Category: Technology

Google’s Pixel 8 Pro could come with a new feature that’s not quite commonly found on phones. 91mobiles has published a video from tipster Kuba Wojciechowski showing what looks like Pixel device being used to measure a person’s temperature. Yep, if the leak is legit, the upcoming flagship Pixel will have a built-in thermometer. The video shows an infrared sensor similar to the ones used by contactless thermometers inside the metal panel where the rear cameras are also located. 

Based on the demonstration of the built-in thermometer, users will have to take off their glasses or any other eye and forehead accessories. They then have to bring the sensor as close to their forehead as possible without actually touching it and then moving their phone towards their temple in 5 seconds. 91mobiles says the sensor could also be used to measure the temperature of inanimate objects, but the video didn’t demonstrate how that would work. Google’s employees have reportedly been testing the feature, as well. 

A previous leak of computer renders show the Pixel 8 Pro as a rounded version of the Pixel 7, and this new video does show a device that’s identical to those renders. While the upcoming phone bears a lot of physical similarities to its predecessor, its three rear cameras are now inside one module. On the Pixel 7 Pro, one of the three camera sensors is in a separate module. 

A thermometer is perhaps a curious feature addition for a phone, especially now that pandemic-related measures are no longer followed. Take note that this is merely a leak, and it remains to be seen whether the Pixel 8 Pros that will make their way to buyers will actually have the sensor.

91mobiles‘ video has already been deleted due to a copyright claim, but one of the publication’s readers tweeted a copy that we’ve embedded below.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-pixel-8-pro-could-have-a-built-in-thermometer-114808668.html?src=rss 

Google recently announced that it will start deleting accounts that have been inactive for two years starting in December this year. The move was supposed to cover all its products, including Gmail, Drive, Docs, YouTube, Google Photos, Meet and Calendar. But now the tech giant has updated its blog post (as noticed by TechCrunch) announcing the purge to say that it does “not have plans to delete accounts with YouTube videos at this time.”

The tech giant positioned security as its main reason for deleting inactive accounts. It said internal analysis showed that old, abandoned accounts are around 10 times less likely to have two-factor enabled. That makes them vulnerable to bad actors who could use them for identity theft and other nefarious purposes. One could also come to the conclusion, however, that deleting old accounts would free up space in Google’s servers. 

After the announcement went out, critics raised concerns that the move could wipe out some important pieces of internet history. Old YouTube videos, including the very first one, would disappear, along with videos uploaded by deceased users. Google didn’t say why it ultimately changed its mind, but YouTube videos are safe. For now.

As for the rest of its products, the company intends to send out warning emails to accounts in danger of being deleted and to their recovery emails by the end of 2023. Those accounts will be deactivated within 60 days if their owners don’t log in after receiving the warning email, though users will have 60 more days (for a total of four months) to recover their accounts before they’re permanently gone. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-account-purge-will-spare-youtube-channels-with-videos-120458847.html?src=rss 

This week, we’re focusing on Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), an annual event meant to promote the need for accessible tech solutions. Cherlynn returns to tell us what Apple, Google, Adobe and others are doing to make their products more useful for people with disabilities (and, it turns out, many general users too). We also discuss Sam Altman’s trip to Congress, and why we’re not entirely impressed with the OpenAI CEO’s calls for AI regulation. Finally, we explain why the BlackBerry movie is one of the best films about tech ever made (take that, Tetris!).

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

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Tech companies highlight new features for Global Accessibility Awareness Day – 1:27

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman goes to Congress and advocates for A.I. regulation – 34:24

Amazon announced a bunch of hardware: new Echo Buds, Echo Show and Echo Pop – 45:10

Montana’s TikTok ban has been signed, scheduled to go into effect in 2024 – 49:04

Working On (and Cherlynn’s experience on the ground at Google I/O) – 53:55

Pop culture picks – 1:04:44

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Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos
Graphic artist: Luke Brooks and Joel Chokkattu

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-pixel-fold-zelda-tears-of-kingdom-123058606.html?src=rss 

The Supreme Court has ruled that Andy Warhol has infringed on the copyright of Lynn Goldsmith, the photographer who took the image that he used for his famous silkscreen of the musician Prince. Goldsmith won the justices over 7-2, disagreeing with Warhol’s camp that his work was transformative enough to prevent any copyright claims. In the majority opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, she noted that “Goldsmith’s original works, like those of other photographers, are entitled to copyright protection, even against famous artists.” 

