Apple, which has already introduced "dark mode" in macOS, is widely expected to replicate this in its mobile operating system iOS this year. The move comes as a number of technology companies introduce dark mode in their apps and operating systems. But is it something everyone wants?

TidBITS: When text is white on a black background as it would be in Dark Mode, the whiteness of the lines lightens the edges of each line broadly on both sides, blurring the edge. If the thin lines of the text are black and the background is white, however, white from both sides washes over the entire line, lightening it evenly, so the edges aren't blurred. Blur is a bad thing because of how the human eye relies primarily on contrast when extracting detail from an image. In "Reality and Digital Pictures" (12 December 2005), Charles wrote: The eye does not see light per se, it sees changes in light -- contrast. If two objects do not contrast with one another, to the eye they meld into one. This fact makes controlling the contrast of adjacent details to be paramount in importance. He was focused on issues revolving around photographs, but contrast has been shown to be paramount in numerous studies of textual legibility as well.

Of course, contrast goes in both directions -- black on white and white on black both have high contrast. In the scientific literature, black on white is called "positive polarity," whereas white on black is called "negative polarity." Numerous studies over decades of research have found that positive polarity displays provide improved performance in a variety of areas. [...] Taptagaporn and Saito (1990, 1993) tracked changes in pupil size for different illumination levels as well as for the viewing of different visual targets, such as a cathode ray tube (CRT) display, script and keyboard. They found less visual fatigue as measured by the frequency of changes in pupil size when working was accomplished with a positive than with a negative polarity display. Likewise, Saito, Taptagaporn, and Salvendy (1993) found faster lens accommodation and thus faster focusing of the eye with positive than with negative polarity displays.

To summarize, a dark-on-light display like a Mac in Light Mode provides better performance in focusing of the eye, identifying letters, transcribing letters, text comprehension, reading speed, and proofreading performance, and it results in less visual fatigue and increased visual comfort. The benefits apply to both the young and the old, as that paper concludes: In an ageing society, age-related vision changes need to be considered when designing digital displays. Visual acuity testing and a proofreading task revealed a positive polarity advantage for younger and older adults. Dark characters on light background lead to better legibility and are strongly recommended independent of observer's age.

merbs writes: If the robots are simply "coming," if they just show up and relieve a helpless lot of humans of their livelihoods, then no one is to blame for this techno-elemental phenomenon, and little is to be done about it beyond bracing for impact. Not the executives swayed by consulting firms who insist the future is in AI customer service bots, or the managers who see an opportunity to improve profit margins by adopting automated kiosks that edge out cashiers, or the shipping conglomerate bosses who decide to replace dockworkers with a fleet of automated trucks. These individuals may feel as if they have no choice, with shareholders and boards and bosses of their own to answer to, and an economic system that incentivizes the making of these decisions -- and sometimes the technology will perform obviously superior work to the human -- but they are exactly that: decisions, made by people, to call in or build the job-threatening robots.

Pretending otherwise, that robots in every use case are inevitable, is the very worst form of technological determinism, and leads to a dearth in critical thinking about when and how automation *is* best implemented. Because even the most ardent robot lovers will agree, there are plenty of cases of badly deployed automation; systems that make our lives worse and more inefficient, and that kill jobs en route to worse outcomes. And such automated regression is often implemented under the logic of 'robots are coming,' so better hop aboard. We will be able to make better decisions about embracing effective automation if we understand that, in practice, 'the robots are coming for our jobs' usually means something more like 'a CEO wants to cut his operating budget by 15 percent and was just pitched on enterprise software that promises to do the work currently done by thirty employees in accounts payable.'

Hulu has broken out some new total audience figures and revealed just how many of those total viewers are watching the company's ad-supported streaming service. From a report: Peter Naylor, senior vice president and head of advertising sales at Hulu, said that his company counts 82 million overall viewers, and added that nearly 70% of those viewers are on Hulu's $5.99-per-month ad-supported plan. According to Variety, that works out to 58 million, or an average of 2.9 viewers per Hulu account. Naylor's comments add some context for figures that Hulu disclosed earlier this month. The company said it now has more than 28 million total customers (26.8 million paid subscribers and 1.3 million promotional accounts). The company also said that its ad-supported audience grew by 43% year over year and that total ad-supported hours watched on Hulu increased by 82% year over year.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When you first start planning a big trip, step one will likely happen at the Google search bar. Step two might be clicking onto the images of your target destination. The North Face, in a campaign with agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made, took advantage of this consumer behavior to keep its name top of mind with travelers considering an adventure sports excursion.

