Apple has "paused ads related to gambling and a few other categories on App Store product pages" after developers and commentators criticized the types of advertisements showing up in the iPhone's App Store, according to a statement from spokesperson Trevor Kincaid. From a report: On Tuesday, Apple announced that companies could advertise their apps on the store pages for other apps, putting their icon in the "you might also like" section. Almost immediately, developers started showing examples of ads for gambling apps being recommended under their apps. Twitter is also full of screenshots of very inappropriate ad placements: one Twitter user shows a slot machine app being advertised alongside gambling addiction recovery apps, and there are examples of other betting apps being advertised on pages for apps aimed towards children, adult video chat apps showing up on the Apple Books page, and dating apps being placed under apps designed to improve existing relationships.

The Sling TV team has inadvertently spilled the beans on its previously leaked media hub for cord cutters. Zatz Not Funny discovered a briefly available landing website for the AirTV Player, and it's clearer than ever that Sling (read: Dish) is catering to those determined to leave cable and satellite behind. From a report on Engadget: The set-top box will revolve around a home screen that merges over-the-air TV tuning with not only Sling TV, but Netflix -- you won't have to jump between apps or devices to watch both your local news and the latest season of Black Mirror. And since this is an Android device (notice the "G" button on the remote), there's a good chance that other online services will be available as well. It's not certain how much the AirTV Player will cost or when you can get it in your hands. However, a launch at CES in January seems likely given that Dish tends to have a major presence at the trade show. It could be a big deal if there aren't any rude surprises in the pricing or execution, though. Until now, you've typically needed a separate over-the-air TV tuner device (like Nuvyyo's Tablo DVR) if you wanted local live programming wrapped in a slick interface.

cjellibebi writes: Neural networks that were designed to recognize images also hold some interesting capabilities for generating them. If you run them backwards, they turn out to be capable of enhancing existing images to resemble the images they were meant to try and recognize. The results are pretty trippy. A Google Research blog post explains the research in great detail. There are pictures, and even a video. The Guardian has a digested article for the less tech-savvy.

An anonymous reader writes with news that Google has released the full report of the FCC investigation into the incident in which its Street View cars collected personal data while mapping Wi-Fi networks. They are putting responsibility for the data gathering on a 'rogue engineer' who wrote the code for it without direction from management. "Those working on Street View told the FCC they had no knowledge that the payload data was being collected. Managers of the Street View program said they did not read the October 2006 document [written by the engineer that detailed his work]. A different engineer remembered receiving the document but did not recall any reference to the collection of payload data. An engineer who worked closely with the engineer in question on the project in 2007, reviewing all of the codes line by line for bugs, says he did not notice that the software was designed to capture payload data. A senior manager said he preapproved the document before it was written."