Goldsmith’s story goes as far back as 1984, when Vanity Fair licensed her Prince photo for use as an artist reference. The photographer received $400 for a one-time use of her photograph, which Warhol then used as the basis for a silkscreen that the magazine published. Warhol then created 15 additional works based on her photo, one of which was sold to Condé Nast for another magazine story about Prince. The Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF) — the artist had passed away by then — got $10,000 it, while Goldsmith didn’t get anything. 

Typically, the use of copyrighted material for a limited and “transformative” purpose without the copyright holder’s permission falls under “fair use.” But what passes as “transformative” use can be vague, and that vagueness has led to numerous lawsuits. In this particular case, the court has decided that adding “some new expression, meaning or message” to the photograph does not constitute “transformative use.” Sotomayor said Goldsmith’s photo and Warhol’s silkscreen serve “substantially the same purpose.” 

Indeed, the decision could have far ranging implications for fair use and could influence future cases on what constitutes as transformative work. Especially now that we’re living in the era of content creators who could be taking inspiration from existing music and art. As CNN reports, Justice Elena Kagan strongly disagreed with her fellow justices, arguing that the decision would stifle creativity. She said the justices mostly just cared about the commercial purpose of the work and did not consider that the photograph and the silkscreen have different “aesthetic characteristics” and did not “convey the same meaning.”

“Both Congress and the courts have long recognized that an overly stringent copyright regime actually stifles creativity by preventing artists from building on the works of others. [The decision will] impede new art and music and literature, [and it will] thwart the expression of new ideas and the attainment of new knowledge. It will make our world poorer,” she wrote. 

The justices who wrote the majority opinion, however, believe that it “will not impoverish our world to require AWF to pay Goldsmith a fraction of the proceeds from its reuse of her copyrighted work. Recall, payments like these are incentives for artists to create original works in the first place.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-supreme-courts-warhol-decision-could-have-huge-copyright-implications-for-fair-use-103547155.html?src=rss 

Apple is famous for being protective of its projects and for expecting secrecy from its workers. Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, the tech giant is concerned about the possibility of its employees inadvertently leaking proprietary data while using ChatGPT. To prevent that scenario from happening, Apple has reportedly restricted the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools, such as GitHub’s Copilot that can autocomplete code. The Journal also says that Apple is working on large language models of its own. 

In early April, The Economist Koreareported that three Samsung employees shared confidential information with ChatGPT. Apparently, one employee asked the chatbot to check database source code for errors, while another asked it to optimize code. The third employee reportedly uploaded a recorded meeting onto the chatbot and asked it to write minutes. It’s unclear how Apple is restricting use of generative AI tools and if it’s prohibiting their use completely. But in Samsung’s case, the company restricted the length of employees’ ChatGPT prompts to a kilobyte or 1024 characters of text. 

Large language models like OpenAI’s become better the more people use them, because users’ interactions are sent back to developers for further training. ChatGPT’s terms and conditions, for instance, state that conversations “may be reviewed by [its] AI trainers to improve [its] systems.” For a secretive company like Apple, limiting their use doesn’t come as a surprise. That said, OpenAI introduced a new privacy control setting in April that enables users to switch off their chat histories so that their conversations can’t be used for training. The company made it available after it had to pull ChatGPT for a few hours due to a bug that showed users other people’s chat histories. 

Not much is known about Apple’s LLM projects at the moment, if there truly are any, but all its AI efforts are under the supervision of John Giannandrea, who used to lead Google’s search and AI teams. The tech giant has also snapped up a number of AI startups over the past few years. When asked about AI in an interview recently, Apple chief Tim Cook hinted that the tech giant is taking a cautious approach by saying: “I do think it’s very important to be deliberate and thoughtful in how you approach these things.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-may-have-restricted-employee-use-of-chatgpt-due-to-privacy-concerns-073141519.html?src=rss 

Elon Musk’s personal lawyer, Alex Spiro, has reportedly sent Microsoft a letter that accuses it of using Twitter API “for unauthorized uses and purposes.” According to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Spiro wrote that “Microsoft may have been in violation of multiple provisions of the agreement for an extended period of time.” In particular, it accuses Microsoft of improperly using Twitter data, such as using more than what it was supposed to and sharing that data with government agencies without permission. Spiro also wrote that Microsoft had declined to pay for its data usage. 

Microsoft had used Twitter data via its API for years in several products, including those related to Xbox, Bing and its advertising tools. However, after Twitter ended free access to its API, Microsoft decided to start distancing itself from the website. It removed Twitter from its social media management tool for advertisers, and it also switched off the option to upload screenshots and clips directly to Twitter from Xbox consoles and the Game Bar on Windows. The tech giant didn’t explain the reason behind those decisions, but Twitter has been charging organizations up to $50,000 a month to access its new API.