The brand and agency took pictures of athletes wearing the brand while trekking to famous locations around the world, including Brazil's Guarita State Park and Farol do Mampimptuba, Cuillin in Scotland and Peru's Huayna Picchu. They then updated the Wikipedia images in the articles for those locations so that now, the brand would appear in the top of Google image search results when consumers researched any of those locations -- all done for a budget of zero dollars. "Our mission is to expand our frontiers so that our consumers can overcome their limits. With the 'Top of Images' project, we achieved our positioning and placed our products in a fully contextualized manner as items that go hand in hand with these destinations," explained Fabricio Luzzi, CEO of The North Face Brazil in a statement.

According to the agency, the biggest obstacle of the campaign was updating the photos without attracting attention of Wikipedia moderators to sustain the brand's presence for as long as possible, as site editors could change them at any time. The "hack" worked, at least for a while, evident in a quick Google search of some of the places mentioned in the campaign's case study video. Further reading: Wikimedia is not pleased.

Tenants in a New York City apartment complex are fighting their landlord's effort to install a facial recognition system to access parts of the buildings, calling it an affront to their privacy rights. From a report: The row, which the tenants believe could become an important test case, comes as concern about the spread of facial recognition systems has grown across the US and globally, with law enforcement agencies increasingly relying on the tool. San Francisco this month became the first US city to ban city police and government agencies from using it. Private firms are also increasingly keen on the technology. At Atlantic Plaza Towers in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the landlord, Nelson Management Group, is moving to install a new system to control entry into the buildings. It would use facial recognition to open the front door for recognized tenants rather than traditional keys or electronic key fobs.

More than 130 tenants have, however, filed a formal complaint with the state seeking to block the application. "We do not want to be tagged like animals," said Icemae Downes, who has lived at Atlantic Plaza Towers since it opened 51 years ago. "We are not animals. We should be able to freely come in and out of our development without you tracking every movement." Some residents also fear the move reflects the spreading pressures of gentrification further into the east of Brooklyn, and a desire to attract white, higher-income residents in the buildings, whose tenants are mostly black. They say there is already a culture of surveillance and that if they are suspected of breaking one of the building's rules, they might find an image of themselves pushed under their doors.

Google is cracking down again on deceptive Chrome extension installation practices. The browser maker listed new rules yesterday that extension developers must follow, or face the possibility of having their extension removed from the official Chrome Web Store. From a report: These new rules come after last year Google banned the installation of Chrome extensions via third-party sites (called inline installs) and limited the installation process to users visiting the extension's official Chrome Web Store page only. [...] But yesterday, Google announced plans to remove all Chrome extensions that abuse the following tactics to trick users towards pressing the "Add to Chrome" button: 1. Extensions that lack a clear "disclosure" that explains to users what they can expect by installing the Chrome extension. 2. Extensions that use misleading disclosures or explanations for the extension's purpose. 3. Hiding disclosure texts (extension's purpose) in large blocks of text, down the page, or using text and fonts that make the disclosure unreadable. 4. Using misleading interactive elements (such as buttons or forms) that trick the user into believing they're taking an action, but unknown to them, they are actually installing a Chrome extension. [...]

From a report: Don't trust everything you see on LinkedIn. We created a fake LinkedIn profile with a fake job at a real company. Our fake profile garnered the attention of a Google recruiter and gained over 170 connections and 100 skill endorsements. Everyone is talking about fake accounts on Facebook and fake followers on Twitter. LinkedIn hasn't been part of the conversation, but Microsoft's social network also has a big problem. We created a fake profile and connected it to a real company. Sadly, it isn't hard. LinkedIn doesn't ask for any proof or confirmation of anything. Instead, LinkedIn runs on a sort of honor system.

You can say you work for a large company and give yourself an impressive job title. It worked for us. Our fake profile (John) "works for HP" as an Innovation Technologist. You may think that's a job title we made up on the spot, but it's a real position we found in HP's job listings. We also gave John previous jobs at Exabeam and Salesforce to round out his resume. You might imagine that HP or someone else would notice and stop us. But that's not how it works. LinkedIn doesn't notify companies about new employee profiles. We didn't steal anyone's identity or even use a real photo for our fake profile. See that photo of John? That's not a stock photo of a real person. Instead, the image came from thispersondoesnotexist.com. Simply put, it's a fake photo of a non-existent person generated by a computer algorithm.

