced it would roll out support for HTTP/3. The browser maker is scheduled to ship HTTP/3 in an upcoming Firefox Nightly version later this fall.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're a cricket fan, you will be visiting Facebook way more often in the coming months and years. The social juggernaut announced on Thursday it has partnered with the International Cricket Council (ICC), the global governing body of cricket, to secure exclusive digital content rights until 2023 for global ICC events in the Indian subcontinent. As part of the four-year deal, financial details of which were not disclosed, Facebook will show post-match recaps and in-play key moments and other "feature content" of the matches in the Indian subcontinent. The exclusive rights are limited to the Indian subcontinent; elsewhere the company will carry post-match recaps. Facebook said it hopes to serve "hundreds of millions of cricket fans" through this "unprecedented" and "ground-breaking" deal. A Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company won't be live-streaming the matches in any market.

Microsoft said it's challenging a federal judge's order that prohibits the company from telling one of its larger corporate customers that the U.S. government issued a warrant for data on the customer. From a report: The software maker and cloud services provider failed to get the "secrecy order" lifted so that it could notify the unidentified enterprise customer of the data demand, Dev Stahlkopf, Microsoft's general counsel, said in a blog post. "We have challenged that order in the lower court, and we will pursue an appeal in the appellate court if necessary, and continue to stand up for the principle that our customers are entitled to know when the government obtains their data," she wrote in the blog. The case is the latest salvo in a yearslong battle between Microsoft and the U.S. government over what are called "sneak and peek" searches in which the subject of a federal inquiry doesn't know their data has been requested or turned over. In 2016, Microsoft sued the government over the practice, saying it had become too widespread. A year later, the Justice Department said it would scale back the use of secrecy orders.

Microsoft is enabling Google's Assistant to work with its Xbox One console. From a report: Much like the existing Alexa integration, Microsoft is allowing Google Assistant to launch games and apps, turn the console on and off, pause videos, and much more. You'll need to use the Google Assistant app for iOS or Android or a device like Google's Home with Assistant on it to control an Xbox One. Google Assistant won't run on the Xbox One itself; instead, it will receive commands from other devices running Assistant.

A suspected Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) group has been spotted attacking tech companies using a trojanized screen-reader application, replacing the built-in Narrator "Ease of Access" feature in Windows. Threatpost reports: The attackers also deploy a version of the open-source malware known as the PcShare backdoor to gain an initial foothold into victims' systems. Using the two tools, the adversaries are able to surreptitiously control Windows machines via remote desktop logon screens, without the need for credentials.

The attacks begin by delivering the PcShare backdoor to victims via spearphishing campaigns. It has been modified and designed to operate when side-loaded by a legitimate NVIDIA application. It is "specifically tailored to the needs of the campaign, with additional command-and-control (C2) encryption and proxy bypass functionality, and any unused functionality removed from the code," explained researchers with BlackBerry Cylance, in an analysis posted on Wednesday. The unused functionality includes audio/video streaming and keyboard monitoring, suggesting that it's strictly being used to install other malware.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Gael Duval, creator of the popular early Linux distribution, Mandrake Linux, wanted a smartphone, which was open source, would run a wide variety of popular software, and protect your privacy. His answer was the Android-based /e/ operating system and smartphones. While it's still in beta, both its code and refurbished Samsung phones running it are now available. Duval's approach hasn't been to reinvent the mobile operating system wheel, but instead to clean up Android of its Google privacy-invading features and replace them with privacy-respecting one, in which, as Duval said in an interview, "Your data is your data."

To do this, he's started with LineageOS. This is an Android-based operating system, which is descended from the failed CyanogenMod Android fork. According to Duval, the /e/ operating system is a Lineage OS fork. It also blends in features from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) 7, 8, and 9 source-code trees. In the /e/ OS all Google services have been removed and replaced with MicroG services. MicroG replaces Google's libraries with purely open-source implementations without hooks to Google's services. This includes libraries and apps which provide Google Play, Maps, Geolocation, and Messaging services for the Android applications when they need them. What this means is that you can run some Android apps, which normally only work on a fully Google-enabled Android phone on an /e/ phone. These compatible apps are available via the /e/ app store. The /e/ platform also comes with its own services, the report notes. For example, its search program uses Qwant, a popular, privacy-first European-based search engine, and for cloud storage, you get /e/'s own cloud, which is based on the open-source NextCloud.

You can download and install /e/ on 85 different smartphone models. You can also buy an /e/ phone today if you're in the EU.

At its annual hardware event on Wednesday, Amazon revealed a slew of updates to its virtual assistant, including the ability to add the voice of Samuel L. Jackson. Mashable reports: Amazon is using neural text-to-speech technology to replicate the iconic actor's voice, instead of having him record canned lines to repeat ad nauseam. The Samuel L. Jackson Alexa personality is launching later this year. Anyone who buys it in 2019 will get it for just $0.99. Humorously, there will be explicit and non-explicit versions of his voice available for use.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Meet AdBlock Radio, an adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts. Its creator, Alexandre Storelli, told Motherboard he hopes to help companies "develop alternative business models for radio and podcast lovers that do not want ads." "Ads exploit the weaknesses of many defenseless souls," Storelli told Motherboard. "Ads dishonestly tempt people, steal their time and promise them a higher social status. Blocking them will be a relieving experience for many."

Most audio ads exploit "auditory artifacts" to produce an ad that can't be ignored or tuned out because it feels louder than it actually is -- this has gotten so bad that there has actually been a "sonic arms race" where ads have been made increasingly louder over the years. "Adblock Radio detects audio ads with machine-learning and Shazam-like techniques," Storelli wrote about the project. He said he's been working on it for more than three years and that it uses techniques such as speech recognition, acoustic fingerprinting, and machine learning to detect known ad formats. It uses a crowdsourced database of ads and "acoustic fingerprinting," which converts audio features into a series of numbers that can be combed by an algorithm. Storelli has made Adblock Radio open-source and given detailed instructions on how to build on it, integrate it into user devices, and deploy it in a way that pressures radio stations (and podcasts) to self-regulate the quality of their ads.