Month: April 2018

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A Russian court has paved the way for the government to block the Telegram messaging app over its creators' failure to provide authorities with access to users' encrypted messages, it was widely reported on Friday.

Russia's state communications watchdog sought the ban last Friday in a lawsuit that asked the court for the authority to block the app's use in Russian territories. The watchdog said Russian authorities needed the ability to decrypt messages sent by potential terrorists and that Telegram had missed an April 4 deadline to turn over keys that would make that possible. At today's hearing, which was scheduled only 24 hours earlier, the court granted the request after just 18 minutes of deliberation, The New York Times reported. Telegram lawyers skipped the hearing in protest.

The ruling came a month after telegram lost a lawsuit it filed against Russia's secretive security agency, the FSB, which has said Telegram is the messenger of choice for "international terrorist organizations in Russia." In 2016, the Kremlin supported a sweeping anti-terrorism law that required authorities to be given backdoor access to encrypted applications. Telegram, which says it has 200 million users, is widely used by lawyers, reporters, government officials, and others. The FSB says telegram was also used by a suicide bomber who last year killed 15 people on a subway in St. Petersburg.

Enlarge / Google's screenshot looks nothing like the current Android P build, and exists in a halfway point between Android and the iPhone X.

It looks like Google just leaked a major new feature of Android P in a blog post. The post, which recaps a security feature, contained a screenshot of the DNS settings with a navigation bar that we hadn't seen before. The explanation from the rumor mill is that this is Android's upcoming iPhone X-style gesture navigation.

The navigation bar in Google's screenshot is nothing like what you see on Android today. The blue color scheme indicates that the phone is running the Pixel theme, so the back button should be solid white. Instead, it's rendered in the old hollow style. The home button is a pill shape instead of circular. The Recent Apps button, which is normally a square, is totally missing.

After talking it out with the Android Twitter crew, 9to5Google's Stephen Hall said he's heard from sources that this is "100 percent" Android gesture navigation and that the back button is supposed to hide itself. If you wipe out the back button from this picture and call the pill-shaped home button a gesture indicator, you have something that looks exactly like the iPhone X's gesture navigation system. In Google's screenshot, a dialog box is open, so the theory is that in this (in-development, subject-to-change) build of Android, a back button pops up only when a dialog box is open and the button would normally disappear.

Enlarge / One voice is amplified, the other is muted. (credit: YouTube)

Google researchers have developed a deep-learning system designed to help computers better identify and isolate individual voices within a noisy environment.

As noted in a post on the company's Google Research Blog this week, a team within the tech giant attempted to replicate the cocktail party effect, or the human brain's ability to focus on one source of audio while filtering out others—just as you would while talking to a friend at a party.

Google's method uses an audio-visual model, so it is primarily focused on isolating voices in videos. The company posted a number of YouTube videos showing the tech in action:

Eric Bangeman

White Castle is known for a lot of things, but serving delicious and nutritious food is not one of them. But when word made it to the Orbiting HQ that the oldest fast food chain in the United States was now dishing up Impossible Burgers, we decided we needed to investigate.

The White Castle-Impossible Burger partnership is an unlikely one, to be sure. The former is perhaps best known for being the last step in finalizing a massive hangover as well as the intended destination of a hungry duo seeking late-night sustenance. The latter is a plant-based burger that "bleeds," sears, and even purports to taste like a beef-based burger. Earlier this year, a few of my colleagues ventured out to a DC-area burger joint to taste-test the Impossible Burger. The reviews were mixed, with the highest praise coming from Tim Lee, who called it a "convincing imitation" of the real thing.

TechCrunch

Gmail.com is soon getting its first redesign in seven years, and with that new look comes some new features. We've already heard about new side panels for Google Calendar, Google Keep, and Google Tasks, and now we're getting word of another new feature: self-destructing emails.

TechCrunch has screenshots detailing the feature from the pre-release version of Gmail. In the compose window, there's a new lock icon called "Confidential Mode." When clicked, a message pops up saying, "Options to forward, download or copy this email's contents and attachments will be disabled." The sender can then pick an expiration date for the email, and optionally require an SMS passcode to open the email. The compose window also switches to a blue color scheme, letting the user know they're not just sending a normal message.

Enlarge / SHANGHAI, CHINA - APRIL 13: Kimi Raikkonen of Finland driving the (7) Scuderia Ferrari SF71H leaves the garage during practice for the Formula One Grand Prix of China at Shanghai International Circuit on April 13, 2018 in Shanghai, China. (credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

When the 2018 Formula 1 season got underway in March in Australia, its long-awaited streaming service was conspicuously absent. Embracing the 21st century and adding an Internet streaming option was a major goal of Liberty Media, the sport's new owners. But that was easier said than done. Under the previous regime, the same broadcasters who carried the races on TV also got the local streaming rights. These were all geofenced, and they precluded the sport from offering its own competing product.

But as those contracts expire, Liberty has been working to fix things. New broadcast contracts no longer include local Internet streaming rights—a major reason NBC dropped the series here in the US. As each region allows, Liberty will offer two different streaming options: F1 TV Access, which is free, and F1 TV Pro, which will cost between $8-$12 a race depending on where you live. It's unclear from the announcement whether there will be a race-by-race option or if you must sign up for a whole season—which would cost between $70 and $150.

The free service will include live timing and audio commentary, as well as extended video highlights. F1 TV Pro will have full video of every race, including video feeds from all 20 of the cars. And now we have a launch date: after missing the first few rounds of the championship—it seems they needed time to stress-test everything—the service will launch at the Spanish Grand Prix, running May 11-13.