Maine lawmakers have passed a bill that will prevent internet providers from selling consumers' private internet data to advertisers. From a report: The state's senate unanimously passed the bill 35-0 on Thursday following an earlier vote by state representatives 96-45 in favor of the bill. The bill, if signed into law by state governor Janet Mills, will force the national and smaller regional internet providers operating in the state to first obtain permission from residents before their data can be sold or passed on to advertisers or other third parties. Maine has about 1.3 million residents.

The Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission voted in 2017 to allow internet providers to sell customers' private and personal internet data and browsing histories -- including which websites a user visits and for how long -- to advertisers for the biggest buck. Congress later passed the measure into law.

Odds of the U.S. and China cooling off their trade war further diminished on Friday after the world's most populous nation said it would create a list of "unreliable" foreign firms of its own. From a report: Gao Feng, a spokesman of China's commerce ministry, said today that the nation will create an "entity list" that will include, in part, foreign companies that have stopped or curtailed their businesses with Chinese firms. "Foreign enterprises, organizations or individuals that do not comply with market rules, deviate from a contract's spirit or impose blockades or stop supplies to Chinese enterprises for non-commercial purposes, and seriously damage the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises, will be included on a list of 'unreliable entities,'" he was quoted as saying by state-owned local media. The retaliation comes weeks after the U.S. Commerce Department enlisted Huawei and 68 affiliates in an entity list over national security concerns, thereby requiring American companies to take approval from the government before conducting business with Chinese firms.

Amazon is reportedly interested in buying prepaid cellphone wireless service Boost Mobile from U.S. carriers T-Mobile and Sprint. "Amazon is considering buying Boost mainly for an attached wholesale deal that would allow the buyer to use T-Mobile's wireless network for at least six years," reports Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the matter. "Amazon would also be interested in any wireless spectrum that could be divested." From the report: It was not immediately clear why the U.S. online retail giant and cloud services provider would want the wireless network and spectrum. T-Mobile and Sprint have offered concessions, including selling Boost, to reduce their market share in the prepaid wireless business and gain regulatory approval for their planned $26 billion merger. The U.S. Justice Department would need to scrutinize the buyer of a divested asset to ensure it will stay viable and preserve competition. The carriers are also considering divesting wireless spectrum, or airwaves that carry data, in order to push the merger through.

dryriver writes: BBC Future has the story of "Tamara" (not her real name) who used to be paid 24 euros a day to rewrite U.S. news stories for a slew of "fake news" U.S. politics websites targeted at American news readers but run out of Velev, Macedonia. Basically, Tamara's handler "Marco" would send her eight real U.S. politics news stories via email every morning, asking Tamara to rewrite them with very extreme political views and slants injected into them. Tamara was often tasked with writing horrible things about Muslims for example, making up heinous crimes they had committed in various places, and injecting those made-up falsehoods into otherwise legit-looking news articles. The rewritten articles, which were engineered to trigger strong reactions in readers, went on Facebook -- where Marco had over 2,000,000 likes -- and on a number of "American looking" fake news websites also run by Marco out of Macedonia. On a good day, Marco would earn up to 2,000 euros a day from Google ad revenues for his fake news U.S. politics websites. Tamara, who was only paid 3 euros per article she rewrote, muses in the BBC Future article about how stupid people must be to eat up the falsehoods that she, Marco and others put online everyday. She characterizes the content of the rewritten articles as "insultingly ridiculous" and "obviously fake," but many American news readers apparently ate them up and frequently believed what they read.

"While Linux-preloaded laptops have been available for years from smaller companies, and have represented a fraction of their own sales with the much-admired XPS 13 developer model, Dell now offers a range of Precision models pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux," writes Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed. Phoronix reports: At the start of May Dell announced an Ubuntu Linux option for their entry-level ~$700 Precision laptop while now they are closing out May by offering up Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on their higher-tier Precision laptop models. Ubuntu Linux has landed for the rest of Dell's current generation Precision mobile workstation line-up with support for the Precision 5540, 7540, and 7740. The Precision 5540 offers options of Xeon E or 9th Gen Core CPUs with up to 64GB of RAM and options for a NVIDIA Quadro T2000. The Precision 7540/7740 meanwhile are more powerful mobile workstations with supporting up to 128GB of ECC RAM and latest generation processors. The Precision 7740 model can also accomodate NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 series graphics. Additional details can be found via this blog post by Dell's Barton George.

Researchers have discovered an advanced piece of Linux malware that has escaped detection bypasses antivirus products and appears to be actively used in targeted attacks. Ars Technica reports: HiddenWasp, as the malware has been dubbed, is a fully developed suite of malware that includes a trojan, rootkit, and initial deployment script, researchers at security firm Intezer reported on Wednesday. At the time Intezer's post went live, the VirusTotal malware service indicated Hidden Wasp wasn't detected by any of the 59 antivirus engines it tracks, although some have now begun to flag it. Time stamps in one of the 10 files Intezer analyzed indicated it was created last month. The command and control server that infected computers report to remained operational at the time this article was being prepared.