In response to a tweet about Microsoft dropping Twitter from its social media management tool, Elon Musk said: “They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.” It’s also worth noting that Musk and Microsoft have had a bumpy relationship lately, with the former claiming that the tech giant is controlling its partner OpenAI. Microsoft, which has invested a total of $13 billion in the ChatGPT creator, said the claim was “factually not correct.” Musk also told Fox News that he was concerned that ChatGPT “is being trained to be politically correct” and that he was looking to create his own generative AI chatbot called “TruthGPT.” He also criticized OpenAI, which he helped start as a non-profit in 2015, for turning into a for-profit business. 

It’s unclear if this event will culminate into a lawsuit, but Twitter is demanding that Microsoft examine the data use of its apps. Twitter also wants Microsoft to submit a report by June on how much of its data the company has and how it’s stored and used. In addition, it wants to know when Microsoft had given government organizations access to its data. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitter-reportedly-accuses-microsoft-of-violating-its-data-use-policy-052356286.html?src=rss 

One day after Montana Governor signed the first statewide ban on TikTok into law, the measure is already facing a legal challenge. Five TikTok creators are suing in an effort to block the ban from taking effect.

In court filings, lawyers representing the TikTok creators say the ban is unconstitutional and that it violates their First Amendment rights. They also take issue with Montana’s supposed national security justification for the ban. 

“Montana has no authority to enact laws advancing what it believes should be the United States’ foreign policy or its national security interests, nor may Montana ban an entire forum for communication based on its perceptions that some speech shared through that forum, though protected by the First Amendment, is dangerous,” the suit states. “Montana can no more ban its residents from viewing or posting to TikTok than it could ban the Wall Street Journal because of who owns it or the ideas it publishes.”

In an interview on Fox News, Montana’s Attorney General, Austin Knudsen, said that legal challenges to the ban were expected. “There are some important issues here that I do think we probably need the federal courts to step in and answer for us here,” he said. “And that was part of our calculus in bringing this.”

The lawsuit is among the first legal challenges to the law, and will likely be closely watched as federal officials consider a nationwide ban on the app. Right now, the Montana ban is set to take effect January 1, 2024, though lawsuits challenging it could delay that timeline. TikTok itself hasn’t commented on whether it’s planning to bring its own litigation in Montana, but said in a statement following the bill’s signing that it planned “to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tiktok-creators-sue-montana-over-statewide-ban-of-the-app-225725851.html?src=rss 

Sony may be having some problems with PlayStation Plus games today. Commenters in forum posts on Reddit, ResetEra and NeoGAF report various users being alerted to an alert, reading, “The game will expire in 15 minutes,” and then booting them to the PlayStation home screen. Engadget’s Kris Holt also ran into the issue Wednesday evening while playing Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.

Users experiencing the glitch say it appears to happen with any game in the PS Plus catalog. Fortunately, you can apparently return to the game from the home screen and quickly continue playing. However, the cycle seems to repeat in regular 15-minute (and possibly other) increments.

It isn’t yet clear how widespread the issue is. (Some users in the Reddit post claim they’re playing PS Plus games without problems.) Additionally, the bug doesn’t have any known fixes. PlayStation hasn’t yet acknowledged the issue publicly; Engadget has reached out to ask for a comment, and we will update this article if or when we hear back.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/playstation-plus-bug-warns-that-games-will-expire-in-15-minutes-205015372.html?src=rss 

Apple added a multiview feature today for watching live sports on the Apple TV 4K. You can now watch up to four live streams of Major League Soccer matches, Friday Night Baseball games and the studio shows MLS 360 and MLB Big Inning. Previously, multiview options for Apple’s set-top box were limited to third-party services like FuboTV, YouTube TV and March Madness streams.

After choosing a compatible match, other available live games will appear at the bottom of the screen in the Apple TV app. There, you can customize whether to watch one stream prominently (with others tiled in smaller windows to the right) or two to four matches in split-screen (of equal sizes). In addition, it lets you choose which audio to hear, including home radio broadcasts for MLS and home or away feeds for Friday Night Baseball. Finally, you can switch to full-screen mode with one click if a stream demands your total attention.

MLS Season Pass, which has no obnoxious blackouts, requires a $15 / mo. (or $99 / season) subscription to watch and use multiview. (Apple TV+ subscribers pay a bit less at $13 / mo. or $79 / season.) Additionally, Apple offers a one-month trial for new and returning subscribers until the end of October. Meanwhile, Friday Night Baseball is available to all Apple TV+ subscribers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-tv-adds-multiview-for-live-sports-192952130.html?src=rss