Some of the evidence analyzed -- including code showing that the computers it infects are already compromised by the same attackers -- indicated that HiddenWasp is likely a later stage of malware that gets served to targets of interest who have already been infected by an earlier stage. It's not clear how many computers have been infected or how any earlier related stages get installed. With the ability to download and execute code, upload files, and perform a variety of other commands, the purpose of the malware appears to be to remotely control the computers it infects. That's different from most Linux malware, which exists to perform denial of service attacks or mine cryptocurrencies. Some of the code appears to be borrowed from Mirai, while other code has similarities to other established projects or malware including the Azazel rootkit, the ChinaZ Elknot implant, and the recently discovered Linux variant of Winnti, a family of malware that previously had been seen targeting only Windows.

Motorola's $500 Moto Z4 is finally official, bringing an updated design with a near-notchless 6.4-inch OLED display, headphone jack, and support for the company's Moto Mods. Other specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 processor, 4GB of RAM with 128GB of storage (expandable via microSD to 2TB) and Android 9.0 Pie, with Motorola promising an update to Q in the future. CNET reports: To improve photography Motorola has added what it calls "Quad Pixel technology," which uses pixel-binning to allow for 48-megapixel shots with the rear lens, following a trend of other recent higher-end midrange phones including OnePlus' 7 Pro. Around front is a 25-megapixel shooter which takes advantage of the same "Quad Pixel" tech. Motorola says both sensors should offer improved details and colors as well as better low-light performance. The company has even added its own rival to the Pixel 3's Night Sight called Night Vision.

In some brief hands-on time with the phone, the phone feels more premium than the rival cheaper Pixel 3a, which starts at $399. Videos looked sharp on the OLED display and the Night Vision did a solid job of enhancing images taken in a dark room. Whether the Z4 can rival the Pixel 3A's camera or if its cheaper price can top the value of $669 OnePlus 7 Pro's performance remains to be seen. An optical fingerprint sensor is built into the display, similar to the technology used on OnePlus' 6T and 7 Pro. As with the OnePlus phones, setup was seamless and unlocking was responsive during our brief use of the phone. Wireless charging isn't present nor is IP-rated water resistance (Motorola says the phone can withstand spills and rain). The phone will be available from Verizon on June 13, and will support the carrier's 5G network via the 5G Moto Mod (sold separately).

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, FedEx will deliver packages seven days a week starting next year, adding an extra operating day to accommodate America's online shopping habits. From the report: The delivery giant also plans to bring to customers' doorsteps many of the packages it currently drops at local post offices. The shift will seek to lower costs by building density along FedEx Ground routes, while also shifting some two million packages daily out of the U.S. Postal Service's network. The changes aim to serve an e-commerce shopping market where consumer habits don't mesh with working schedules, because many deliveries arrive at homes while shoppers are at work. It also adds capacity to FedEx's network by using existing facilities an extra day to handle what the company expects will be a doubling of small package shipments in the U.S. by 2026.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft has spent years pushing developers to create special apps for the company's Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and today, it's putting the final nail in the UWP coffin. Microsoft is finally allowing game developers to bring full native Win32 games to the Microsoft Store, meaning the many games that developers publish on popular stores like Steam don't have to be rebuilt for UWP.

This is a big shift for Microsoft's Windows app store, particularly because games are one of the most popular forms of apps that are downloaded from app stores. Previously, developers were forced to publish games for Windows 10 through the Universal Windows Platform, which simply doesn't have the same level of customization that game developers have come to expect from Windows over the years. The writing has been on the wall for UWP for months now. Microsoft recently revealed its effort to switch the company's Edge browser to Chromium and away from UWP to make it available on Windows 7, Windows 8, and macOS. Microsoft's Joe Belfiore admitted in an interview with The Verge earlier this month that UWP was a "headwind" for Edge. "It's not that UWP is bad, but UWP is not a 35-year-old mature platform that a ridiculously huge amount of apps have been written to," Belfiore said at the time. Microsoft even recently put its touch-friendly UWP versions of Office on hold, preferring to focus on the web, iOS, Android, and its desktop apps instead. Office was always the centerpiece for UWP and a good example of how to build a more demanding app on Microsoft's new platform. Microsoft is finally listening to app and game developers and not trying to force UWP on them anymore. "Ultimately, this is good news for both developers and Windows users," the report concludes. "We might now start to see more games in the Microsoft Store that work how PC gamers expect them to and hopefully more apps."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's original grand plan for Windows 10 was an operating system that was always up-to-date. Updates were intended to be mandatory, and while you could delay them a bit, you couldn't opt out of them entirely. And the software giant was committed to rolling out two major feature updates a year. Fast forward to now, and things are very different. You can delay, or avoid, most updates, including feature updates -- assuming you're even offered them in the first place.

AdDuplex monitors the state of adoption for the various Windows 10 versions, and its latest figures, for May, show the October 2018 Update (1809) is still only on 31.3 percent of systems (up from 29.3 percent in April), and the May 2019 Update (1903) is currently to be found on just 1.4 percent of devices.

From a report: Recently, a musician signed to a major indie label told me they were owed up to $40,000 in song royalties they would never be able to collect. It wasn't that they had missed out on payments for a single song -- it was that they had missed out on payments for 70 songs, going back at least six years. The problem, they said, was metadata. In the music world, metadata most commonly refers to the song credits you see on services like Spotify or Apple Music, but it also includes all the underlying information tied to a released song or album, including titles, songwriter and producer names, the publisher(s), the record label, and more. That information needs to be synchronized across all kinds of industry databases to make sure that when you play a song, the right people are identified and paid. And often, they aren't.

Metadata sounds like one of the smallest, most boring things in music. But as it turns out, it's one of the most important, complex, and broken, leaving many musicians unable to get paid for their work. "Every second that goes by and it's not fixed, I'm dripping pennies," said the musician. Entering the correct information about a song sounds like it should be easy enough, but metadata problems have plagued the music industry for decades. Not only are there no standards for how music metadata is collected or displayed, there's no need to verify the accuracy of a song's metadata before it gets released, and there's no one place where music metadata is stored. Instead, fractions of that data is kept in hundreds of different places across the world. As a result, the problem is way bigger than a name being misspelled when you click a song's credits on Spotify. Missing, bad, or inconsistent song metadata is a crisis that has left, by some estimations, billions on the table that never gets paid to the artists who earned that money.

The Galaxy Note 10 will reportedly be Samsung's first flagship to remove the headphone jack, taking one of the last wired audio options off the flagship market. From a report: The Note 10 will have no 3.5mm connector, or exterior buttons (power, volume, Bixby) will be replaced by capacitive or pressure-sensitive areas, likely highlighted by some kind of raised 'bump' and/or texture along the edge (i.e., a faux button). We don't know if it's Samsung's intent to carry over both of these changes to the Galaxy S11 in 2020. Both changes had been previously rumored, but we can now provide stronger confirmation. The Note line has always been fertile ground for Samsung's more forward-looking changes to its smartphones' industrial design and general philosophy, as it's a phone that's long been adored by some of Samsung's most ardent fans -- the sort of people who tend to be early adopters of new technology.

Four years after 3D Touch debuted on the iPhone 6s, the pressure-sensitive feature appears to be on the chopping block. From a report: Last week, in a research note shared with MacRumors, a team of Barclays analysts "confirmed" that 3D Touch "will be eliminated" in all 2019 iPhones, as they predicted back in August 2018. The analysts gathered this information from Apple suppliers following a trip to Asia earlier this month. This isn't the first time we've heard this rumor. The Wall Street Journal said the same thing back in January. Apple already replaced 3D Touch with Haptic Touch on the iPhone XR in order to achieve a nearly edge-to-edge LCD on the device, and it is likely the feature will be expanded to all 2019 iPhones. Haptic Touch is simply a marketing name for a long press combined with haptic feedback from the Taptic Engine. Apple commentator John Gruber adds: 3D Touch is a great idea but Apple never rolled it out well, and it was never discoverable. I wouldn't be surprised if most people with 3D Touch-enabled iPhones have no idea it exists. In and of itself, the lack of discoverability isn't necessarily a problem. That's how power user features often work. Right-clicking on the Mac, for example, is in the same boat. What 3D Touch never got right is that power-user shortcuts should be just thatâ-- shortcuts for tasks with more obvious ways to do them. Now imagine if right-clicking only worked on certain high-end Macs, but didn't work on others. That's what happened with 3D Touch.

I think it should have always been a shortcut for a long-press, pure and simple. Just a faster way to long-press. But because 3D Touch is not just a shortcut for a long-press, but is not available on any iPad nor many iPhones, developers could never count on it, so they never really did anything with it. It doesn't get used much because there's not much you can do with it.